Sunday, January 22, 2023

Follow God and not the Traditions

First of all, we (the born-again believers) are the church and wherever we meet is our choice.
Secondly which day we gather is also our choice. God never gave commands on "how to worship", "where to worship" or "how many should meet together except, two or three", nor which day to meet.
The problem is that the modern church has turned its traditions into rules that determine someone's spirituality.
Mark 7:13 "13 Thus you nullify the word of God by the tradition you have handed down. And you do so in many such matters.”
There is also no rule from God that we have to go to the same gathering every week. We can choose to hop around and be of service to people in other gatherings. There is no such thing as "membership" in a particular local church gathering.
My suggestion to believers who see these truths is to not allow anyone to "guilt" them into staying in the traditions of men that God never commanded.
I am excited every day about the way the Lord is bringing out these truths to the believers who are waiting expectantly for the Lord to return in the clouds for His Bride.
All the traditions and myths of men that transformed the church gatherings into social clubs are being exposed for what they are and many people are being set free from this bondage of traditions of men.
Mark 7:1-8 "7 The Pharisees and some of the scribes *gathered to Him after they came from Jerusalem, 2 and saw that some of His disciples were eating their bread with [a]unholy hands, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the other Jews do not eat unless they [b]carefully wash their hands, thereby holding firmly to the tradition of the elders; 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they [c]completely cleanse themselves; and there are many other things which they have received as traditions to firmly hold, such as the [d]washing of cups, pitchers, and copper pots.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes *asked Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk in accordance with the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with [e]unholy hands?” 6 But He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
‘"This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
7 And in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.”
Just because you are familiar and comfortable with the traditions of centuries does not mean you must remain faithful to them. It is God we are faithful to, He alone should dictate our comings and goings.
Hallelujah!!!!

Intellectualism is the Outcome of an Inner Heart of Pride

"Intellectualism" is the love of using high-minded words strung together, often unrelated to one another, but used in the same sentence, in order to impress others making them believe the "intelligent one" is "so very intelligent."
I assert that the more high-minded the verbiage the less wise. God's gospel and His Words in the Bible are not hard, they are simple, high-sounding words that almost no one else in our culture uses and have no value in leading a sinner to Christ or even edifying the searching Christian.
1 Corinthians 8:1 "Now concerning food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes one conceited, but love edifies people."
The words "puffs up" denote a person who is bloated, full of air with nothing inside like a balloon. Balloons can easily be popped by better rational arguments.
Foolish word-salad does not edify believers and rarely if ever brings anyone to Christ. A lot of modern leaders who are hell-bent on teaching predestination for salvation are of this sort. Those who choose to come to Christ in faith are predestined TO BE HOLY AND ASSIGNED TO PARTICULAR WORKS AS BELIEVERS. The word "predestination" does not apply to salvation it applies to someone being assigned a position or calling.
Christ was not a highly educated person, He was easy to understand and full of the wisdom of God the Father.
2 Timothy 2:15
"Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.z'
1 Corinthians 2:14
"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."
Modern definition of "Intellectuallism: the theory that knowledge is wholly or mainly derived from pure reason; rationalism"
Notice that God is not involved in God's wisdom. "Intellectualism" is the human thinking process to come up with the ideas of their own mind.
In the case of modern "Christian intellectualism" man is attempting to interpret God's word in a way that makes sense to them, it births many false doctrines and makes many people terribly proud of their findings based on human wisdom mixed with scripture. They dissect God's word, copying and pasting one small context from its position in Scripture into another part of the Bible to make it say what they want to believe.
Those who have been changed into a new creation by Christ do understand the simplicity of the Bible and its truths. What we struggle with we can ask the Holy Spirit within us and He will make it all clear, or He makes us satisfied with not understanding what He has not revealed yet.
James 1:4-6 "…4 Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. 6 But he must ask in faith, without doubting, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.…"
God never told us to seek out the most intelligent or educated person we know and ask them to explain the Bible. HE TOLD US TO GO TO JESUS CHRIST, His Holy Spirit Who lives in us.
In these last days of rebellion, there will be few people we can trust to "rightly divide" the Word. The only One we can trust is Christ and His Holy Spirit.
Be sure that you will cause people to deride and mock you for your decision to trust the Holy Spirit. They will say you are "using Him as a crutch" as though you should not, that will be the devil speaking through those who have never trusted the Holy Spirit and cannot understand what it is like to hear from Him.
They will say trusting the Holy Spirit is a "cop out", putting everything on God that we should figure out for ourselves. I have heard this myself, it made me laugh. After all, why on earth would I trust a man more than I trust Christ Who made the man?!!!
We are to question all things men say, and trust all things Christ says. His Word gives us all the principles we need to find the answers and what is not answered specifically we can pray for His will to develop the scenario to follow the way He wants us to go.
It really isn't hard to understand but it is hard to do if we do not trust in Christ.

