Author: Bible Simply

PROFILE of BIBLE SIMPLY SIMPLE KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING AND KNOWING YOUR BIBLE’S CONTENTS HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE. As we are educated to be doubters and skeptics, one way or another, you need to employ the willing suspension of disbelief at the very start and if you have not believed the following tenets enumerated below you must pretend they are true while reading. 1. Read it as if it is the infallible Word of God. 2. Remember in the first chapter of the first of sixty-six books: Genesis, these words appear: a. “God said-God made-God called” i. God said what you’re reading ii. God made the patriarchs, prophets & apostles write them. iii. God called ordinary men to write His Words. Do not treat them as in any other book. 3. Do not analyze it by your own intellect for logic or truthfulness; 4. Do not judge it by your powers of mental reason or of popular philosophy; 5. Read it as God’s Word demonstrating the waywardness of rebellious human nature cursed by sin; 6. Read it noticing the rare men or women that wholeheartedly seek God sincerely without ulterior motive; 7. Read it noticing the futile attempts of men to keep the moral law, vainly worshipping with lip service; 8. Read it and continue the habit even when you do not understand it for God is secretly at work because the Bible says:-: a. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God: i. Romans 10: 17. b. The pre-eternal Christ’s name is the Word, in the triune godhead of the Father, the Word & Spirit: i. 1st John 5:7; 1st John 1:1; John’s Gospel 1:1. 9. Read it without the help of church or clergy until there arises within your heart a pang of hunger to wholeheartedly be a daily Bible reader. 10. Read it until God’s grace enlightens the eyes of your understanding to fathom Christ’s message to you in both the Old and New Testaments (excepting the uninspired Apocrypha in some Bibles) 11. Read it noticing the principles of the wise reader found in the following Bible references:- a. Proverbs 3:5-6; 1st Corinthians 2:14; 2nd Timothy 3:16; Romans 1:17; John’s Gospel 1:17. 12. Keep in mind that the minute your mind asserts superior wisdom over your Bible reading you are a fool. a. Romans 1:22. 13. The reason the mind blindly argues against the credibility of Scripture that the problem is from the heart: a. Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? PROFILE John David’s Bible Simply is a Know Your Bible program. Bible Simply has been formed to reach the ‘household of faith’ and the god-fearing pilgrims struggling to understand the Bible. Bible Simply would encourage spasmodic readers to become daily Bible readers and regular readers to become more acquainted with the Old and New Testaments. For a free Bible Study or New Testament sample: c/- biblesimply@gmail.com or Please write to- Bible Simply PO Box 366603, Bonita Springs FL 34136. Bible Simply is neither church-based nor sectarian in approach. It does not solicit church attendance or use follow-up methods unless requested. Bible Simply holds to the tenets of our Puritan forefathers and their early English Bible translations based on the Greek Text of Erasmus, not the unreliable 19th C Greek New Testament of Westcott & Hort upon which most modern translations of the Bible are based. MOTTO: “Faith alone- by grace alone- through Scripture alone.” ‘The just shall live by faith,’ not of themselves but of grace. http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/how-to-start-reading-your-bible/

OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (Pt.3)

Since the Reformation, until the mid 19th C the weekly intercessory gathering of the saints was an essential meeting for the whole congregation. From time immemorial this was the secret of survival for the New Testament church at Jerusalem and Antioch when it was still a persecuted and vilified minority.

Today, with very few exceptions, free prayer participation of spoken intercession is a forgotten public meeting. It was once a staple part of the church programme. It has been abandoned as too archaic and old-fashioned in the modern 21st-century hustle, and bustle addicted to restless compulsive busyness.

The unions secured the right of the worker to 8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, and 8 hours leisure. Today’s frenzy of movement, predicted by the ancient prophets, seems to allow time for busy social media, electronic interactive screen communication and entertainment for leisure, leaving little or no time for private devotion to God in the Scriptures and prayer. Much is often determined by their master, the smartphone allowing them any quietude. Heaven forbid that they dare silence or switch it off! Such action would be anathema to their so-called friends sending the latest interactive hearsay rumours.

Truthfully, on average the godfearing and the upright professors of moral rectitude and religion could not possibly stop still in prolonged silence without image, icon or decibel to preoccupy their minds. Why? Because they do not want to be discomforted facing their own naked soul unmasked of its pretence, and spurious profession of walking with the Intercessor: the Saviour.

