Month: March 2018

WHEN CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Pt.2)

    WHEN CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Pt.2)

Humanistic Versions Of Church Christianity.

Beliefs adopted into churchianity.
1. IMAGE OF GOD in man that is said to have survived Adam’s fall from innocence into sinfulness.

THE TRUTH: it was irreparably marred and distorted when Adam and Eve rejected eternal life from God’s ‘Tree’ of salvation and chose paranormal insight from a taboo branch of knowledge.

2. CONSCIENCE: The surviving light of God’s guidance in human conscience is said to be preserved.

TRUTH: The light of the conscience was also ruined with Adam’s fall, leaving a universal shadow only of morality in the conscience.

    WHAT REMAINS IN THE HUMAN PERSONA OF ADAM’S RACE.

• GOD’S CURSE IN ORIGINAL SIN. As the blight of God’s curse upon Adam’s descendants passed on to the human race by heredity, it left a dysfunctional trilogy of man’s body (degenerating from the womb); his soul (dead in sins and trespasses); and his spirit (his wilful persona).
• HIS WORSHIP. The original worshipping spirit of Adam was tarnished at the fall and left only a spirit prone and curious to search the mysteries of unseen powers above. This worshipful bent of humanity to fathom the divine is of itself neither virtuous, nor spiritual.

• WORSHIP MISUNDERSTOOD . The natural human desire to worship something, someone, or somebody is cunningly exploited by one’s innate wilful ego for self delusion and self justification. It thrives on the religion of the prevailing culture into which it is born. It works contrary to the spirit of truth possessed by the redeemed and is resistant in its blindness to God and Christ in Scripture.

• RELIGION. Self righteous from early infancy, humans are universally prone to self delusion. Acquiring church doctrines tends to garrison the heart against the overtures of God’s Spirit through the Scriptures and Christ’s ambassadors on earth who possess that inner drive to preach the Word. Indulging in religion, ironically buttresses this resistance to Christ and His Word. I.e. knowledge itself, even of Christian religion, usually increases the blinding deceit of the desperately wicked heart, said the prophets of old.

• This natural propensity to worship the unseen divine power is in a Western culture is called ‘Christian’, but not in other cultures with given nomenclatures of atheism, spiritism, animism, Buddhism, etcetera.

• In a Christian culture the bent to worship expresses itself in church attendance, which again is mistaken for the Spirit of God drawing souls to worship God, who are then named ‘Christians’.

• Whether in a Christian culture, or another one, this worship usually leads to the deception of self-justification, based upon indoctrinated knowledge from preachers, who for the vast majority today, are themselves merely self justifying, moralists and possess no gospel of redeeming grace to give to their congregations, but merely the gospel of knowledge, albeit biblical knowledge. As such they are educators, but cannot lift a lost soul blighted with darkness into the glorious light of the gospel of grace. This is notwithstanding their modern altar-mania, decisionism, and self perfect methods of converting those who respond to their emotive appeals and accept an unconditional free after-life eternal insurance package.
• The natural worship of the first man in his innocence, did not lead him to accept God’s offer of eternal life through the Tree provided.

• Eve, the first woman in Eden, found it easier to worship paranormal phenomena and voices of the gods, despite her knowing that God’s words offered her eternal life from the eternal Tree of Life.

• Eve had the knowledge of and the memory of “hearing the Word,” but it did not draw her to God, without faith, a gift of God’s grace to the wholehearted seeker. She forfeited eternal life by choosing more religious knowledge and the lust to dabble in the paranormal. The average church adherent or member does the same and her male counterpart capitulates to the status quo just like Adam.

WHEN CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Pt.2)

When the Church is a Distracter. (Pt.1)

The Church.
Of today’s 2,800 churches and sects that comprise Christendom many call their own denomination: the ‘True Church’, or the ‘Correct ‘Church’.

Nevertheless, all but a very tiny minority, in Christendom’s 2.5 billion souls, have any idea of biblical regeneration. These, the Bible calls: the remnant. At best the rest merely use biblical vocabulary, clichés, and hackneyed phrases to justify their own doctrines of churchianity.

The word church, comes not from the original Greek manuscripts of the holy Scriptures, but from Constantine’s Latin term (‘ecclesia’) for the first official church of the 4th century, when the new Roman emperor stopped the Empire’s 300 years of incessant persecution of Christians.

Constantine decided to exploit the new religion of the East and use it to gain back control of an empire split between east and west in a long running civil war.

