Church, modesty, church discipline & correction
On black churches, modesty, church discipline & correction, turning from worldly to godly.
Problems in the black church.
Black churches sadly have been notorious for being full of false teachings even from America's early days. It has always bent more liberal, instead of biblical. Today some biblical black churches exist, but outside of black communities, black Americans and those on the path to citizenship, should be in a mixed church, not ethnically singular. It can open them up to truth and educate on many things the black church has wrong. But also since we are to be one in Christ, not divided. Not segregated. Today more black churches are coming under biblical leadership & teaching, and thats good. But believers looking for a church need to be knowledgeable about what to look for, (be learned on foundations biblical truths of Christianity and the Gospel), so they dont walk into a false church.
The church shes supposedly going to is either a false church, (as typical in black communities) or a biblical one thats rightly calling out sin. Far too few black churches call out sin and lack implementing church discipline...that any hint of it happening feels offensive or judge (by those in the pews) cuz they never had any true shephards guiding and calling them to it in pursuit of holy living. If the church shes in is biblical and is calling out sin... the leaders are doing their job. And likewise godly brethren in the church should come alongside and teach and correct (in loving counsel) those not adhering to holy behavior, to lead them into righteousness and help them conquer sin. This woman's is vanity and putting her identity in self not Christ. That needs correcting. And her judgmentalism. She needs to repent of her sins towards God and the leaders and any godly believers who tried to correct her. If mot saved, she first needs Salvation; transformation.
What about so many Denoms?
If you think certian churches arent of The Church, in a way that is true bcuz many claim to be of Christ - but are not. NT warns if false preachers and teachers. So wolves in the church or wolves running a "church" are to be caution.
But if implying diff denominations means The Church is fractured and not legit- then youre wrong. Within true Christianity [the biblical one] we are united by Christ, by the Gospel. Various denoms exist within this one true Church; the Bride of Christ, because of the Reformation; people within RCC who got access to and studied the Bible (that was a rare situation) realized the RCC religion is an apostate false religion, that needed radical reform to turn it back to Truth. But since RCC rejected it, these ones in varied EU countries left RCC and educated the people to those truths & the true Gospel. The denominations came from that, not by disagreement, but by the reformed teacher/leader in those countries, who taught secondary matters from their limited understanding of Scripture at that time. A denom formed from it. Then as people fled (Roman Empire/RCC's reach) they continued teaching until murdered by RCC. Believers fled & settled elsewhere in freedom and continued under each of those mens teaching, they *just didnt keep reforming* either due to lack of pursuing and exsmining Scripture, or access to earliest church preachers/fathers (pre RCC 475 AD), and lack of studied men of the Word leading churches (when new ones of that denom began being built), until more recent times. So those original churches; mainline conservative protestant churches, just kept teaching what their founder taught. They never kept studying, reforming, changing, growing, (seeing if that founder lacked understanding in certian secondary areas). But with all that known now today, and those who study the Scriptures, and use proper hermenutics when doing so, can come to understand the errors the Reformers held to or taught, not errors of salvific matters but of & around the secondary; ordinances of like baptism & communion, as well as end times. It is things we can agree to disagree on because if one studies Scripture rightly and with what we have access to today, they can come to understand a matter more correctly, and then move to a denomination that rightly teaches on that. At least theyd rightly teach on it in their home, even if there is no other church but the old one in their town or within a distance they can get to. Today we have cars, others b4 us may not have even had a horse. They were limited to walking. And they had less churches than we do today, esp in rural areas (most of the US). Cities weren't even big back then. And outconus churches were fewer but non Anglican/Catholic ones in modern times were allowed [since UK later broke away from RCC], such as Spurgeons. It was huge, but most churches outconus have 30 people, and in US average size is 75, but 30 for rural. Distance was always a factor, so you were left with slim pickins.
Today many watered down and false churches are all over the place, the mainline protestant churches disintegrated by embracing man made & pagan-cultural worldviews, but remnants of true Christianity among those split off and are still present, but most go to Reformed like / GCC like churches today, or Calvinist SBC churches that adhere to biblical truth.
So while there are false churches masquerading as Christian, the true Church is made up of the invisible and local visible churches regardless of denomination, since they are united together in Christ - by the biblical Gospel. Jesus will still call out His Bride from the world at the end of the Church age as the end times judgment age begins. Those saved will evermore be with Christ.
So, I wouldn't focus on all the distractive stuff like denoms and etc but instead tell people "in light of judgment coming, flee to Christ to be saved" (& restored to a right relationship with God), because thats their greatest need & tomorrow isnt guaranteed. This can guide them through the Gospel so they can as Jesus said in Mark 1:15 "Repent and Believe the Gospel". Those who do are born again by God. And that is the only way.
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