Prayer, the clergy says, in this ‘modern-day’, can be automated and privatised by circulating lists of their people’s needs to the faithful for their petitions, in private prayer via prayer-chains. Whether by Bible Study hand-outs, email, smartphone, or social media, they are in reality, obfuscating as clergy and elders as they silently proclaim: “Why pray, when the church can SAY it some other way? Viz: said prayers, read prayers, and dead prayers?

When the human spirit prevails in an assembly the spirit of prayer is unwelcome. Preachers and leaders bypass it altogether and relegate public assembly prayer to individual home activity. When this happens hot coals cool; luke-warm embers become cold; broken reeds become more bowed; saints forget how to pray and when they try they are lost for words the vapour of smoking flax ascends. They with the household of faith need the old-time fire of free spontaneous vocal saints’ praying in the midst of the assembly. Without it they are separated from the Spirit’s dynamic of fire that God has deigned to ignite only when saints pour out their hearts aloud to Him. In a day of false-fire, it must be understood that prayer is in the language of the people, not the indulgence in eccentricity via popular hypnotic entrancing gibberish. The latter can be made unwelcome by precluding outsider participation.

The modern church focuses only on public praise in worship of song and overlooks the other. No one denies that God has chosen the ‘foolishness of preaching’ to save, keep, and revive, but only free public prayer generates the fire of the spirit of prayer in the heart of the newborn lamb. Down through the ages until the mid-19thC. our godly forefathers took this as incontrovertible. This was so in the New Testament church at Jerusalem and later at Antioch.

“And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:31)

“Gird yourselves, and you priests lament,: you ministers of the altar howl: come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God…Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord.” (Joel 2:13-14)

Credits: King James Version-(Public Domain);
Article: John David

OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (Pt.3)

UNDERSTANDING THE VIRGIN MARY’S HERITAGE

UNDERSTANDING MARY & JOSEPH’S HERITAGE BY ANCESTRY.
MATTHEW 1 (see also Luke 3: 23-38)
Contrary to Rome’s tradition, the genealogy of Mary is given in Matthew 1:1-17. Although it is an ascending lineage from Abraham’s wife Sarah, only three of the Virgin Mary’s matriarchs are familiar to the student and a number are only implied: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachael, and Bathsheba. Thus at first reading, it would seem to be a patriarchal list, because it was written in a strongly patriarchal culture. The three familiar ancestors listed are Tamar, Rachab, and Ruth, as Mary’s matriarchal antecedents. Heli was the father of Mary, but Jacob the father of Joseph with many illustrious patriarchs well known the Bible student.

Luke the physician, the writer of the gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles, gave a patriarchal descending list of forbears of Joseph. He was the Lord’s stepfather because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Joseph’s wife, Mary. While she was not sinless, as Rome claims, she had not been impregnated with man’s inherent accursed seed (via Adam’s fall) that Joseph would have given her.

Though Joseph’s genealogy is remarkable, (Luke 3:23-38) his ancestry the best of the patriarchs, princes, and kings; God’s curse was nonetheless present in his seed that generated Jesus’ brothers. Only the Holy Spirit of the Heavenly Father could plant a sinless seed within Mary’s womb that would be “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners”.

The reader must realize that both parents possessed the heritage within the tribe of Judah. Indeed, Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.

The promise made to King David and Solomon, (reiterated time again by the prophets) was that the coming Saviour and High Priest of elect believers, would come from the tribe of Judah to lead another priesthood in his new kingdom of heaven. He would be a descendant of David whose forefathers were shown to be from Judah, the son of Jacob (Israel), and grandson of Abraham ‘the father of all believers’. Remember that Abram met Melchizedek and blessed him with the grace of faith, among other gifts. (Genesis 14) A few verses later in Genesis 15 Abram is at last able to believe the impossible promises he had previously disbelieved and therewith was justified by faith and became the ‘father of all believers’.

Both Matthew’s and Luke’s list of lineal ancestry, are meant to confirm Jesus’ maternal and neo-paternal heritage as the Son of David, the Son of Man, and the Son of God. Yet paradoxically, Jesus Christ our Lord (whose name, before his incarnation, was The Word of God) had no beginning and has no end, just like Melchizedek. Thus the Lord Jesus is the Christ, forever the High Priest, after the order of Melchizedek.
References:
Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 7; 1 John 5:7; Revelation 19:13;

Detailed Study: Compare of Hebrews 7 in the following verses:
Hebrews 7:1-3; 7:12-15; 7:17; 7:21; & 7: 21-24.

