of the Church of England as well as of the government of England. He demanded that all churches conform to his will. Thomas Helwys, a Baptist pastor, wrote a book entitledA Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquityin which he insisted that the king had no right to dictate to persons and churches what to believe. Helwys sent a copy of the book to King James with a personal inscription in which he declared, “The king is a mortal man and not God and therefore has no power over the immortal souls of his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual lords over them.”For his statement of this Bible truth, the king imprisoned the pastor, and he died in prison, refusing to recognize anyone other than Jesus as Lord of the churches. The wife of Helwys suffered imprisonment for her convictions about the Lordship of Christ and religious freedom. These two courageous Baptists were among the first of many in England, and later in America and many other places, who suffered for their uncompromising conviction that Jesus is Lord. Although they were ridiculed, arrested, fined, beaten, imprisoned, and even killed, they refused to abandon their belief in religious freedom for all persons under the Lordship of Christ. The Lordship of Christ and a New Testament Church Are Inseparable What does it mean for individual Christians and for the churches of which they are a part to be under the Lordship of Christ? For one thing, it means that they should acknowledge Christ as Lord. The church belongs to Christ, not to them. He is the head of the church; they arenot. They are not to rule the church; Christ is. Furthermore, each member of the church should recognize that he or she has opportunity and responsibility to make decisions regarding the church under the Lordship of Christ. This is the New Testament model of a church. Persons make decisions about the church of which they are part, such as who the deacons and pastor will be, how the tithes and offerings will be spent, and what sort of building they will occupy. Yet each of these decisions should be made in light of the fact that Jesus is Lord of the church. The Royal Collection © 2005, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II King James I
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