Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 8
March 28, 1957
NUMBER 46, PAGE 5a

The Modern Bible

Voyd N. Ballard, Ventura, California

The Bible is the book of God, and God intended that it should be our all sufficient guide in religion. The church should "make all things according to the pattern." (Heb. 8:5.) We should be content to follow Divine examples in all things. But there is every indication that some are not. The Bible as it now reads does not describe some of the practices of some of the churches of Christ. In order to have some of the modern day practices described in the Bible we would have to make some changes. Since brethren seem altogether unwilling to change their practices, it might be easier to change the Word of God so that we will have a Modern Bible to fit these modern practices. The Modern Bible could read like this:

Acts 6:2, 6 — "Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave our pastoral duties along with our work of planning committees and arranging our youth programs, and serve tables. Wherefore look ye out among you seven men of high social standing, full of good organizing ability and business judgment, whom we may appoint over this business. These seven men we will authorize to establish a Church of Christ Widows' Home. This Home shall ye have chartered as a separate institution from the church. All churches of Christ shall be encouraged to send their widows and any other widows they can find to this Church of Christ Home, and every congregation shall be asked to send regular contributions and behold it shall come to pass that any congregation who opposes this institution shall be marked and branded as Antis and Sommerites. These seven men shall constitute the Official Board and Stephen shall be the Superintendent. It shall be his chief duty to travel among the churches and encourage them to support this home. And behold the theme of this separate institution shall be "Unto Him be glory in the church."

James 1:27 — "Pure religion before God and the Father is this, To search the country over and gather together as many children as possible, (whether they are orphans or not) establish an institution that shall be known as a Church of Christ Orphan Home, place these children therein, and insist that every congregation send a regular contribution to this Great Brotherhood Work." If any congregation among the brotherhood seems inclined to do its own work through its own local organization, refusing to support this separate institution, itshall be branded as Sommerite and charged with not caring anything about the poor little orphans."

Philippians 4:15, 16 — "Now ye Philippians know also, that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church sponsored me, but ye only. For even in Thessalonica ye announced to the brotherhood that ye were doing a great work in setting up yourselves as my sponsors, and thus ye ASSUMED a great undertaking in asking all the churches to send their funds to you, so that ye might oversee me in my great work of National broadcasting over the Mediterranean hookup at Thessalonica. Truly ye made known to the brotherhood that it was your exclusive work, though far beyond your means to accomplish, and thus impressed upon all he churches their obligation to send once and again to this BROTHERHOOD WORK that you had assumed. Also ye have well done in that ye have succeeded in quarantining and branding the radicals who insist that the congregations should send support direct to the preacher. Let every man who dares oppose the sponsoring church have the curse of the institutional brethren rest upon him, even though he may be blest with the smiles of Heaven."

Acts 20:7,11 — "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to hear Dr. Paul lecture, he made the following announcements: Remember that the Youth Group of Troas will, on the morrow, sojourn to Miletus where will be gathered together Youth Groups from all the congregations. This is a great work and is sponsored by the fine church in Ephesus. They have arranged for many recreational activities such as, Skating parties, Bowling, ball games, tennis, etc. There will be plenty of time for 'Fellowship hours' in which our boys and girls will have a chance to get to know each other better. Many fine courtships and marriages have come from these get-togethers, and this is fine, for, one work of the church is to see that our young people are properly married. The activities of this Great Youth Rally will be climaxed by the Big Baseball game between the Jerusalem Church of Christ and the Antioch Church of Christ. Both of these congregations have fine ball teams and this will, indeed be an exciting game. The losing congregation will treat the entire Youth Encampment to a chicken dinner. Everyone be sure to attend these great meetings. And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, and he became so excited at these announcements, that he fell down from the third loft, and was takened up dead. This troubled the congregation greatly for Eutychus was the captain of their ball team and they knew that they did not have a chance of winning any games without him. But Paul went down and said trouble not yourselves for I will restore the life of this great soldier, seeing that you cannot win without him. When he was come up again he gave them a fifteen minute sermonette, for verily they could not stand a long winded preacher. After that they all talked a long while, even till break of day, discussing in detail their plans for the recreational activities of the great Youth Rally.