Scriptures read and referenced are from the King James Version (Public Domain) which was the fifth and last reprint of the first English New Testament (Tyndale 1526). The Reformers published the first New Testaments from the Koine Greek (in Erasmus’New Testament 1516) and translated into European languages. The Greek manuscripts of the NT from Constantinople had only arrived in Europe some fifty years earlier after Islam laid siege to Constantinople.

Article by John David.

UNDERSTANDING THE VIRGIN MARY’S HERITAGE

UNDERSTANDING DIFFICULT PASSAGES OF THE BIBLE.
Romans 7:5-14. The essence of vss: 5-14 by John David using the King James Version (Public Domain).
But when we were in the motions of sin it did work in our members, but now we are delivered from them wherein we were held that we should serve in newness of spirit.
But sin had wrought in me all manner of lust. In the oldness of the letter of the Law I knew sin by its commands which condemned me.
Before I knew the Law I was unaware of sin within me. But when I learned of the Law’s commands I was condemned to death. Its commandments wrought in me self condemnation and guilt. It was deadly to my spirit, crippling me.
The good commandments unto life I found to be deadening, though they are holy, just and good. Was the Law killing me? God forbid! It exposed my sin consciously making me captive of my carnal state.

PRAYERLESSNESS OF OUR CHURCHES. (1)
by John David
Without the spirit of prayer present in a congregation converts will be made by men, but not by God. They will be taught doctrine, creed, and biblical history, confessions of faith, and biblical verse memorization, but lack the inner Teacher in the absence of the spirit of prayer.

Charles Finney of the Second Great Awakening and George Whitefield of the First Great Awakening were totally dependent upon the spirit of prayer. Finney would only preach in a church where it was manifest in at least one or two saints. The whole secret of his ministry was the spirit of prayer. He personally knew the secret of prayer described in Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 10. He knew what it was to ‘stand in the gap’, to plead, reason, and remonstrate with his heavenly Father.

This was none other than the secret of Moses, Daniel, and Elijah. Albeit, for an assembly of the saints, warm coals can only retain their fire when with other warm coals which then may become hot if they pray audibly to their Father together. This is the secret of the statement: “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. Otherwise, the church is constantly on the defensive against a wily foe who can outwit it.

When saints pray audibly and unashamedly in Christ’s name the smoking flax will flare into flame again and the bruised and broken reeds will begin to revive. To underestimate the spoken prayers of the saints is folly indeed. The invisible cycle of this process is described in 2 Corinthians 10.

Jesus said that where two or three gather together in prayer there he will be in the midst. This is commonly misunderstood as happening in worship. It takes praying elders and deacons audibly praying together beforehand if Jesus is to be in the midst of that worship. No it is not a one man show or one minister’s responsibility.

Public unashamed audible prayer of the brethren, supported by the silent intercession of the sisters will bring a new dynamic. “Prayer changes things,” said Praying Hyde of India. “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of,” said Alfred Tennyson.

If allowed to be a stable part of the assembly’s weekly program inevitably the spirit of prayer will eventually be manifest impassioning and emboldening saints’ supplications with fervency. Cold hearts will become strangely warmed in the presence of interceding saints.

Without opportunity for the spirit of prayer no matter how pure an assembly’s doctrine; no matter how upright its preacher or elders; no matter how pious its members- it is nevertheless dying by attrition and all the evangelistic outreach and visitation efforts in the world will not keep the status quo from shrinking. This is why churches all over the west on both sides of the Atlantic finally shut their doors.

(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 & 3.)

PRAYERLESSNESS OF OUR CHURCHES. (1)
Without the spirit of prayer present in a congregation converts will be made by men, but not by God. They will be taught doctrine, creed, and biblical history, confessions of faith, and biblical verse memorization, but lack the inner Teacher in the absence of the spirit of prayer.

Without an opportunity for the spirit of prayer no matter how pure an assembly’s doctrine; no matter how upright its preacher or elders; no matter how pious its members- it is nevertheless dying by attrition and all the evangelistic outreach and visitation efforts in the world will not keep the status quo from shrinking. This is why churches all over the west on both sides of the Atlantic finally shut their doors.
Article by John David
Quoted Scriptures from the KJV Bible (King James Version- Public Domain.)

(TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 & 3.)

OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (2)

OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (2)
by John David.
Without the spirit of prayer the pulpit may have the right jargon, fervency, and even ebullient oratory but its clichés and hackneyed phrases become worn. Above all the messages lack the energy and presence of Christ.

