John Reese
Searcy, Arkansas
President Emeritus
VISIT WBSLIBRARY.ORG
The WBS Library is all-digital. It will be dynamic, ever growing, attractively designed and practical, drawing readers to the Gospel and the call of discipleship in Jesus Christ.
The WBS Library serves a number of strategic purposes for world evangelism. Consider, for example, the five basic courses of the WBS Master Series in Mandarin Chinese, which was translated from English some time ago. The courses in Chinese are a valuable resource with the potential for benefiting millions who speak and read Mandarin in China and some 50 million souls from other parts of the globe. However, WBS lacked sufficient Chinese teachers for its typical interactive model that pairs each seeker with a Christian volunteer teacher (Study Helper). In the meantime, while WBS works to build a teaching base, we want to make the Mandarin Master Series available for Chinese seekers now! The WBS Library is the solution. As you encounter Chinese speakers locally, in your international travels or on social media, you can share the WBS Library website.
Similarly, the Master Series has been translated into Swahili, Russian, Telegu, Hindi and other languages. As these are posted to the WBS Library, they will be announced so that you can inform friends who can benefit.
Resources
In addition to our various translations of the Master Series, we also look to add to the WBS Library the Mathetis Original courses: Wondering What to Believe, In Need of a Savior and Seeking the Family of God. These are already available with full interactivity on the Mathetis app and Mathetis.org. The WBS Library in no way replaces Mathetis, but provides an additional avenue for easy access to the 30 videos (10 videos in all three courses) and “Digging Deeper” articles for further study. Like any modern library, this digital library will allow for multiple formats catering to reading, viewing and listening.
Another resource to become available is the first installment— Matthew—of the Commentary on the New Testament in Basic English, edited by the late Van Tate. Van was a missionary to Kenya for many years. He saw the need for a commentary that was in basic English and sensitive to the questions and concerns that so many around the world have. Van and his family graciously granted the book’s copyright to WBS. Over the years, WBS has been the beneficiary of valuable works like this, which now can be made available in our library.
WBS Courses
The Master Series courses have been used to teach millions. Their effectiveness comes from God’s Word, the seed of salvation. While these seven courses present the Gospel repeatedly and well, they lack space to answer some questions commonly raised by seekers and new converts. Thus began the development of the Advanced Courses to mature and to meet spiritual needs: Effective Evangelism, Lord, Teach Us To Pray, Balancing Faith and Works, Roles in the Family of God, Test the Spirits and the Covenants Series. All courses seek to represent the full and fair Biblical picture of their respective subjects, with a gentle but persuasive tone. All are focused on Christ and the Bible. All 10 WBS Advanced Courses are designed for interaction in 13 lessons, equally suitable for personal study or for Bible class and small group studies.
The Source
All materials—present and planned—support New Testament Christianity. For example, the WBS Advanced Courses, A History of God’s People and Understanding the Bible, along with the booklet Guide to New Testament Christianity, present Biblical principles as the Lord restores us to Christianity as He intended. Restoration is simply the result of sincerely and practically confessing, “Jesus is Lord.” Amid many voices and changing winds of doctrine, listen to the one voice of the one Shepherd. Where do we hear Him? The only reliable source is the Bible. In the Scriptures, Jesus Himself says that His Spirit reveals all truth to the apostles and prophets. With Himself as the cornerstone, they form the foundation on which Jesus builds His temple of praise to the one Father (Ephesians 2:18-22). So, the resources of the WBS Library go back to the message revealed by God’s Son and His inspired spokesmen.
He is the one Lord who gives one faith, one hope and one baptism into one body. He neither creates nor sanctions today’s conflicting faiths and religious bodies. If Christ truly is Lord, if He truly has “all authority,” His is the only name and the only body into which we are baptized (Acts 19:5; 1 Corinthians 1:13; 12:13; Ephesians 4:5). Separate bodies are not part of His plan. When we obey the Gospel, He adds us to the one church, the one that submits to Him as Head, the one He saves by His sacrifice (Acts 2:47; Eph 5:22-24).
Challenges
The confession “Jesus is Lord” is easy to say but challenging to implement. For example, in early centuries, those who misunderstood the Lord’s Supper accused the early church of cannibalism. They called the early Christians “atheists” for not accepting the many gods that all accepted in that culture.
In the same way, the very notion of belonging just to Christ and His church is misunderstood, even opposed, by those today who think only in terms of denominational divisions. They accuse members of Christ’s church of pride, intolerance and, ironically, sectarianism. Unfortunately, some, even in the kingdom, earn criticisms that others indiscriminately apply to genuine Christians. They are the weeds and the bad fish that Jesus warned us to expect (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-50).
Sociologists, historians, statisticians and other academicians work with categories that require Christians to belong to one denomination or another. Their earthly definitions, however, do not determine heavenly realities. If one God and Father has one spiritual family, that is the family into which the new birth places us. If one Head has one body, that is the body in which we should serve. Shall we alter the truth as taught by our Lord to fit today’s culture and its sociological groupings? In the end, all that matters is our Lord and His recognition of His own. “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him” (1 John 3:1 cf. 2 Timothy 2:19).
As in the early centuries, the pressure to conform with the majority is intense. There is a high price to meaning the confession “Jesus is Lord.” To pay the price, to withstand the pressure, requires genuine faith in Christ. That faith comes from His Word. We listen to the voice of the Shepherd and follow where He leads. That is why the study of God’s Word is so essential, which becomes all the more true as pressure increases internally and externally. Are you looking for healthy teaching in line with the confession “Jesus is Lord,” which promotes His one faith, one hope and one baptism into one body? If so, we invite you to benefit from the WBS Library which promotes Christ and His New Testament Christianity.