Thus he arranged for an Act of Toleration, and then started his ruthless militant program of nationalizing a beleaguered Christian minority into the Roman religion. He attempted thereby to end the civil war and join the factions into one. He arranged for the Bible to be rewritten into Latin, adding his seven new sacraments into the translation.

The Greek word ‘ekklesia’ (called out to assemble) he translated into ‘ecclesia’, meaning something else completely. The first English New Testament printed omitted the word ‘church’, as did five other modern translations in print.

At the dawn of the 16th C. Englishman William Tyndale dared to translate the Greek original New Testament manuscripts which had come to Europe after the forced exodus of scholars from Constantinople in 1400.

The Vulgate Bible had been the legacy (via Jerome) of Constantine’s 4th century Old Latin New Testament since his fifty new Latin Bibles, were scribed for the inauguration of the empire’s Roman (Catholic) Church around 411 AD.

Therefore, with the combined release of precious koine Greek manuscripts from the east; Gutenberg’s printing press; the restoration and recovery of the original Greek text by Erasmus; and Martin Luther’s Puritan Reformation (1517) the glorious light of the Gospel message began to shine once again in darkened Europe.

So the humanist scholar Erasmus, and the French scholarly publisher Stephanus (Robert Etienne) enabled the early Puritan translators in Switzerland, Germany, France and Britain to accurately publish the Greek text into English, French, and German, without the Church of Rome’s inserts in the Latin Vulgate.

William Tyndale, who printed the first English New Testament in 1526 was martyred at the stake by the infuriated Roman Catholic Church in Europe. They burnt his first edition, and imprisoned and tortured anyone who dared to read or own it. His crime: he had omitted the word church and its 4th C sacraments of Constantine. He was not the only Puritan scholar to be hounded into exile, imprisoned and martyred for promoting the original copy of the New Testament in their native tongue.

NEXT POST. (Pt.2)

When the Church is a Distracter. (Pt.1)

WHEN THE CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Intro’.)

WHEN THE CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER.
Introduction
The real church on earth is the invisible body of regenerated believers, called saints, in the New Testament. There are hundreds of denominations who say they are the unique church, or that they alone have the real Christian congregants. The common disease of preachers is sectarianism: not discerning that invisible body that transcends all artificial denominational boundaries.

The falling-away of these last days (Matt.24) has caused multitudinous sheep and shepherds to adopt the worldly trend of goat-filled churches and become sectarian separatists since the 19th C.

These overemphasize their own human visible church and obscure the invisible body of Christ on earth, the sheep of the true flock. Thus they impoverish their walk with the Lord. (Romans.12;; 1st Corinthians 12). Consequently they become a liability to the kingdom, notwithstanding their recruitment of followers. There is no doubt that many have responded to their church and become followers of Christ. But following a doctrine or a method to gain eternal life falls far short of regeneration by faith through grace.

Church expansion under the guise of evangelism requires little more than consistent advertising, and visiting the homes of the community. The birth of new babes in Christ is a different matter and can only take place after travail in the labour ward where brethren meet to wait on God for the lost as the Spirit directs. This fell out of fashion well over a hundred years ago. Merely teaching another soul how to wear a fleece is not the second birth through faith by grace.

END OF INTRODUCTION.
Next post: Part 1 of When the Church is a Distracter.

WHEN THE CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Intro’.)

BIBLICAL FAITH & REPENTANCE LOST SINCE 19th C.

BIBLICAL REPENTANCE & FAITH LOST IN THE 19th C.
Hebrews 6:1b. “not laying again the foundation of repentance”
“not laying again the foundation of…faith”.
PLAGUE OF AMERICAN NEW ENGLAND THEOLOGY’S LEGACY.
1) The 19th C emergence of new genre evangelism and its sensational new type of preacher quickly introduced a new type of repentance which was said to be merely a ‘change of mind’.

a. It bypassed biblical sorrowful anguish brought by the Spirit through the prayers of the saints
b. It made the godly sorrow Paul wrote of in 2 Corinthians 7 something quickly attained in a moment
c. It conveniently suited the automated mass conversions of Billy Sunday and D. L. Moody
d. Though the preaching took Bible texts it added the psychology of New England’s easy-religion
e. It inadvertently expounded the ‘easy-faith’ concepts of William James, the Father of U.S. Psychology.
f. It violated Paul’s warning, not to lay again an alternative foundation to repentance or faith.
g. However, it appealed to the masses and the media and was mislabelled ‘revival’.
h. It overlooked the difference between awakening and conversion presuming both were the same.
i. The disciples were first awakened by the call to ‘follow,’ but only converted when Jesus resurrected.
j. In the preceding 40 months Jesus said they had little or no faith and did not understand his gospel.
k. Though Jesus gave them his powerful name to use in healing of others they remained sceptics.
l. As awakened and zealous followers who had the Spirit with them they needed the Spirit within them.
m. Like the Exodus Jews who followed the presence of God with them they had no faith as sceptics.
n. Only Joshua and Caleb of 600 thousand soldiers had a different spirit: God’s Holy Spirit.
o. Repentance is not just a change of mind but a gift to wholehearted, earnest seekers like Joshua
p. St. John 20 and Luke 24 tells how the risen Christ turned sorrow into godly repentance and faith
q. The Eleven then had more than ideology, knowledge, or the mere ‘willing suspension of disbelief’.