Even amid maximum human output, it is to no avail, because without the spirit of prayer God the Father cannot draw men to his Son as presumptuous pulpiteers and administrators think sermons, church evangelism and private prayer bulletins will be enough to feed sheep, reach the lost, and build the kingdom. None of the three goals will be achieved without reinstituting the old fashioned free-prayer mid-week meeting thereby allowing the spirit of prayer to return.

Some narcissistic ministers of the pulpit love the sound of their own voice several times on Sunday. They also feel their vocal cords must predominate, instead of the voices of the saints in prayer, during the mid-week meeting, once set aside for the brethren. This they do, at every possible opportunity, ensuring there is no such room for free prayer of the brethren, even though they resist the very fire they are trying to simulate.

As a side effect of the 19th C. divisive age that still pervades today, many are scared of any freedom that might allow a rebel to exploit free prayer for his own purposes. Yet many good ministers in the 20th C became adept in controlling any such eccentric without either havoc or abandoning the free prayer meeting.

Yet the euphemism of ‘security’ is often used to cover the common fear that administrators have should they permit such a regular prayer meeting. Though this is certainly true in the USA, it has also spread to the other side of the Atlantic.

Beware that today’s lock down on free prayer in the tabernacle does not prevent the incense of saints’ joint prayers from ascending to the gates of heaven.

So phobic have many overseers become that those who would meet together for spoken prayer participation in a home will rarely gain the required official permission. In the unlikely event that is allowed an administrator is delegated to govern such a meeting, which usually means it is dead before it starts. In other words once spoken prayer is controlled, timed, or conducted with selective participants it is not free but stilted, stale, and stymies free prayer.

One thing we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Viz: God has limited endowing the spirit of prayer to a church that has a public prayer assembly in its regular schedule. This assembly is unwilling to let busyness or the clock shut the curtain on the window of prayer. Other tabernacles merely go through the motions, to show they are prayerful, but are in reality resist the spirit of fire that will grow an assembly and make men holy.

Did this downgrade start with the new prayer methodology of 19th C. evangelists Moody and Torrey, who discovered the secret of prayer methodology? Their popularity elevated them to the literati as experts on prayer while their writings simultaneously discounted the importance of saint’s oral participation in any midweek prayer meeting. Instead the latter evangelist and teacher promoted a Bible Study in lieu of the traditional prayer meeting. This resulted in the saints’ audible prayer meetings being privatized to the home in the ensuing decades.

1. Two are better than one. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

2. A threefold cord shall not be quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

3. “If two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father.”‘Matthew 18:19

4. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”. Matthew 18:20

Article by John David.
Quoted Scripture from King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain)

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3 & 4.

OUR PRAYERLESS CHURCHES (2)

WHO ELECTS THE SAINTS?

Romans 9
11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calls;)

12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
(Do we argue against God’s sovereign choice and call it unfair, or unethical?)

15 For he said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

16 So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy.
(Universalists and freewill religionists say anyone can be redeemed, but what did Paul say about election?)

17 For the scripture said unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might shew my power in you, and that my name might
be declared throughout all the earth.

18 Therefore has he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.
(Do the antinomies of the New Testament teach freewill of voluntarism or the enigma of God’s sovereign choice?)

19 You will say then unto me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who are you that reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus?

21 Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

FOOTNOTES.
Romans 9:18. Bibliolatrous interpreters of the Word will extract one verse (10:9) or another (10:13) as arbiters of the whole book of holy writ so they can bypass the rest of the antinomies to support humanisms unbridled freewill as a determinant of salvation.
2 Romans 9:17. (Do the antinomies of the New Testament teach freewill of voluntarism or the enigma of God’s sovereign choice?)
3.Romans 9:16. (Universalists and freewill religionists say anyone can be redeemed, but what did Paul say about election?)
4 Romans 9:14. (Do we argue against God’s sovereign choice and call it unfair, or unethical?)

Bible quouations from the KJV, King James Version (Public Domain)

Noyes in parenthesis reiterated in footnotes by Bible Simply (John David)

THE ILLUMINATED BELIEVER. (4)

FOUR STAGES OF THE BELIEVERS FAITH: Unawakened Faith; Awakened Faith; Enlightened Faith; Illuminated Faith.
THE ILLUMINATED CONVERT.(4)
The truly enlightened disciple becomes more frustrated as time progresses and his hunger grows. He is disappointed with himself and his own inner self. One day he becomes so disillusioned with his own spiritual state that he considers quitting altogether.

