A member of a certain church, who had previously been attending services regularly and being really faithful with the work, stopped. No one knew why he gave up on God, but it was sure that he did. After a couple of weeks, an elderly Christian gentleman who knew this man went for a visit. It was quite a chilly evening, and the gentleman found the man at home alone, sitting before a blazing fire. Guessing the gentleman’s reason for the visit, the man welcomed him in and led him to a comfortable seat next to the fire so the man could warm himself after being in the cold. The man then took his seat and waited for the elderly gentleman to say something, but not a word was uttered. The gentleman made himself at home and comfortable beside the fire, but he said nothing for what seemed like a very long time to the man. In the grave silence, he contemplated the dance of the flames around the burning logs and the beauty of the fire. After several moments more, the elderly gentleman took the fire tongs, carefully picked up a white hot burning ember and placed it to one side of the hearth all alone, and then, he sat back in his chair, silent. As the one lone ember’s flame flickered and diminished, there was a momentary glow, but then the ember which burned with fire was now nothing but a cold, dead and black coal. Not a word

If we were to take a trip to our favorite drive-through, fast-food restaurant and order a #1 with cheese, fries and a coke, and then when we pulled up to the pay window to discover the total was $43.59, would we have a problem with that? The obvious answer is, “Yes, of course!” Hearing that staggering price for just one meal, we would ask the cashier why the meal was so expensive. She simply states, “You didn’t tell me not to give you one of everything else on the menu.” We would probably just drive to another fast-food place instead of trying to explain to this young cashier the principle of exclusion by silence. It is a very simple principle to understand in the secular world; from the example above, we derive that if I say I want a #1, that’s all I want—nothing less, nothing more. Yet, something that we understand and apply in the secular world is often misunderstood and disregarded in the religious world. Denominationalism normally rejects the law of exclusion based on what it wants (not what God wants). This manifests itself variously as entertainment in their services, instrumental music in worship, not taking the Lord’s Supper on the first day of the week, not preaching the whole counsel of God and failing to teach God’s plan of salvation correctly. If we will just read the Bible as it is written, we will understand clearly that when God says to do something, He doesn’t have to say,