GLAD TO SEE YOU GO, WISH YOU HAD NOT COME

By Curtis Pugh

Some may think our title strange, but it reflects the attitude of the world to the children of God who speak the Word of God. We base our title and our thoughts on the words of the Lord Jesus to and about His little traveling church: those that assembled with Him from their baptism by John the Baptist until He was taken up from them – for there was such a church (see Acts 1:21-22; 1 Corinthians 12:28).

Consider these three verses: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” (John 15:18-19) and also John 17:14, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Two things marked these men making them different and thus hated by the world. The same two things make some people different and hated by the world today. Those two things are these: (1) they had been chosen out of the world and, (2) they had God's Word. These were individuals set apart as different. Having been chosen, God was in them and worked in them. This made them radically different than those around them. They lived differently, talked differently, had different interests and a different view of things than that much larger group from whom they had been chosen.

The world (those not so chosen) hated both the One who did the choosing and those whom He chose. It was not that the haters wanted to be like those chosen: nay, they despised them. It was their being different that fueled hatred from those Christ called “the world.” And the chosen ones would not keep their mouths shut, always repeating what Christ had said: always quoting the Scriptures!

The Lord's true churches today preach essentially the same message, exhibit the same lifestyle and are equally hated as was the first of His assemblies. It they are not essentially like the first church they are not Christ's churches since He established only one kind. So the question is this: does the world of the lost – the majority of people – have this attitude toward you and your church: “glad to see you go and wish you had not come”? Or are you and is your assembly highly respected and accepted by the world? Are you welcome at their fairs and affairs? Are you practically indistinguishable from them, the world?

The adage goes like this: “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck and has a duck for a mother it's a duck!” That can be said of individuals and churches as well as ducks! One test of true Christianity is that it is hated by the world!