1. He becomes sorrowful over his inner state and his inability to grasp the answers.
1a. Then still reading the Word, he grows despondent about ever becoming a spiritual person or becoming good enough when he sees so many of his own foibles, failures, and sins.
1b. He wishes he could be more than sorry for himself, but genuinely sorry enough to satisfy God.
1c. He hungers and thirsts for a resolution with a deep longing.
2. It is then after listening to regular preaching of a godly minister in a Bible-believing assembly expounding Christ in the Scriptures that a change will at last occur.
2a. The risen Saviour invisibly presents Himself to his mind.
2b. The glow of His presence is awe-inspiring and HOPE begins to burn within him.
2c. Suddenly doubts are replaced by the gift of grace.
2d. The Bible with which he so often struggled now seems the LIVING WORD of life which had hitherto only been a book of stories.
2e. His eyes are opened and his mind and soul are ILLUMINATED by the regenerating Holy Spirit.
2f. Within this believer, HOPE is accompanied by PEACE is beyond human understanding.
2g. His exuberance makes his spirit revel in JOY.
2h. He has become a new creature in Christ by the power of His resurrection. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The typical believer who has been awakened and had a measure of enlightenment.
1. His own faith wavers (James 1:6-8) and believes in the Scriptures, but with reservations.
2. His own powers of reason raise obstacles that prevent him from being granted repentance and saving-faith.
3. When he gives up the mental struggle of contending with God and surrenders his mind and his questions he becomes a candidate for grace. (Jeremiah 29:13)
4. When he surrenders self-will and his intellect to God as inadequate in gaining an encounter with the God of grace, then he is near the kingdom of heaven.
5. Thus only when he admits that this life-changing encounter of grace is at the Lord’s behest, that prevenient grace gives the earnestness and patience to wait for the promise.
6. Others have told him that the individual’s ability of choice is enough. But, free-will is a myth.
7. The Bible teaches that man’s volition is biased. His will-power is captive to the curse of perpetual self-will. Adam’s natural streak of rebellion was in Eve as well, because the natural free-will went its own way even before the inherent curse began to plague his descendants of humanity. (Romans 5)
8. Both Eve and Adam rejected eternal life to gain a superior spiritual knowledge of good and evil. Ever since man’s natural propensity from birth is the hidden streak of rebellion that sways his decisions and the course of his direction. Man will aspire to and be content with enlightenment as part of superior knowledge, but in itself will be an obstacle to his illumination and translation from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son.

9. The curse of hidden inbred sin runs within the natural nature ready to break out at the opportune time. The Reformation re-echoed this forgotten truth of the bondage of the will, so amplified by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. It was Origen’s writings that allowed the humanists to validate the myth of free-will as an asset of the human persona. This occurred in the church during the Renaissance before the 17th Century and in the Age of Enlightenment (Reason) afterward. Yet human reason, which is such an asset to the intelligentsia and the literati of our world, is the greatest obstacle to the conversion of a sinner into a saint wherein he is redeemed and ransomed by his Saviour giving his life for his rescue.

10. For illumination, the believer first needs to become a wholehearted pilgrim of the Man he follows. Albeit needed wholeheartedness is a constant theme of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms and was reiterated by Christ and the apostles. (Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30)

11. Repentance is the last catalyst to illumination by the Spirit of Christ. Never has there been so little understanding of biblical repentance as in our present day, but godly sorrow is the gift of grace that the human spirit is incapable of simulating.

12. Countless leaders, within the church and without, are completely mistaken about its characteristics and attributes since the 18th C Age of Reason. Thus even the best of believers conjure up unbiblical concepts upon which they rely for their eternal destiny. It is either assumed in affirmation or automated in free-will decision responding to the entreaties of pulpit orators. In neither case is it present. Even in blessed sacraments and ordinances, it cannot be enacted by the elements of water-wine-wafer rites.

The 18th C Age of Enlightenment elevated reason but further darkened the soul emphasizing the ability of human will to be responsible, moral and religious.. Thus the false gospel of moralism is a poor substitute for biblically expounding Christ in the volume of the Book. (Hebrews 10). It rarely occurs in our pulpits’ extemporaneous banter.