q. i. They were not told how to say a prayer
q. ii. They were not told how to believe
q. iii. They were not told ‘how to be sure they knew they were on their way to heaven’.
q. iv. As followers, not yet Christians, they had learned that their own faith and willpower had failed.
q. v. They had learned that their own knowledge of the Scriptures had failed
q. vi. They had learned that their own zealous profession of lips had failed
q. vii. They had learned that their own faith and willpower had failed
q. viii. They had learned that their own knowledge and ‘change of mind’ was a fickle failure.
q. ix. They had learned that they did not know how to pray without a different spirit.
q. x. They had learned that their own loyalty was turned to cowardice and denial in a moment.

DOWN THROUGH CHURCH HISTORY until 19th C masquerade by new easy-automatic evangelism, counsellors of seeking respondents always made room for the Spirit to do his peculiar work of conversion, or regeneration, in the lives of seekers. This was so until the wane of the 2nd Great Awakening on both sides of the Atlantic, which had started in 1825 and had been ushered in by a spreading spirit of prayer.

Counselling assurance was not given because a sinner’s prayer was offered. The evangelist/preacher/soul-winner waited for the Lord Jesus to work and convert sorrow into repentance; despair into hope; doubt into faith; and self-condemnation into joyful assurance. They knew that the Lord needed no help to do His peculiar work of grace and regardless of church denomination the inevitable outcome was the result.

Where there is a spirit of prayer and the seeker is wholehearted the inevitable outcomes always occur. They are described in Luke 24; John 20; Acts, and the New Testament Epistles. Awakening is the beginning of the journey, not the end, which only occurs with the illuminating of the awakened into newness of life.

This cannot be simulated by mechanical ideology and persuasive approaches of psychology in which men and women take it upon themselves to convert souls by the methods of easy-religion that has dominated evangelism for over a hundred and fifty years.

Even indoctrinating select verses of Scripture to justify this simulated evangelism produces, for the most part, false converts who are both inured against true evangelism and become its resisting until death, only to discover that they are part of the five foolish virgins whose borrowed oil had been inadequate for meeting the Bridegroom (Christ). When finally they had realized their mistake and were willing to pay the price for their own oil it was too late and they were shut out of the kingdom.

SCRIPTURE: What Jesus said to those followers who presumed that God’s presence with them was enough for eternal life.
• Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. 2 And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: 4 But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. 5 While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. 6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. 7 Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. 9 But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. 10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. 11 Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us. 12 But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
(Matthew 25: 1-12)

• When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.
Luke 13:25-27

• Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
(Matthew 7:22-24)

Scvriptures quoted are from King James Version which is Public domain. (Not quoted from the Authorised KJB)
https://www.biblegateway.com/

Biblical knowledge cannot give eternal life anymore than affirmation, lip confession, and the water of the baptism.

CONCLUSION.
“One thing we have learned from history is that we do not learn from history”. Most of the best church members are taught to choose only Scriptures which agree with the preacher’s belief. By pragmatism one scripture is said to supersede another scripture. This is not willing amnesia but bibliolatrous twisting of whatever scripture they want to believe that suits their own false version of Christianity. This is “Ichabod” or the curse of apostasy, making the status quo of Christendom confident of their insight when in fact they are blind and deaf to God’s entreaties from the whole of the Scriptures No part of the New Testament supersedes another part, nor do they contradict one the other if contextual place, time, audience, speaker, background and antinomy is duly considered. Popular literalistic bibliolatry of the right wing moral majority and the hundreds upon hundreds of fringe sects which follow suit conveniently block their ears to the whole counsel of God in the New Testament and exploit that which suits them in their reactionary pragmatic wresting of Scripture to their own destruction.

Popular mass easy-evangelism of the globe for two hundred years has smoothed the dying pillow of the lost with its false hopes, condemned by Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Jesus:-

Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness. Luke 11:35

BIBLICAL FAITH & REPENTANCE LOST SINCE 19th C.