Our Vision for These Days 5: Recognition of Pastor as a Watchman

Albert-N-MartinAlbert N. Martin

Where do we gain the concept of the servant of God ministering under the New Covenant as a watchman amongst God’s people? Well, when we turn to the Old Testament and seek to discover the beginnings of the biblical concept of a watchman, we find that the watchman was the man assigned the responsibility of standing upon the wall of a city or a military garrison in order to look out for approaching dangers to that city or to that garrison, and with a solemn responsibility in a context of conscious alertness and wakefulness, when perceiving that danger, to alert the proper authorities.

Our Vision for These Days 6: A Return to Domestic Piety

Albert-N-MartinAlbert N. Martin

Now, I wish to address the sixth area of crucial concern, which does, indeed, constitute a vital part of our vision for these days. I’ve stated it this way: it is the reestablishment of godly family life, or in the more antiquated terminology, the return to domestic piety. What we would call in current parlance “godly family life,” our forefathers designated as “domestic piety.”

Our Vision for These Days 7: A Recovery of Biblical Worship

Albert-N-MartinAlbert N. Martin

Our vision for these days, in terms of a passionate concern to see a recovery of biblical worship. Now, in taking up so vast and crucial a subject as biblical worship, I am doing so with a very limited field of focus, namely, the public worship of the gathered people of God in their seasons of stated gathering for such worship. I state this fact that the outset, because I’m fully aware that the biblical doctrine of worship is both exceedingly broad and deep. In bypassing many other crucial aspects of the more comprehensive biblical doctrine of worship, I have no intention, in so doing, of demeaning those other aspects, nor do I consider the matters of little importance or unworthy of extensive and careful instruction from the Scriptures.