While the believer’s enlightenment can arouse the mind to zealous religious fervour, illumination will by grace open the believer’s eyes of his understanding that he might understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:32;45)

Whereas he had hitherto had a degree of mental understanding by enlightenment, now he will have spiritual perception. Until this point, he has had only a natural understanding of the Word.

Previous to his illumination “his natural man received not the things of the Spirit of God: for they were foolishness to him: neither could he know them, because they were spiritually discerned. Now his understanding of Christ in the Scriptures is not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Now he has received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that he might know the things that are freely given to him of God. (1 Corinthians 2: 11-15)

Peter and the ten other enlightened disciples went forty months before they were illuminated on the day Jesus rose from the dead. (Luke 24:27-32; 44-45; John 20:21-22)

It is possible for a believer to go forty years after being awakened, then enlightened in mind, before he is finally illuminated by grace to be justified by faith.

Bible References
a. John 10:16….and other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice
b. 1 Corinthians 15:3… awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of god:
c. Ephesians 5:14… awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
d. Romans 13:11 …it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now, is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
e. John 6:37:… all that the Father gives me shall come to me

f. John 6. 45… every man, therefore, that has heard and has learned of the Father, comes unto me.
g. 2 Corinthians 7: 8-1: …you were made sorry after a godly manner. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation.”
h. Jeremiah 29:13…and you shall seek me, and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart.
i. John 6:44…no man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.
j. John 6:65 …no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
k. John 1:13…born not of blood, nor by the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.
l. Hebrews 9:14; 10:22; Isaiah 55.

** All scripture quoted from the KJV: King James Version (Public Domain).

Bibliographic References
1 Jonathan Edwards: Freedom of the Will (1746) was an evangelist (with George Whitfield) greatly used in the First Great Awakening of New England. He later turned against Reformation and paved the way for New England Theology’s easy religion of the 19th and 20th C’s that has permeated the USA and the globe.

2 William James: Varieties of Religious Experience, was the 19th C Father of Modern Psychology who gave easy-religionists and modern evangelists fuel for their false fire. His inflammatory book’s destruction of biblical conversion great Christians in modern history was his greatest accomplishment and destabilized a large swathe of Christendom. Though he was a certified agnostic he had devilishly influenced the theological halls of Christendom’s seminaries against radical, real, traditional biblical conversion. His philosophy has discredited faith-by-grace in evangelical conservative Christendom for the last 150 years. This is why easy-religion permeates the full cross-section of Christendom today.

THE ILLUMINATED BELIEVER. (4)

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER (2): The Awakened Believer.

THE AWAKENED BELIEVER.
1. Reading the Word of God produces moral convictions and these grow until the reader is uncomfortable. Why? “That sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” (Romans 7:11) The seeking believer then has the choice of turning away from his convictions or continuing with the quest of his soul caused by his awakening call of Christ to follow him. Should he choose to turn away he will then be a miserable soul for whatever time it takes for him to relent from his folly and return as a pilgrim seeker.

Easy religionists of our pulpits today would jump in where angels fear to tread and reassure him with false hopes. Such clergy fail to discern the difference between awakening and conversion. The seeker’s soul will never be placated by the ‘rabbit trails’ of water-wine-wafer sacraments/ordinances; ‘full surrender’; infilling of the Spirit; tongues’ speaking; or full sanctification. Clergy making these alternative easy ways to avoid real repentance have not the slightest inkling of biblical conversion or the meaning of faith by grace that the Reformation heralded some 500 years ago and shelved by 99% of the church today.

2. The moral law and the condemnation it produces in man’s conscience is meant to bring the believer to the end of himself and distrust his own efforts, and the false hopes of his own faith, and his own religious creed/ sacrament.

3. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity for saving grace. The eleven disciples were in hiding, except John, after the crucifixion. They were at the end of themselves in mortifying sorrow facing their cowardice, disbelief, and failure.

4. This was the opportunity for the risen Christ to change their worldly sorrow into godly sorrow of repentance. Concomitantly the Lord Jesus converted their double-mindedness into genuine godly faith enabling them to believe as the day-star of the Spirit indwelling them.

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER (2): The Awakened Believer.

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER. (1)

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER.
1) The unawakened believer; (2) The awakened disciple; (3) The enlightened pilgrim; (4) The illuminated convert.

THE UNAWAKENED BELIEVER
It is not enough to believe, and there are many believers in the church who have not been awakened. They have never had an encounter with the living Christ’s spirit because they have never sought him with all of their heart. They were happy to have a quick-fix that the church has offered the world since the 19th C. There are varying degrees of belief towards Jesus in the Gospels of the New Testament.

