“I THINK OF MYSELF AS A TOOL”

Hugo McCord

After a workplace fire (in the mill town of St. Helens, Oregon) burned Brian Sakultarawattn over 97% of his body, doctors and nurses saved his life, but he has no hands or feet, and is blind with a badly scarred face (THE OREGONIAN, July 2, 1997). Now he is 20 years old, and happy with his 19 year old bride, whose love truly is “for better or worse.”

Brian and Haley not only love each other, but they love all people, and their cheerful, up-beat dispositions lift the spirits of all who know about them. What they have experienced has brought “hundreds of letters from people as far away as Israel and Saudi Arabia,” telling how “Brian’s and Haley’s tenacity helped them put family strife or health problems into perspective.”

“Everyone’s going to have struggles,” says Brian. “I think of myself as a tool. God is using me to touch certain lives.” When a blind cripple looks upon himself as “a tool” being used by God “to touch certain lives,” he is practicing what the Bible teaches: “he will be a vessel of honor, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:21). He, like the apostle Paul, is a “chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15).

Brian and Haley have much to do for themselves every day, but their dedication to the Lord leads them to make time to encourage others:

The couple visited family and attends church and Christian concerts. Recently, they spoke to a church group in Hillsboro and plan more such engagements (THE OREGONIAN, ibid.)

Haley says,

There’s more to life than being beautiful or handsome or doing everything that you want, ... We’re going to be able to experience things we never would have. That’s pretty well worth it to me.

It is a pity that the Sunset Park Community Church, where Brian and Haley attend, does not teach “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The sincere worshipers there are to be complimented for majoring in the two greatest commandments (love for God and for one’s neighbors, Matthew 22:37-40), yes, “the weightier matters” (Matthew 23:23). But Jesus taught that we ought “not to leave the other [the lesser matters] undone” (Matthew 23:23). He condemns a person who omits the lesser commandments:

Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19).

To be specific, the New Hope Community Church (Portland, Or.), along with all community churches, teaches that “all believers become members of His body, the church,” but the Bible teaches that believers are still outside “His body, the church,” until they are “all baptized into the one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Furthermore, the Bible teaches that believers are still outside of Christ until they are “baptized into Christ” (Galatians 3:27).

By invitation (Sunday morning, November 24, 1938) I preached for the Greenbelt (Maryland) Community Church. However, my sermon was politely ignored.

The “Constitution” of the Greenbelt Community Church states that “Membership in a church of whatever faith shall be accepted for membership in this Church.” But the New Testament says there is “one faith” (Ephesians 4:5).

The Constitution provides for the expulsion of any member guilty of “unchristian conduct” in “accordance with the practice of the early church.” The Greenbelt Church is to be complimented for looking back to the “practice of the early church” as the reason for withdrawing fellowship, but in other matters they abandon “the practice of the early church.”

The Constitution provides that the “Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper shall be observed at such times as the Church may determine,” not in “accordance with the practice of the early church,” as stated in Acts 20:7: “on the first day of the week ...the disciples came together to break bread.”

The Constitution provides that “Baptism” shall “be optional.” But when baptism first started it was not optional. Those who rejected the baptism of John (“a man sent from God,” John 1:6) “rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized by him” (Luke 7:29-30).

Peter would not have been selected as a pastor of a community church, for “he commanded” sinners “to be baptized in the name of the Lord” (Acts 10:48). Moreover, he wrote that baptism “saves” (1 Peter 3:21), a statement not believed or taught in any community church.

The sermon Philip preached to one man “about Jesus” did not make baptism optional, for the man exclaimed, “What hinders my being baptized?” (Acts 8:35-36).

The Constitution provides that Baptism “when desired” shall be administered in the form requested by the member.” The form chosen by some is sprinkling, while others select pouring or immersion (so, light, medium, or heavy). But in days of the New Testament, sinners “obeyed from the heart” the “form of doctrine,” the “form” being “buried with him by baptism” and being raised up “as Christ was raised up” (Romans 6:17, 4).

The Constitution provides that “No ordinance is compulsory on any member,” but Jesus thought that his Father’s ordinance for baptism was compulsory, for he walked about 70 miles (a 3 day journey) to be baptized (Matthew 3:13-17).

Moreover, Jesus himself, with “all authority in heaven and on the earth,” issued an ordinance that all believers be “baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18-20). And he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Sadly, some who have gone through the form of Jesus’ burial and resurrection in their baptism do not afterward display a “newness of life” that the resurrection from the water symbolizes (Romans 6:4). They are Christians only in name, not in practice. They are selfish, and in no way display the wholesome spirit of dedication that is in Brian and Haley.