Like A River

 

“Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it has a God who knows the way out of the grave.” G. K. Chesterton/

Like a mountain river propelled downward, flowing between canyon walls with the power of gravity guiding the power of rushing water, picking up debris and impurity in its headlong movement. Seemingly nothing can stand in the path of the powerful onslaught of that river. Suddenly it seems to disappear from sight, although the river has not stopped its flow. The irrepressible, torrential watercourse has come to a blind end within the high canyon walls. It can’t go over, it can’t go around and yet its power does not allow it to stop, therefore it is forced to go underground – out of sight. And it keeps flowing. The path it is forced to take while underground removes the debris and impurities picked up on the surface.  When it bursts forth into the open once again, often many miles from its disappearance, it comes forth cleansed and filtered by the arduous perseverance of the journey it has endured.

For over a period of two thousand years, in many places and many times, the Christian church world-wide has endured in such a way as that river. When it has been forced out of sight it has never stopped flowing – and growing.  -g.w.

 

  I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile.                                      Romans 1:16

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.  Job 13:15

¹⁰ As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
¹¹ so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11

When the true church is driven under ground it is separated from the superficial(heretical)church which remains visible. Yet the power is in the unseen.