Many religious have never heard the call of Christ. They may read the Scriptures and attend Christian worship services. One day listening to the Bible-based preacher there is a personal response of the believer. He/she is suddenly arrested by the challenge to follow Christ and do His bidding. His whole being is awakened into the reality of Christ’s presence and he/she becomes an ardent follower or disciple.

Unawakened souls are not disciples of Christ, merely religious in mind. They may be in the church, but they do not have God’s presence WITH THEM and are not yet His SHEEP.

The unawakened believer has no knowledge of the Scriptures and he finds the Bible a mystery which he does not understand. He is classed as a walking dead, or ‘dead man walking’. The unawakened believer needs not to procrastinate too long or the day of grace may pass too soon.

The unawakened person may well have knowledge of creed, confession, and written articles of faith, such as water washes away sins.

Awakening does not happen at one’s own behest or the will of the preacher. It is at God’s behest alone. No decision, prayer, water, wine or wafer can compel God to awaken the lost soul, dead in sins and trespasses.

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER. (1)

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER.

1) The unawakened believer; (2) The awakened disciple; (3) The enlightened pilgrim; (4) The illuminated convert.

THE UNAWAKENED BELIEVER
It is not enough to believe, and there are many believers in the church who have not been awakened. They have never had an encounter with the living Christ’s spirit because they have never sought him with all of their heart. They were happy to have a quick-fix that the church has offered the world since the 19th C. There are varying degrees of belief towards Jesus in the Gospels of the New Testament.

Unawakened souls are not disciples of Christ, merely religious in mind. They may be in the church, but they do not have God’s presence WITH THEM and are not yet His SHEEP.

The unawakened person may well have knowledge of creed, confession, and written articles of faith, such as water washes away sins.

THE AWAKENED BELIEVER.
1. Reading the Word of God produces moral convictions and these grow until discomforting the reader. Why? “That sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.” (Romans 7:11)

THE ENLIGHTENED BELIEVER.
1. To have an enlightened mind is inadequate to understand the spiritual side of the Bible’s sixty-six volumes. It is the most unusual book ever written and one needs something more than an enlightened mind of curiosity and rational reason to understand its message.

2. Though enlightenment produces zealous interest, curiosity, and understanding of the Bible’s characters, history, and moral directives it is unable to give spiritual discernment of Christ’s grace and redemption. Independent reason will prevent the natural mind from fathoming the saga of grace from Genesis to Revelation.

3. Enlightenment is secretly driven by the Father’s magnetic attraction of the believer to His Son in the Scriptures. Though mistaken today for the new birth, it falls far short of one possessing eternal life. He/she needs the illumination of Christ’s regenerating Spirit.

4. Awakening and enlightenment are all part of the Father drawing the believer to His Son. (John 6)

5. The faith of the believer is not enlightened, only his mind but the doubts of the ambivalent will remain. His own faith wavers all the time. He needs the gift of true faith by grace. Until then he is like the first twelve disciples who were lacking in faith.
An enlightened mind is not enough to understand the spiritual side of the Bible in its sixty-six volumes. It is the most unusual book ever written and one needs something more than an enlightened mind. Though that in itself produces zealous interest, curiosity, and understanding of the Bible’s characters, history, and moral challenges, the enlightenment of the mind is unable to give spiritual discernment of its real message of grace and redemption. Man’s independent reason will prevent it.

The first eleven apostles were unconverted until the first day of the resurrection (Luke 24 & John 20).
It is secretly driven by the Father’s magnetic attraction to the Scriptures. More than anything else that drawing of the Father is paramount. It is not universal, but only to the wholehearted seeker. For God the Father alone can reveal the person of the Lord Jesus Christ who then calls the believer to follow Him. However, he is still in need of illumination by Christ’s regenerating Spirit. Awakening and enlightenment are all part of the Father’s drawing the seeker to His Son.

