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Acts 15:22-29<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers,\u00a0with the following letter: \u201cThe brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings.\u00a0Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions,\u00a0it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,\u00a0men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.\u00a0We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth.\u00a0For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements:\u00a0that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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Now, before there can be communion there must be union. The sharers are one in a sense altogether above organization, nationality, race or denomination. That oneness is a divine thing, achieved by the Holy Spirit in the act of regeneration. Whoever is born of God is one with everyone else who is born of God.<\/p>\n
The early Christians, under the fire of persecution, driven from place to place, sometimes deprived of the opportunity for careful instruction in the faith, wanted a “rule” which would sum up all that they must believe to assure their everlasting welfare. Out of this critical need arose the creeds. Of the many, the Apostles’ Creed is the best known and best loved, and has been reverently repeated by the largest number of believers through the centuries. And for millions of good men that creed contains the essentials of truth. Not all truths, to be sure, but the heart of all truth. It served in trying days as a kind of secret password that instantly united men to each other when passed from lip to lip by the followers of the Lamb. It is fair to say, then, that the truth shared by saints in the apostolic fellowship is the same truth which is outlined for convenience in the Apostles’ Creed.<\/p>\n
In this day when the truth of Christianity is under serious fire from so many directions it is most important that we know what we believe and that we guard it carefully. But in our effort to interpret and expound the Holy Scriptures in accord with the ancient faith of all Christians, we should remember that a seeking soul may find salvation through the blood of Christ while yet knowing little of the fuller teachings of Christian theology. We must, therefore, admit to our fellowship every sheep who has heard the voice of the Shepherd and has tried to follow Him.<\/p>\n
The beginner in Christ who has not yet had time to learn much Christian truth and the underprivileged believer who has had the misfortune to be brought up in a church where the Word has been neglected from the pulpit, are very much in the same situation. Their faith grasps only a small portion of truth, and their “sharing” is necessarily limited to the small portion they grasp. The important thing, however, is that the little bit they do enjoy is real truth. It may be no more than this, that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”; but if they walk in the light of that much truth, no more is required to bring them into the circle of the blessed and to constitute them true members of the apostolic fellowship. (Tozer)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Acts 15:22-29\u00a0\u00a0Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers,\u00a0with the following letter: \u201cThe brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to … Continue reading “73.j. Acts 15:22-29\u00a0“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-prayers"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":200404,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200401\/revisions\/200404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prayingpint.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}