tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15122642184688885032024-03-18T21:01:15.703-07:00Stop! The Bridge is Out!This site is to attempt to warn and ask people to just stop and ask the question, Is this True! To ask people to take a second look at what they are being taught and fed in their local churches. Does the information that you receive agree with the plain text of the Bible. Are we adding "stuff" to what God said!
I hope these postings of audio, video and the written word will do the same. Please stop for a minute and have....Ears to Hear!
Go to my first Posting of Dec 2009noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-45925819972692438822011-05-24T12:37:00.000-07:002011-05-24T14:11:35.448-07:00How should we React to the Days After May 21,2011<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwsoDsWlGYURlTixmE8R0Im5iW2JblqJcQlvI7qmfhAKmlwuM87ATPpHfLP3Zg3dfaioMoyMdRXt6WC1JGd5w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>The Day has come and gone. There has been so many different reactions to this claim that the rapture was going to happen on May 21, 2011. CNN had preachers on and posted people's reactions to this claim. One wrote that he was going to go to a forest and take his clothes off and run through the trees before Christ Returns. Another stated she was going to eat a pile of candy before the moment comes. It is interesting that those that killed their pets, spend their money, etc. Have not been on record to say I am going to preach the gospel more then ever. Or I long to bow before the King of Kings. To praise Him for his Mercy and Grace to save a wretched sinner as I. Could it be Gods' Wisdom to make that day of the rapture and his coming unknown so that it does not become another work righteousness that people could place on their account. And make Grace cheap again.</div><div>Are we to laugh at these followers of Harold Camping and mock them. Todd Friel stated on Wretched Radio on Monday May 23,2011. That it was o.k to mock them. I firmly disagree. This was a sobering act of rebellion to the Word of God and declaring to have the same knowledge of God. The ground should be quaking under our feet with the holiness of God. Not a time of mocking those that have mocked God. 1) Prayer should be our first reaction. praying for these followers. That they would revisit the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Make the Gospel the centre of their lives instead of the end times. The Gospel will take care of the future. 2) Reach out to these followers. If you know of any near you. Offer kindness, food, support, maybe some kind of financial help to get them back on their feet. When Joseph Smith and when the watchtower society made there dates of Jesus returning. Did the Bible believing church just call them false prophets, justly so, but did they reach out to them with the Gospel and with kindness. Reaching out to them does not mean that you agree with their claims!</div><div>3). This whole experience should help us reach the world more then ever with the Gospel. Here is a video of a group of people in a store cooler while a possible 200mph wind was blowing out the windows of the store. Listen to the cries of the people. They did not want to die! May the Lord help us to hear those cries of the lost during these days before Christ comes back. And share the Gospel today!</div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy-8-WNcSvCMIZpMPU86WOp0QluOLvpYguEiMBrFvzOe-_VjHotiynYKQTm4wBBpsZGGjm1nLE3EnvkMTXCAA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div>Here is a open letter from Dr. James White to Harold Camping, pleading to him to repent of his False Prophecy! <a href="http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4645"> http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4645</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><h1>An Open Letter to Harold Camping of Family Radio</h1> <p class="itemAuthor">05/23/2011 - James White</p><span class="itembody">On Open Letter to Harold Camping of Family Radio<br /><br />Dear Mr. Camping:<br /><br />In July of 2009 you and I engaged in a debate on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program concerning your teaching that the church age had ended and that Christ would return on May 21, 2011. I trust you recall our exchange. I am also aware that you have at least seen my book, <i>Dangerous Airwaves: Harold Camping Refuted and Christ's Church Defended.</i> I have been seeking to warn people about your teachings, sir, for about a decade. I know others have been warning the church about you longer than I.<br /><br />Mr. Camping I am writing to seek your repentance and the most God-glorifying outcome of the debacle of your failed May 21, 2011 prophecy/teaching. I am not writing to engage in debate with you. The time for debate ended on May 22, 2011. It is now time for you to repent and seek to undo the massive damage you have done, first and foremost, to the cause of Christ. <br /><br />Let me first list the items you need to repent of, openly and publicly (for you are a public person, and your teachings were disseminated all around the world).<br /><br />You need to repent of your abuse of the Bible, based upon claims of latter-day opening of understandings no one else has, allegedly, ever had, based upon the horrific misreading of the books of Revelation and Daniel. The Bi</span>ble is not a code book, Mr. Camping, and it never has been. You have attacked the grammatical/historical means of honoring the intention and meaning of the original authors, and in so doing, have turned the Bible into your own private playground where you, and you alone, set the rules. You decided that certain numbers have certain meanings, and you alone decided which numbers could be added to others. You told your audiences that you were simply teaching the Bible, when you were doing nothing of the sort. Unless you honor the intention of the original authors, which means doing difficult exegetical work, studying languages and backgrounds, you have no business saying you are representing the Bible. This has been your primary error for decades on end, and I know I am not the first minister of the gospel to seek to correct you about this. Your utterly fallacious means of interpretation of the Bible has led to the mockery of the Christian faith all around the world, and you alone must repent for your willful rejection of the correction offered by many to you over the years. </div><div><span class="itembody"><br />You need to repent of your repeated date-setting, and your twisting of those Scriptures that plainly state that we do not n</span>ow know, and will never know, the date of the coming of Christ, until it happens. You have been proven wrong multiple times now, and it is time for you to admit that you have been in error every single time you have argued that we can, in fact, know. </div><div><span class="itembody"><br />You must repent of your many unbiblical teachings, teachings which have grown out of your rebellion against Christ's Church. First and foremost, you must repent of your attack upon the church. You must return to the church (I would suggest the local Christian Reformed Church from which you made your original defection) in repentance and seek to place yourself under their care, repenting for your schism. You must openly and publicly abjure your teaching that Satan rules in the churches, and that all ministers of the gospel since 1988 are, in fact, servants of Satan. You must call all listeners of Family Radio to return to their churches with repentant hearts. You must instruct them to seek to learn to read the Bible aright, to seek to interpret the Bible in light of its original meanings and intention, not as a secret, gnostic code-book.<br /><br />You must likewise abjure and repent of the other false teachings you have been promulgating, including, but not limited to, such teachings as Jesus having died twice, your new annihilationism teaching, etc. You once held to mainly ort</span>hodox views, but, when you refused godly counsel and went out on your own, you planted the seeds of your own destruction, which have now sprouted, over night it seems, into the crop of condemnation you now rightly face. </div><div><span class="itembody"><br />You must likewise repent of the perversion of the gospel you have been teaching, wherein you have not only removed repentance and faith under the guise of "works" (neither are works, both are the gifts of God to His elect by His Spirit, but remain part and parcel of the gospel call), but you clearly, in these last days, added belief in your own May 21, 2011 teaching to the gospel itself, saying that those who did not believe this teaching would experience eternal torment. You have been preaching a false gospel, Mr. Camping, and you must repent for this.<br /><br />The time for haggling and debating has passed, Mr. Camping. Your teaching has been disproven, and your only hope is to be found in complete repentance from your false teachings. I fear if you seek to rescue your reputation, you will end your life under the wrath of God. Your unwillingness to listen to counsel has already caused great damage to the cause of Christ. You have one final chance for redemption, sir. Do not remain stiff-necked. Repent and turn from your ways.<br /><br />James White<br />Alpha and Omega Ministries<br /></span></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-88022855287509954702011-05-20T09:40:00.000-07:002011-05-20T10:12:40.495-07:00Dr. James White on May 21, 2011<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxsUbyVfBxprolJB-0QTFICh7JD4DZTf5UeKqKsyl6k59hsas7pewOCddq3eqfvLUS7m1pV4u2Bp7_evzgaDw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div>Please Pray for these people that they will find a Bible foundational church on May 22,2011</div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw8_q4lM4ZnifTKXEJ5XF-lKXgaN020B2kKWL9lEOUlo3CGhU8zjbhTkg4WGNr7repYxyEEq0sTMHt4yvGtuA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-86150561995092401562011-05-18T14:22:00.000-07:002011-05-18T15:12:17.146-07:00Mr. Camping, Who is Moses' Father?<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dySnLzPM9fDlUcO9Hxj-Furl67Vb2-zoDi9Q2dyG8ayETaIujxaw-NYll0JgUqGpIGxBuIQT0U8yrj23MNOsw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div>Here is an audio of a program from <a href="http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/09/turretinfan.html">http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/09/turretinfan.html</a></div><div><h3 class="post-title entry-title"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">TurretinFan</span>: Harold <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Camping's</span> Achilles Heel: Why Family Radio's Date for the End of the World is Wrong </h3></div><div>In listening and reading about Harold Camping I come to the conclusion. That this was once was a sincere follower of Jesus Christ. Who looked at the church and attempted to practice <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">discernment</span> and did not rely on the body of Jesus Christ to assist and help in making <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">biblical</span> decisions. He became a island on his own in his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">interpretations</span> of the Bible. I am including articles and audio for your listening.</div><div><br /></div><div>h<a href="ttp://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2009/09/isi-discussion-regarding-harold-camping.html">ttp://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2009/09/isi-discussion-regarding-harold-camping.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div>The following is an outline of some of the topics discussed. This is not a transcript, but more or less notes for the discussion.<br /><br />I. In General - Regarding Harold Camping<br /><br />a) False Teacher<br /><br />He has been seen to be a false teacher at least since his date setting book "1994?" (which was demonstrated by history to be false).<br /><br />Now, he teaches annihilationism and some form of Modalism.<br /><br />Perhaps, worst of all, he severs himself and his followers from communion, declaring the church age to be over and discouraging his followers from gathering together.<br /><br />1 Corinthians 11:25-26<br />After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death<span style="font-weight: bold;"> till he come</span>.<br /><br />Jesus has not come, and consequently we continue to show (symbolically) the Lord's death in the Lord's Supper, whereas Mr. Camping and his followers have excommunicated themselves.<br /><br />b) Familiar with the Bible<br /><br />Mr. Camping is obviously quite familiar with the text of the Bible. He's been studying it for many years. Unfortunately, his studies are misdirected in that he applies Scripture for purposes for which it was not intended.<br /><br />II. Regarding Amram and Moses<br /><br />During the call-in segment of Mr. Camping's debate with Dr. White, I had an opportunity to ask one question of Mr. Camping. My question was:"What was the name of Moses' father?"<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why did I ask the question?</span><br /><br />I knew that his answer would demonstrate that he was unwilling to submit to Scripture.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What does Scripture tell us is the name of Moses father?</span><br /><br />Scripture tells us:<br /><br />Exodus 6:20 And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.<br /><br />Numbers 26:59 And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister.<br /><br />1 Chronicles 6:3 And the children of Amram; Aaron, and Moses, and Miriam. The sons also of Aaron; Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.<br /><br />1 Chronicles 23:13 The sons of Amram; Aaron and Moses: and Aaron was separated, that he should sanctify the most holy things, he and his sons for ever, to burn incense before the LORD, to minister unto him, and to bless in his name for ever.<br /><br />Mr. Camping is fond of saying that things are doubled to emphasize their importance. This statement of paternity is not simply doubled but doubled twice - that is to say - it is quadrupled. There are four Scriptural testimonies all agreeing that Moses' father was Amram, and no Scripture suggesting any other name for Moses' father.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why does Camping not follow this plain teaching of Scripture?</span><br /><br />Camping needs to avoid following this plain teaching of Scripture, in order for his date-setting method to work. One of Mr. Camping's methods of calculating the end times is to place it exactly 7000 years from the date of Noah's flood. One sees this in his articles and books. For example he writes: "Because the year 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C. when the flood began, the Bible has given us absolute proof that the year 2011 is the end of the world during the Day of Judgment, which will come on the last day of the Day of Judgment." (<a href="http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/judgment/judgment.html">source</a>)<br /><br />To give you a sense of contrast, Archbishop Ussher in his "Annals of the World" gives a date for the flood of about 2350 B.C. I'm aware that there is a lot modern scholarship that suggests that disputes Ussher's date, but the point is simply to give you a sense of contrast between a more literal reading of the text and Mr. Camping's view.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How does Camping date the flood so much earlier (about 2500 years earlier)?</span><br /><br />As you can imagine, it is not easy to fit an additional 2500 years into the text, and there is no chance that Mr. Camping is going to date the end of the world to be about 2500 years from now. To accomplish his purposes, Mr. Camping has to rely on what he calls a "clue phrase" in the text.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is this clue phrase?</span><br /><br />The clue phrase is "called his name." In some of the genealogical accounts there is a statement that father called the name of his son "Seth" (or whatever the child's name is). Camping asserts that when such a phrase is used, the literal son is being mentioned. Otherwise, in Camping's view, the father-son relationship should not be assumed, and consequently we should be free to view the genealogies another way, such that the "father" is simply an ancestor, and that the "son" is simply a descendant that happened to be born the year his father died.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the problems with this?</span><br /><br />At first this may seem like a fairly reasonable system. After all, there sometimes some inconsistencies in the biblical genealogies (a matter we can perhaps address a little later). However, there are some real problems:<br /><br />1) This idea of a "clue phrase" is wrong from a positive usage sense.<br /><br />Camping writes: "A more careful examination of the Scriptures reveals why the phrase "called his name" which is the Hebrew qara, was used. In every place where this phrase is employed, there can be no doubt of the existing relationship; invariably it is indicative of parent and child." (<a href="http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/calendar/calendar_01.html">link</a>)<br /><br />Mr. Camping's claim about this supposed clue phrase is wrong:<br /><br />Genesis 3:20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.<br /><br />It should be plain that Eve is not Adam's child.<br /><br />1 Samuel 7:12 Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.<br /><br />Plainly, an inanimate object is not a child.<br /><br />Ruth 4:17 And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.<br /><br />Obed was the son of Boaz and Ruth not of Naomi's female neighbors.<br /><br />Exodus 2:10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.<br /><br />Moses was not biologically the son of Pharaoh's daughter: he held that relationship only by adoption.<br /><br />2) This idea of a "clue phrase" is wrong from a negative usage sense.<br /><br />Genesis 4:1-2<br />And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.<br /><br />Both Cain and Abel were the direct children of Adam and Eve without any "clue phrase" being provided. In fact, Seth is the first one where it is said that someone "called his name" Seth.<br /><br />Exodus 2:2 And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.<br /><br />This is a report of Moses' conception and birth. His mother (Jochebed) is not said to have "called his name" Moses, but she was nevertheless his biological mother.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Even if the "clue phrase" is off, isn't it possible that the Hebrew genealogy works this way?</span><br /><br />As far as I can recall, Mr. Camping is not the first to come up with this idea that Hebrew genealogies might sometimes be based on dating from the death of an ancestor to a descendant born about the same time. There are at least two serious problems applying such a principle to Amram and Moses though:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">1) Aaron AND Moses</span><br /><br />Amram is called the father both of Aaron and Moses. This might be fine if those were twins, but they were three years apart:<br /><br />Exodus 7:7 And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">2) And Miriam</span><br /><br />Furthermore, they had an older sister, Miriam who (when Moses was three months old - Exodus 2:3) was resourceful enough to persuade the princess of Egypt to hire Moses' mother as a nurse for him (Exodus 2:7). Amram can't have died in three different years (one for Miriam, then again for Aaron, and finally for Moses).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What other reasons does Camping give?</span><br /><br />There is one other main argument that Mr. Camping presents, namely that adding a speculative generation (or more than one) between Amram and Moses is necessary to make the stay in Egypt 430 years.<br /><br />Camping provides the following breakdown:<br /><br />Levi 77 years in Egypt<br />Kohath 133 years in Egypt<br />Amram 137 years in Egypt<br />Aaron 83 years in Egypt<br />------------------------<br />430 years total time<br /><br />(<a href="http://www.familyradio.com/graphical/literature/calendar/calendar_01.html">source</a>)<br /><br />This enumeration is alleged to correspond to the 430 years that Scripture says ended the day of the Exodus.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What are the problems with this analysis?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">1) The 430 years should be measured from the Promise to Abraham</span><br /><br />Galatians 3:16-17<br />Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.<br /><br />Notice that Paul is explicit that the giving of the law was 430 years from the promise to Abraham. Since Abraham died before the entry into Egypt, it is impossible that there could have been 430 years in Egypt.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">2) Kohath wasn't born in Egypt</span><br /><br />Genesis 46:8-26, especially vs. 11 let us know that Kohath was one of the sons of Levi who came into Egypt with Levi and Jacob as one of the "seventy souls" mentioned in Genesis 46. It states:<br /><br />Genesis 46:11 And the sons of Levi; Gershon, Kohath, and Merari.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So then how long was the stay in Egypt?</span><br /><br />The stay in Egypt itself was 215 years. It was 215 years from the promise until the entry into Egypt, as we can determine from Genesis, and we know the total time was 430 years, so we can deduce that the time in Egypt was 215 years.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Does the 215 year view fit the genealogies?</span><br /><br />Yes, the genealogies have Levi and Kohath coming into Egypt. Amram is the only one in the series who lives his entire life in Egypt and that was 137 years. Some of the time before his birth and after his death were also time in Egypt, of course.<br /><br />Additionally, it should be noted that Jochebed is described as being the daughter of Levi.<br /><br />Exodus 6:20 And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an hundred and thirty and seven years.<br /><br />Numbers 26:59 And the name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister.<br /><br />This evidence again suggests that Levi was not dead over a century before Amram was born, but rather that there was some overlap between Amram and his grandfather Levi (though both Amram and Jochebed were born in Egypt and apparently died in Egypt).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is Mr. Camping the only one who holds to the 430 year theory?</span><br /><br />No. In fact, we find many modern scholars who have a similar view, and even many of the modern translations translate one of the key verses in such a way as to require the 430 year theory. For example, the King James Version states:<br /><br />Exodus 12:40 Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years.<br /><br />Whereas the more modern English Standard Version states:<br /><br />Exodus 12:40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Are you a King James Version Only-ist?</span><br /><br />No. I simply think that the KJV better preserves the ambiguity of the original text here.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is the historical view of the text?</span><br /><br />Both the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint provide an additional phrase "and in the land of Canaan" that clarify that the 430 years is not to be understood as simply the time in Egypt.<br /><br />Eusebius of Caesarea, who got his information from the Jewish historian Alexander Polyhistor (who flourished in the first century before Christ) took the 215 year view. In at least one place Joseph adopted the 215 year view: <blockquote>They left Egypt in the month Xanthicus, on the fifteenth day of the lunar month; four hundred and thirty years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but two hundred and fifteen years only after Jacob removed into Egypt. <a name="EndNote_ANT_2.28a"></a><a href="http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-2.htm#EndNote_ANT_2.28b"></a>It was the eightieth year of the age of Moses, and of that of Aaron three more. They also carried out the bones of Joseph with them, as he had charged his sons to do.</blockquote> -Josephus, <a href="http://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/ant-2.htm">Antiquities of the Jews</a>, Book II, Chapter 15, Section 2 (I am told that in another place Josephus disagrees with his opinion stated here, although I could not locate that other place.)<br /><br />The Reformed commentators whom I checked on this matter (John Calvin, Matthew Henry, John Gill, and Matthew Poole) all likewise agreed with the 215 year view as well. Even Luther appears to agree.<br /><br /></div><div><a href="http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/07/harold-camping-debates-dr-james-white.html">http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/07/harold-camping-debates-dr-james-white.html</a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/07/harold-camping-debates-dr-james-white_29.html">http://sharpens.blogspot.com/2009/07/harold-camping-debates-dr-james-white_29.html</a></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-23143512978931314192011-05-15T15:45:00.000-07:002011-05-15T16:23:02.534-07:00An Examination of Rob Bell's "Love Wins." Chapter 5: Dying to Live<div><br /></div><div><h3 class="post-title entry-title">An Examination of Rob Bell's "Love Wins." Chapter 5: Dying to Live </h3> <div class="post-header"> <div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div> <div id="post-body-2658878077988128235" class="post-body entry-content"><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Rob Bell. <i>Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived</i>. New York: HarperCollins, 2011.</span></b></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Chapter 5: Dying to Live</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> (pages 121-37)</span></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">1. Animal Sacrifices</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"></span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“Just the thought of such practices and rituals is repulsive. So primitive and barbaric. Not to mention unnecessary. It doesn’t even cross our minds to sacrifice animals.” (p. 123)</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Observation:</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> God instituted the sacrificial system in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. They are symbols of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. To call what God instituted barbaric, primitive, and repulsive is an attack against God.</span></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">2. Hebrews 9</span></b></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Concerning Hebrews 9: “Whole cultures centered around keeping the gods pleased. This was obviously a very costly, time-consuming ordeal, not to mention an anxiety-producing one. You never knew if you’d fully pleased the gods and paid the debt properly. And now the writer is announcing that those days are over because of Jesus dying on the cross. Done away with. Gone. Irrelevant.” (p. 124-25)</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Observation:</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Wrong - - Hebrews 9 is not about all sacrifices in all religions. In Hebrews 9, the author speaks of the fact that the <u>Jewish</u> sacrificial system is no longer needed because of Christ’s sacrifice.</span></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">3. Atonement Language</span></b></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“There’s nothing wrong with talking and singing about how the ‘Blood will never lose its power’ and ‘Nothing but the blood will save us.’ Those are powerful metaphors. But we don’t live any longer in a culture in which people offer animal sacrifices to the gods. People did live that way thousands of years, and there are pockets of primitive cultures around the world that do continue to understand sin, guilt, and atonement in those way. But most of us don’t. What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand.” (p. 129)</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Observation:</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> “Blood” is not just an image limited to the ancient world, but is still relevant today. </span><i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ</span></i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> (Ephesians 2:13).</span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Jesus did not shed symbolic blood, but literal blood!</span></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">4. Resurrection</span></b></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“. . . resurrection after death was not a new idea. In the fall in many parts of the world, the leaves drop from the trees and the plants die. They turn brown, wither, and lose their life. They remain this way for the winter—dormant, dead, lifeless. And then spring comes, and they burst into life again. Growing, sprouting, producing new leaves and buds. For there to be spring, there has to be a fall and then a winter. For nature to spring to life, it first has to die. Death, then resurrection. This is true for ecosystems, food chains, the seasons—it’s true all across the environment. Death gives way to life.” (p. 130)</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Observation:</span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> Frankly, Jesus is not an ecosystem. Furthermore, Bell’s example does not accurately describe the resurrection of Jesus unless dead leaves reattach themselves to trees and live once more. Jesus’ resurrection is a miracle, not a natural process.