What a sad commentary! Had the people believed Moses, instead of the crafty false teachers of their day, they would have accepted Christ, because Moses wrote of Christ. He said to them, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law?” ( John 7:19.)Īnd again he said, “… had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.” ( John 5:46.)
These the Savior severely criticized, accusing them of apostasy from the very law of Moses which they pretended to preach. With such heavenly guidance, none need go astray.īut there were men in the Lord’s own day who taught false doctrines and led the people into mistaken paths. They were the mouthpieces of the Lord, and their inspired messages to the people were the will of the Lord, the mind of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation. They were the inspired leaders in the Church. Those safeguards, according to Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, rested primarily in the persons of the apostles and prophets whom God placed at the head of the Church for that specific purpose. Not only did he provide that salvation should come through his regularly constituted church, but he set up safeguards to protect its members from being tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and to preserve them from the sleight of men who, with cunning craftiness, lie in wait to deceive. The Lord established one strait and narrow way, and understandingly observed that “few there be that find it.” Therefore it was made clearly manifest that salvation is in the Church, and of the Church, and is obtained only through the Church. It was the Church that was provided to edify the body of Christ, as Paul explained to the Ephesians. It was the Church that was given for the work of the ministry. It was the Church that was organized for the perfecting of the Saints. It comes only through the Church itself as the Lord established it. It does not come through any separate organization or splinter group nor to any private party as an individual. When the Savior established his church during his mortal ministry, and as it was further developed by the twelve apostles of that day, one important fact became conspicuously clear, which is: that salvation comes through the Church.
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