The Nevada County picayune., 1922-01-19
OUR WEEKLY SERMON
What Must a Church Do to Be Saved?
 (By pr. ]. c. Williams)
Text, Acts 16 Il, !.

Text, Acts 16:4 ,.
 The church is composed of individu- als and what is necessary for the sal vation of the individual is also neces- sary for the church and we get a direct answer in the 31st verse of this chap ter as to what is needed for the salva- tion ossone man-"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." and we see from tiRt divinely inspired answer to the important question, What must l do to he saved" that the basis of sal yation is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and then it follows that if a church is 10 be saved ii must believe in this same divine Savior and must proclaim him as Lord and Redeemer. The first great requirement is faith, and this is the faith spoken of in the Bible as ''once delivered to the saints embody- ing the great fundamental doctrines of 2 personal and sovereign God, a divine snd crucified and risen and ascended Christ and divine Holy Spirit now in charge of the church here on earth AS administrator and then the accom- panying doctrines of the vicarious sac rifice and atonement of Christ with the accomplished redemption as taught in @t.o D;I,la ,nJ tboo ,.nuoparo tion bv tho Holy Spirit and faith, repentance, love, confession of Christ before men with constant reminder of a judgment to come, of a hell for the wicked and un- believing and heaven for the re deemed in Christ.
 The church must have an unwayer- tug faith in the full inspiration of the Scriptures and their preservation till this good day in their entirety, and that they are the only rule of faith and conduct given LIS by the Triunc God for our guidance and instruction.
 A church can he numbered among rhe living or dying when we know what position is taken on the great funda- mental doctrines enumerated above and when there is wavering or doubt ar complete cratic teaching upon these then we know that they are numbered among those appointed to die and that he end is not far away. Nearly all fhe great heresies and errors have been about the person and nature Of Jesus Christ and the truth and au- thenticity of the Scriptures and though these questions have been settled time and again and all opponents of the true doctrine have been routed from the field of conflict and completely overwhelmed. yet in almost every gen erntion there are those who revive the old heresies and paint them mp and 1.ose as modern views and doctrines adapted to the new age of thought.
 Get down church history and see the different churches going away into false doctrines in the past and then iying and passing from the stage of .ction as the GnosticS. Arians, Mono fhelites and scores of otohers and you see that they all got wrong about the rerson and nature of Christ and taught "damnablc hereSeS" about him, but they have all gone the same road to defeat and death and while we have about 200 denominations in the United states today. you will not find the ,.amcs of those named above among them. Here is the warning then tc any church. or individual. that if wt get a wrong conception of Christ and adopt the doctrine of those who saA that he is only n prophet and not ont Of the Godhead. then there is short eonrse here. and soon the race will hf run and the journey will end at thf ecclesiastical grave yard. The saying that 'here is nothing new under the sun" applies today specially and very emphaticaily to theology and views oi religion While we think we live h
 Iaodern times and are told that we must adopt modern views or our church
 will become obsolete and drop ou
 from the race of life, yet when W, consider there so-called modern views we discover that they have been simply
 the old dead teachings of Arianism re