Once again Old Bethel Church has opened its doors to those who came to worship there once a year. It is in the midst of today's hectic life, one thinks of Old Bethel, a simple tabernacle of God far from the beaten path and the super highways. It is a quiet spot where services are held once a year. Yet its early history is one of almost violence, where the governing body of the church meted out sentences to offenders of church law.

     But time soon mellowed the old church. Its congregations grew and there was a great reformation. And then just as quickly the faithful started going to other churches, some of them having been mothered by Old Bethel. Good roads and improved means of transportation drew them away. Now the church opens its doors to its friends and former congregations just wants annually.

     We call loyalty a great virtue. To loyalty must be added moral integrity and intelligent discernment. Otherwise a narrow loyalty might lead to blind credulity, and even to mental and spiritual suicide.

     What crimes against progress have blotted the history of the church because a mistaken loyalty has turned its back on the beckoning future and blindly accepted the blight of the dead hand of the past. Many a church is appropriately located in the midst of a graveyard. How often the verdict during the long years has shown that what has passed for loyalty was mere stagnation which defied the letter and denied the spirit. But so long as communicants can gather at Old Bethel, even though it be once a year, the church will live forever a refuge for all of mankind.

     Through man's own devices he has brought disaster to the world, muddled his own way of thinking to the end that he has made a sorry job of civilization. He needs spiritual help. Man needs churches of worship, like Old Bethel which holds the answer to man's problems. But it is up to man to seek those answers in the temples of God.