Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified with Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. 1 Corinthians 1:2
The Assembly in Corinth to which Paul addressed this letter in our text today is many centuries gone. The correspondent who read this letter before the Assembly is totally forgotten. Those saints served their time, completed their march through history, and have been lost to knowledge as conditions about them and after them evolved and upheaved. Just like we will be if the Rapture does not occur in the near future. You and I are in mid-stride now, making our little marks, saying our little pieces, building our little lives, and moving day-by-day into eventual antiquity. What will people know about us in the coming centuries? And what difference will we have made that will endure?
Some of our Assembly meetings are a little noisy these days because some of our young families are bringing along babies at a brisk pace. All these little children can be disruptive at times. But look on these little children and understand that they are the future of our testimony, if they are saved and take their places in the Assembly. How we live before them, how we teach them, determines whether these little ones will be faithful to Paul’s words in today’s text, and eventually whether our Assembly survives for any length of time into the future. The world is swirling about us, seeking to snatch away the young Christians. The devil is throwing his fiery darts in his never-tiring bid to destroy the testimonies of Christians and the Assembly. Religion and philosophies will claim their victims from among us, sad to say. What will endure through future generations? We can’t know. But we can lay foundations. We can cling faithfully to truth and refuse to accept error. We can set examples before the young folks. God has given to us precious truths that are lost on the world and on most of the denominations around us. We can let none of these truths slip. We must commit them to future generations. Or there will be no Assembly to carry on, and on, and on.
How long will your Assembly endure after you are gone? At least some of that depends on you. -Jim MacIntosh