</span></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">5. The Gospel</span></b></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">“A gospel that repeatedly, narrowly affirms and bolsters the ‘in-ness’ of one group at the expense of the ‘out-ness’ of another group will not be true to the story that includes ‘all things and people in heaven and on earth.’” (p. 135)</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">Observation: </span></b><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">The Bible explains that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who follow Christ and those who do not. Jesus said,<b> </b></span><i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters</span></i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> (Luke 11:23).</span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><br /></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">25:31 <i>"But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne. <span> </span></i><span></span>25:32 <i>"All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; </i><span> </span><span> </span> </span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">25:33 <i>and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left.</i> <span> </span><span> </span> </span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">25:34 <i>"Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. . . .</i> <span> </span><span> </span> </span></span></div> <div style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in" class="MsoNormal"><span style="FONT-SIZE: large"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">25:41 </span><i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'">"Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels."</span></i><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'"> (Matthew 25:31-34, 41)</span></span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; FONT-SIZE: 12pt"></span></div></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://mattakers.blogspot.com/2011/04/examination-of-rob-bells-love-wins_29.html?spref=tw">http://mattakers.blogspot.com/2011/04/examination-of-rob-bells-love-wins_29.html?spref=tw</a></div><div><br /><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyBmp5jkSyF50-sJty1-_bICsx4uNK4qq04JJmSvAsQGNrP11lDkV8LBpJUYXVxgVrOGEP2_Ov4HF-rM98yAQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><div>Chapter 24 from the Gospel according to Jesus: Tetelestai!: The Triumph Is Complete</div><div><p align="center"><br /></p><p align="center"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyVoHTTZTCcjCHqaK6sLshuWS6wSAEHoRfS7NE6EnmixN0dp8ga0L12VS9Wv_YspNCCm2sSiVY5vzxx5ZC3QA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p align="center"><br /></p><p align="center"><br /></p><p align="center">THE CROSS OF CHRIST</p><span > <p align="center"><br /><b>by J. C. Ryle</b></p> <p align="justify"><br />"Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Galatians 6:14</p> <p align="justify">What do we think and feel about the cross of Christ? We live in a Christian land. We probably attend the worship of a Christian church. We have, most of us, been baptized in the name of Christ. We profess and call ourselves Christians. All this is well—it is more than can be said of millions in the world. <i>But what do we think and feel about the cross of Christ?</i> </p> <p align="justify">I want to examine what one of the greatest Christians who ever lived, thought of the cross of Christ. He has written down his opinion—he has given his judgment in words that cannot be mistaken. The man I mean is the Apostle Paul. The place where you will find his opinion, is in the letter which the Holy Spirit inspired him to write to the Galatians. The words in which his judgment is set down, are these, "But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." </p> <p align="justify">Now what did Paul mean by saying this? He meant to declare strongly, that he trusted in nothing but "Jesus Christ crucified" for the pardon of his sins and the salvation of his soul. Let others, if they would, look elsewhere for salvation; let others, if they were so disposed, trust in other things for pardon and peace—for his part the apostle was determined to rest on nothing, lean on nothing, build his hope on nothing, place confidence in nothing, boast in nothing, "except in the cross of Jesus Christ." </p> <p align="justify">I wish to say something about "the cross" to the readers of this volume. Believe me, the subject is one of the deepest importance. This is no mere question of controversy. It is not one of those points on which people may agree to differ, and feel that differences will not shut them out of heaven. A man must be right on this subject, or he is lost forever. Heaven or hell, happiness or misery, life or death, blessing or cursing in the last day—all hinges on the answer to this question, "What do you think about the cross of Christ?" </p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b><br />I. </b></span><span >Let me show you, first of all, </span><span ><b><i>what the Apostle Paul did NOT boast in.</i> </b></span></p><span > <p align="justify">There are many things that Paul might have boasted in, if he had thought as some do in this day. If ever there was one on earth who had something to boast of in himself, that man was the great apostle of the Gentiles. Now if he did not dare to boast, who shall? </p> </span><p align="justify"><span >He never boasted in his </span><i><span ><b>national privileges</b></span><span >.</span></i><span > He was a Jew by birth, and, as he tells us himself, "A Hebrew of the Hebrews." (Phil. 3:5.) He might have said, like many of his brethren, "I have Abraham for my forefather I am not a dark unenlightened heathen; I am one of the favored people of God—I have been admitted into covenant with God by circumcision. I am a far better man than the ignorant Gentiles." But he never said so. He never boasted in anything of this kind. Never, for one moment! </span></p><span > </span><p align="justify"><span >He never boasted in </span><span ><b>his own <i>works</i></b></span><span >. None ever worked so hard for God as he did. He was "more abundant in labors" than any of the apostles. (2 Cor. 11:23.) No man ever preached so much, traveled so much, and endured so many hardships for Christ's cause. None was ever made the means of converting so many souls, did so much good to the world, and made himself so useful to mankind. No Father of the early Church, no Reformer, no Puritan, no Missionary, no minister, no layman—no one man could ever be named, who did so many good works as the Apostle Paul. But did he ever boast in them, as if they were in the least meritorious, and could save his soul? Never! Never for one moment! </span></p><span > </span><p align="justify"><span >He never boasted in </span><i><span ><b>his knowledge</b></span><span >.</span></i><span > He was a man of great gifts naturally, and, after he was converted, the Holy Spirit gave him greater gifts still. He was a mighty preacher, and a mighty speaker, and a weighty writer. He was as great with his pen as he was with his tongue. He could reason equally well with Jews and Gentiles. He could argue with infidels at Corinth, or Pharisees at Jerusalem, or self-righteous people in Galatia. He knew many deep things. He had been in the third heaven, and "heard unspeakable words." (2 Cor. 12:4.) He had received the spirit of prophecy, and could foretell things yet to come. But did he ever boast in his knowledge, as if it could justify him before God? Never—never! Never for one moment! </span></p><span > </span><p align="justify"><span >He never boasted in </span><i><span ><b>his graces</b></span><span >.</span></i><span > If ever there was one who abounded in graces, that man was Paul. He was full of <b>love</b>. How tenderly and affectionately he used to write! He could feel for souls like a mother or a nurse feeling for her child. He was a <b>bold </b>man. He cared not whom he opposed when truth was at stake. He cared not what risks he ran when souls were to be won. He was a <b>self-denying </b>man—in hunger and thirst often, in cold and nakedness, in watchings and fastings. He was a <b>humble </b>man. He thought himself less than the least of all saints, and the chief of sinners. He was a <b>prayerful </b>man. See how it comes out at the beginning of all his Epistles. He was a <b>thankful </b>man. His thanksgivings and his prayers walked side by side. But he never boasted in all this, never valued himself on it—never rested his soul's hopes on it. Oh, no—never for a moment! </span></p><span > </span><p align="justify"><span >He never boasted <i>in </i></span><i><span ><b>his Churchmanship</b></span><span >.</span></i><span > If ever there was a good Churchman, that man was Paul. He was himself a chosen apostle. He was a founder of churches, and an ordainer of ministers—Timothy and Titus, and many elders, received their first commission from his hands. He was the beginner of services and sacraments in many a dark place. Many an one did he baptize; many an one did he receive to the Lord's Table; many a meeting for prayer, and praise, and preaching, did he begin and carry on. He was the setter up of discipline in many a young Church. Whatever ordinances, and rules, and ceremonies were observed in many Churches, were first recommended by him. But did he ever boast in his office and Church standing? Does he ever speak as if his Churchmanship would save him, justify him, put away his sins, and make him acceptable before God? Oh, no! Never—never! Never for a moment! </span></p><span > <p align="justify">Now if the apostle Paul never boasted in any of these things, who in all the world, from one end to the other—who has any right to boast in them in our day? If Paul said, "God forbid that I should boast in anything whatever except the cross," who shall dare to say, "I have something to boast of—I am a better man than Paul"? </p> <p align="justify">Who is there among the readers of this paper that trusts in any goodness of his own? Who is there that is resting on his own amendments—his own morality—his own churchmanship—his own works and performances of any kind whatever? Who is there that is leaning the weight of his soul on anything whatever of his own, in the smallest possible degree? Learn, I say, that you are very unlike the apostle Paul. Learn that your religion is not <i>apostolic religion.</i> </p> <p align="justify">Who is there among the readers of this paper that trusts in his religious profession for salvation? Who is there that is valuing himself on his baptism, or his attendance at the Lord's table—his church-going on Sundays, or his daily services during the week—and saying to himself, "What more do I lack?" Learn, I say, this day, that you are very unlike Paul. Your Christianity is <i>not the Christianity of the New Testament.</i> Paul would not boast in anything but "the cross." Neither ought you. </p><b> </b><p align="justify"><b>Oh, let us beware of self-righteousness! Open sin kills its thousands of souls. Self-righteousness kills its tens of thousands! </b>Go and study humility with the great apostle of the Gentiles. Go and sit with Paul at the foot of the cross. Give up your secret pride. Cast away your vain ideas of your own goodness. Be thankful if you have grace—but never boast in it for a moment. Work for God and Christ, with heart and soul and mind and strength—but never dream for a second of placing confidence in any work of your own. </p> <p align="justify">Think, you who take comfort in some fancied ideas of your own goodness—think, you who wrap up yourselves in the notion, "all must be right, if I keep to my Church,"—think for a moment what a sandy foundation you are building upon! Think how miserably defective your hopes and pleas will look in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment! Whatever people may say of their own goodness while they are strong and healthy, they will find but little to say of it when they are sick and dying. Whatever merit they may see in their own works here in this world, they will discover none in them when they stand before the tribunal of Christ. The light of that great day of judgement will make a wonderful difference in the appearance of all their doings. It will strip off the tinsel, shrivel up the complexion, expose the rottenness of many a deed that is now called good. Their wheat will prove nothing but chaff—their gold will be found nothing but dross. Millions of so-called 'good works' will turn out to have been utterly defective and graceless. They passed current, and were valued among men—they will prove light and worthless in the balance of God. They will be found to have been like the whitened sepulchers of old—fair and beautiful on the outside—but full of corruption on the inside. Alas, for the man who can look forward to the day of judgment, and lean his soul in the smallest degree on anything of his own now!</p> <p align="justify">"Howsoever people when they sit at ease, do vainly tickle their own hearts with the wanton conceit of I know not what proportionable correspondence between their merits and their rewards, which in the trance of their high speculations, they dream that God has measured and laid up as it were in bundles for them—we see notwithstanding by daily experience in a number even of them, that when the hour of death approaches, when they secretly hear themselves summoned to appear and stand at the bar of that Judge, whose brightness causes the eyes of angels themselves to dazzle, all those idle imaginations do then begin to hide their faces. To name merits then is to lay their souls upon the rack. The memory of their own deeds is loathsome unto them. They forsake all things wherein they have put any trust and confidence. No staff to lean upon, no rest, no ease, no comfort then—but only in Christ Jesus."—<i>Richard Hooker. </i>1585.</p> <p align="justify">Once more I say, let us beware of self-righteousness in every possible shape and form. Some people get as much harm from their fancied virtues as others do from their sins. Rest not, rest not until your heart beats in tune with Paul's. Rest not until you can say with him, "far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!"</p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b><br />II. </b></span><span >Let me explain, in the second place, </span><span ><i><b>what we are to understand by "the cross of Christ."</b></i></span></p><span > <p align="justify">The 'cross' is an expression that is used in more than one meaning in the Bible. What did Paul mean when he said, "I boast in the cross of Christ," in the Epistle to the Galatians? This is the point I now wish to examine closely and make clear. </p> <p align="justify">The cross sometimes means that <b>wooden cross</b>, on which the Lord Jesus Christ was nailed and put to death on Calvary. This is what Paul had in his mind's eye, when he told the Philippians that Christ "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Phil. 2:8.) This is not the cross in which Paul boasted. He would have shrunk with horror from the idea of boasting in a mere piece of wood. I have no doubt he would have denounced the Roman Catholic adoration of the crucifix, as profane, blasphemous, and idolatrous. </p> <p align="justify">The cross sometimes means the <b>afflictions and trials </b>which believers in Christ have to go through, if they follow Christ faithfully, for their religion's sake. This is the sense in which our Lord uses the word when He says, "He who takes not his cross and follows after Me, cannot be my disciple." (Matt. 10:38.) This also is not the sense in which Paul uses the word when he writes to the Galatians. He knew that cross well—he carried it patiently. But he is not speaking of it here. </p> <p align="justify">But the cross also means, in some places, <b>the doctrine that Christ died for sinners upon the cross</b>—the atonement that He made for sinners, by His suffering for them on the cross—the complete and perfect sacrifice for sin which He offered up, when He gave His own body to be crucified. In short, this one word, "the cross," stands for Christ crucified, the only Savior. This is the meaning in which Paul uses the expression, when he tells the Corinthians, "the preaching of the cross is to those who perish foolishness." (1 Cor. 1:18.) This is the meaning in which he wrote to the Galatians, "God forbid that I should boast, except in the cross." He simply meant, "I boast in nothing but Christ crucified, as the salvation of my soul."</p> <p align="justify">"By the cross of Christ the Apostle understands the all-sufficient, expiatory, and satisfactory sacrifice of Christ upon the cross, with the whole work of our redemption; in the saving knowledge of whereof he professes he will glory and boasts."—<i>Cudworth on Galatians.</i> 1613.</p> <p align="justify">"Touching these words, I do not find that any expositor, either ancient or modern, Popish, or Protestant, writing on this place, does expound the cross here mentioned of the sign of the cross—but of the profession of faith in Him who was hanged on the cross."—<i>Mayer's Commentary.</i> 1631. </p> <p align="justify">"This is rather to be understood of the cross which Christ suffered for us, than of that we suffer for Him."—<i>Leigh's Annotations.</i> 1650.</p> <p align="justify">Jesus Christ crucified was the joy and delight, the comfort and the peace, the hope and the confidence, the foundation and the resting-place, the ark and the refuge, the food and the medicine of Paul's soul. He did not think of what he had done himself, and suffered himself. He did not meditate on his own goodness, and his own righteousness. He loved to think of what Christ had done, and Christ had suffered—of the death of Christ, the righteousness of Christ, the atonement of Christ, the blood of Christ, the finished work of Christ. In this he did boast. This was the sun of his soul. </p><b> </b><p align="justify"><b>This is the subject he loved <i>to preach about.</i> </b>He was a man who went to and fro on the earth, proclaiming to sinners that the Son of God had shed His own heart's blood to save their souls. He walked up and down the world telling people that Jesus Christ had loved them, and died for their sins upon the cross. Mark how he says to the Corinthians, "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins." (1 Cor. 15:3.) "I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." (1 Cor. 2:2.) He, a blaspheming, persecuting Pharisee, had been washed in Christ's blood. He could not hold his peace about it. He was never weary of telling the story of the cross. </p><b> </b><p align="justify"><b>This is the subject he loved <i>to dwell upon when he wrote</i> to believers.</b> It is wonderful to observe how full his epistles generally are of the sufferings and death of Christ—how they run over with "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," about Christ's dying love and power. His heart seems full of the subject. He enlarges on it constantly—he returns to it continually. It is the golden thread that runs through all his doctrinal teaching and practical exhortations. He seems to think that the most advanced Christian can never hear too much about the cross. </p> <p align="justify">"Christ crucified is the sum of the Gospel, and contains all the riches of it. Paul was so much taken with Christ, that nothing sweeter than Jesus could drop from his pen and lips. It is observed that he has the word "Jesus" five hundred times in his Epistles."—<i>Charnock.</i> 1684.</p><b> </b><p align="justify"><b>This is what he <i>lived upon </i>all his life</b>, from the time of his conversion. He tells the Galatians, "The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galat. 2:20.) What made him so strong to labor? What made him so willing to work? What made him so unwearied in endeavoring to save some? What made him so persevering and patient? I will tell you the secret of it all. He was always feeding by faith on Christ's body and Christ's blood. Jesus crucified was the food and drink of his soul.</p> <p align="justify">And we may rest assured that Paul was right. Depend upon it, <b>the cross of Christ—the death of Christ on the cross to make atonement for sinners—is the center truth in the whole Bible</b>. This is the truth we begin with when we open Genesis. The seed of the woman bruising the serpent's head is nothing else but a prophecy of Christ crucified. This is the truth that shines out, though veiled, all through the law of Moses, and the history of the Jews. The daily sacrifice, the passover lamb, the continual shedding of blood in the tabernacle and temple, all these were emblems of Christ crucified. This is the truth that we see honored in the vision of heaven before we close the book of Revelation. "In the midst of the throne and of the four beasts," we are told, "and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain." (Rev. 5:6.) Even in the midst of heavenly glory we get a view of Christ crucified. Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book. It is like the Egyptian hieroglyphics without the key that interprets their meaning—curious and wonderful—but of no real use. </p> <p align="justify">Let every reader of this paper mark what I say. You may know a good deal about the Bible. You may know the outlines of the histories it contains, and the dates of the events described, just as a man knows the history of England. You may know the names of the men and women mentioned in it, just as a man knows Caesar, Alexander the Great, or Napoleon. You may know the several precepts of the Bible, and admire them, just as a man admires Plato, Aristotle, or Seneca. But if you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have read your Bible hitherto to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a key-stone, a compass without a needle, a clock without spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you. It will not deliver your soul from hell. </p> <p align="justify">Mark what I say again. You may know a good deal about Christ, by a kind of head knowledge. You may know who He was, and where He was born, and what He did. You may know His miracles, His sayings, His prophecies, and His ordinances. You may know how He lived, and how He suffered, and how He died. But unless you know the power of Christ's cross by experience—unless you know and feel within that the blood shed on that cross has washed away your own particular sins—unless you are willing to confess that your salvation depends entirely on the work that Christ did upon the cross—unless this be the case, Christ will profit you nothing. The mere knowing Christ's name will never save you. You must know His cross, and His blood, or else you will die in your sins.</p> <p align="justify">"If our faith stops in Christ's life, and does not fasten upon His blood, it will not be justifying faith. His miracles, which prepared the world for His doctrines; His holiness, which fitted Himself for His sufferings, had been insufficient for us without the addition of the cross." <i>Charnock.</i> 1684.</p> <p align="justify">As long as you live, <i>beware of a religion in which there is not much of the cross.</i> You live in times when the warning is sadly needful. Beware, I say again, of a religion without the cross. </p> <p align="justify">There are hundreds of places of worship, in this day, in which there is everything almost except the cross. There is carved oak, and sculptured stone; there is stained glass, and brilliant painting; there are solemn services, and a constant round of ordinances; but the real cross of Christ is not there. Jesus crucified is not proclaimed in the pulpit. The Lamb of God is not lifted up, and salvation by faith in Him is not freely proclaimed. And hence all is wrong. Beware of such places of worship. They are <i>not apostolic. </i>They would not have satisfied Paul.</p> <p align="justify">"Paul determined to know nothing else but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. But many manage the ministry as if they had taken up a contrary determination—even to know anything except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."—<i>Traill.</i> 1690.</p> <p align="justify">There are thousands of religious books published in our times, in which there is everything except the cross. They are full of directions about sacraments, and praises of the Church. They abound in exhortations about holy living, and rules for the attainment of perfection. They have plenty of fonts and crosses, both inside and outside. But the real cross of Christ is left out. The Savior, and His work of atonement and complete salvation, are either not mentioned, or mentioned in an unscriptural way. And hence they are worse than useless. Beware of such books. They are <i>not apostolic.</i> They would never have satisfied Paul. </p> <p align="justify">Paul boasted in nothing but the cross. Strive to be like him. Set Jesus crucified fully before the eyes of your soul. Listen not to any teaching which would interpose anything between you and Him. Do not fall into the old Galatian error—think not that anyone in this day is a better guide than the apostles. Do not be ashamed of the "old paths," in which men walked who were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Let not the vague talk of modern teachers, who speak great swelling words about "catholicity," and "the church," disturb your peace, and make you loose your hands from the cross. Churches, ministers, and sacraments, are all useful in their way—but they are not Christ crucified. Do not give Christ's honor to another. "He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord." (1 Cor. 1:1.)<br /></p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>III. </b></span><span >Let me show, lastly,</span><span ><b> <i>why all Christians ought to boast in the cross of Christ.</i> </b></span></p><span > <p align="justify">I feel that I must say something on this point, because of the ignorance that prevails about it. I suspect that many see no peculiar glory and beauty in the subject of Christ's cross. On the contrary, they think it painful, humbling, and degrading. They do not see much profit in the story of His death and sufferings. They rather turn from it as an unpleasant thing. </p> <p align="justify">Now I believe that such people are quite wrong. I cannot hold with them. I believe it is an excellent thing for us all to be continually dwelling on the cross of Christ. It is a good thing to be often reminded how Jesus was betrayed into the hands of wicked men—how they condemned Him with most unjust judgment—how they spit on Him, scourged Him, beat Him, and crowned Him with thorns—how they led Him forth as a lamb to the slaughter, without His murmuring or resisting—how they drove the nails through His hands and feet, and set Him up on Calvary between two thieves—how they pierced His side with a spear, mocked Him in His sufferings, and let Him hang there naked and bleeding until He died. Of all these things, I say, it is good to be reminded. It is not for nothing that the crucifixion is described four times over in the New Testament. There are very few things that all four writers of the Gospel describe. Generally speaking, if Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell a thing in our Lord's history, John does not tell it. But there is one thing that all the four give us most fully, and that one thing is the story of the cross. This is a telling fact, and not to be overlooked. </p> <p align="justify">People seem to forget that <b>all Christ's sufferings on the cross were <i>fore-ordained</i></b><i>.</i> They did not come on Him by chance or accident—they were all planned, counseled, and determined from all eternity. The cross was foreseen in all the provisions of the everlasting Trinity for the salvation of sinners. In the purposes of God the cross was set up from everlasting. Not one throb of pain did Jesus feel, not one precious drop of blood did Jesus shed, which had not been appointed long ago. Infinite wisdom planned that redemption should be by the cross. Infinite wisdom brought Jesus to the cross in due time. He was crucified "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." (Acts 2:23.) </p> <p align="justify">People seem to forget that <b>all Christ's sufferings on the cross <i>were necessary for man's salvation</i></b><i>.</i> He had to bear our sins, if ever they were to be borne at all. With His stripes alone could we be healed. This was the one payment of our debt that God would accept—this was the great sacrifice on which our eternal life depended. If Christ had not gone to the cross and suffered in our stead, the just for the unjust, there would not have been a spark of hope for us. There would have been a mighty gulf between ourselves and God, which no man ever could have passed. </p> <p align="justify">"In Christ's humiliation stands our exaltation; in His weakness stands our strength; in His ignominy our glory; in His death our life."—<i>Cudworth.</i> 1613. </p> <p align="justify">"The eye of faith regards Christ sitting on the summit of the cross as in a triumphal chariot; the devil bound to the lowest part of the same cross, and trodden under the feet of Christ."—<i>Davenant on Colossians.</i> 1627.