Saturday, January 21, 2023

Traditions of Men that Lie

Most people who attend traditional buildings where Christians meet do not understand the concept of a Christian gathering.
Mark 7:13 "13 Thus you nullify the word of God by the tradition you have handed down. And you do so in many such matters.”
There is nowhere in the Scriptures that tells believers to send men to a formal school to be taught by teachers with degrees. What happens when the men depend on the teachers for their training is that they begin to trust in the teachers instead of the Holy Spirit. Another thing that happens is these schooled my men people become arrogant and think no one else is allowed to challenge their teaching unless they have also had that formal training.
The Holy Spirit is challenging many institutionally-educated men and those men are resisting even hostile toward the Holy Spirit.
John 16:13-14 "13 However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come. 14 He will glorify Me by taking from what is Mine and disclosing it to you.…"
Nowhere did God tell believers to build edifices, houses to worship in, the early believers met in homes or the already-built synagogues because that's where the Jews met. Their God was in the building but after Christ came their God dwelt in the born-again believer, there was no longer a need for a building. They used the already-built buildings but they didn't need them.
Many people who attended the church buildings over the centuries falsely believed that they could only pray if they were in that building, that God dwelt there, but He did not, He dwells in every born-again believer.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 "19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.…"
John 4:23-24 "…23 But a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such as these to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
Matthew 18:20 "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there..." "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."
Because man thought they could do better than God they established rules and standards that God never commanded. The men who thought they were smarter than God built huge buildings to gather in causing the attendees to think in terms of a concert or theater, leaving all the goings on to be done by the preacher up front, and now sadly the "worship team."
The people in the pews rely on the educated preacher to teach them instead of the Holy Spirit and they rely on the worship team to worship on their behalf.
There is no concept in the Bible of a "worship team", it is Christ in every believer who leads our worship, not a human being. In the modern church, the paid "educated by men" pastor is the focal point, not Christ. The worship team does the work of worshiping for the pew person. These things are antithetical to the Word of God.
The pew people remain in the pews almost in a lethargic state doing their day of obligation so they can go home feeling good about themselves but never having worshiped and nothing changes them. They come week after week going home to resume the same old them without the name of the Lord Jesus Christ on their lips or an open Bible anywhere in their home.
I have asked people; "how was worship today" and their response was to praise the music and the good message but they coulnt' remember what the message was. I suggest they couldn't remember because they were not listening to learn and it was not all that interesting to them.
I have had people tell me they couldn't remember the sermon or the songs but on another day they could recite to me the goings on in a movie they watched days ago.
The pew people have no witness in the community because they are no different from the unbelievers. They endorse many things God hates while hating many things God commanded. They have no love for the brethren as God commanded and no love for the Word of God.
Welcome to the end times God describes in His Word. Religious people sit in the pew every week with anger and hate in their heart toward anyone who will cause them to question what they want in their lives. Anyone who obediently calls out sin will be shunned by the pew people.
2 Timothy 4:2-4 "…2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears, they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. 4 So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.…"
Many people in the church buildings today worship a god of their own ideas, one who defies most of what Christ teaches as well as lacking love for the brethren.
1 John 3:14-18
"We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us."
No one who rages at a brother or sister for speaking the truth of God is a born-again believer."
Sadly we are living in a time when most who say they are "Christians" never speak the name of Jesus Christ and are even uncomfortable when they hear someone else speaking it. This is the clue that most attendees of these false churches are not born again, they are pretenders who have never known the Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew 7:21-23 "21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Most people who attend church gatherings today have never known Christ but like to think they are safe from problems and hell for merely attending.
My purpose in this article is not to hammer on pretenders but rather to challenge them to self-reflect about their motives for attending church and even become convicted over their sin of pretense, so they can become born again for real this time.
Mostly, I care how pretenders are smudging the name of Christ with their false gospel and their arrogant disrespect for His Word. They lead many non-believers to think Christians are no different from the world and often worse than the world. But the truth is that authentic believers are not like the world or worse than the world, they are dedicated to loving people to the point of death through their warnings and encouragement to turn to Christ.
Authentic believers love everyone, sometimes that love is a warning or a spanking but it is done to help not to harm and never out of self-focus but Christ-focus.

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Harshness is for the Stubborn Believer

I tend to be harsh at times, but only with those who say they are Christians but reject what God said in His Word.
Read the Bible for the truth, do not take on the ideas of the world to mix them with some Bible truth.
There are many believers who mix the world's wisdom with Bible truth and come up with no truth at all. Some are still learning and want to learn the truth.
However, most who have the wrong worldly thinking will not listen and become angry when corrected to think Biblically. These are the people who love the world more than Christ while claiming they are Christian.
2 Timothy 4:3 "For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires,"
We all need to have patience with new believers and believers who did not know something but love to learn. Those who claim to be Christians and will not listen to the Bible are the ones who need the strong rebuke, it will reveal their heart when they rage at you for correcting them.
Proverbs 27:5-7
"5 Better is open rebuke
Than love that is concealed.
6 Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.
7 A satisfied person despises honey,
But to a hungry person any bitter thing is sweet."
2 Timothy 4:2
"preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction."
Proverbs 17:10
"A rebuke goes deeper into one who has understanding
Than a hundred blows into a fool."
Do not be intimidated when you have to rebuke someone who says they are a Christian but rage at Biblical correction, ignore their rage and leave them to the Lord, but don't forget to pray for them.