H. Ray Dunning on the Communion of Saints

By: Rev. Scott Armstrong

In his lecture on the Apostle’s Creed, Dr. H. Ray Dunning says this regarding the Communion of Saints:

“The Church is a congregation of real flesh-and-blood people. This fact is both the glory of the Church and one of its dangers. C.S. Lewis suggests that one way the devil can tempt young, idealistic Christians is by calling their attention to the fact that the Church is composed of ordinary, maybe even sub-ordinary people who have idiosyncrasies and live ordinary lives in the world. The enemy’s strategy, he suggests, is to get the idealist’s attention on these things and never let him see the Church with its banners flying, so as to produce discouragement.

Have you ever gone to church and looked over the congregation, listened to brother A as he sings the hymns off key, and listen to sister B as she testified in butchered English or watch the preacher struggle through a sermon, which he tries to make heard over the screaming of a baby on the back pew whose mother doesn’t seem to be aware that others are disturbed, and has no place to leave the baby because the church is too small to afford a nursery and ask yourself the question: “Is this really what the Church is all about?” Well, if you have, tell the devil to get off your shoulder, and ask God to help you see the Church with its banners flying so that with all of Christendom you can say with conviction, “I believe in the Communion of Saints.”

*The full lectures given by Dunning were originally produced for the Laymen’s Tape Club in 1982 and reformatted for a recent episode of The Holiness Today podcast.