</p> <p align="justify">People seem to forget that <b>all Christ's sufferings were endured <i>voluntarily</i></b><i>,</i> and of His own free will. He was under no compulsion. Of His own choice He laid down His life—of His own choice He went to the cross in order to finish the work He came to do. He might easily have summoned legions of angels with a word, and scattered Pilate and Herod, and all their armies, like chaff before the wind. But He was a willing sufferer. His heart was set on the salvation of sinners. He was resolved to open "a fountain for all sin and uncleanness," by shedding His own blood. (Zech. 13:1.) </p> <p align="justify">When I think of all this, I see nothing painful or disagreeable in the subject of Christ's cross. On the contrary, I see in it wisdom and power, peace and hope, joy and gladness, comfort and consolation. The more I keep the cross in my mind's eye, the more fullness I seem to discern in it. The longer I dwell on the cross in my thoughts, the more I am satisfied that <b>there is more to be learned at the foot of the cross than anywhere else in the world</b>. </p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(a) Would I know the length and breadth of <i>God the Father's love</i> towards a sinful world?</b></span><span > Where shall I see it most displayed? Shall I look at His glorious sun, shining down daily on the unthankful and evil? Shall I look at seed-time and harvest, returning in regular yearly succession? Oh, no! I can find a stronger proof of love than anything of this sort. I look at the cross of Christ. I see in it not the cause of the Father's love—but the effect. There I see that God so loved this wicked world, that He gave His only begotten Son—gave Him to suffer and die—that "whoever believes in Him should not perish—but have eternal life." (John 3:16.) I know that the Father loves us, because He did not withhold from us His Son, His only Son. I might sometimes fancy that God the Father is too high and holy to care for such miserable, corrupt creatures as we are! But I cannot, must not, dare not think it, when I look at the cross of Christ. </span></p><span > <p align="justify">"The world we live in would have fallen upon our heads, had it not been upheld by the pillar of the cross; had not Christ stepped in and promised a satisfaction for the sin of man. By this all things consist—not a blessing we enjoy but may put us in mind of it; they were all forfeited by sin—but merited by His blood. If we study it well we shall be sensible how God hated sin and loved a world."—<i>Charnock.</i></p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(b) Would I know how exceedingly <i>sinful and abominable sin</i> is in the sight of God? </b></span><span >Where shall I see that most fully brought out? Shall I turn to the history of the flood, and read how sin drowned the world? Shall I go to the shore of the Dead Sea, and mark what sin brought on Sodom and Gomorrah? Shall I turn to the wandering Jews, and observe how sin has scattered them over the face of the earth? No! I can find a clearer proof still! I look at the cross of Christ. There I see that sin is so black and damnable, that nothing but the blood of God's own Son can wash it away. There I see that sin has so separated me from my holy Maker, that all the angels in heaven could never have made peace between us. Nothing could reconcile us, short of the death of Christ. If I listened to the wretched talk of proud people, I might sometimes fancy sin was not so very sinful! But<b> I cannot think little of sin, when I look at the cross of Christ. </b></span></p><span > <p align="justify">(c) Would I know the <i>fullness and completeness of the salvation</i> God has provided for sinners? Where shall I see it most distinctly? Shall I go to the general declarations in the Bible about God's mercy? Shall I rest in the general truth that God is a "God of love"? Oh, no! I will look at the cross of Christ. I find no evidence like that. I find no balm for a sore conscience and a troubled heart, like the sight of Jesus dying for me on the accursed tree. There I see that a full payment has been made for all my enormous debts. The curse of that law which I have broken has come down on One who there suffered in my stead. The demands of that law are all satisfied. Payment has been made for me, even to the uttermost farthing. It will not be required twice over. Ah, I might sometimes imagine I was too bad to be forgiven! My own heart sometimes whispers that I am too wicked to be saved. But I know in my better moments this is all my foolish unbelief. I read an answer to my doubts in the blood shed on Calvary. I feel sure that there is a way to heaven for the very vilest of people, when I look at the cross. </p> <p align="justify">(d) Would I find strong <i>reasons for being a holy man?</i> Where shall I turn for them? Shall I listen to the ten commandments merely? Shall I study the examples given me in the Bible of what grace can do? Shall I meditate on the rewards of heaven, and the punishments of hell? Is there no stronger motive still? Yes! I will look at the cross of Christ! There I see the love of Christ constraining me to "live not unto myself—but unto Him." There I see that I am not my own now—I am "bought with a price." (2 Cor. 5:15; 1 Cor. 6:20.) I am bound by the most solemn obligations to glorify Jesus with body and spirit, which are His. There I see that Jesus gave Himself for me, not only to redeem me from all iniquity—but also to purify me, and to make me one of a "peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Titus 2:14.) He bore my sins in His own body on the tree, "that I being dead unto sin should live unto righteousness." (1 Pet. 2:24.) <b>There is nothing so sanctifying as a clear view of the cross of Christ! It crucifies the world unto us, and us unto the world. How can we love sin, when we remember that because of our sins Jesus died? Surely none ought to be so holy as the disciples of a crucified Lord. </b></p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(e) Would I <i>learn how to be contented and cheerful </i>under all the cares and concerns of life? </b></span><span >What school shall I go to? How shall I attain this state of mind most easily? Shall I look at the sovereignty of God, the wisdom of God, the providence of God, the love of God? It is well to do so. But I have a better argument still. I will look at the cross of Christ. I feel that "He who spared not His only-begotten Son—but delivered Him up to die for me, will surely with Him give me all things" that I really need. (Rom. 8:32.) He who endured such agony, sufferings, and pain for my soul, will surely not withhold from me anything that is really good. He who has done the greater things for me, will doubtless do the lesser things also. He who gave His own blood to procure me a home in heaven, will unquestionably supply me with all that is really profitable for me by the way. <b>There is no school for learning contentment that can be compared with the foot of the cross! </b></span></p><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(f) Would I gather <i>arguments for hoping that I shall never be cast away?</i> </b></span><span >Where shall I go to find them? Shall I look at my own graces and gifts? Shall I take comfort in my own faith, and love, and penitence, and zeal, and prayer? Shall I turn to my own heart, and say, "this same heart will never be false and cold"? Oh, no! God forbid! I will look at the cross of Christ. This is my grand argument. This is my main stay. I cannot think that He who went through such sufferings to redeem my soul, will let that soul perish after all, when it has once cast itself on Him. Oh, no! what Jesus paid for, Jesus will surely keep. He paid dearly for it. He will not let it easily be lost. He called me to Himself when I was a dark sinner—He will never forsake me after I have believed. When Satan tempts us to doubt whether Christ's people will be kept from falling, we should tell Satan to look at the cross. </span></p><span > <p align="justify">"The believer is so freed from eternal wrath, that if Satan and conscience say, 'You are a sinner, and under the curse of the law,' he can say, 'It is true, I am a sinner; but I was hanged on a tree and died, and was made a curse in my Head and Lawgiver Christ, and His payment and suffering is my payment and suffering.'"—<i>Rutherford's Christ Dying.</i> 1647.</p> <p align="justify">And now, will you marvel that I said all Christians ought to boast in the cross? Will you not rather wonder that any can hear of the cross and remain unmoved? I declare I know no greater proof of man's depravity, than the fact that thousands of so-called Christians see nothing in the cross. Well may our hearts be called stony—well may the eyes of our mind be called blind—well may our whole nature be called diseased—well may we all be called dead, when the cross of Christ is heard of and yet neglected. Surely we may take up the words of the prophet, and say, "Hear, O heavens, and be astonished O earth; an astounding and a horrible thing is done,"—Christ was crucified for sinners, and yet many Christians live as if He was never crucified at all!</p></span><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(a) The cross is<i> the grand peculiarity of the Christian religion.</i> </b></span><span >Other religions have laws and moral precepts, forms and ceremonies, rewards and punishments. But other religions cannot tell us of a dying Savior. They cannot show us the cross. This is the crown and glory of the Gospel. This is that special comfort which belongs to it alone. Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian, and yet contains nothing of the cross. A man who teaches in this way, might as well profess to explain the solar system, and yet tell his hearers nothing about the sun. </span></p><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(b) The cross is<i> the strength of a minister.</i></b></span><span > I for one would not be without it for all the world. I should feel like a soldier without weapons—like an artist without his brush—like a pilot without his compass—like a laborer without his tools. Let others, if they will, preach the law and morality; let others hold forth the terrors of hell, and the joys of heaven; let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church; give me the cross of Christ! This is the only lever which has ever turned the world upside down hitherto, and made people forsake their sins. And if this will not, nothing will. A man may begin preaching with a perfect knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but he will do little or no good among his hearers unless he knows something of the cross. Never was there a minister who did much for the conversion of souls who did not dwell much on Christ crucified. Luther, Rutherford, Whitefield, M'Cheyne, were all most eminently preachers of the cross. This is the preaching that the Holy Spirit delights to bless. He loves to honor those who honor the cross. </span></p><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(c) The cross is <i>the secret of all missionary success.</i> </b></span><span >Nothing but this has ever moved the hearts of the heathen. Just according as this has been lifted up missions have prospered. This is the weapon which has won victories over hearts of every kind, in every quarter of the globe. Greenlanders, Africans, South-Sea Islanders, Hindus, Chinese, all have alike felt its power. Just as that huge iron tube which crosses the Menai Straits, is more affected and bent by half-an-hour's sunshine than by all the dead weight that can be placed in it, so in like manner the hearts of savages have melted before the cross, when every other argument seemed to move them no more than stones. "Brethren," said a North-American Indian after his conversion, "I have been a heathen. I know how heathens think. Once a preacher came and began to explain to us that there was a God; but we told him to return to the place from whence he came. Another preacher came and told us not to lie, nor steal, nor drink; but we did not heed him. At last another came into my hut one day and said, 'I am come to you in the name of the Lord of heaven and earth, He sends to let you know that He will make you happy, and deliver you from misery. For this end He became a man, gave His life a ransom, and shed His blood for sinners.' I could not forget his words. I told them to the other Indians, and an awakening began among us." I say, therefore, preach the sufferings and death of Christ, our Savior, if you wish your words to gain entrance among the heathen. Never indeed did the devil triumph so thoroughly, as when he persuaded the Jesuit missionaries in China to keep back the story of the cross! </span></p><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(d) The cross is <i>the foundation of a Church's prosperity.</i> </b></span><span >No Church will ever be honored in which Christ crucified is not continually lifted up—nothing whatever can make up for the lack of the cross. Without it all things may be done decently and in order; without it there may be splendid ceremonies, beautiful music, gorgeous churches, learned ministers, crowded communion tables, huge collections for the poor. But without the cross no good will be done; dark hearts will not be enlightened, proud hearts will not be humbled, mourning hearts will not be comforted, fainting hearts will not be cheered. Sermons about the Church and an apostolic ministry—sermons about baptism and the Lord's supper—sermons about unity and schism—sermons about fasts and communion—sermons about fathers and saints—such sermons will never make up for the absence of sermons about the cross of Christ. They may amuse some—they will feed none. A gorgeous banqueting room, and splendid gold plate on the table, will never make up to a hungry man for the lack of food. Christ crucified is God's ordinance for doing good to people. Whenever a Church keeps back Christ crucified, or puts anything whatever in that foremost place which Christ crucified should always have, from that moment a Church ceases to be useful. Without Christ crucified in her pulpits, a church is little better than a cumberer of the ground, a dead carcase, a well without water, a barren fig tree, a sleeping watchman, a silent trumpet, a speechless witness, an ambassador without terms of peace, a messenger without tidings, a lighthouse without fire, a stumbling-block to weak believers, a comfort to infidels, a hot-bed for formalism, a joy to the devil, and an offence to God. </span></p><span ><b> </b></span><p align="justify"><span ><b>(e) The cross is <i>the grand center of union</i> among true Christians. </b></span><span >Our outward differences are many, without doubt. One man is an Episcopalian, another is a Presbyterian—one is an Independent, another a Baptist—one is a Calvinist, another an Arminian—one is a Lutheran, another a Plymouth Brother—one is a friend to Establishments, another a friend to the voluntary system—one is a friend to liturgies, another a friend to extempore prayer. But, after all, what shall we hear about most of these differences, in heaven? Nothing, most probably—nothing at all. <i>Does a man really and sincerely boast in the cross of Christ?</i> That is the grand question. If he does, he is my brother—we are traveling on the same road; we are journeying towards a home where Christ is all, and everything outward in religion will be forgotten. But if he does not boast in the cross of Christ, I cannot feel comfort about him. Union on outward points only, is union only for a time—union about the cross is union for eternity. Error on outward points is only a skin-deep disease—error about the cross is disease at the heart. Union about outward points is a mere man-made union—union about the cross of Christ can only be produced by the Holy Spirit. </span></p></div></div></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-25705777255124197032011-05-08T15:56:00.000-07:002011-05-08T19:27:34.439-07:00Rob Bell's Love Wins, Chapter 4. Dr. James White response<div><br /></div><div>Here is chapter four of Rob Bells book: Love Wins. Does God gets what He wants?</div><div>Dr. James White responses to this chapter. Check out his web site. <a href="http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4555">http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=45</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyO_a1zmj_1VyMq00Z-PrawcXobBjvwDQaze_FofCAZ3EtM7NxSXufdlS0OwxnYs8TB5UVnLgaIuomhbDMqMQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxb72kFHfKiYtJwE91Kc4k_BQslPM2ffxaZ7rgXqImNAk3ryO77KwQF5ghDXA3aWyw2z36hrqcjJRF9tbup2A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyObGYx_M6LtcoxuNB5FWmkS8MzU7-SRfdcPObCRu02wOAaxG11gfVucqgMEJaug8V3lAgh75WHWRml2PTnFw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxjzCeaY86uw1mlMYFUVKDUhTzpF4AsNVA0Wo5AEnOmcX6FPVAVok3yCo3HpcGdGZPaVXH21eKN80AxmlVR0w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-13362031641609567482011-05-04T12:46:00.000-07:002011-05-04T17:22:32.882-07:00Rob Bell debate<div>Here is a very revealing interview of Rob Bell. Either before or after the "Unbelievable Debate on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Premiertv</span>. It appears the Rob can be two kinds of people. He is more honest with his comments in the radio interview because the interviewer was more supportive and agreeable with Rob's theology. Either case these interviews will give you more understanding of Rob Bell's true stand. Dr. James White clears the clouds over Rob Bells double speak. </div><div>Check out Dr. James White's site <a href="http://aomin.org/">http://aomin.org/</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dx-FrcNwAO4R-fVH_iZbY8URXlVOqS74wmjV8_FmexlDWg3wf3wNWGU8F_XugP3HIKO40X4-29Nm2Q3D60G9Q' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwQQRIMi8GyA7617k7wRwCEnWHP_c3FhzAJofw3J0CEKvgYCrgEFVZzDAgcaIqAVFJjaz6viBoCnufjh3ZPtw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy7fjD0NPn1REHuBFp4U7rmOFz-0mPcAXO1x51SOY8u9oxcpDZq7YJo39mZ5bmQmkkFhlgx0_8yVjQsa-qp9Q' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwK8eVNA0OddsX39RXB8wljt1gB2sxEIQLEplb71ad7aPvJpU9-2Y_SNZ0mOlzjHjPm5mbgpgw5KnHEI-g4Kw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw8XYBS95D3h5E1gE7nSQZICENZ0_Vam4C7DF8VFmPyspmYSGwZEk2_DvhZy1DvBKEgFcK5OOy28TqTt3Tubg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dznEXYaEmr-oBPmKB9b9-vWGAlzZ68yukLmXNB-cB-_JSfUbZZ_bo9DIEhBUVI_NEiN0Pn-Hr-iuLwyegLo8A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwJDvctjaPU4dTWmNuoTZG5grW-I_udhyR9mhTasJgTi5a-Y6QtA8o0BoYQeorUmXwBaFoOvykrriYoSiajJA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-17105325680870772092011-05-03T08:39:00.000-07:002011-05-03T09:23:56.053-07:00Love Wins, Chapter 3. Questioning a Biblical Hell<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzlbaOIJg-K5U7Hvk97rHogwOYl_ojhMeVTG1PsTRSM9lWHaMVqZGIQQ2Tf5JwNRDmiMb0VWHj02J3Py0vsvA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This chapter from Love Wins is centering on Hell. I will let Rob speak for himself and then listen to an answer from John MacArthur. Matt 13:47-52 The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Furnace</span> of Hell</div><div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwh9O9Eyu0iaQlZ3gFkp8yAyc_9yNwJQ8hofdtWZXtODTBff0sm7NiyPHnZzuIBgLRYYDxl43B4Ds1U0Xd3ZA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>Here is Randy <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Alcorn's</span> Hell: Eternal Sovereign Justice Exacted upon Evildoers (Chapter 29 of If God Is Good)</div><div>Please take time to read. Rob Bell said in chapter one that him and his wife made a decision that they would teach their children in a way that they would not have to unlearn what they have been taught by them. It is interesting that this book whats thousands of years of Reformation Biblic</div><div>al <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">the</span></div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ology</span> to be unlearned and take up the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">baggage</span> that He introduces. </div><div>All I am asking is to question this <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">baggage</span>!</div><br /><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi28ArALDPKElu9ecjvkOAhssrCwEE22-J4Ge7jS4HlY-eV-2us2o_8RJuqekhChbhBn9TZ9LLxkc61Bsl3TFra_pTpzNXxVSOivYiS5JIGbSXHoWZY_7vAvW5izMvXAJKk87Oi5txuP2A/s200/productimage-picture-if-god-good-40_jpg_175x284_q85.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 133px; height: 200px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602525958816563122" /></div><div><br /></div><div><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong><br /></strong></p><p align="left"><strong>If ther</strong><strong>e</strong><strong> is no Hell, there is no justice.</strong></p><p>When most people speak of what a terrible notion Hell is, they talk as if it involves the suffering of innocent people. That would indeed be terribly unjust—but nowhere does the Bible suggest the innocent will spend a single moment in Hell.</p><p>When I think of Hell, I recall a man I met on a train out of Kiev, whose mother was the only one of twelve children in her family to survive Stalin’s enforced starvation in Ukraine. I think about <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Vek</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Samoeun</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Taing</span>, as they walked us through the Killing Fields, telling us of the atrocities committed against their families.</p><p>Without Hell, justice would never overtake the unrepentant tyrants responsible for murdering millions. Perpetrators of evil throughout the ages would get away with murder—and rape, and torture, and every evil.</p><p>Even if we may acknowledge Hell as a necessary and just punishment for evildoers, however, we rarely see <em>ourselves </em>as worthy of Hell. After all, we are not Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Bundy</span>, or <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Dahmer</span>.</p><p>God responds, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10–12).</p><p>As we saw in chapters 7–9, in our unredeemed state, we remain alienated from God, the source of all goodness. And while by his common grace some of his goodness leaks both onto us and into us, our predominant condition is far from good. In his book <em>The Nazi Doctors, </em>Robert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Lifton</span> coined the phrase “the normalcy of evil.” Evil permeates the human condition. The Nazi doctors were respectable, educated people who loved their families yet thought nothing of performing sadistic experiments on Jewish children. They considered themselves good people. We consider ourselves good people.</p><p>We’re wrong.</p><p>Guilty people can always rationalize sin. Hell exists because sin has no excuse.</p><p>After detailing a long list of human atrocities, Os Guinness asks the painful question, “What does it say of us as human beings that the people who do these things are the same species as we are?”[1]</p><p>To see the face of evil, we need only look in the mirror. If we don’t see evil’s reality in our lives, it’s no surprise. Evil people typically don’t.</p><p align="left"><strong>Hell exists precisely because God has committed himself to solving the problem of evil.</strong></p><p>Hell is not evil; it’s a place where evil gets punished. Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But Hell is morally good, because a good God must punish evil.</p><p>Hell will not be a blot on the universe, but an eternal testimony to the ugliness of evil that will prompt wondrous appreciation of a good God’s magnificence. That sounds like nonsense to Hell-hating moderns, but it makes perfect sense when we recognize and hate <em>evil </em>for what it is. We each have our preferred ways of sinning, whether as prostitutes, porn addicts, materialists, gossips, or the self-righteous. We all are sinners who deserve Hell.</p><p>We hate Hell precisely because we don’t hate evil. We hate it also because we deserve it.</p><p>We cry out for true and lasting justice, then fault God for taking evil too seriously by administering eternal punishment. We can’t have it both ways. Sin is evil; just punishment of sin is good. Hell is an eternal correction of and compensation for evil. It is justice. To fear and dread Hell is understandable, but to argue against Hell is to argue against justice.</p><p align="left"><strong>Were this our only life, for there to be justice all evil would have to be judged here and all goodness rewarded here.</strong></p><p>Christianity teaches that one’s life in this fallen world will give way to an unending life, either in Heaven or Hell. <em>That </em>life, not this one, will bring perfect justice. Atheists consider the world terribly unjust, for they think that only in this life can any retribution for good or evil take place. But the Bible teaches that God will exercise justice in a never-ending afterlife. At the end of this fallen world, just before the inauguration of the New Heaven and New Earth, God will at last bring ongoing justice to both unbelievers and believers (see Revelation 20).</p><p align="left"><strong>Hell is the only just alternative to Heaven.</strong></p><p>Fallen angels along with humans who haven’t accepted God’s gift of redemption in Christ will inhabit Hell (see 2 Peter 2:4; Revelation 20:12–15). After Christ returns, believers will be resurrected to eternal life in Heaven while unbelievers will be resurrected to an eternal existence in Hell. Jesus said, “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out... and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:28–29).</p><p>God will judge the unsaved for their sins. Christ will say to those who don’t know him, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).</p><p align="left"><strong>JESUS AND HELL</strong></p><p align="left"><strong>In the Bible, Jesus spoke more about Hell than anyone else did.</strong></p><p>Jesus referred to Hell as a real place and described it in graphic terms (see Matthew 10:28; 13:40–42; Mark 9:43–48). He spoke of a fire that burns but <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">doesn</span>’t consume, an undying worm that eats away at the damned, and a lonely and foreboding darkness.</p><p>Christ says the unsaved “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12). Jesus taught that an unbridgeable chasm separates the wicked in Hell from the righteous in paradise. The wicked suffer terribly, remain conscious, retain their desires and memories, long for relief, cannot find comfort, cannot leave their torment, and have no hope (see Luke 16:19–3 1).</p><p>Our Savior could not have painted a bleaker picture of Hell.</p><p>C. S. Lewis said, “I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven.”[2] The biblical teaching on both destinations stands or falls together. If the one is real, so is the other; if the one is a myth, so is the other. The best reason for believing in Hell is that Jesus said it exists.</p><p>It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">isn</span>’t just what Jesus said about Hell that matters. It is the fact that it was he who said it.</p><p>“There seems to be a kind of conspiracy,” wrote Dorothy Sayers, “to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of hell comes from. The doctrine of hell is not ‘<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">mediaeval</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">priestcraft</span>’ for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin.... We cannot repudiate hell without altogether repudiating Christ.”[3]</p><p>Why do I believe in an eternal Hell? Because Jesus clearly and repeatedly affirmed its existence. As Sayers suggested, you cannot dismiss Hell without dismissing Jesus.</p><p>Atheist Bertrand Russell wrote, “There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”[4]</p><p>Shall we believe Jesus or Bertrand Russell? For me, it is not a difficult choice.</p><p>C. S. Lewis said of Hell, “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason.”[5]</p><p>We cannot make Hell go away simply because the thought of it makes us uncomfortable. If I were as holy as God, if I knew a fraction of what he knows, I would realize Hell is just and right. We should weep over Hell, but not deny it. If there <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">isn</span>’t an eternal Hell, Jesus made a terrible mistake in affirming there is. And if we cannot trust Jesus in his teaching about Hell, why should we trust anything he said, including his offer of salvation?</p><p>We may pride ourselves in thinking we are too loving to believe in Hell. But in saying this, we blaspheme, for we claim to be more loving than Jesus—more loving than the One who with outrageous love took upon himself the full penalty for our sin.</p><p>Who are we to think we are better than Jesus?</p><p>Or that when it comes to Hell, or anything else, we know better than he does?</p><p><strong>God determined he would rather endure the torment of the Cross on our behalf than live in Heaven without us.</strong></p><p>Apart from Christ, we would all spend eternity in Hell. But God so much wants us not to go to Hell that he paid a horrible price on the cross so we <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">wouldn</span>’t have to. This can be distorted into self-congratulation: if God paid such a great price for us, we must be extremely valuable. A better perspective is that if God had to pay such a great price for us, it emphasizes both the extent of his love <em>and </em>the extent of our evil.</p><p>Jesus asks a haunting question in Mark 8:36–37: “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”</p><p>The price has been paid, but we can’t benefit from forgiveness unless we choose to receive it. A convicted criminal may be offered a pardon, but if he rejects it, he remains condemned.</p><p><strong>By denying Hell’s reality, we lower the stakes of redemption and minimize Christ’s work on the cross.</strong></p><p>If Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">didn</span>’t deliver us from a real and eternal Hell, then his work on the cross is less heroic, less potent, less consequential, and less deserving of our worship and praise.</p><p>Theologian William <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Shedd</span> put it this way: “The doctrine of Christ’s vicarious atonement logically stands or falls with that of eternal punishment.”[6]</p><p><strong>ANNIHILATION</strong></p><p><strong>The Bible teaches Hell is a place of eternal punishment, not </strong><strong>annihilation.</strong></p><p>Jesus said, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). Here in the same sentence, Christ uses the word “eternal” <em>(<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">aionos</span>) </em>to describe the duration of both Heaven and Hell. Thus, according to our Lord, if some will consciously experience Heaven forever, then some must consciously experience Hell forever.</p><p>Despite the clarity of Matthew 25:46, even some evangelical Christians have affirmed that upon dying, or at the final judgment, those without Christ will cease to exist. Clark <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Pinnock</span> writes, “It’s time for evangelicals to come out and say that the biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of Hell is annihilation, not everlasting torment.”[7] <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">Pinnock</span> makes a revealing statement:<strong> </strong></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">I was led to question the traditional belief in everlasting conscious torment because of moral revulsion and broader theological considerations, not first of all on scriptural grounds. It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life.[8]</p><p>Note that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Pinnock</span> admits he reached his conclusions about annihilation “not first of all on scriptural grounds.” John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">Stott</span> wrote about eternal conscious torment, “Emotionally, I find the concept intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain.... Scripture points in the direction of annihilation.”[9]</p><p>But would John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Stott</span>, whom I greatly respect and who is an advocate of the inspiration and authority of Scripture, have ever said Scripture points toward annihilation if it were not for the emotional strain put upon him by the passages that clearly appear to teach everlasting punishment?</p><p>Revelation 20:10 says not only that Satan, but also the beast and the false prophet, “will be tormented <em>for ever and ever.” </em>Revelation 19:20 shows the beast and false prophet are humans, put in Hell a thousand years earlier. Hence, we at least know that Hell for humans <em>cannot </em>mean immediate annihilation at death.</p><p>The most graphic New Testament statement of the eternal suffering of the unrepentant says simply, “The smoke of their torment goes up <em>for ever and ever, </em>and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). It’s hard to imagine a more emphatic affirmation of eternal punishment.</p><p>If we are going to discard the doctrine of eternal punishment because it feels profoundly unpleasant to us, then it seems fair to ask what other biblical teachings we will also reject, because they too don’t square with what we feel. And if we do this, are we not replacing the authority of Scripture with the authority of our feelings, or our limited understanding?</p><p align="left"><strong>Annihilation makes no sense in light of Revelation 20.</strong></p><p>One popular <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">annihilationist</span> position maintains that unbelievers cease to exist when they die. But if they no longer exist, then how can they be raised to stand at the Great White Throne Judgment of Revelation 20? Would God re-create them to stand before him in judgment? After this judgment, Revelation 20 says they will be cast into the lake of fire. Would this be a second annihilation?</p><p>Another view states that unbelievers are destroyed not at death, but sometime later. They suffer some punishment appropriate to their offenses (as the rich man experiences in Luke 16), some shorter and some longer, then are snuffed out of existence.</p><p>But as we’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">ve</span> seen, two human beings, the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">antichrist</span> and the false prophet, will be thrown into the lake of fire after a thousand years of suffering. If it is wrong for punishment to last forever, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">wouldn</span>’t it seem wrong to last over a thousand years? If there’s an eventual end to people’s suffering in Hell, where is that indicated in Scripture? Why Christ’s emphasis on “eternal punishment” and fire that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">isn</span>’t quenched and a worm that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">doesn</span>’t die?</p><p>People believe in annihilation because it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">doesn</span>’t seem nearly so bad as eternity in Hell. The rich man of Luke 16 does not cease to exist when he dies. But will he one day cease to exist? If so, when he begs for relief, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">wouldn</span>’t we expect Abraham to say, “When your sins are paid for, then you will no longer suffer”? But Abraham offers him no hope for relief.</p><p>Annihilation is an attractive teaching compared to the alternative—I would gladly embrace it, were it taught in Scripture. But though I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">ve</span> tried, I just can’t find it there.</p><p align="left"><strong>Annihilation would not satisfy God’s justice and solve the problem of evil. </strong></p><p>Do you believe that Stalin, Pol Pot, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_34">Idi</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_35">Amin</span> got their just punishment in this life? Do you think the life imprisonment of Charles Manson—in which he receives food, clothes, reading material, television privileges, and protection from other inmates—supplies full justice for his arrogant, unrepentant slaughter of innocent human beings? Would eternal nonexistence be a just punishment for such men? In what sense does an annihilated person, who by definition experiences nothing, experience any punishment at all?</p><p>Can you imagine God saying to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao at the final judgment, “For all your evil rebellion against me and your unspeakable crimes against humanity, your punishment is to no longer be conscious”? The “pain” of nonexistence is no pain at all. To cease to exist is to not be held accountable for sin. How could God satisfy his justice if he responded to despicable sins against himself and humanity by merely flicking a switch into nothingness?</p><p>Annihilation is no solution to the injustice of evil and suffering. If it were true, annihilation might itself raise a serious moral problem, for it suggests that our sins are not so grievous and the consequences for committing them are painless, or at worst exist only for a limited time.</p><p>If, as the Bible teaches, Christ’s redemptive work is so magnificent that it delivers us from an eternal Hell, then it should elicit maximum worship from us. But if it delivers us only from nonexistence—which is exactly the end atheists, naturalists, and materialists believe in—then we may feel grateful to God for what we are rescued to, Heaven, but not so grateful for what he rescued us from, mere nonexistence.</p><p>Although the doctrine of annihilation continues to gain ground among believers, Christians must realize that embracing this doctrine minimizes, or worse, eliminates altogether the horrors of Hell. This doctrine in its most popular form merely confirms what most unbelievers already think, that their lives will end at death, and therefore there’s nothing to be concerned about. In contrast, the Bible speaks of an eternal Hell as something that should motivate unbelievers to turn to God, and motivate believers to share the gospel with urgency.</p><p><strong>IS HELL A PROBLEM OR A SOLUTION?</strong></p><p><strong>Many see Hell as the ultimate cruelty and injustice.</strong></p><p>Jesus said God prepared Hell “for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:4 1). Humans go there only as they align themselves with that cosmic minority of fallen angels who reject God.</p><p>Clark <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_36">Pinnock</span> writes, “I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine....How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God.”[10]</p><p>It’s hard to imagine a more serious accusation, since Jesus, the second member of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_37">triune</span> God, makes the clearest statements in Scripture about everlasting punishment. Can any Christian really believe that in doing so Jesus was saying God is “cruel” and “like Satan”?</p><p>Many atheists believe early Christians invented Hell as a doctrine to frighten people into conversion. But Christ’s followers merely repeated their Lord’s teaching. They <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_38">didn</span>’t make it up.</p><p><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_39">Doesn</span>’t our main objection to Hell center in the belief that we are far better than we really are? We may accept in theory that we’re sinners; we may even be able to list some of our sins (though we can give quite good reasons for many of them). But we do not even begin to see the extent of our evil in the sight of an all-holy God.</p><p>If we regard Hell as a divine overreaction to sin, we deny that God has the moral right to inflict ongoing punishment on any humans he created to exist forever. By denying Hell, we deny the extent of God’s holiness and the extent of our evil. We deny the extreme seriousness of sin. And, worst of all, we deny the extreme magnificence of God’s grace in Christ’s blood, shed for us on the cross. For if the evils he died for aren’t big enough to warrant eternal punishment, then perhaps the grace he showed us on the cross isn’t big enough to warrant eternal praise.</p><p>Suppose that</p><ul><li>God is far more holy than we realize.</li><li>We are far more sinful than we realize.</li></ul><p>If these premises are true—and Scripture demonstrates they are—then why should it surprise us that God decisively and eternally punishes sin?</p><p>If we better understood both God’s nature and our own, we would not feel shocked that some people go to Hell. (Where else could sinners go?) Rather, we would feel shocked—as perhaps the angels do—that any fallen human would be permitted into Heaven. Unholy as we are in ourselves, we are disqualified to claim that infinite holiness cannot demand everlasting punishment.</p><p align="left"><strong>The more we believe in God’s absolute holiness and justice, the more Hell will make sense to us.</strong></p><p>Are you tired of all the evil and corruption in this world? Do you long for a world in which such things don’t exist? Then you long for a Heaven without evildoers. And that requires either that God forces everyone to repent, come to Christ, and embrace his righteousness, or that God provides an alternative residence for those who do not. Hell is that place.</p><p>It saddens me to think of people suffering forever. But if there were no Hell, that would diminish the very attributes of God that make Hell necessary and Heaven available.</p><p>Should we want Hell eliminated if our righteous God determines it should exist? I believe we should leave Hell in God’s hands, trust him, and submit to his judgment, not our own.</p><p>Just as most people in prison don’t think they belong there, so most of us can’t imagine we deserve Hell. But when at last we begin to grasp that we do deserve it, we praise God for his grace on a far deeper level.</p><p align="left"><strong>Our opinion about Hell’s existence holds no sway; God doesn’t give us a vote.</strong></p><p>Simone Weil wrote, “One can only excuse men for evil by accusing God of it.”[11]</p><p>Some in ancient Israel claimed the way of the Lord was not just. God replied, “Is it not your ways that are unjust?” And then he reiterated that everyone will die for his own sin (see Ezekiel 18:25–29).</p><p>Just because I don’t like the idea of Hell doesn’t make Hell unjust. Of course, sinners oppose the idea that they deserve eternal punishment, just as a little boy opposes the idea that he deserves punishment because he hit his little sister.</p><p>Why do we have more difficulty accepting the doctrine of Hell than ancient people did? Perhaps because our tolerant, therapeutic, positive-thinking culture assumes our basic goodness.</p><p>In a day of television and Internet news polls that determine what percent of a population approves of certain issues or candidates, it’s easy to think that our opinion about Hell carries weight. But God doesn’t take opinion polls. He refuses to adjust his revelation about Hell to fit our modern sensibilities.</p><p align="left"><strong>Hell will have degrees of punishment; each person’s punishment will exactly correspond to his sins.</strong></p><p>All whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be judged by God in relation to their works, which have been recorded in the books of Heaven (see Revelation 20:12–15). The severity of punishment will vary with the amount of truth known, and the nature and number of the sins committed (see Luke 20:45–47; Romans 2:3–6).</p><p>Jesus said the Day of Judgment would be more bearable for some than for others (see Matthew 11:20–24). Some will be “beaten with many blows” and others “beaten with few blows” (Luke 12:47–48).</p><p>Hell is not one-size-fits-all. Revelation 20 explicitly says that God records all human works so that all punishment will be commensurate to the evil committed (verses 12–13, see also Matthew 5:21–28; 12:36; 1 John 3:15).</p><p><strong>Eternal punishment is not disproportionate or infinite.</strong></p><p>People commonly ask, “Why would God inflict infinite punishment for finite sins? Isn’t that disproportionate punishment and therefore unjust?”</p><p>Scripture nowhere teaches infinite punishment; rather, it teaches punishment proportionate to the evil committed. The confusion comes in mistaking <em>eternal </em>for <em>infinite. </em>No one will bear in Hell an infinite number of offenses; they will bear only the sins they have committed (see Revelation 20:12–13).</p><p>The length of time spent committing a crime does not determine the length of the sentence for that crime. It may take five seconds to murder a child, but five seconds of punishment would hardly bring appropriate justice. Crimes committed against an infinitely holy God cannot be paid for in finite measures of time.</p><p>John Piper, agreeing with the viewpoint of Jonathan Edwards, says, “The length of your sin isn’t what makes the length of suffering just, it’s the height of your sin that makes the length of the suffering just.”[12]</p><p align="left"><strong>Since the absence of God is the absence of good, Hell is a place without the slightest trace of good.</strong></p><p>In Luke 16 Abraham and Lazarus dwell together in paradise, but the rich man stands alone in Hell. Expect no comforting company in a place from which God has withdrawn. “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Hell is horrible because it means being locked out from God’s presence.</p><p>Since God is the source of all good, there can be no good where God is not. No wonder Dante, in the <em>Inferno, </em>envisioned this sign chiseled above Hell’s gate: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”[13]</p><p align="left"><strong>The vast majority of those who believe in Hell do not believe they are going there.</strong></p><p>Many more Americans believe in Heaven than believe in Hell. For everyone who believes he’s going to Hell, a hundred and twenty believe they’re going to Heaven.[14] This optimism stands in stark contrast to Christ’s words in Matthew 7:13–14: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”</p><p>Our culture considers Heaven the default destination (when did you last attend a funeral in which a speaker pictured the departed in Hell?). But since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “without holiness no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14), none of us will enter the presence of an infinitely holy God unless something in us radically changes. Until our sin problem gets resolved, Hell will remain our true destination.</p><p align="left"><strong>Once this life ends, the unbeliever’s sin nature becomes permanent, likely assuring future evildoing that demands future punishment.</strong></p><p>At death, God will transform his children so that righteous men will be made perfect (see Hebrews 12:23). But he can do nothing more for those who have refused his grace. Hell isn’t simply a sentence that falls upon us; it is the inevitable destination we choose with every sin and every refusal to repent and turn to God for grace.</p><p>When developing photographs, technicians immerse negatives in different solutions; so long as the photograph remains in the developing solution, it can change. But once it gets dropped into the “stop bath,” it’s permanently fixed. So will it be when we die and enter eternity; our lives on Earth will be fixed, never to be altered or revised.[15] “Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).</p><p>D. A. Carson argues that rebellion may continue eternally in Hell, and if so, then Hell is eternal precisely because the sinful rebellion is eternal. Hell would then be a place where “sinners go on sinning and receiving the recompense of their sin, refusing, always refusing, to bend the knee.”[16] Hell would be ever-ongoing punishment for ever-ongoing sins.</p><p>This position makes perfect sense if we recognize death as forever sealing or making permanent our natures. The believer has been granted an eternal identity with the nature of Christ, and this identity allows him to enter Heaven. But at death the unregenerate person, the unrepentant sinner, forever remains unregenerate. There is no longer a possibility of transformation. Yes, he will acknowledge God’s existence, but so do the demons even now, shuddering (see James 2:19). He will regret being punished, but that doesn’t mean he will repent, nor will he cease to sin against God in thought and word (and action, if action is possible in Hell). Because his nature is unrepentant, and that nature cannot change after death, he can continue for all eternity not to trust God, not to value Christ’s work, and to otherwise commit sins against God.</p><p>Hell’s torment may be to unendingly experience lusts, greed, and other sinful desires with no hope of fulfillment, coupled with ongoing judgment for these ongoing sins.</p><p><strong>Fairness doesn’t demand that God give people a second chance after death, since he gives us thousands of chances before death.</strong></p><p>God grants every person a lifetime to reform, to turn to him for grace and empowerment. For those who die young or otherwise lack the mental capacity to respond to Christ, many Christians throughout the ages have believed God may extend the atonement of Christ to cover them, as an act of grace. I agree.</p><p>God gives people on this fallen Earth adequate opportunity to turn to him in their “first chance.” He has revealed himself to us in the creation and in our conscience so that “men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). If people respond to God, I believe he will send them further revelation of himself through human agents, angels, direct intervention in dreams or visions, or however he chooses.</p><p>God gives us second chances and third and tenth and hundredth chances every day of our lives. The chance to respond to the message of creation that cries out, “There is a God,” is repeated multiple times daily, over a lifetime. Every breath is an opportunity to respond to a conscience that convicts people of their guilt.</p><p>If God allowed everyone to die first and then decide whether to trust God, it would make faith irrelevant. In the end all people would submit to Christ by sight, not faith; instead of trusting, they would merely be acquiescing to his infinite power. He has no desire for this.</p><p>If a woman were given a choice between being buried alive in a swamp and marrying a certain man, she would choose to marry the man. But what man would want such a wife? God doesn’t need our love, but he does want it. He doesn’t want people who merely desire to escape Hell. He wants people who value and treasure him above all else, who long to be with him.</p><p align="left"><strong>Because our choices in this life orient us for eternity, God-rejecters might be as miserable in Heaven as Hell.</strong></p><p>C. S. Lewis spoke to those who questioned the doctrine of Hell:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: “What are you asking God to do?” To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.[17]</p><p>Lewis said the doors of Hell are barred from the inside. If he means those in Hell refuse to give up their trust in themselves to turn to God, I think he’s right. But if we imagine that people in Hell won’t want to get out to avoid its sufferings, that’s certainly false. The rich man in Luke 16 desperately desired to have his agony relieved; he even requested a drop of water from paradise. Wanting out of Hell, however, is not the same as wanting to be with God. And God desires us to be with him only if we want to be with him. Feeling sorry for the consequences of our sins is not the same as repenting of our sins.</p><p>The redeemed say, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11, esv). But what do the unredeemed say when exposed to God’s presence? “They called to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!’” (Revelation 6:16).</p><p>Heaven and Hell are places defined, respectively, by God’s presence or absence, by God’s grace or wrath. They’re real places, but also conditions of relationship to God. Whose we are, not where we are, determines our misery or our joy. To bring a man from Hell to Heaven would bring him no joy unless he had a fundamentally transformed relationship with God.</p><p>Three times in the final two chapters of Scripture we’re told that those still in their sins have no access to Heaven and never will (Revelation 21:8, 27; 22:15). The condition of the unbelieving heart remains unchangeable at death. God’s grace, even if offered, would remain forever repugnant to such a rebellious heart.</p><p>To the person sealed forever in righteousness, God will remain forever wondrous; to the one sealed forever in sin, God will forever remain dreadful.</p><p align="left"><strong>We live our present life between Heaven and Hell and so get foretastes of each, which prepare us for one or the other.</strong></p><p>Just as God and Satan are not equal opposites, neither is Hell the equal opposite of Heaven. God has no equal as a person, and Heaven has no equal as a place.</p><p>Hell will be agonizingly dull, small, and insignificant, without company, purpose, or accomplishment. It will not have its own stories; it will be a mere footnote on history.</p><p>I don’t believe Hell is a place where demons take delight in punishing people, since Hell was made to punish demons, not reward them, and there will be no delight in Hell. People will not take solace by commiserating, since there will be no solace. More likely, each person remains in solitary confinement (the rich man of Luke 16 appears to have no company in Hell).</p><p>Both Heaven and Hell touch Earth—an in-between world leading directly into one or the other. What tragedy that this present life is the closest nonbelievers will ever come to Heaven. What consolation that this present life is the closest believers will ever come to Hell.</p><p align="left"><strong>Our present suffering warns against the suffering of Hell; for unbelievers, the fear of Hell serves as a merciful call to repentance.</strong></p><p>Suffering can help the Heaven-bound fall out of love with this life and live in light of the coming one. The sufferings of the present give us a bittersweet reminder of the horrors from which God has delivered us.</p><p>For the Hell-bound, suffering can serve as a frightening foretaste of Hell. Suffering reminds us of our imminent death, the wages for our sin. In our suffering we should look at our own evils and failures and beg God for mercy.</p><p>Spurgeon said, “If sinners will be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies; and if they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay....If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned or unprayed for.”[18]</p><p>Imagine how much of Spurgeon’s passion and urgency would have disappeared if he’d believed no one would suffer eternal, conscious punishment.</p><p>Many speak of the fear of Hell as something wrong, primitive, and cruel. But Jesus said we should fear both God and Hell: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).</p><p>Bart Ehrman makes an honest and chilling admission:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">When I fell away from my faith—not just in the Bible as God’s inspired word, but in Christ as the only way of salvation, and eventually from the view that Christ was himself divine, and beyond that from the view that there is an all-powerful God in charge of this world—I still wondered, deep down inside: could I have been right after all? What if I was right then but wrong now? Will I burn in hell forever? The fear of death gripped me for years, and there are still moments when I wake up at night in a cold sweat.[19]</p><p>I think this is God’s Spirit confirming a truth that Ehrman doesn’t want to acknowledge. Every time he “suffers” these thoughts, it’s another opportunity to bow to the God of holiness and grace, who in Christ offers him pardon from Hell and citizenship in Heaven.</p><p>If we reject the best gift that a holy and gracious God can offer us, purchased with his own blood, what remains, in the end, will be nothing but Hell.</p><hr size="1"><p>[1] Os Guinness, <em>Unspeakable </em>(San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 24.</p><p>[2] C. S. Lewis, <em>Letters to Malcolm </em>(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002), 76.</p><p>[3] Dorothy Sayers, <em>Introductory Papers on Dante </em>(London: Methuen, 1954), 44.</p><p>[4] Bertrand Russell, <em>Why I Am Not a Christian </em>(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), 17.</p><p>[5] C. S. Lewis, <em>The Problem of Pain </em>(New York: Macmillan, 1962), 118.</p><p>[6] William Shedd, <em>The Doctrine of Endless Punishment </em>(New York: Scribner, 1886), 153.</p><p>[7] Clark Pinnock and Delwin Brown, <em>Theological Crossfire </em>(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 226–27.</p><p>[8] Pinnock and Brown, <em>Theological Crossfire, </em>226.</p><p>[9] David L. Edwards and John R. W. Stott, <em>Essentials </em>(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 314.</p><p>[10] Clark Pinnock, “The Destruction of the Family Impenitent,” <em>Criswell Theological Review, </em>4 (1990), 246–47.</p><p>[11] Simone Weil, in Os Guinness, <em>Unspeakable, </em>62.</p><p>[12] John Piper, message entitled “The Echo and Insufficiency of Hell,” Resolved Conference, June 16, 2008.</p><p>[13] Dante Alighieri, <em>Inferno, </em>canto 3, line 9.</p><p>[14] K. Connie Kang, “Next Stop, the Pearly Gates...or Hell?” <em>Los Angeles Times, </em>October 24, 2003.</p><p>[15] Randy C. Alcorn, <em>Money, Possessions, and Eternity </em>(Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2003), 120.</p><p>[16] D. A. Carson, <em>How Long, O Lord? </em>(Grand Rapids, IL: Baker Academic, 2006), 92.</p><p>[17] C. S. Lewis, <em>The Problem of Pain </em>(New York: Macmillan, 1962), 128.</p><p>[18] Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “The Wailing of Risca” (sermon 349, New Park Street Pulpit, December 9, 1860), www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0349.htm.</p><p>[19] Bart D. Ehrman, <em>God’s Problem </em>(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 127.</p></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-42944612378816264662011-04-26T10:17:00.000-07:002011-04-26T13:59:36.366-07:00Love Wins:Chapter Two<div><br /><br /><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz37Ro5akUj5MfTAKKw20bd8TlExbcQq30dTkuOsTC3t7IurwH_zoGGBwxClB2SorN30TS-qxzjPXbRDmt81g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p>Here is a blog from John MacAuthur that clearly shows how much Rob Bell is redefining Christianity. After that is a Bible study on Heaven by John MacArthur. </p><p><a href="http://http//www.gty.org/Blog/B110414">http://http://www.gty.org/Blog/B110414</a></p><p> </p>Rob Bell: “Evangelical and orthodox to the bone?” Hardly.<br />Thursday, April 14, 2011<br /><br />Rob Bell is reminiscent of the Rich Young Ruler in Mark 10:17-27. He has a warped view of goodness. He talks as if his own standard of good is the norm, and Bell even suggests that God is not good if He sends people to hell.<br /><br />Jesus’ reply to the young inquirer ("No one is good except God alone"—v. 18) says God himself alone is the standard of true good, not any creature—certainly not a fallen creature.<br /><br />The Young Ruler was not saved, nor can any person be who thinks his or her own preferences determine what is truly good. That kind of arrogance reflects a damning egotism.<br /><br /><br /><br />In his books, sermons, and videos, Rob Bell has consistently promoted views that are antithetical to biblical Christianity and hostile to historic evangelical principles.<br /><br />For example, although he claims to “affirm the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible” (Velvet Elvis, 26), Bell is clearly more interested in casting doubt on the fundamental truths of biblical Christianity than he is in defending them.<br /><br />Consider what else Bell says on that very same page of Velvet Elvis:<br /><br /><br />What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births?<br /><br />But what if, as you study the origin of the word ‘virgin’ you discover that the word ‘virgin’ in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word ‘virgin’ could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being ‘born of a virgin’ also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse?<br /><br />Bell compares the Christian faith to a large trampoline, with its cardinal doctrines (truths evangelicals have historically deemed essential) functioning like the springs that support the jumping platform. The individual springs aren’t absolutely essential, Bell says—including the virgin birth:<br /><br /><br />What if that spring [the virgin birth] were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart? . . . If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn’t that strong in the first place, was it?” (26-27)<br /><br />So on the one hand, in a single sentence, he professes to affirm the virgin birth. On the other hand (and on the very same page), he spends multiple paragraphs calling the truthfulness and importance of that doctrine into question.<br /><br />That is Bell’s modus operandi. He labels himself an evangelical while simultaneously undermining the foundational tenets of evangelical conviction.<br /><br />In light of this, Love Wins should not have been a surprise to anyone. The book is consistent with several things Bell has been teaching for some time. For example:<br /><br /><br />• He has frequently espoused a distorted understanding of hell—one in which hell is not a literal place where wicked souls are punished, but more of a self-induced state of mind pertaining mainly to this life.<br /><br /><br />Rob Bell, Ooze Interview (July 2007): “I don’t know why as a Christian you would have to make such declarative statements. [Why would you] want there to be a literal hell? I am a bit skeptical of somebody who argues that passionately for a literal hell, why would you be on that side? Like if you are going to pick causes, if you’re literally going to say these are the lines in the sand, I’ve got to know that people are going to burn forever, this is one of the things that you drive your stake in the ground on. I don’t understand that.”<br /><br />Rob Bell, Sex God, 21–22: “To the Jewish mind, heaven is not a fixed, unchanging geographical location somewhere other than this world. Heaven is the realm where things are as God intends them to be. . . . Now if there’s a realm where things are as God wants them to be, then there must be a realm where things are not as God wants them to be. Where things aren’t according to God’s will. Where people aren’t treated as fully human. It’s called hell.”<br /><br />• His understanding of heaven is even more bizarre.<br /><br /><br /><br />Rob Bell, Sex God, 168: “If sex is about connection, what happens when everybody is connected with everybody else? . . . Is sex in its greatest, purest, most joyful and honest expression a glimpse of forever? Are these brief moments of abandon and oneness and ecstasy just a couple of seconds or minutes of how things will be forever? Is sex a picture of heaven? In First Corinthians 12, Paul claimed to have seen a vision of heaven, and the phrase he used to describe it in Greek is translated ‘unwordable words.’ He wrote that he saw things man is ‘not permitted to tell.’ Maybe that’s why the Scriptures are so ambivalent about whether a person is married. About whether a person is having sex. Maybe Jesus knew what is coming and knew that whatever we experience here will pale compared with what awaits everyone. Do you long for that? Because that’s the center of Jesus’ message. An invitation.”<br /><br />• Bell has also consistently promoted a form of universalism. For example:<br /><br /><br /><br />Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, 137: “So this reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. . . . Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live, which story we choose to live in, which version of reality we trust. Ours or God’s.”<br /><br />Rob Bell and Don Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, 147: “Jesus is the representative of the entire human family. His blood covers the entire created door. Jesus is saving everyone and everything.”<br /><br />Rob Bell, Ooze Interview (July 2007): [In response to the question, “Do you believe in a literal hell that is defined simply as eternal separation from God?”] “Well, there are people now who are seriously separated from God. So I would assume that God will leave room for people to say ‘no I don’t want any part of this.’ My question would be, does grace win or is the human heart stronger than God’s love or grace. Who wins, does darkness and sin and hardness of heart win or does God’s love and grace win?”<br /><br />Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, 18: “God is bigger than any religion. God is bigger than any worldview. God is bigger than the Christian faith.”<br /><br />So when he promotes Love Wins with the following words, why would we be surprised?<br /><br /><br />Rob Bell, Love Wins Promo Video: “And then there is the question behind the questions, the real question: What is God like? Because millions and millions of people were taught that the primary message—the center of the Gospel of Jesus—is that God is going to send you to hell, unless you believe in Jesus. And so, what gets, subtly, sort of caught and taught is that Jesus rescues you from God. But what kind of God is that; that we would need to be rescued from this God? How could that God ever be good; how could that God ever be trusted? And how could that ever be good news.”<br /><br />Or when he suggests the possibility of post-mortem salvation, should we be shocked?<br /><br /><br />Rob Bell, Love Wins, p. 107: [There will be] “endless opportunities in an endless amount of time for people to say yes to God. At the heart of this perspective is the belief that, given enough time, everybody will turn to God and find themselves in the joy and peace of God’s presence. The love of God will melt every hard heart, and even the most ‘depraved sinners’ will eventually give up their resistance and turn to God.”<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMgW_SCoJrOktYzaaaWJZT9QSh2HPhcL6ptW6AwAOwhPl4-eBhuIMADO7lsYCiIwMmXnNdNdXtXP53oLpNDP5iehCKAyn-RXHFMrLSfPVy8q0K6IjCj34p3QDYwg7BOXEG8Ihngyj9FXI/s1600/Heaven.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 140px; height: 220px; float: left; cursor: pointer;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5599998130383440738" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMgW_SCoJrOktYzaaaWJZT9QSh2HPhcL6ptW6AwAOwhPl4-eBhuIMADO7lsYCiIwMmXnNdNdXtXP53oLpNDP5iehCKAyn-RXHFMrLSfPVy8q0K6IjCj34p3QDYwg7BOXEG8Ihngyj9FXI/s320/Heaven.jpg" /></a><br /><br />INTRODUCTION<br /><br />We live in a time when credit cards allow us to own what we can't afford, go where we wouldn't be able to go, and do what would otherwise be impossible for us. Then we begin paying--hopefully. Sometimes people allow their indebtedness to steadily increase until they can't meet all their obligations, and serious problems result. The credit problem is symptomatic of an attitude that says, "I want what I want when I want it!" The mindset of our age is against postponing anything. We prefer instant gratification, gladly sacrificing the future on the altar of the immediate.<br /><br />Unfortunately the church has fallen prey to such materialistic indulgence. Rather than setting their affections on things above (Col. 3:1), many Christians are attached to the earth. Rather than laying up their treasure in heaven, they have dedicated themselves to accumulating treasure here. Certain television and radio ministries, preaching a prosperity gospel, promise people that Jesus wants them healthy, wealthy, and successful. Such teaching is extremely popular because it caters to people's desire to have everything in this life. Because the church doesn't have heaven on its mind, it tends to be indulgent, self- centered, and weak. Its present comfort consumes its thoughts, and it entertains only passing thoughts of heaven.<br /><br />A. The Preciousness of Heaven<br /><br />In reality, everything that is precious to us as Christians is in heaven.<br /><br /><br />1. Our Father<br /><br />In Matthew 6:9 Jesus says, "Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." Our Father, who is the source of everything, is in heaven.<br /><br />2. Our Savior<br /><br />Hebrews 9:24 says, "Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us." Our Savior is also in heaven.<br /><br />3. Our brothers and sisters in Christ<br /><br />Hebrews 12:23 says, "To the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect." Our brothers and sisters in the faith are there. Every Old and New Testament believer who has died is in heaven.<br /><br />4. Our names<br /><br />In Luke 10:20 Christ tells His disciples, who were casting out demons, "Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven." By saying that our names are written in heaven, Christ assures us that we have a title deed to property there.<br /><br />5. Our inheritance<br /><br />First Peter 1:3-4 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you." Our eternal inheritance--all the riches of God's glory and grace--is there.<br /><br />6. Our citizenship<br /><br />In Philippians 3:20 Paul observes that "our citizenship is in heaven." We are citizens; we belong there.<br /><br />7. Our eternal reward<br /><br />In Matthew 5:12 Jesus says we we're to consider ourselves blessed when others persecute us because our reward is in heaven.<br /><br />8. Our Master<br /><br />In Ephesians 6:9 Paul reminds us that our Master is in heaven.<br /><br />9. Our treasure<br /><br />In Matthew 6:19-21 Jesus says that the only treasure we will possess throughout eternity is there.<br /><br />We can summarize by saying that heaven is our home. Christians are strangers, pilgrims, and aliens in this world.<br /><br />B. The Priority of heaven<br /><br /><br />1. Explained<br /><br />Everything we love, everything we value, everything eternal is in heaven. Nevertheless the church in this century has tended to be self-indulgent, proof that many Christians have lost their heavenly perspective. Too many don't want to go to heaven until they've enjoyed all that the world can deliver. Only when all earthly pursuits are exhausted, or when age and sickness hamper their enjoyment, are they ready for heaven. It is as if they pray, "Please God, don't take to heaven yet; I haven't been to Hawaii!" Or, "I haven't gotten my new car or house." What a jaded perspective!<br /><br />First John 2 says, "If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.... The world is passing away" (vv. 15, 17). Many people who claim to love Christ love the world so much that they can't possibly be citizens of heaven. Like the old spiritual says, everybody talking about heaven ain't going there. But it is also true that everyone going there isn't talking about it. The hope of heaven should fill us with a joy of anticipation that loosens us from this transitory world. It's easy to become so attached to the world that we spend our energy consuming things that will perish rather than accumulating treasure in heaven. Some people think heaven is an imaginary place, the dream of little children. Others believe it is a state of mind, a projection of all that is good in humanity, or the immortality of truth and beauty. But the Bible says heaven is a place, the eventual dwelling of all who love God. We will live there forever in complete perfection and glory.<br /><br />2. Exemplified<br /><br /><br />a) Paul's situation<br /><br />When Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, he was facing overwhelming persecution. In 4:8-10 he says, "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body." In verses 16-17 he says, "We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison." Paul is saying that whatever we endure in this life can't be compared with the glory it's producing in the life to come. When the mother of James and John asked Christ if He would allow her sons to sit on His left and right in the Kingdom, Christ said that decision was the Father's, but implied that the Father would give it to the one who suffered most here for His name (Matt. 20:21-23). Whatever we endure here will be compensated for in eternity.<br /><br />b) Paul's shell<br /><br />Paul continues, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Cor. 4:18[en]5:1).<br /><br /><br />(1) The decay of the earthly body<br /><br />Our earthly tent is being torn down. I remember reading that when someone asked John Quincy Adams how he was doing, Adams replied something to the effect of, "John Quincy Adams is well, sir, very well. The house in which he has been living is dilapidated and old, and he has received word from its maker that he must vacate soon. But John Quincy Adams is well, sir, very well." Indeed our earthly tent is being torn down, but when it's gone, we'll have a building from God, eternal in the heavens. Second Corinthians 5:2 says of our earthly bodies, "Indeed in this house we groan." We groan because of the infirmities of the flesh and the sin that permeates it. We groan because we can't be what we long to be. We're debilitated in these bodies, so we groan with the rest of creation, waiting "eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19). We long to be clothed with a heavenly body.<br /><br />(2) The anticipation of an eternal body<br /><br />In 2 Corinthians 5:2-4 Paul continues, "We groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; inasmuch as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." Although in this body we groan because we are burdened by sin, sickness, sorrow, and death, we don't want to be unclothed. We want both our spirits and our bodies to enter the presence of God. Paul yearned for heaven and his eternal body.<br /><br />Verse 5 says, "He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to the Spirit as a pledge." The Greek word translated "pledge" is arrab[ma]on, the same word Paul uses in Ephesians 1:14 to refer to the Holy Spirit. In modern Greek a form of arrab[ma]on refers to an engagement ring. In New Testament times it referred to a down payment or first installment--earnest money. So, the Holy Spirit is the pledge of the new body we will have in the glories of heaven.<br /><br />c) Paul's strategy<br /><br />In verses 6-8 Paul mentions the practical results of his teaching in the previous verses: "Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord--for we walk by faith, not by sight--we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord." Do you find it difficult to say honestly that those verses express the deepest desires of your heart? There is a tendency to hold tightly to this world because it's all we know. We experience meaningful relationships here, so we become captive to this life. But notice that Paul says, "At home with the Lord." We are at home only when we're with the Lord--that's where we belong.<br /><br />As we examine what the Bible teaches about heaven, we should long to be clothed with our heavenly form. We should look forward to being absent from the body and present with the Lord. We should become more preoccupied with the glories of eternity rather than the afflictions of today. We need to spend our energy accumulating heavenly treasures rather than amassing treasures here that are ultimately meaningless. After a rich person died, someone asked one of his friends how much he left. The friend answered, "All of it." And that's exactly what each of us will leave.<br /><br />LESSON<br /><br />I. WHAT HEAVEN IS<br /><br />The Bible refers to heaven about 550 times. The Hebrew word translated "heaven" (shamayim) is plural and literally means "the heights." The Greek word translated "heaven" is ouranos, which inspired the name of the planet Uranus. It refers to that which is raised up or lofty.<br /><br />A. A Place<br /><br />Both those words are used to refer to three different places. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 Paul says, "Such a man [probably a reference to himself] was caught up to the third heaven" (emphasis added). That clearly demonstrates there are three heavens.<br /><br /><br />1. The atmospheric heaven<br /><br />Sometimes when the Bible speaks of heaven, it is referring to the region usually called the troposphere--the atmosphere around the earth. It's the air we breathe. For example, Isaiah 55:9 says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven ...." Here the word "heaven" refers to the atmosphere, which is where the hydrological cycle occurs. Psalm 147:8 says that God "covers the heavens with clouds." That is the first heaven.<br /><br />2. The planetary heaven<br /><br />The second heaven is where the stars, moons, and planets are. Scripture also mentions this heaven. For example, Genesis 1 says, "God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens.... God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth" (vv. 14,16-17). That's the second heaven.<br /><br />3. The divine heaven<br /><br />The third heaven is the place where God dwells with His holy angels and those saints who have died.<br /><br /><br />How Can an Omnipresent God Live in Heaven?<br /><br />In 1 Kings 8:27 Solomon prays, "Heaven and the highest heaven [lit. "heaven of heavens"] cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built!" There is a sense in which the heaven of heavens can't contain God, yet in another sense it is His dwelling place. A simple illustration may help clarify how both can be true: I live in a house, but that house can't contain me. It doesn't contain me bodily at all times, and it certainly can't contain the effect of my life--my influence. Although that is an imperfect illustration, it expresses how God can dwell in heaven, but at the same time not be limited or contained to it.<br /><br /><br /><br />a) In the Old Testament<br /><br />Isaiah 57:15 says, "Thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, I dwell on a high and holy place." God has a real dwelling place. Isaiah 63:15 identifies that place: "Look down from heaven, and see from Thy holy and glorious habitation." Psalm 33:13-14 says, "The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men; from His dwelling place He looks out." So there is a place where God dwells, and that place is called heaven. It's the heaven of heavens, the third heaven. Psalm 102:19 says, "He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the Lord gazed upon the earth."<br /><br />b) In the New Testament<br /><br /><br />(1) Revelation<br /><br />Revelation 3:12 says, "He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God." John describes the city as descending out of heaven at God's command.<br /><br />(2) Matthew<br /><br />Christ repeatedly stressed that the Father is in heaven. In Matthew 5:16 He says, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." In verse 34 He says, "Make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God." Verse 45 says, "That you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 6:1 says, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." In verse 9 Christ says, "Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who art in heaven." Matthew 7:11 says, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!" Verse 21 says, "Not every one who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven." Matthew 10:32-33 says, "Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven."<br /><br />Matthew 12:50 says, "Whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother." In Matthew 16:17 Jesus said to Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven." Matthew 18:10 says, "Do not despise one of these little ones [believers], for I say unto you, that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." Verse 14 says, "It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish." Verse 19 says, "If two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven." In verse 35 Christ says, "So shall My heavenly Father also do to you."<br /><br />(3) John<br /><br />In John 6 Jesus says, "The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world" (v. 33). Again Jesus links God and heaven. In verse 38 Christ says, "I have come down from heaven." In verses 41-42 He says, "I am the bread that came down out of heaven.... I have come down out of heaven." In verses 50-51 He says, "This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down out of heaven." Verse 58 says, "This is the bread which came down out of heaven."<br /><br />Heaven is not a figment of imagination, a feeling, or an emotion-- it's a place, God's place.<br /><br /><br />A Key to Interpreting the New Testament<br /><br />Heaven is so much God's place that it became a synonym for God Himself. That usage is common in the New Testament. In Matthew 23:22 Jesus says, "He who swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it." Heaven there is synonymous with God. You can refer to either heaven or God and mean both. In Luke 15:7 Christ says that "there will be...joy in heaven over one sinner who repents." The following parables, including that of the prodigal son, illustrate that that refers to joy in heart of God. In fact, the prodigal son, rehearsing what he would say to his Father, said, "I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven" (Luke 15:18). That meant the same thing as sinning against God.<br /><br />When the writers of Scripture speak of the Kingdom of Heaven, they are actually referring to the Kingdom of God. Particularly during the Intertestamental Period, the 400 years between the events of the Old Testament and the New, the Jewish people developed a fear of using God's name. They didn't like using the covenant name of God (Yahweh or Jehovah), because they thought it was too holy to pass through their lips. So they began substituting things for the name of God, and "heaven" became a common substitute. By New Testament times that practice was so ingrained that the Jewish people understood any reference to the Kingdom of Heaven as a reference to the Kingdom of God.<br /><br /><br />B. A Sphere<br /><br /><br />1. Explained<br /><br />In Ephesians 1:3 the apostle Paul says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places [heavenlies] in Christ." Notice that the verb tense indicates that the blessing occurred in the past. Ephesians 2:4-6 says, "God, being rich in mercy...even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised [past tense] us up with Him, and seated [past tense] us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus." Although we aren't yet in heaven, we are in the heavenlies. Heaven is where God lives and rules. We aren't in the place called heaven, but we are under the dominion of the King of heaven, so we are living in the heavenlies.<br /><br />Christ preached that the Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God was at hand. He called people to enter that Kingdom, to be saved, and to inherit eternal life. Those three expressions all point to one experience: salvation. Whenever someone believes in Christ, he enters the Kingdom of God--he comes under God's rule, not in heaven but in the heavenlies. Although we don't yet live in heaven, we do live in the heavenlies and should therefore be preoccupied with heavenly things. Our new life in Christ is in the heavenlies--it is under the rule and dominion of God.<br /><br />2. Examined<br /><br />Heaven will be a new community of holiness and fellowship with God. It will be a place of joy, peace, love, and fulfillment. But we experience that partially even now. The Holy Spirit is producing in us the fruit of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). Those traits characterize heaven. That's what Fanny Crosby meant by "a foretaste of glory divine" in her hymn "Blessed Assurance." We are tasting now what we will enjoy in heaven. We have the life of God in us and the rule of God over us. We know joy, peace, love, goodness, and blessing. We have become part of a new family, a new kind of community. We have left the kingdom of darkness for the kingdom of light. We are no longer under the dominion of Satan but the dominion of God in Christ. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come." We are new creations.<br /><br />We are members of a new family. Rather than remaining the children of Satan, we have become the children of God. Galatians 4:26 says that Jerusalem is our mother, referring not to the earthly Jerusalem, but to the Jerusalem where God rules. We have a new citizenship (Phil. 3:20), new affections (Col. 3:1), and a new storehouse where we are to store our treasures (Matt. 6:19-20).<br /><br /><br /><br />CONCLUSION<br /><br />So heaven is an actual place, but it is also a sphere in this world where God rules. The best of our spiritual experiences here is only a taste of heaven. Our highest spiritual heights, profoundest depths, and greatest spiritual blessings will be normal in heaven. As we live now in the heavenlies, we are merely tasting the glories of the life to come. To us heaven is now a sphere where we live under God's rule and His Spirit's blessing. Someday it will also be a real place where we will walk in our glorified bodies. In John 17 Christ prays, "Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory" (v. 24). In John 14:1 Christ says to His disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also." Jesus is preparing a place where we will live in a glorified, physical form similar to that of the resurrected body of Christ. He walked, ate, and sang, but He also ascended through space into the third heaven.<br /><br />We are longing for "the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God" (Heb. 11:10). In ancient times a city was a place of safety and refuge. The nomadic people of those times were especially vulnerable to robbers, thieves, and the elements. Imagine after many weeks or even months of such wandering how refreshing it was to enter the protection of a walled city. Every Christian needs to see himself as a pilgrim, wandering through this world, looking for "the city...whose architect and builder is God"--a real place where we will live with Christ. We will be with Him, just as the disciples were with Him after His resurrection. Like Thomas, we will touch Him. We will sit with Him and sing with Him. The joy we have of walking with Christ and knowing that the Spirit lives within us is the pledge that someday we will live in heaven.<br /><br /><br />There Is No Purgatory<br /><br />If you are a Christian, the moment you leave this life you go to heaven. The Bible doesn't teach what the medieval theologians referred to as limbus patrum or limbo. There is no purgatory. Paul said he preferred "to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8). He said he desired "to depart and be with Christ" (Phil. 1:23).<br /><br />When we consider that Christ prayed that all who know Him would spend eternity with Him (John 17:24), our hearts should overflow with gratitude. We need to have the heart of Paul--yearning to to be clothed with our heavenly form and to exchange this transient world for eternal joy.</div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-52684909045328911622011-04-20T09:31:00.000-07:002011-04-20T12:03:38.414-07:00Love Wins, Chapter one.Here is chapter one of Love Wins by Rob Bell. I have listen to this chapter twice and I am receiving a brain freeze with all the questions and jumping like a jack rabbit all over the New Testament. His view of Jesus Christ still comes down to his starting point, his <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">presupposition</span>. Which I am hearing from Rob Bell. All the words of Scripture have to be viewed by experiences of life, by his rejection of church Fathers and theologians that do not agree with his "<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Journey</span>". And a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">misrepresentation</span> of the Bible. My heart <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">yearns</span> for a elder. Grounded in a Historical, Biblical Truth that would reach this man. I can't give up and not pray for Rob Bell. Until he questions his own books and his own starting point. He will <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">continue</span> to worship a 'god' of his choice.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyrT4BaEj5zbkqqage4EDEjSrRFjwIIY_jyWtFk9UlqOSGjdC2e1ofUbE6zL5Kd8OrgRhc7Fg0idVML8Jw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div>A good <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Biblical</span> foundation to answer a false foundation and false questioning is the Gospel. So I will be airing chapters from John <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">MacArthur's</span> book: <b>The Gospel According to Jesus</b>. Lets start with chapter one: <b>What did Jesus Really mean, "Follow me".</b></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwlO-alwnD99pMZXgy5TfaiwLnZOoWReWACh1km1fvi3KTnjkjF6mrvrSWkT6yxX1bpBOvzqVr8yWkG_gaWwA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-61055543983964080742011-04-17T15:50:00.000-07:002011-04-17T16:45:00.417-07:00Roger Oakland Update and MessageFirst is a video update from Roger Oakland. He is going through a lot of changes in his website. Please check it out. <a href="http://www.understandthetimes.org/"></a><br />Roger has stood for Biblical Truth all through his ministry. But it is important to give complete credit to the Mercy and Grace of Jesus Christ for revealing His truth and keeping Roger in the narrow way. What a kind God! He can do the same to anyone who becomes a slave of the Gospel.<a href="http://www.understandthetimes.org/commentary/c89.shtml"></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy9RW7RWsmLd1vktq2daVHwJQIyA6zNoj_mdNfPZ8ZHhKTuJzc1sluWsGRy5VqYQG55iiLUjjTWE8_yK_Qg8A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div>Here is copy of the news of Understanding the Time Radio Program being pulled from Calvary Chapel Radio.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="posttitle"><h2>Roger Oakland Removed from Calvary Chapel Radio</h2><p class="post-info">November 20, 2007 </p></div><div class="entry"><p>Sent from <a href="http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/">Lighthousetrails</a>:</p><p align="center"> ***********</p><p><span class="p1">In less than 48 hours after Roger Oakland of <a href="http://www.understandthetimes.org/">Understand the Times</a> posted an article (on 11/15/07) titled <a href="http://pjmiller.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/ichabod/" target="_blank"><strong>“Ichabod,”</strong></a> his radio program was removed from Calvary Chapel’s radio network, <a href="http://www.kwve.com/index.cfm?event=weekday_programs">KWVE</a>. Lighthouse Trails contacted KWVE on November 19th to confirm the removal and to find out the reasons that this took place. Richard McIntosh, KWVE station manager, confirmed the removal and told Lighthouse Trails that while he knew the reason, he <em>would</em> not comment. A secretary at KWVE suggested Lighthouse Trails speak with McIntosh’s boss for more information. She transferred the call to the office of Chuck Smith Sr. who was unavailable for comment at the time. </span></p><p>Below is a copy of a notice Roger Oakland posted regarding the removal of his program, which had been on KWVE for 15 years. Oakland, author of <em>Faith Undone</em>, a powerful expose’ on the emerging church, has become increasingly vocal about Christian leaders who have been promoting both the emerging church and New Age mysticism in the church. He has been lecturing and speaking throughout the world for over 20 years – many of the audiences have been Calvary Chapel churches and pastors. While Calvary Chapel’s founding pastor, Chuck Smith, spoke out against the emerging church and contemplative spirituality (including Purpose Driven which is a promoter of both movements) in 2006 (see documentation) many Calvary Chapel churches have continued promoting these movements as is the case in nearly every Christian denomination today.</p><p><span id="more-484"></span></p><p><strong>Roger Oakland’s commentary on the removal of his program off <a href="http://www.kwve.com/">KWVE</a></strong>:</p><p>Following the publication of the commentary “Ichabod” posted at our web site Thursday, November 15, our “Understand The Times” radio program that has been broadcast Monday through Friday on KWVE 107.9 for the past fifteen years was removed from the air. The final program KWVE was Friday, November 16, 2007.</p><p>For those who have been regular listeners, you will be able to continue to hear Understand The Times radio programs by going to <a href="http://www.understandthetimes.org/">understandthetimes.org </a>and finding the “Webcasts” button on the home page. The link to the radio transcripts is under that button.</p><p>New Understand The Times programs are posted weekly. You will be also able to download the transcripts of each program or sign up for Understand The Times podcasts.</p><p>Further, when this announcement was made by the KWVE manager, Roger was in Rome speaking at a conference on Biblical Creation. Evidence was presented to support the Genesis record and the theory of evolution was exposed for what it is – great deception. Many people’s lives were impacted. God’s Word was proclaimed with the anointing of the Holy Spirit. New doors are opening. God is on the throne. Jesus is coming soon!</p><p><strong>Please pray for Roger, his family and the ministry of Understand The Times, at this time. Prayers are being answered and new doors for ministry are being opened, as other doors are closing.</strong><span><em>Now gird up your loins, and arise and speak to them all which I command you, “Do not be dismayed before them, lest I dismay you before them. Now behold I have made you today as a fortified city, and as a pillar of iron and as walls of bronze against the whole land, to the kings and to the people of the land. And they will fight against you but they will not overcome you, for I am with you to deliver you,” declares the LORD. </em>Jeremiah 1:17-19</span></p><p><span>Sincerely In Christ,<br />Roger Oakland<br />Understand The Times, International </span></p><p><span>Here is a recent message from Roger Oakland when he was in Saskatoon on April 10,2011</span></p><p>World History; Church History; And What You Can Do About It</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div></div></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzKaxyVb-wxhtgfn0sXq-okEY5ztwVknCSTmqjJqO_Fy-_1lx-Z8zQeX5b7O1Gt64hW0k4FSf8pjlPjjtCKug' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-83745197613882786012011-04-15T12:38:00.000-07:002011-04-15T13:12:57.476-07:00Lady Gaga did not receive the Gospel<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOiRxUxnklttI2_cIAdd3mLjlFh5WWrgYLcxKzP0MR4G_WGnf2QOQpQuOyXIqaPiFrAhKVlDkXBukW5WeYAUr9TfGA4DppDGUPI2JukEunBSTA-d4UclKHrWxHb4fQqhmWJjjZ5n7TbY8/s1600/tracts.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 272px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOiRxUxnklttI2_cIAdd3mLjlFh5WWrgYLcxKzP0MR4G_WGnf2QOQpQuOyXIqaPiFrAhKVlDkXBukW5WeYAUr9TfGA4DppDGUPI2JukEunBSTA-d4UclKHrWxHb4fQqhmWJjjZ5n7TbY8/s320/tracts.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5595905678546124434" /></a><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxoY6hLX74wwk84IGO1RLH2lvVk1OtwP8eAQgOJeS7jpz4nfvB57_UpdPRqRslZbxD1jUQt1mt3CkH-2BF52g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div><p><span ><span ><b>T</b></span>here is an old story of how a diver saw a piece of paper clutched in the mouth of an oyster. The man grabbed it, found that it was a gospel tract and said, "I can't hold out any longer. His mercy is so great that He has caused His Word to follow me even to the bottom of the ocean." God used a tract to save the man. Why should a Christian use tracts? Simply because God uses them. He used a tract to save the great missionary Hudson Taylor, as well as many, many others. That fact alone should be enough incentive for a Christian to always use tracts to reach the lost, but there are even more reasons why we should use them. Here are a few:</span></p><p> </p><ul><li>Tracts can make an opening for us to share our faith. We can watch people's reaction as we give them a tract, and see if they are open to listen to spiritual things.</li><li>They can do the witnessing for us. If we are too timid to speak to someone about the things of God, we can at least give them a tract, or leave it lying around so that someone will pick it up.</li><li>They speak to the person when they are ready--i.e. they don't read it until they want to.</li><li>They can find their way into people's homes when we can't.</li><li>They don't get into argument. They just state their case.</li><li>Dr. Oswald J. Smith said, "The only way to carry out the Great Commission will be by the means of the printed page." Billy Graham said, "Nothing surpasses a tract for sowing the seed of the Good News." The Apostle Paul said, "I might by any means save some." I'm sure that if Paul had access to the printed page that we have access to, he would carry his convictions to the full.</li></ul><p>I am never in public without gospel tracts. In fact, if anyone ever finds me in public without them, I will give them $20. That makes sure I am always loaded for battle (you should say the same thing to your friends). When I see an attendant who is standing in a store looking bored, I can give him or her a tract and say, "This will break your boredom." Most people smile, and say “Thanks.” In fact, we have tracts especially to break boredom. One is called the Intelligence Test Bookmark. This tract has a ten-minute “getaway” time. After you give it to them, you have ten minutes to get away, before they even know that it's a Christian tract. Other titles are especially designed for specific purposes.</p><p>If you want people to accept your tract from you, don't say, "Would you like this?" They will probably say, "What is it?" and then you're in trouble. Instead, say, "Did you get one of these?" That question has a two-fold effect. You stir up curiosity and make them ask "One of what?" That's when you pass it to them. That phrase also makes them feel as though they are missing out on something. And so they are.</p><p>Perhaps your whole life seems to pass before your eyes at the thought of giving someone a tract. Don't worry--you are not alone. We all battle fear. The answer to fear is found in the prayer closet. Ask God to give you a compassion that will swallow your fears. Meditate on the fate of the ungodly. Give Hell some deep thought. Confront what it is that you are so fearful of.</p><p>Do you like roller coasters? Some Christians want to try bungie-jumping or sky diving. Isn't it strange? We are prepared to risk our lives for the love of fear…and yet we are willing to let a sinner go to Hell for the fear of giving out a tract. Ask yourself how many piles of bloodied stones you can find where Christians have been stoned to death for preaching the gospel. How much singed soil can you find where they have been burned at the stake. Shame on us. We have a fear of rejection. We are fearful of looking foolish. That's a subtle form of pride. That sort of fear isn't from God. He hasn't given us the spirit of fear. If we listen to the lies of the devil rather than the Word of God, it shows we prefer to have faith in the devil rather than in our faithful Creator. What a terrible thought! Faith in His “precious promises” will lift us above the fear that so easily paralyzes us. If God is with us, nothing can be against us.</p><p>If you have never given out tracts, leave them in a shopping cart, or put them in the mail when you pay bills. Why not begin today? Then each night as you shut your eyes to go to sleep, you will have something very special to pray about…that God will use the tract you put somewhere. You will also have a deep sense of satisfaction, that you played a small part in carrying out the Great Commission…to reach this dying world with the gospel of everlasting life. Don't waste your life. Do something for the Kingdom of God while you are able to. Finally, always remember--treat every day as though it were your last…one day you will be right, so do something for God while you are able.</p><p>Author: <a href="http://www.christiananswers.net/raycomfort/index.html">Ray Comfort</a> of Living Waters Publications</p></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-73522291780796457362011-04-14T12:03:00.000-07:002011-04-14T18:56:37.554-07:00Richard Dawkins gets a heart full<div>Earlier this year Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America and Outspoken Evolutionist Richard Dawkins. Got together and had a debate. And recorded their meeting, I must say that in order for Richard Dawkins to accept an evidence against Evolution. He has to leave his presupposition that there is no God. Wendy Wright's point is so valid that the value of an human being is tied up in the discussion of the existence of God. If you have blind chance and random DNA accidents creating single cell animals and then up the family tree to Humans. This can and does effect how much value we place on the unborn child and even effects the bullying issue.<br />Here are the seven parts.<br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwB6EN7q_vFYE9wWe4rKaBfBoYX3tknapapq88s77_VZyt1xRCTk7ZFT8oh4G-y2eLkm-jWghhcEdCbh0nRbQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy0TlkrYNdbgT9J0FJc-bQQWUxEfUwLufb_VCpPhALxMxenZ_0UprD7zj9XxsSlAt6zPPwqR7nstAfryED0QQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwmPxkQ11X9gaDeBM4aD7SJB_DKIbq-3ceY8ceiKKg3E3ebgOhE8JvWNew_QDGXSuT8-WtYP1XWGQae5KTf-w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw7qrGMBq_sMfyQG65gQhQmU2949pdo7mo3CyliYrVtDbPLTDjFOw9sWTO0vnj6zyBZpwk5xEhGUpiWxMOSqw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyKykL2Z1wTtGWgLdV6vY8D6ATgqfxm68QLzrHtMIbM7voZZJNRYc6Z1vsfSaL2XreFssQ_MQ7LTvSduP0Bag' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyXysr9nSmoU7dl6Mu5l-U2dYptL-gx5y7hQigwvdMY0lDzCBxyRHjbryrY9V2tKyu-h3ozW2VJvRemJ8tK_w' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwjgVekt0HHzFFfqcb1cbYKWEEQ6q9mnAuhnBaQVNSAHM8dvzx4VRnmeeobwYfu8AewZ_3W6BhBldvnu1Xu5Q' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-78134679774603686522011-04-10T17:25:00.000-07:002011-04-10T18:16:55.942-07:00Rob Bell: Questions become Statements. Preface of "Love Win"sRob Bell becomes more clear in where he stands regarding Orthodox Christianity. His Questions are becoming statements. <div><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyb0fCZM7_VssAOISl3CHf0aR1l4hgq2Bo7zfplVxXrvJx2cWX7mYimJ8Nw8VonFDjeRb6-MfiEbqjnXDCUxQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Here is an audio of the preface from <b>Love Wins</b> audio book. It seems that the discussion about the "story" of Jesus Christ because more important than Truth itself. This story that he repeats from history appears to Rob Bell to be the "god" of his choosing.</div><div><br /></div><div> Notice that Rob Bell states that The "Jesus Story has been <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">hijacked</span> by a few. Here is the Books for further study that Kevin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">DeYoung</span> includes after His Book Review. If these men are the hijackers. The Biblical Truth is being proclaimed today as it was in the first century of Christianity. Thank the Lord for these men and their writings.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The Doctrine of God</div><div><b>J. I. Packer,</b> Knowing God (Downers Grove: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">IVP</span>, 1998).</div><div><b>D. A. Carson,</b> The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Wheaton</span>: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Crossway</span>, 1999).</div><div>Eternal Punishment and the Uniqueness of Christ</div><div><b>Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, </b>eds., Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship</div><div>Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Grand Rapids: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Zondervan</span>, 2004).</div><div><b>Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson</b>, eds., Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to</div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Inclusivism</span> (Downers Grove: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">IVP</span>, 2008).</div><div><b>John Piper</b>, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to Be Saved? (Grand</div><div>Rapids: Baker, 2010).</div><div>The Gospel</div><div><b>Greg Gilbert,</b> What Is the Gospel? (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Wheaton</span>: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Crossway</span>, 2010).</div><div><b>Steve Jeffery, Mike <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Ovey</span>, Andrew <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Sach</span>,</b> Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the</div><div>Glory of Penal Substitution (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Wheaton</span>: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Crossway</span>, 2007).</div><div>Systematic Theologies</div><div><b>Wayne <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Grudem</span>,</b> Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids:</div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Zondervan</span>, 1994), 1140–67.</div><div><b>Michael Horton,</b> The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand</div><div>Rapids: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Zondervan</span>, 2011), 919–990.</div><div><b>Mark <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Driscoll</span> and Gerry <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Breshears</span></b>, Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Wheaton</span>:</div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Crossway</span>, 2010), 145–174, 407–436.</div><div>Related Books</div><div><b>Kevin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">DeYoung</span> and Ted <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Kluck</span></b>, Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be</div><div>(Chicago: Moody, 2008).</div><div><b>Kevin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">DeYoung</span></b>, ed., Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day (<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Wheaton</span>:</div><div><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Crossway</span>, 2011).</div><div><b>David <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Clotfelter</span>,</b> Sinners in the Hands of a Good God: Reconciling Divine Judgment and Mercy</div><div>(Chicago: Moody, 2004).</div><div><b>J. Gresham <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">Machen</span></b>, Christianity and Liberalism (1923; new ed.; Grand Rapids: <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">Eerdmans</span>,</div><div>2009).</div><div>21</div></div><div><br /></div><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzb6h4TSDZcIWdxcCnwWzrit4Fc7oYjuwmL_-RdAsq95YzsKXpd5aCfpEiiHUxDxdXYYvCMEc36HGGzyA-2Jw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Read Kevin <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">DeYoung</span>"s six points to understand where Rob Bell's foundation for his "discussion"</div><div><br /></div><div>From <b>God is still Holy and what you learned in Sunday School is still True. A Review of Love Wins.</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i><div>A Few Preliminaries</div><div>Before going any further with a critique, a number of preliminary comments are in order. A few</div><div>opening remarks may help put this critical review in context and encourage productive responses.</div><div>One, although Bell asks a lot of questions (350 by one count), we should not write off the</div><div>provocative theology as mere question-raising. Bell did not write an entire book because he was</div><div>looking for some good resources on heaven and hell. This isn’t the thirteen-year-old in your</div><div>youth group asking her teacher, “How can a good God send people to hell?” Any pastor worth his</div><div>covenant salt will welcome sincere questions like this. (“Good question, Jenny, let’s see what the</div><div>Bible says about that.”) But Bell is a popular teacher of a huge church with a huge following. This</div><div>2</div><div>book is not an invitation to talk. It’s him telling us what he thinks (nothing wrong with that). As</div><div>Bell himself writes, “But this isn’t a book of questions. It’s a book of responses to these questions”</div><div>(19).</div><div>Two, we should notice the obvious: this is a book. It is a book with lots of Scripture references.</div><div>It is a book that draws from history and personal experience. It makes a case for something. It</div><div>purports one story of Christianity to be better than another. Bell means to persuade. He wants</div><div>to convince us of something. He is a teacher teaching. This book is not a poem. It is not a piece</div><div>of art. This is a theological book by a pastor trying to impart a different way of looking at heaven</div><div>and hell. Whether Bell is creative or a provocateur is beside the point. If Bell is inconsistent,</div><div>unclear, or inaccurate, claiming the “artist” mantle is no help.</div><div>Three, I’m sure that many people looking to defend Bell will be drawn to a couple escape</div><div>hatches he launches along the way. As you’ll see, the book is a sustained attack on the idea that</div><div>those who fail to believe in Jesus Christ in this life will suffer eternally for their sins. This is the</div><div>traditional Christianity he finds “misguided and toxic” (viii). But in one or two places Bell seems</div><div>more agnostic.</div><div>Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of</div><div>their choices? Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are</div><div>free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because</div><div>we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love</div><div>requires. (115)</div><div>These are strange sentences because they fall in the chapter where Bell argues that God wants</div><div>everyone to be saved and God gets what God wants. He tells us that “never-ending punishment”</div><div>does not give God glory, and “God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest hearts” (108).</div><div>So it’s unclear where the sudden agnosticism comes from. Is Bell wrestling with himself? Did a</div><div>friend or editor ask him to throw in a few caveats? Is he simply inconsistent?</div><div>Similarly, at the end Bell argues, rather out of the blue, that we need to trust God in the present,</div><div>that our choices here and now “matter more than we can begin to imagine” because we can miss</div><div>out on rewards and celebrations (197). This almost looks like an old-fashioned call to turn to</div><div>Christ before it’s too late. When you look more carefully, however, you see that Bell is not saying</div><div>what evangelicals might think. He wants us to make the most of life because “while we may get</div><div>other opportunities, we won’t get the one right in front of us again” (197). In other words, there</div><div>are consequences for our actions, in this life and in the next, and we can’t get this moment back;</div><div>but there will always be more chances. If you don’t live life to the fullest and choose love now,</div><div>you may initially miss out on some good things in the life to come, but in the end love wins</div><div>(197–198).</div><div>3</div><div>For anyone tempted to take these few lines and make Bell sound orthodox, I encourage you</div><div>to read the whole book more carefully. Likewise, before you rush to accept that Bell believes</div><div>in hell and believes Christ is the only way, pay attention to his conception of hell and in what</div><div>way he thinks Jesus is the only way. Bad theology usually sneaks in under the guise of familiar</div><div>language. There’s a reason he’s written 200 pages on why you must be deluded to think people</div><div>end up in eternal conscious punishment under the just wrath of God. Words mean something,</div><div>even when some of them seem forced or out of place. Take the book as a whole to get Bell’s</div><div>whole message.</div><div>Four, it is possible that I (like other critics) am mean-spirited, nasty, and cruel. But voicing</div><div>strong disagreement does not automatically make me any of these. Judgmentalism is not the</div><div>same as making judgments. The same Jesus who said “do not judge” in Matthew 7:1 calls his</div><div>opponents dogs and pigs in Matthew 7:6. Paul pronounces an anathema on those who preach a</div><div>false gospel (Gal. 1:8). Disagreement among professing Christians is not a plague on the church.</div><div>In fact, it is sometimes necessary. The whole Bible is full of evaluation and encourages the</div><div>faithful to be discerning and make their own evaluations. What’s tricky is that some fights are</div><div>stupid, and some judgments are unfair and judgmental. But this must be proven, not assumed.</div><div>Bell feels strongly about this matter of heaven and hell. So do a lot of other people. Strong</div><div>language and forceful arguments are appropriate.</div><div>Five, I am not against conversation. What I am against is false teaching. I did not go to the</div><div>trouble of writing a review because I worry that God can’t handle our questions. The question is</div><div>never whether God can handle our honest reappraisals of traditional Christianity, but whether</div><div>he likes them.</div><div>On the subject of conversation, it’s worth pointing out that this book actually mitigates against</div><div>further conversation. For starters, there’s the McLarenesque complaint about the close-minded</div><div>traditionalists who don’t allow for questions, change, and maturity (ix). This is a kind of preemptive</div><div>“damned if you do, damned if you don’t” approach to conversation (cf. 183). In essence,</div><div>“Let’s talk, but I know already that the benighted and violent will hate my theology.” That hardly</div><div>invites further dialogue. More practically, Bell includes no footnotes for his historical claims and</div><div>rarely gives chapter and verse when citing the Bible. It is difficult to examine Bell’s claims when</div><div>he is less than careful in backing them up.</div><div>Six, this is not an evangelistic work, not in the traditional sense anyway. The primary intended</div><div>audience appears to be not so much secularists with objections to Christianity (á la Keller’s</div><div>Reason for God), but disaffected evangelicals who can’t accept the doctrine they grew up with.</div><div>Bell writes for the “growing number” who have become aware that the Christian story has been</div><div>“hijacked” (vii). Love Wins is for those who have heard a version of the gospel that now makes</div><div>their stomachs churn and their pulses rise, and makes them cry out, “I would never be a part of</div><div>that” (viii). This is a book for people like Bell, people who grew up in an evangelical environment</div><div>4</div><div>and don’t want to leave it completely, but want to change it, grow up out of it, and transcend it.</div><div>The emerging church is not an evangelistic strategy. It is the last rung for evangelicals falling off</div><div>the ladder into liberalism or unbelief.</div><div>Over and over, Bell refers to the “staggering number” of people just like him, people who</div><div>can’t believe the message they used to believe, people who want nothing to do with traditional</div><div>Christianity, people who don’t want to leave the faith but can’t live in the faith they once</div><div>embraced. I have no doubt there are many people like this inside and outside our churches.</div><div>Some will leave the faith altogether. Others—and they are in the worse position—will opt for</div><div>liberalism, which has always seen itself as a halfway house between conservative orthodoxy and</div><div>secular disbelief.</div><div>But before we let Bell and others write the present story, we must remember that there are also</div><div>a “staggering number” of young people who want the straight up, unvarnished truth. They want</div><div>doctrinal edges and traditional orthodoxy. They want no-holds-barred preaching. They don’t</div><div>want to leave traditional Christianity. They are ready to go deeper into it.</div><div>Love Wins has ignited such a firestorm of controversy because it’s the current fissure point</div><div>for a larger fault-line. As younger generations come up against an increasingly hostile cultural</div><div>environment, they are breaking in one of two directions—<b>back to robust orthodoxy (often </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b>Reformed) or back to liberalism.</b> The neo-evangelical consensus is cracking up. Love Wins is</div></i></span></div><div>simply one of many tremors.</div></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><br /></b></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-17439985981571310352011-04-07T06:00:00.000-07:002011-04-07T20:41:26.702-07:00Why is Theology Important to You?<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzEpY9FGgRN6ywk3VMoYpQaNtj16-x4NHYNQK2V5wqqF2MikubdzV6u1nXCnJOlmhveKW9-hzUMELWsDYV4wA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Why is Biblical Theology important?<br /><br />Biblical theology is an important discipline for several reasons; first, it helps us to determine what themes and truths of scriptures are really important, and why. As we seek to understand how the scriptures naturally unfold, and how its themes are developed and grow ever more mature, we start to realize what's truly being emphasized. If we relied on systematic theology alone, we might come to know many truths about angels and men and sin and redemption, but which of those truths are the most important? Which are the most emphasized and developed in the history of special revelation? Is it as important to know about cherubim and seraphim as it is to know about justification and redemption?<br /><br />Second, biblical theology gives us the “big picture,” and shows us how all the truths of the bible cohere and relate to each other, and make sense as a whole. The bible was not given to us as a handbook of various truths and doctrines, but fundamentally as an epic story, in which all truths exist to portray the glory of one great Hero, promised, foreshadowed, and prepared for in the Old Testament, and finally coming to accomplish his magnificent and many-faceted work in the New Testament. Systematic Theology alone does not give this epic, Christ-centered sense of the bible as one great unified whole, testifying to the mighty work of God's redemption through his eternal Son, the triumphant Christ.<br /><br />Third, biblical theology can be helpful in demanding the application of a rigorous historical-grammatical hermeneutic in exegesis. Biblical theology, by its very nature, must take into account the history and context of special revelation, and answer the questions of why a particular book was written at a particular time, what problems it addressed, how it further prepared the world and the people of God for the coming of Christ, and so on; and for this reason, it can be a healthy corrective to any tendency toward careless “proof-texting”.<br /><br /><br />Monergism Copyright © 2008<br /><br /></div>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-86545615447469310502011-04-04T12:30:00.000-07:002011-04-04T16:11:35.131-07:00Unicorns in the Bible?If any one brings up reasons for not trusting the Bible because it is written by men. This information may help. But always remember to get to the gospel facts as so as possible.<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyK7UxaMp0MLihowhm5cInzWRbW5Qi_1NGEiGmNLDjBBo9tn656SkBzHnlRYUwsmWKdl7WXdWO1ZRiOn9dfhg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>This information is from <a href="http://http//www.answersingenesis.org/">http://http//www.answersingenesis.org/</a> by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, AiG–U.S. onJune 25, 2008 Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves (Job 39:9–12.1) In Job 38–41, God reminded Job of the characteristics of a variety of impressive animals He had created, showing Job that God was far above man in power and strength.2 Job had to be familiar with the animals on God’s list for the illustration to be effective. God points out in Job 39:9–12 that the unicorn, “whose strength is great,” is useless for agricultural work, refusing to serve man or “harrow (plow) the valley.” This visual aid gave Job a glimpse of God’s greatness. An imaginary fantasy animal would have defeated the purpose of God’s illustration. Modern readers have trouble with the Bible’s unicorns because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34:7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength. The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.). Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick . . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.”3 The elasmotherium, an extinct giant rhinoceros, provides another possibility for the unicorn’s identity. The elasmotherium’s 33-inch-long skull has a huge bony protuberance on the frontal bone consistent with the support structure for a massive horn.4 In fact, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, in his 1849 book Nineveh and Its Remains, sketched a single-horned creature from an obelisk in company with two-horned bovine animals; he identified the single-horned animal as an Indian rhinoceros.5 The biblical unicorn could have been the elasmotherium.6 Assyrian archaeology provides one other possible solution to the unicorn identity crisis. The biblical unicorn could have been an aurochs (a kind of wild ox known to the Assyrians as rimu).7 The aurochs’s horns were very symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal II’s palace relief and Esarhaddon’s stone prism.8 Fighting rimu was a popular sport for Assyrian kings. On a broken obelisk, for instance, Tiglath-Pileser I boasted of slaying them in the Lebanon mountains.9 Extinct since about 1627, aurochs, Bos primigenius, were huge bovine creatures.10 Julius Caesar described them in his Gallic Wars as: “a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied . . . . Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.”11 The aurochs’ highly prized horns would have been a symbol of great strength to the ancient Bible reader. One scholarly urge to identify the biblical unicorn with the Assyrian aurochs springs from a similarity between the Assyrian word rimu and the Hebrew word re’em. We must be very careful when dealing with anglicized transliterated words from languages that do not share the English alphabet and phonetic structure.12 However, similar words in Ugaritic and Akkadian (other languages of the ancient Middle East) as well as Aramaic mean “wild bull” or “buffalo,” and an Arabic cognate means “white antelope.” However, the linguistics of the text cannot conclusively prove how many horns the biblical unicorn had. While modern translations typically translate re’em as “wild ox,” the King James Version (1611), Luther’s German Bible (1534), the Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate translated this Hebrew word with words meaning “one-horned animal.” 13 The importance of the biblical unicorn is not so much its specific identity—much as we would like to know—but its reality. The Bible is clearly describing a real animal. The unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong horns—not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail. Footnotes 1.In addition to Job 39:9–10, the unicorn is mentioned in Numbers 23:22, 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalm 22:21, 29:6, 92:10; Isaiah 34:7. Back 2.In Job, God’s list of impressive real animals goes on to discuss peacocks, ostriches, horses, hawks, and eagles. God builds up to a crescendo, commanding Job to look at the behemoth, which He had created on the same day He created man (Job 40:15). The behemoth’s description matches that of a sauropod dinosaur. Following the behemoth, the list concludes with the leviathan, a powerful fiery sea creature. See “Could Behemoth Have Been a Dinosaur?” Back 3.Edward Robinson, ed., Calmet’s Dictionary of the Holy Bible, 1832 revised edition, pages 907–908. Back 4.The report in Nature described a 33-inch-long skull with a bony frontal protuberance more than three feet in circumference. This bony protuberance with its associated structures is thought to have supported a horn over a yard long. Norman Lockyer, “The Elasmotherium,” Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, August 8, 1878, p. 388. Back 5.Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (London: John Murray, 1849), p. 435. Back 6.A margin note on Isaiah 34:7 placed in the King James Version in 1769 mentions this possible identity, and the Latin Vulgate translates the same Hebrew word as “unicorn” in some contexts and “rhinoceros” in others. Back 7.Aurochs is both singular and plural, like sheep. Back 8.Viewable at www.britishmuseum.org. Back 9.Algernon Heber-Percy, A Visit to Bashan and Argob (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1895), p. 150. Back 10.Brittanica Concise Encyclopedia, 2007, s.v. “Aurochs.” Back 11.Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, Book 6, chapter 28 (http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.6.6.html). Back 12.Elizabeth Mitchell, “Doesn’t Egyptian Chronology Prove That the Bible Is Unreliable?” in The New Answer Book 2, ed. Ken Ham (Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 2008), pp. 245–264 Back 13.Some writers who hold to the two-horned identity think that the KJV translators substituted the plural unicorns for the singular an unicorn in Deuteronomy 33:17 because they were uncomfortable with the idea of a two-horned unicorn. However, the KJV translators themselves noted the literal translation an unicorn in their own margin note. They likely chose the plural rendering to fit the context of the verse. Deuteronomy 33:17 states, “His [Joseph’s] glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh.” The verse compares the tribal descendants of Joseph’s “horns,” meaning descendants of his two sons Ephraim and Manasseh, with the strong horns of unicorns. “Horns” is plural because there are two sons in view, and “unicorn” is referenced because the unicorn’s horn is so incredibly strong.noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-6858954207700704652011-04-02T15:34:00.000-07:002011-04-03T16:38:29.114-07:00Is it Right to Name Individuals that Error from TruthI hope these videos will help you understand the need to expose public speakers of teaching false doctrines and teachings that are not grounded in Scripture. There is growing opposition to being truthful with the church. One of the main objections is that it is unloving. But again it is loving to take a deaf ear and let individuals be in danger of worshiping a non-existent 'God". Or in other words a idol that we make up with our minds and not starting with Scripture to shape our understanding of Truth. First is Brannon Howse from his article: Is It Negative and Unbiblical to Name False Teachers?<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw5lgQEeRwruCxtywcd7UDkS_Eq_9pe1DOelheaKEOrRvUzVv3Q27kK65uWJvFAXRR4TzxpOTn4JnPxL5G3aQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzHBlh8vD7NwzI4JsExOA90fQGvKIo4DuYEjF_lbPRwOuUrnLLmPuZMevFxzqIs113dRefx2Get5aFQIQ238A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-63891647845166990302011-03-30T10:31:00.000-07:002011-03-30T10:46:50.880-07:00Standing for the Gospel – It is a Small Price to Pay<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMqPWTOQyHMaZj3aR08JGUYsotH_q00TZ237VJ9UJmawlG4oQOFKpvydkRO8kUMaSDdj0Eve0-b2rrB6FXEPBR8CapljFSXBVg7s6vtzW98FNEvdNz9tHnTa4D0pchXsvesEihXPYGKtk/s1600/logoltblue.gif"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 137px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 177px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589928829690231778" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMqPWTOQyHMaZj3aR08JGUYsotH_q00TZ237VJ9UJmawlG4oQOFKpvydkRO8kUMaSDdj0Eve0-b2rrB6FXEPBR8CapljFSXBVg7s6vtzW98FNEvdNz9tHnTa4D0pchXsvesEihXPYGKtk/s320/logoltblue.gif" /></a> There is one ministry that I have come to know that has stood against the christian culture movement that opposes the Truth of God's Holy Word. It is Understanding the times, headed by Roger Oakland. He has constantly been faithful to the Gospel Call. Please Pray and support their ministry. I have posted his articles and videos in the past. This was posted on his site on March 16. He is also starting a online Bible School. Which I will be sharing more about as the information comes in. Standing for the Gospel – It is a Small Price to Pay Commentary by Roger Oakland <a href="http://www.understandthetimes.org/">http://www.understandthetimes.org/</a> According to the Scriptures and the events that we see happening around us, we are living in the last days. The Bible states that the last days will be perilous. Webster’s Dictionary defines the word perilous to mean dangerous, grave, threatening, unsafe, and unhealthy. Does this not describe the world today? This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 Timothy 3:1 There will be many deceivers during this time. The blind will be leading the blind. There will be wolves in sheep’s clothing that desire to devour the sheep and drive them to market. These wolves may know they are wolves, or they may not. They are under strong delusion. The world is under strong delusion as well. What is delusion? “Something that is falsely or delusively believed or propagated.”1 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie. 2 Thessalonians 2:11 More often than not, sheep will follow a shepherd because that is the nature of sheep. They will even trust the shepherd and do whatever he says because they believe he will protect them against all wolves. But earthly shepherds cannot be relied on. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and He is the only one who can protect the sheep. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. John 10:11 When we put men into the place of power, they become corrupt and obsessed for the love of money and more power. In short, shepherds can become wolves when they are led by the flesh rather than by the Spirit of God. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Romans 8:5-6 When the sheep finally see what is happening, it is often too late. Even though shepherd’s may know what the Word of God teaches, they often use the Word as a means to their own end. They say things such as “do not touch God’s anointed” in order to avoid being challenged by those who try to direct them back to the Word of God. My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place. Jeremiah 50:6 In the last days, we can expect to see the faith of many people being influenced by Satan in a powerful way. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 It appears from Bible prophecy that an apostate church actually becomes Satan’s footstool. “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” Revelation 2:9. Satan is the master of lies. What better master plan than to deceive multitudes in the name of the Savior. He sets up a peace plan in the name of Jesus, but it is a peace plan that will ultimately bring God’s wrath. We live in the very day that this plan is unfolding, and so few seem aware of it. In the past, God’s servants warned about what was coming in the future, but like Noah, they were not heard. Now that the signs are increasingly more obvious, fewer and fewer believers seem to be responsive. But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Matthew 24:37 Instead of warning that disaster is coming, many pastors have become false teachers and are actually helping expedite this great delusion. And while the economies of the world are collapsing, charlatans are doing all they can to hang on to their assets and build up their empires, often in the name of God. Instead of serving people and being involved in reaching the poor, widows, and the orphans, they are forever looking for further ways to grow their “kingdoms”: more radio stations, bigger buildings, more property, and large screen monitors for broadcasting their own messages to satellite outreaches reaching millions across the globe with their agendas to reproduce themselves. Instead of churches, these TV entertainment centers have become like fast food franchises. Graphic designers design logos that stand for brand names like the “M” in Mc Donald’s. The Bible, once taught faithfully, now becomes a manipulated spring board for postmodern “googly-gook” that destroys the truth. Large meetings are held in stadiums with bands that are popular with the world. More funds are spent on entertainment than on promoting Jesus Christ. The appeal to the senses is part of the appeal to attract the postmodern generation trained to have their ears tickled by worldly methods. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 2 Timothy 3: 6-7 Organizers hope their followers will be attracted to this style of program, so they can be introduced to the “Lord” and a gospel that may not even be based on the Scriptures. When “converts” go forward, everyone in the audience claps. Some may truly become believers but countless of them do not. Christian believer, be exhorted to reach out to the lost with the true Gospel. The world is being deceived, and so is most of organized Christianity. Strong delusion has made its mark. An apostate church is emerging, while Bible believing, discerning Christians are being left on the side of the road, scorned and displaced with often no church to attend. This apostate church has left the light of the Word and is headed into the darkness. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. 2 Timothy 3: 13-14 Because men love darkness more than the light, they refuse to take biblical correction. Rather they call those who challenge them divisive, liars, and troublemakers. They say that white is black and black is white. While certain men have crept in just like in the days of Jude, and while this apostate church is rising to the “top,” let those who have ears to hear, hear what the Spirit says. Let us proclaim the Good News about our glorious salvation; let us not put our hope in building a “Christian” nation and a Kingdom of God on Earth (there will be no Kingdom of God on Earth until He returns in judgement at His second coming); rather let us put our hope in the Gospel. Satan has been the god of this world since the fall of man, and that has never changed. In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 2 Corinthians 4:4 According to the Scriptures we should prepare for a dark time ahead. Are we willing to tell others what true salvation is (centered around Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the Cross), or are we planning to help build an interfaith, universalistic, mystical kingdom on earth? Maybe it is time to count the cost. Are we willing to share the truth about Jesus Christ and shout it out loud? Let us exhort one another to become fishers of men as Jesus challenged us? Follow Him! Is it not a small price to pay in light of what He has done for us? Lord help us to be faithful servants. It is indeed a small price to pay for what you have done for us. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Revelation 12:11noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-75662984556792072482011-03-29T14:22:00.000-07:002011-03-29T15:29:04.550-07:00The Gospel is bigger then "Love Wins"Here is Todd Friel from Wretched T.V. giving a overview of Rob Bell's Book, Love Wins. Check out the web site. It is full of helpful information. <a href="http://http//wretchedradio.com/">http://http://wretchedradio.com/</a> Part 1 <br /><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzF8sxsDxNUjUTv1FW-dDFMWSOPPTgftlj6WmzBNA4jSHYv7naf3nfvgGaIM94eMwevipHVtYMH9zUZLYf9Jg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><br /><p>Part 2</p><br /><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwB_UDSGBWsvnkAnmOYBUnGTZLIVj6gWNbh0sTsOqbRDXRNgsChb3DPykVxQy5JYVUSKoXFEB9UE4RJflKcUQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><br /><p>Part 3</p><br /><p></p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyIbZt8UBtSzqUDrnAjAI1ICfuR8rDajrgSsRAsupK7n06HOb7LHosGczuEE1Cidfjqwe64UPe8N3SHBmGgZg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-48598770186213567312011-03-23T08:19:00.000-07:002011-03-24T15:58:15.087-07:00Panel Discussion on "Love Wins"A great resource to help you understand Ron Bells Book: Love Wins. Is a Panel with<br />R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Justin Taylor, Denny Burk, Russell Moore from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They bring out the great concerns that a Believer should have with the concepts that Rob Bell brings forward.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyJinNAYRLCKq1oJGSpegn8ysjwrKQYlExft5_6X2AwbdgLC0_pSY78yWFLiFI95yrhKsULT6_VAAAvronexg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwMy75g_mGaOPZreSs288DH2Nf-0ieBSqKtgUeR93phpcbBntjMZt6Gh4EbqHdcSwC14NkNfo7g6BD6FLc0aw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><br /><p></p><br /><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzphrbW0gkMvq0hPCiEm9vUna_78vBXvmH78PT63hkULJ-KW5YQrGIiPF0WHapIckCviEQkCGVzlh_IKC_BVQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><br /><p></p><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyxV5brjnpUIEjnxiN0jTIsUhHoQ3dV3Y6MgFQQCJFZaOkLintomlA7nq7la8vI_U3yXZEK6skNtf9-ZbQT9A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwXFmkDkrrsB_Xazin5okcDRbIgPC0OBsJ5JzouOzD69MxWzsUH1Af8uLq6Bx2GrCLBc3ORfNDfzvQ-H_VZGw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxcJbZjdHZ_N38oUqJQarEeDYlhiHzKSCubFzLtk-mJHUi3re0YwP9jYM49q6EMkHEuMe-w6TvNIPehiW7ttQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz1xZ2GOjISmaZbGr8KKQYaXnvyHllqX9G-6Y1Aq2dX-geJD-KMurj2ps479wL6ZLGGzf-YRgB--PMIa1aJQQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzruTS1cvHRC18tNTq37PSTzErxvTWfCZbH2C3IY2rh4z1ofP76KB9SNILWuVoLN0-IW6k7MmnbkFF9mD4lgw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><br /><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyX6nZqnCn1BWv2pU4ruYhGbkLVHBxNXPXhABT_8lKzzkdetxU-4c_cdviP_br2uXvu-P-1euTLpYr0x8NMtA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxZcvltMSbNPZYK4nufCjsnJU9oljTFBH-aolZg0WyglWoVpVXmikoeuAwXpYl0Q3YIAnNHNFEW6An46FHY' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-61219883089525461982011-03-20T18:05:00.000-07:002011-03-20T20:44:30.628-07:00Rob Bell's Presuppostion Wins<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaghyjOGcUbHNRlOpHEYFjjzMe_JOPUERFIiKbbAaVmtjEv3EqfepkYHbafqXgs3WDjjns4VAAz6jKKD6S7xjloLVD6RrEl3uOXxnEOwLuYnEtEHc9hylVdotM4fGyeJPhR167xRG0o5k/s1600/Love+Wins+Rob+Bell+Book.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 214px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586337408713467506" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaghyjOGcUbHNRlOpHEYFjjzMe_JOPUERFIiKbbAaVmtjEv3EqfepkYHbafqXgs3WDjjns4VAAz6jKKD6S7xjloLVD6RrEl3uOXxnEOwLuYnEtEHc9hylVdotM4fGyeJPhR167xRG0o5k/s320/Love+Wins+Rob+Bell+Book.jpg" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div>It started back in February regarding the news of Rob Bell's new Book, <strong>Love Wins. </strong>HE continued his questioning style in his promotional video. But his doubts on the punishment of Hell for those that have not repented of their sin and placed their trust by faith in Jesus Christ. And the doubt that 'good people' can't be punished was very clear in the video.</div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><br /><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzqKn614eWW3NixcLvWA-qaZZe7WhIu27G8IEpCyOZz4sh80dI0SN4VsN9O29ImW0Qd1-gP_pDlr2jFWpgo-g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p></p><p>The interviewer hit it on the money when He asked: "How much of this book, you working out your own childhood experiences of being brought up in a fairly cramped evangelical family. And really finding that difficult as you became a adult. How much is this? Actually that? "</p><p>Rob Bell: "<strong>Oh I would totally own up to that in a heartbeat</strong>. We are all on a journey, we are all were handed things. You were handed things. I was handed things. This is the way the world works. This is what matters. This is what doesn't. Here's who these people are. Here's who these people. Here's who is in and who is out. We all have been handed these things. We spend our lives sort of pushing back and questioning and probing. I think that's what makes it so engaging. Part of the joy of life."</p><p>Either he didn't understanding the question or he did not want to say, yes, I reject this Biblical concept of Hell that was taught to me as a child. And because of that rejection it has influenced my thinking today. </p><p>It is called a presupposition. What he brings to the facts and then interprets the facts with his worldview. And not let the facts just speak for themselves.</p><p>He is a link to a very <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">thorough</span> review of Rob Bell's Book:</p><p><a href="http://http//thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2011/03/14/rob-bell-love-wins-review/">http://http//thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2011/03/14/rob-bell-love-wins-review/</a></p><p>More to come!</p><p></p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dx7W-d7J-zP3OOnTlsHsWlZ64Lhw1vBt79eSVCPc0rF2pGuiaMVQnueIoV1KdqqDc2nIoS4aw1nrtamqcwTHg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-22126667248504055512011-03-20T17:17:00.000-07:002011-03-20T18:04:50.191-07:00Sorry for Not PostingThat you for your patience for not posting. I did more heart <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">searching</span> for why this blog should exist or not. After the events surrounding the recent book of Rob Bell's book <strong>Love Wins. </strong>I revisited my first post and helped refuel the fire of warning the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Biblical</span> Church of dangerous teaching and trends that the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">church</span> adopts.<br /><br /><em>There was a story of a man that was driving through the night on a small country road. It was raining hard and so the fella turned the radio on to hear the weather report. The news reporter stated that there was a man missing from Mental Institution near by. And he was considered dangerous because of his mental state. He drove for another 30 minutes and the rain was still pounding on the windshield. He had to slow down at times because of the poor visibility. Out of nowhere a man was seen down the road, waving his arms. The closer the car got to man, the driver started to hear the words, stop, stop, stop. The thought came to the driver, wow! This must be the guy that has escaped from the Mental Institution. Just look at his eyes! They have that crazy look in them.<br />So fear overtook the driver and he turned the car to the left and the man with his hands on the hood still was yelling, Stop, Stop, Stop! The driver was still full of fear about what this guy will do next. So he turned the car around and drove back to the village that he past awhile ago.<br />Next he saw a set of headlights coming toward him and with a flashing blue and red lights on the top of the car. It was the police. They stopped in front of the car and came to the drivers window. The driver said that he was so glad to see him. There was a crazy man down the road yelling for me to stop. The police said,<br />Crazy Man! I don't know anything about a crazy man. But it was a good thing that you did stop and turn around. The Bridge down the road that you were headed for was washed out by the river. That man whoever he was, saved you from falling from the bridge and into the river.</em><br /><em></em><br />I understand the biblical mandate:<em><br /><br /><br />•Matt 7:15-20 Jesus says, "Beware of the FALSE PROPHETS, who come to you in SHEEP'S CLOTHING but INWARDLY ARE RAVENOUS WOLVES. You can identify them by their FRUIT, that is, by the way they ACT. Can you pick grapes from <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Thornbushes</span>, or Figs from Thistles? (17) A GOOD TREE produces GOOD FRUIT, and a BAD TREE produces BAD FRUIT. A GOOD TREE can’t produce BAD FRUIT, and a BAD TREE can’t produce GOOD FRUIT. So every TREE that does not produce GOOD FRUIT is chopped down and thrown into the Fire. Yes, just as you can identify a TREE by its FRUIT, so you can IDENTIFY PEOPLE BY THEIR ACTIONS."<br /><br /><br />•Matt 24:4-5 Jesus told them, “Don’t let anyone Mislead you, for MANY will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive MANY."<br /><br /><br />•Matt 7:21-23 Jesus warns, "Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the WILL OF MY FATHER in Heaven will enter. On Judgment Day MANY will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We PROPHESIED IN YOUR NAME and Cast out demons in your Name and Performed many Miracles in your Name.’ But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who BREAK GOD'S LAWS."<br /><br /><br />•Matt 24:11 Jesus says, "MANY FALSE PROPHETS will appear and will deceive MANY people."<br /><br /><br />•Matt 24:23-26 Jesus says “Then if anyone tells you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah,’ or ‘There he is,’ don’t believe it. For FALSE MESSIAHS and FALSE PROPHETS will rise up and perform GREAT SIGNS AND WONDERS SO AS TO DECEIVE, IF POSSIBLE EVEN GOD'S CHOSEN ONES. See, I have warned you about this ahead of time. “So if someone tells you, ‘Look, the Messiah is out in the desert,’ don’t bother to go and look. Or, ‘Look, he is hiding here,’ don’t believe it!"<br /><br /><br />•Mark 13:22 Jesus warns, "FALSE CHRISTS & FALSE PROPHETS shall rise, and shall show SIGNS & WONDERS, IN ORDER TO LEAD ASTRAY, IF IT WERE POSSIBLE, EVEN THE ELECT. But take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance."<br /><br /><br />•Rev 2:2 Jesus says, "I know ALL the things you DO. I have seen your Hard Work & your Patient Endurance. I know you DON'T TOLERATE EVIL PEOPLE. You have EXAMINED the CLAIMS of those who SAY they are APOSTLES but are NOT. You have DISCOVERED they are LIARS. You have Patiently Suffered for Me without Quitting...(6) You HATE THE EVIL DEEDS of the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Nicolaitans</span>, just as I do."<br />•Matt 16:4 Jesus says, "ONLY an EVIL, ADULTEROUS generation would demand a Miraculous Sign..."<br /><br /><br />•Acts 20:29-32 "I know that FALSE TEACHERS, like VICIOUS WOLVES, will come in among you after I leave, not sparing the Flock. Even some men from your own group will rise up and DISTORT THE TRUTH in order to draw a following. Watch out! Remember the three years I was with you—my constant watch and care over you night and day, and my many tears for you. “And now I entrust you to God and the Message of his Grace that is able to build you up and give you an inheritance with all those he has set apart for himself."<br /><br /><br />•Rom 16:17-18 "WATCH OUT (MARK THEM) for people who cause Divisions and Upset People’s Faith by TEACHING THINGS CONTRARY to (TO THE DOCTRINE) what you have been taught. STAY AWAY from them. Such people are not serving Christ our Lord; they are serving their own Personal Interests. By SMOOTH TALK and GLOWING WORDS THEY DECEIVE INNOCENT PEOPLE."<br /><br /><br />•2 Peter 2:1-3 "But there were also FALSE PROPHETS in Israel, just as there will be FALSE TEACHERS among you. They will CLEVERLY TEACH DESTRUCTIVE HERESIES and even DENY THE MASTER (JESUS) who bought them. In this way, they will bring sudden destruction on themselves. Many will follow their Evil Teaching and Shameful Immorality. And because of these Teachers, the way of Truth will be slandered. IN THEIR GREED THEY WILL MAKE UP CLEVER LIES TO GET A HOLD OF YOUR MONEY. But God condemned them long ago, and their Destruction will not be delayed."<br /><br /><br />•1 Tim 4:1 "Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the LAST TIMES some will turn away from the TRUE FAITH; they will follow DECEPTIVE SPIRITS AND TEACHINGS that come from DEMONS."