Finding Common Ground

           Finding common ground doesn’t mean giving up your views on issues, it simply means you and those with opposing views find things you can agree on.  I hear this phrase quite often these days, both in politics and religion.  It sounds like a good way for folks with differing views to settle important matters, and live in harmony with one another. But is it?

          The government of our country was set up so as to be run by representation of the people. Congress was to be made up of duly elected folks from every state in the union. They were to work together for the people they represented, but more,  for the well-being of the United States as a whole. Ideally, that’s the way it was supposed to work; and practically, they had to find common ground, in order to do it.

          A real kingdom doesn’t work that way. A true kingdom is run by the king alone. He may be a very good king who rules his people well, or he could be a very evil king, who rules his people with an iron fist, but common ground never enters the picture: a real king rules his kingdom according to the dictates of his own heart.

          The church of God is neither a republic nor a democracy; it is a kingdom ruled by a King—the Lord Jesus Christ! He has never relinquished His rule to another; He has never appointed a man to rule over His church; He is not building His church according to the whims and fancies of a majority of men; Christ is the Head of His church, and He alone is building it according to the dictates of His heart, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in accordance with the will of the Father.

          The false shepherds of the present day nominal church are actively pursuing bringing people of all faiths onto common ground; they claim this honors God by bringing all men into a global, human fraternity. They say that no one need lay aside their religious convictions, but find common ground and make it the main thing. Well, from man’s point of view, that sounds wonderful, but from God’s view, just how wonderful is it? Does the Lord God even address this?

          Let’s consider  the term, “All faiths”; that expression is used much these days. It implies that all religions are equal and share some common ground, and they do. Christianity is not a religion, and the one thing all the religions of the world share in common is, they reject Jesus Christ who is the Founder and Head of Christianity.

          Now, some religions may declare that they don’t reject Jesus. As a matter of fact, they may say, we believe in Jesus: we believe He was a prophet, a great teacher who taught good morals, or He was a good man, or an angel, or a created being. But the word of God clearly rejects such thinking as the spirit of antichrist. Jesus Christ was God in a flesh and blood body; He was the second person of God, born of a virgin, the Son of God. Rejection of that is the spirit of antichrist.

          Jesus forbids His church from looking for common ground with those who reject Him.     

“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what does righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and the devil? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Therefore, come out from among them and be separate…”

Brother Bill is a Bible teacher and can be contacted at bboldham@sbcglobal.net