The Use of the Church
H. W. Beecher. 2 Thessalonians 1:1-3 Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, to the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: But what an astronomer he would be who should sit at his telescope, watching the instrument, praising its lenses, magnifying the honour of its maker, cleaning, fixing, and adjusting it, and never seeing anything through it! It is what is beyond the telescope, it is what the telescope reveals and brings to you, that gives it its value. Without that, it is good for nothing. Now the Church is God's telescope; and if it enables you to see through the visible to the invisible, if it brings you truth, if it brings your time —thoughts into the relations of eternity, if it brings God, as a veritable person — yea, as a Father — near to your heart and near to your moral sense, then it is the Church of God to you. Otherwise, it is the Church of man. If it be opaque; if it stop your thought with itself; if you have got only so far as that you are a Churchman, you have not started on the true Christian course. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: WEB: Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the assembly of the Thessalonians in God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ: