Editorials 2-6-12
Serving, separated, sanctified, for Jesus' sake!
The sham condition in religion in Jesus’ day had to be exposed and destroyed before Christianity could be born. It again will have to be exposed and destroyed if Christianity is to be reborn in this generation.
All the Word of God is Profitable.
There are preachers who are hobbyists, preachers who have gone off at a tangent, who preach “believe,” but do not preach “repent.” They preach only one side of the truth. They preach a mutilated Bible, a one-sided gospel, an emasculated message. The whole Bible should be preached and taught. ---Shelton Smith
Every Christian is commissioned by Jesus Himself as a soul winner. But few Christians really believe that and are content to let the church do the evangelizing while they sit home all day. This is where we begin revival by bringing our own selves in true humility before God.
Some go to church just for the walk,
So go to laugh and talk,
Some go the time to spend,
Some go to meet a friend,
Some for speculation,
Some go for observation,
Some go for sins to cover,
Some go to meet a lover,
Some go to doze and nod,
-----
A few go to worship God. Even fewer go to meet the risen Savior, for whose very purpose the church was planted, watered, blessed, loved, pastured, sent, put to every good work, and made ready for His coming.
I have no doubt that our nation is becoming gravely addicted to their electronics. My statement is being more and more verified as fairly reputable and well-documented studies conclude this to be so. Beyond the potential for a national “mental” health nightmare, I have to ask the most obvious question -- how is anything getting done in America if everyone is “wired” around the clock? I retired in 1997 from the federal government and already people were becoming habitually occupied by computer games, like solitaire. And frankly, hardly anyone would openly admit that anything was wrong even though they consumed a couple or more hours every day. Even now, there is little concern even though teenagers text 80 messages a day. I’m absolutely positive that I didn’t make a total of 80 telephone calls in my entire span of teenage years.
A young man from Bible college spent a summer at my house without charge. Ostensibly he was “interning” at the church, but in reality he was acting like a jerk. Everything about that young man was counterfeit, including his lack of manners, his thanklessness, his worldliness, and his shifting of responsibility. He was taught that love is salvation, the church was preeminent, moral respectability is Bible wisdom, piety is the Holy Spirit, and preaching is for anyone who is asked to do it or wants to show off. He was the incarnation of every Christian who refuses to learn the Bible, lives outside of Christ‘s imperatives for the Christian life, and by his hypocrisy makes other bad Christians. I greatly regret that I was practically dishonest in trying to make his stay with me seem tolerable, but I was naïve and didn‘t want to rock the boat. I was disgusted. That the church would train a young man in such foolishness and teach such anti-Christian values staggers the imagination. A preacher preaching a half-truth will bring these kind of burdens upon society.
One of the most serious deterrents to Biblical Christianity today is that people do not choose to read the Bible, preferring to get their information from secondary sources: movies, books, internet, television, music, third parties, and so forth and so on. Moses was commanded to write down the commandments, not draw them in pictures. It is the Word of God, not the vision of God. It is designed to be read objectively. Visual imagery was at the heart of pagan worship done by people whose lives were centered around idols (visual images) and who have lived in various manifestations down through the centuries almost from the Creation. (adapted, The Berean Call)
“You see, many people would be glad to have you be a Christian and be moral and honest, but they will not want you to be an out-and-out Christian, a fanatical Christian, a radical Christian. But what the world does not want you to be, Jesus Christ demands that you be.” “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple,” Jesus said at Luke 14:33. (John R. Rice)
I have learned in life that foolish men and women who are always asserting their compassion are too far up on the evolutionary scale to receive it back. God forbid they be seen openly receiving the compassion of lesser folk. What is the grace of God but His compassion given us who are wholly undeserving of the blood and body of our Lord Jesus, who suffered, bled, and died on a horrific cross that we His poor lost sheep would be found -- and saved to the uttermost? The cross is beneath most men, especially for those who always have their sniffer out to track down unloving scum.
To hear some people glorify their church, you would think there was no Jesus, no judgment, no apostasy, no hardness, no perilous times, no Satan, no suffering, no tearing down of the grand old faith, grand old Book, and grand old Gospel. That big cheese fundamentalist up north has declared ecumenism the sacrosanct foundation for his version of the new cart -- that gospel is church full and Christ less.
Keep a blood-stained banner waving over your testimony as a vivid reminder to the world that Jesus is coming back to restore equity upon the earth, to separate the goats and the sheep, and to stand before the nations, their King of kings and Lord of lords.
Stop the Bloodshed!
Abortion is not a political issue. Abortion is a criminal issue. Good people, you need to quit dilly-dallying with partisan politics and religious issues, stand up and demand that we not murder our babies. This idea of waiting every four years to agree to a usually anemic strategy to end abortion is stupid. Every day we should cry out to God, “Stop the murder!,” and to our society, “Stop the murder!” And tell your preacher to stop all the back scratching and start putting the fear of God before the eyes of this deprave society who murders its young and its old, and tries to justify the murders of those in between. Killing people is wicked and we have no options but to stand up and be counted, if for no reason than they will kill you legally if they can find an expedient reason (for some of us only because we do the will of God).
"Wherefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD: …And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock …” (Ezekiel 16:35,38) I don’t think the genuine Christian community has come to grips with the awful problem it faces. “Christianity” as a phenomenon (not as the traditional faith) has degenerated into an immensely popular religion of “harlotry” for a very simple reason -- it has rejected the Word of God. It has unshackled itself from its spiritual oxygen. It not only has found a running forum for its own fleshly sentimentality, but the world “digs” it, too. Compassion sells well from the Devil‘s fruit stand, as does disdain for the true things and people of God. When you can no longer tell Christianity from the world, when compassionate wolves and undisturbed sheep are lying down together in the bingo parlor, each scratching the other’s back, you have built the first float for the Antichrist’s inaugural parade.
Pigging Out Over the Cell Phone.
The young lady was talking on her cell phone when I entered the restaurant as I sat a couple of tables down. I glanced from time to time and noted that she talked on that phone uninterruptedly the whole time I was there, and presumably before and after. She did not stop for any apparent amount of time including consuming her entire meal with the phone conversation intact. Putting this lady aside momentarily, just who is talking to this woman with one full mouth after another? What kept them from getting sick? Sorry, but our young people today are addicted to their electronics.
Man Down vs. Man Overboard.
A man walking along the deck of the ship might fall. His fall might hurt him, but it would not be the same as falling off the ship. The believer, when he sins, has “fallen on the deck” but he certainly has not gone overboard. When a man is born again, he cannot be unborn. He may get out of fellowship, but he cannot get out of relationship. God has made provision for restoring him to fellowship. Christ will see to it that no wave -- death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth -- shall ever sweep us off the Deck. --- Donald Grey Barnhouse
We often hear of ancient dynasties, but what are they when compared with the Lord? Are they not as the bubble on the breaking wave, born an instant ago and gone as soon as seen? The ungodly are all fame and fury, noise and bluster during their little hour, and then the tide turns or the storm is hushed, and we hear no more of them; while the kingdom of the Eternal abides in the grandeur of its power. ---Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Song of the Ancient Retiree
[I went Medicare this year.]
Perched in my shorts on the edge of my bed,
With a shoe in my hand and my teeth in a cup,
I’m looking for clues, so I don’t have to ask:
Am I going to bed now or just getting up?
Double Minded Men.
When Robert Fulton was hard at work on his steamboat, folks on the banks mocked as if to say he would never get it to go. As he finally rolled up the Hudson river, folks on the banks mocked as if to say he’d never get it to stop. Human beings have a critical spirit that can only be understood by the word jealousy. And we all have it, some much more than others. It is the principal reason so many do not want to be judged. Men will not come out of darkness into light because their evil thoughts and deeds will become revealed.
A Double Minded Man is Unstable in All His Ways.
Neo-evangelical is a lazy man’s religion. It’s like a flyswatter held from the wrong end. (James 1:8) They are double-minded: on the one hand they want everyone to watch them and be so impressed, so that they too will want to be “saved.” But on the other hand they want complete freedom under grace to do as they well please without answering to anyone. We have to wonder about their fruit, by which we should know them.
Carl McIntire used to say, “Beloved, we have to stop this foolishness!” encouraging his followers to stand up to the apostasy of our times. (He often referred to apostasy as filthiness.) Maybe its time to move upon this enemy with all we have - and rebuke them with all authority, rebuke them sharply that they may be sound of faith.
In Judges 2:1-5, God rebuked His people for not driving out the idolatrous nations of the land that He gave them; instead they joined these evil workers in their idolatry. God told them that as a result, He would not Himself drive them out, they would be a perpetual thorn in the Israelite’s side (perhaps as “tares among the wheat“ to be sorted out in the harvest). I sense that God has registered the same punishment for this generation because we have grown soft and cowardly toward the apostasy and grievous sin of our day. We have been silenced by a false and certainly foolish religion of tolerance, inoffensiveness, correct behavior, and kindness or else !!
So What DO We Believe?
1. Believe on Jesus Christ.
John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
2. Believe That Your Sins Are Paid For.
1 John 2:25. Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
3. Believe That Jesus Took Your Place on the Cross.
1 John 4:10. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
4. Believe That The Cross is a Finished Work.
Colossians 1:20. And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.
5. Believe There is Power in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
6. Believe Christ Reunited Us With Our Heavenly Father.
Ephesians 1;16. And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
7. Believe That God Has Saved You Forever.
John 10:27. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: [28] And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
8. Believe That We Can Live the Christian Life.
Luke 9:23. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
9. Believe His Promises.
John 14:1-4. Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. 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 unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.