<br /><br /><br />•2 Tim 4:3-4 "For the time will come (END TIMES) when they will NOT ENDURE SOUND DOCTRINE; but wanting to have their EARS TICKLED, they will accumulate for themselves TEACHERS IN ACCORDANCE TO THEIR OWN DESIRES, and will TURN AWAY THEIR EARS FROM THE TRUTH and will TURN ASIDE TO MYTHS."<br /><br /><br />•Titus 1:10-11 "For there are many REBELLIOUS PEOPLE WHO ENGAGE IN USELESS TALK AND DECEIVE OTHERS. This is especially true of those who insist on Circumcision for Salvation. THEY MUST BE SILENCED, because they are turning WHOLE FAMILIES AWAY FROM THE TRUTH by their FALSE TEACHERS. And they DO IT ONLY FOR MONEY."<br /><br /><br />•Gal 1:6-12 "I am shocked that you are TURNING AWAY SO SOON FROM GOD, who called you to himself through the loving Mercy of Christ. You are following a DIFFERENT WAY that PRETENDS TO BE THE GOOD NEWS but is NOT the Good News at all. You are being FOOLED by those who deliberately TWIST THE TRUTH CONCERNING CHRIST. LET GOD'S CURSE FALL ON ANYONE, INCLUDING US OR EVEN AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN, WHO PREACHES A DIFFERENT KIND OF GOOD NEWS THAN THE ONE WE PREACHED TO YOU. I say again what we have said before: IF ANYONE PREACHES ANY OTHER GOOD NEWS THAN THE ONE YOU WELCOMED, LET THAT PERSON BE CURSED. Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant. Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the GOSPEL MESSAGE I Preach is NOT based on mere HUMAN REASONING. I received my message from No Human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by DIRECT REVELATION FROM JESUS CHRIST."<br /><br /><br />•2 Cor 11:13-15 "These people are FALSE APOSTLES. They are DECEITFUL WORKERS who DISGUISE THEMSELVES AS APOSTLES OF CHRIST. But I am not surprised! SATAN DISGUISES HIMSELF AS AN ANGEL OF LIGHT. So it is no wonder that his Servants also DISGUISE THEMSELVES AS SERVANTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. In the end they will get the Punishment their Wicked Deeds deserve."<br /><br /><br />•Phil 3:18-19 "For I have told you often before, and I say it again with Tears in my eyes, that there are MANY whose CONDUCT SHOWS they are really Enemies of the Cross of Christ. They are headed for DESTRUCTION. Their god is their Appetite, they Brag about shameful things, and they THINK ONLY ABOUT THIS LIFE HERE ON EARTH."<br /><br /><br />•Col 2:8 “BEWARE lest any man spoil you through PHILOSOPHY and VAIN DECEIT, after the TRADITION OF MEN, after the RUDIMENTS OF THE WORLD, and NOT after CHRIST.”<br /><br /><br />•Col 2:18 "Don’t let anyone condemn you by insisting on PIOUS SELF-DENIAL or the WORSHIP OF ANGELS, saying they have had VISIONS ABOUT THESE THINGS. Their sinful minds have made them proud.."<br /><br /><br />•2 John 1:10-11 "If anyone comes to your meeting and does NOT TEACH THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRIST, don’t invite that person into your home or give any kind of encouragement. Anyone who encourages such people becomes a PARTNER IN THEIR EVIL WORK."<br /><br /><br />•2 Pet 2:18 "They Brag about themselves with Empty, Foolish Boasting. With an Appeal to twisted Sexual Desires, they lure back into Sin those who have barely escaped from a Lifestyle of DECEPTION."<br /><br /><br />•Amos 8:11 "Behold, the Days are coming," says the Lord God, "That I will send a Famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of HEARING THE WORDS OF THE LORD."<br /><br /><br />•1 Tim 6:8-10 "So if we have ENOUGH FOOD and CLOTHING, LET US BE CONTENT. But people who long to be RICH FALL INTO TEMPTATION and are TRAPPED BY MANY FOOLISH and HARMFUL DESIRES that plunge them into RUIN AND DESTRUCTION. For the LOVE OF MONEY is the ROOT of ALL KINDS OF EVIL. And some people, CRAVING MONEY, have WANDERED from the TRUE FAITH and pierced themselves with MANY SORROWS."<br /><br /><br /></em>The hardest thing to show people that to correct or warn people is to show love for them. I pray that the above story of the man warning that the bridge was washed away. Would show that He did care enough to stop their car from great danger. Please understand this as I post very hard subjects in the future.<br /><br /><em>2 Timothy 3:16 (English Standard Version)<br />16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness<br /></em><br /><em>Accountable to Jesus Christ</em><br /><p><em>Noah316</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></em>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-76467191652192538842010-12-07T09:22:00.000-08:002010-12-07T10:39:56.501-08:00In the Words of the Enemy<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dx4ppJZr7Fz39Qix-NE9ohT3llN7knc4xIxWXjCzBSVrZHN0dwTZlWgK5E1exkkZihA65RC5NznGjd-8aShyA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br />This video pretty well sums up who you face every day. After the video I inserted a chapter from John Pipers Book. <strong>When I Don't Desire God<br /></strong><a href="http://http//www.desiringgod.org/Store/Books/481">http://http//www.desiringgod.org/Store/Books/481</a><br />It is important to have a balance when exposing the character and works of Satan. And John Piper does a good job in the following writing.<br /><br /><strong>GIVE THE DEVIL HIS DUE, BUT NO MORE<br /><br /></strong>If you ask about the devil’s role in your darkness, I answer: Give him his<br />due, but no more. He and his demons are always at work, not just sometimes.<br />There is nothing extraordinary about the fact of his harassment.<br />Paul considers it a normal part of Christian warfare to “take up the<br />shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of<br />the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).<br /><em>16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one;<br /><br /></em>Peter counsels us, “Be sober-minded; be watchful.<br />Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking<br />someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Pet. 5:8-9).<br /><em>Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.<br /><br /></em>All this is normal. But the quality of his harassment varies from mild temptation<br />to murder. Jesus calls him “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).<br /><em>You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.<br /><br /></em>He has the power to inspire painful persecution and even kill<br />Christians (Rev. 2:10).<br /><em>Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.<br /><br /></em>But there are three great comforts in the face of Satan’s attacks.<br /><br />One is that Satan cannot do anything apart from God’s sovereign permission<br />(Job 1:12; 2:6),<br /><em>12 And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.<br />6 And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life."<br /><br /></em>which is governed by God’s infinite wisdom and covenant love. Thus Satan’s servants become God’s sanctifying envoys<br />(2 Cor. 12:7-10).<br /><em>7 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.<br /><br /></em><br />So even if Satan has a hand in your darkness, he is not<br />free to do more than your loving Father permits, and God will turn it<br />for your good (Luke 22:31-32).<br /><em>32 but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." 33 Peter said to him, "Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death."<br /><br /></em>Second, the decisive blow against Satan’s destructive power was<br />delivered by the death of Jesus for our sins (Col. 2:15<br /><em>15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.<br /></em>Heb. 2:14).<br /><em>14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,<br /><br /></em>This means that Satan can harass us and even kill us, but he cannot destroy<br />us. Only unforgiven sin can damn the human soul. If Christ has covered<br />all our sin by his blood, and if God imputes to us the perfect righteousness<br />of Christ, then Satan has no grounds for any damning accusation,<br />and his case against us fails in the court of heaven. “Who shall bring any<br />charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?<br />Christ Jesus is the one who died” (Rom. 8:33-34).<br /><em>33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God,(D) who indeed is interceding for us.<br /><br /></em><br /><strong>THE DEVIL CANNOT ABIDE WITH THE LIGHT OF<br />CHERISHED TRUTH<br /><br /></strong>Third, deliverance from Satan’s oppressing, darkening, and deceiving<br />work in the life of the Christian comes most often by the power of truth,<br />and only rarely by exorcism. I have seen demon-possession and have<br />been a part of one very dramatic exorcism. I don’t believe the person was<br />a Christian till after the deliverance. The complete takeover of the personality<br />by a demon is not something the Holy Spirit would allow in the<br />Christ-indwelt heart. But that distinction may not matter much to the<br />Christian who is being attacked and harassed from without on every<br />side. The battle can be fierce. What is called for usually is the ministry<br />of 2 Timothy 2:24-26.<br /><em>24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, 25 correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, 26 and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.<br /><br /></em>The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone,<br />able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with<br />gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a<br />knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the<br />devil, after being captured by him to do his will.<br />Gentle, loving, teaching of the truth is the process in which God himself<br />grants repentance and a knowledge of the truth, which results in an<br />escape from the captivity of the devil. The devil cannot abide truth and<br />light. He is by nature a liar and deceiver. He thrives in darkness.<br />Therefore, if, by God’s grace we can bring the full force of truth to shine<br />in the believer’s darkness, the devil will not survive the light. Good, solid<br />Bible teaching is a crucial part of deliverance from the darkening power<br />of the devil.noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-75129977310835347782010-12-02T08:05:00.000-08:002010-12-02T09:51:34.762-08:00Last Mark of a Cult: Divide!<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzbc_BCE4k7qRzFwDH2sTzqRr1L-wwuONzemNKK-n_IK--TNb7XPbO6_hGJ1jTlyX5evmAgmHcIS0WR-n1ALw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwPVdvGpq06D_tXVui5Tl0nKbtWCQmWjyvASJ-WxPf_aXFpsc-4mzCfun_mVufFzfBvWa4gkbMt9vxUAieBVQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br />The last of this series is about how a group will divide themselves from all others and because of that will in the end separate themselves as God. Having the Last word. Now when reading this you may say that every church wants the last word. There is a healthily balance when to divide from other groups that set themselves as the "only" way instead of Jesus Christ alone as the only way.<br />Here is a message by A.W. Tozer to explain:<br /><br />Divisions Are Not Always Bad<br />by A.W. Tozer<br /><br />When to unite and when to divide, that is the question, and a right answer requires the wisdom of a Solomon.<br /><br />Some settle the problem by rule of thumb: All union is good and all division bad. It's that easy. But obviously this effortless way of dealing with the matter ignores the lessons of history and overlooks some of the deep spiritual laws by which men live.<br /><br />If good men were all for union and bad men for division, or vice versa, that would simplify things for us. Or if it could be shown that God always unites and the devil always divides it would be easy to find our way around in this confused and confusing world. But that is not how things are.<br /><br />To divide what should be divided and unite what should be united is the part of wisdom. Unions of dissimilar elements is never good even where it is possible, nor is the arbitrary division of elements that are alike; and this is as certainly true of things moral and religious as of things political or scientific.<br /><br />The First Divider<br /><br />The first divider was God who at the creation divided the light from the darkness. This division set the direction for all God's dealings in nature and in grace. Light and darkness are incompatible; to try to have both in the same place at once is to try the impossible and end by havng neither the one nor the other, but dimness rather, and obscurity.<br /><br />In the world of men there are at present scarcely any sharp outlines. The race is fallen. Sin has brought confusion. The wheat grows with the tares, the sheep and the goats coexist, the farms of the just and the unjust lie side by side in the landscape, the mission is next door to the saloon.<br /><br />But things will not always be so. The hour is coming when the sheep with be divided from the goats and the tares separated from the wheat. God will again divide the light from the darkness and all things will run to their kind. Tares will go into the fire with tares and wheat into the garner with wheat. The dimness will lift like a fog and all outlines will appear. Hell will be seen to be hell all the way through, and heaven revealed as the one home of all who bear the nature of the one God.<br /><br />For that time we with patience wait. In the meanwhile for each of us, and for the church wherever she appears in human society, the constantly recurring question must be: What shall we unite with and from what shall we separate? The question of coexistence does not enter here, but the question of union and fellowship does. The wheat grows in the same field with the tares, but shall the two cross-polinate? The sheep graze near the goats, but shall they seek to interbreed? The unjust and the just enjoy the same rain and sunshine, but shall they forget their deep moral differences and intermarry?<br /><br />To these questions the popular answer is yes. Union for union's sake, and men shall be brothers be for a' that. Unity is so devoutly to be desired that no price is too high to pay for it and nothing is important enough to keep us apart. Truth is slain to provide a feast to celebrate the marriage of heaven and hell, and all to support a concept of unity which has no basis in the Word of God.<br /><br />The Spirit-illuminated Church<br /><br />The Spirit-illuminated church will have none of this. In a fallen world like ours unity is no treasure to be purchased at the price of compromise. Loyalty to God, faithfulness and truth and the preservation of a good conscience are jewels more precious than gold of Ophir or diamonds from the mine. For these jewels men have suffered the loss of property, imprisonment and even death; for them, even in recent times, behind the various curtains, followers of Christ have paid the last full measure of devotion and quietly died, unknown to and unsung by the great world, but known to God and dear to His Father heart.<br /><br />In the day that shall declare the secrets of all souls these shall come forth to receive the deeds done in the body. Surely such as these are wiser philosophers than the religious camp followers of meaningless unity who have not the courage to stand against the vogues and who bleat for brotherhood only because it happens to be for the time popular.<br /><br />Wise Sheep<br /><br />"Divide and conquer" is the cynical slogan of Machiavellian political leaders, but Satan knows how to unite and conquer. To bring a nation to its knees the aspiring dictator must unite it. By repeated appeals to national pride or to the need to avenge some past or present wrong the demagogue succeeds in uniting the populace behind him. It is easy after that to take control of the military and to beat the legislature into submission. Then follows almost perfect unity indeed, but it is the unity of the stockyards and the concentration camp. We have seen this happen several times in this century, and the world will see it at least once more when the nations of the earth are united under Antichrist.<br /><br />When confused sheep start over a cliff the individual sheep can save himself only be separating from the flock. Perfect unity at such a time can only mean total destruction for all. The wise sheep to save his own hide disaffiliates.<br /><br />Power lies in the union of things similar and the division of things dissimilar. Maybe what we need in religious circles today is not more union but some wise and courageous division. Everyone desires peace but it could be that revival will follow the sword.<br /><br /><br /><br />This article is part of A.W. Tozer's book God Tells The Man Who Cares<br /><br />Aiden Wilson Tozer was born in Pennsylvania, in 1897. In 1919 he began pastoring the Alliance Church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. He also pastored churches in Morgantown, West Virginia; Toledo, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana; and in 1928 came to the Southside Alliance Church in Chicago. Here he ministered until November 1959, when he became pastor of the Avenue Road Church in Toronto. A sudden heart attack in 1963 ended his ministry.noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-50129003635180641012010-11-16T07:44:00.000-08:002010-11-16T09:36:54.446-08:00The 4th Mark of a CultThe 4th Mark of a Cult attacks Justification by Faith. Oh know, I said a big word! Their seems to be a movement in Churches to turn their backs on anything that sounds like doctrine and not relationship. Have you ever though that this is the reason why so many through the centuries have left the church to go to the cults is because of abandoning the study of theology. The organized study of God's Word. It amazes me that people go to school for so many careers, trades, high skilled jobs but when it comes to sit under a Pastor that shares Biblical Doctrine. They are tempted to stay home or think Theology is putting God in a "Box." But at the same time we don't even know we have already put him in a box. I am pleading with you to study the scriptures.<br />I am including John MacArthur's article on Justification by Faith <a href="http://http//www.gty.org/Resources/Print/articles/22">http://http//www.gty.org/Resources/Print/articles/22</a> Adding to the finished Work of Salvation is such a dangerous theme that has entered so many churches that they may not even know it. Please take time to read and view the videos.<br />For Those Who have Ears.<br /><br /><p><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxzvMEXNCXfwh4FoUi_LFDg_Pf3f1m6cCScsoVEaBG7z-0wPz80sG98GVFGBc2yVoliZdESXoP7gFpjFlR1gg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><br /><br /><p></p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dx_VjbhYlpSmfCL2MgeY9tTE3EOP64D6uppjqXZvm5Gm7qB8Il8s1Luj2XS-_Dkxi40OTEi9_tnJ9wgucx5aw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><p></p><strong>Justification by Faith by John MacArthur<br /></strong><br /><br />The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is, and has always been, the number one target of the enemy's attack. It provides the foundation of the bridge that reconciles God and man--without that key doctrine, Christianity falls. But the doctrine that the Reformers so painstakingly clarified, even spilled blood over, has become so muddled today that many Protestants barely recognize it. Sadly, there are some who react against a clear presentation of justification, calling it nothing more than useless hair-splitting. The superficial interests of the seeker church have caused doctrinal issues to be downplayed and deemphasized--what "unchurched" person wants to come hear about theology? Under the influence of pragmatism, the seeker-sensitive movement has traded God-honoring doctrinal clarity and biblical purity for entertainment and motivational speeches. Social and political concerns have brought evangelicals and Catholics together in recent years to unite against the forces of secularism. Under the influence of ecumenism, it's difficult for either group to remember what it was that divided them in the first place. The pragmatists and ecumenicists are aided in their forgetfulness by new theological movements that redefine justification in more Catholic terms. Under the influence of liberalism and postmodernism, proponents of the New Perspective on Paul, the Emergent Church, and others have so confused and redefined the doctrine of justification that it has become shrouded in darkness once again. The Christian church today is in danger of returning to the Dark Ages. The seeker movement has Christianity turning in its Bibles; the ecumenical movement urges Christians to use worldly means to accomplish temporal ends; and current theological movements look through the lens of philosophy--Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern subjectivism--rather than Scripture. The departure from sola scriptura has led to the departure from sola fide--justification by faith alone.<br /><br /><strong>Back to the Beginning </strong><br /><br /><br />In the 1500s a fastidious monk, who by his own testimony "hated God," was studying Paul's epistle to the Romans. He couldn't get past the first half of Romans 1:17: "[In the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith" (KJV). One simple, biblical truth changed that monk's life--and ignited the Protestant Reformation. It was the realization that God's righteousness could become the sinner's righteousness--and that could happen through the means of faith alone. Martin Luther found the truth in the same verse he had stumbled over, Romans 1:17: "Therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith" (KJV, emphasis added). Luther had always seen "the righteousness of God" as an attribute of the sovereign Lord by which He judged sinners--not an attribute sinners could ever possess. He described the breakthrough that put an end to the theological dark ages: I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith." Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the "justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. Justification by faith was the great truth that dawned on Luther and dramatically altered the church. Because Christians are justified by faith alone, their standing before God is not in any way related to personal merit. Good works and practical holiness do not provide the grounds for acceptance with God. God receives as righteous those who believe, not because of any good thing He sees in them--not even because of His own sanctifying work in their lives--but solely on the basis of Christ's righteousness, which is reckoned to their account. "To the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Romans 4:5). That is justification.<br /><br /><strong>Declared Righteous: What Actually Changes? </strong><br /><br />In its theological sense, justification is a forensic, or purely legal, term. It describes what God declares about the believer, not what He does to change the believer. In fact, justification effects no actual change whatsoever in the sinner's nature or character. Justification is a divine judicial edict. It changes our status only, but it carries ramifications that guarantee other changes will follow. Forensic decrees like this are fairly common in everyday life. When I was married, for example, Patricia and I stood before the minister (my father) and recited our vows. Near the end of the ceremony, my father declared, "By the authority vested in me by the state of California, I now pronounce you man and wife." Instantly we were legally husband and wife. Whereas seconds before we had been an engaged couple, now we were married. Nothing inside us actually changed when those words were spoken. But our status changed before God, the law, and our family and friends. The implications of that simple declaration have been lifelong and life-changing (for which I am grateful). But when my father spoke those words, it was a legal declaration only. Similarly, when a jury foreman reads the verdict, the defendant is no longer "the accused." Legally and officially he instantly becomes either guilty or innocent--depending on the verdict. Nothing in his actual nature changes, but if he is found not guilty he will walk out of court a free person in the eyes of the law, fully justified. In biblical terms, justification is a divine verdict of "not guilty--fully righteous." It is the reversal of God's attitude toward the sinner. Whereas He formerly condemned, He now vindicates. Although the sinner once lived under God's wrath, as a believer he or she is now under God's blessing. Justification is more than simple pardon; pardon alone would still leave the sinner without merit before God. So when God justifies He imputes divine righteousness to the sinner (Romans 4:22-25). Christ's own infinite merit thus becomes the ground on which the believer stands before God (Romans 5:19; 1 Corinthians 1:30; Philippians 3:9). So justification elevates the believer to a realm of full acceptance and divine privilege in Jesus Christ. Therefore, because of justification, believers not only are perfectly free from any charge of guilt (Romans 8:33) but also have the full merit of Christ reckoned to their personal account (Romans 5:17). Here are the forensic realities that flow out of justification: •We are adopted as sons and daughters (Romans 8:15) •We become fellow-heirs with Christ (v. 17) •We are united with Christ so that we become one with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17) •We are henceforth "in Christ" (Galatians 3:27) and He in us (Colossians 1:27)<br /><br /><strong>How Justification and Sanctification Differ </strong><br /><br />Justification is distinct from sanctification because in justification God does not make the sinner righteous; He declares that person righteous (Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16). Notice how justification and sanctification are distinct from one another: •Justification imputes Christ's righteousness to the sinner's account (Romans 4:11b); sanctification imparts righteousness to the sinner personally and practically (Romans 6:1-7; 8:11-14). •Justification takes place outside sinners and changes their standing (Romans 5:1-2, sanctification is internal and changes the believer's state (Romans 6:19). •Justification is an event, sanctification a process. Those two must be distinguished but can never be separated. God does not justify whom He does not sanctify, and He does not sanctify whom He does not justify. Both are essential elements of salvation. Why differentiate between them at all? If justification and sanctification are so closely related that you can't have one without the other, why bother to define them differently? That question was the central issue between Rome and the Reformers in the sixteenth century, and it remains the main front in renewed attacks against justification.<br /><br /><strong>Justification in Roman Catholic Doctrine </strong><br /><br />Roman Catholicism blends its doctrines of sanctification and justification. Catholic theology views justification as an infusion of grace that makes the sinner righteous. In Catholic theology, then, the ground of justification is something made good within the sinner--not the imputed righteousness of Christ. The Council of Trent, Rome's response to the Reformation, pronounced anathema on anyone who says "that the [sinner] is justified by faith alone--if this means that nothing else is required by way of cooperation in the acquisition of the grace of justification." The Catholic council ruled "Justification ... is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace, and of the gifts, whereby man of unjust becomes just." So Catholic theology confuses the concepts of justification and sanctification and substitutes the righteousness of the believer for the righteousness of Christ.<br /><br /><strong>What's the Big Deal?</strong><br /><br />The difference between Rome and the Reformers is no example of theological hair-splitting. The corruption of the doctrine of justification results in several other grievous theological errors. If sanctification is included in justification, the justification is a process, not an event. That makes justification progressive, not complete. Our standing before God is then based on subjective experience, not secured by an objective declaration. Justification can therefore be experienced and then lost. Assurance of salvation in this life becomes practically impossible because security can't be guaranteed. The ground of justification ultimately is the sinner's own continuing present virtue, not Christ's perfect righteousness and His atoning work. What's so important about the doctrine of justification by faith alone? <strong>It is the doctrine upon which the confessing church stands or falls. Without it there is no salvation, no sanctification, no glorification--nothing. You wouldn't know it to look at the state of Christianity today, but it really is that important. </strong>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1512264218468888503.post-12291070695422609892010-11-05T13:40:00.000-07:002010-11-05T16:30:01.621-07:00Marks of a Cult: The Nature of God and His Work of Redemption<p> </p><p>One of the Areas the Cults change from Biblical Christianity is the Nature of God and the Work of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Redemption</span> for Mankind.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw108llXZW8q_IjQGgZRGB8gahbX56bSOz83mZwK6VXLLwWjpE8XsxajV8rP3m_ukC_gj0KtYZ9IBadRAu1dg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p><p> </p><p><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxICpWmZrUsXKvUCxn-fVSv9nlWDj3ovG5tjgOxYxBCXpcjrahDd8im9GFwq_ZD1ztXQGs07m2PTADKvqUSNg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></p>noah316http://www.blogger.com/profile/17371782428245596433noreply@blogger.com0