1) Enlightening has to do with the arousal of the mind, not his faith. Though he may well be a disciple of Christ he is solely reliant on his mind until he is illuminated and born of the Spirit. He needs the grace of faith because no matter what method is employed natural faith remains natural regardless of the psychology used. Humans are natural disbelievers, better described as skeptics. At best natural faith wavers and is ambivalent. He needs the gift of true faith by grace. Until then he is like the first twelve disciples to whom Jesus questioned for their lack of faith.

a. One’s own faith, whether it is childlike or not, is natural, and the natural man receives not the things of God for they are foolishness to him. ( 1
Corinthians. 2:14).
b. Freewill faith, now popular among a full cross-section of evangelists, ministers, and preachers everywhere.
c. Freewill faith is sourced in New England Theology. Its modern resurgence was in the humanist Age of Enlightenment of the 18th Century.
d. It elevated the natural attributes of humanity’s own powers of reason, conscience, and faith and made God the source thereof.
e. Yet the NT clearly describes the degeneracy of mankind through the curse that fell on the human race through Adam.
f. That is the very reason for the 1st Advent, for which Christ was born (the Second Adam, says St. Paul).
g. William James, The Father of Modern Psychology, went one step further by linking FAITH to WILL power so that the two became synonymous. James
attributed faith to any human action towards God, though he himself was a convinced agnostic.
h. James tried to destroy biblical conversion and faith by grace emphasized in the Reformation. He discredited the major evangelists of the Great
Awakening and the Second Great Awakening by his book ‘Varieties of Religious Experience’. This masterful philosopher sadly
influenced the evangelicals and the liberals in their theological halls of learning and seminaries.

THE ILLUMINATED CONVERT.
The truly enlightened disciple becomes more frustrated as time progresses and his hunger grows. He is disappointed with himself and his own inner self.
One day he becomes so disillusioned with his own spiritual state that he considers quitting altogether.

1. He becomes sorrowful over his inner state and his inability to grasp the answers.
a. Then still reading the Word, he grows despondent about ever becoming a spiritual person or becoming good enough when he sees so many of his own foibles, failures, and sins.
b. He wishes he could be more than sorry for himself, but genuinely sorry enough to satisfy God.
c. He hungers and thirsts for a resolution with a deep longing.
2. It is then after listening to regular preaching of a godly preacher in a Bible-believing assembly expounding Christ in the Scriptures that a change will at last occur.
a. The risen Saviour invisibly presents Himself to his mind.
b. The glow of His presence is awe-inspiring and HOPE begins to burn within him.
c. Suddenly doubts are replaced by the gift of grace.
d. The Bible with which he so often struggled now seems the LIVING WORD of life which had hitherto only been a book of stories.
e. His eyes are opened and his mind and soul is ILLUMINATED by the regenerating Holy Spirit.
f. Within him, HOPE is accompanied by PEACE beyond human understanding.
g. His exuberance makes his spirit revel in JOY.
h. He has become a new creature in Christ by the power of His resurrection. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

BIBLE REFERENCES.
Preconditions to illumination (conversion).
REPENTANCE: ( 2 Corinthians 7: 8-10)
1. REPENTANCE is neither automatic nor worldly sorrow (being sorry for yourself). The sorrow of the world works death
2. WORLDLY sorrow is ‘but for a season’. The passing sorrow for one’s own consequences.
3. GODLY SORROW is the gift. You were made sorry after a godly manner. For godly sorrow works repentance to salvation

THE TWELVE WERE NOT CONVERTED UNTIL THE RESURRECTION.
1. The awakened and enlightened Peter had yet to be converted (illuminated). Conversion by the washing of the blood purges the conscience. Hebrews 9:14.
(Hebrews 10:22)
2. Natural faith cannot bring salvation. James 1:6-7. Natural faith is fickle.
3. Conversion by illumination comes alone by preaching, not water, wine or wafer.
a. 1 Corinthians 1:21. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

** All scripture quoted from the KJV or King James Version (Public Domain).
BIBLE REFERENCES
1. UNAWAKENED FAITH.
a. James 2:19. …the devils also believe and tremble.
b. 1 Corinthians 15:34. awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of god:
c. Ephesians 5:14… awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
d. Romans 13:11. …it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.
2. PROCESS PRIOR TO AWAKENING:
The Father draws the seeker to become wholehearted.[ Deuteronomy 10:12; Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30]
a. John 6:37. All that the Father gives me shall come to me…
b. John 6:44. No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him:
c. John 6. 45. Every man, therefore, that has heard and has learned of the Father, comes unto me.
d. John 6:65 … no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.
e. Jeremiah 29:13. And you shall seek me, and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart.
f. John 10:16. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice.

Freedom of the Will 1746; Jonathan Edwards: First Great Awakening who later turned against Reformation & paved the way for New England Theology’s Easy Religion that has permeated the USA and the globe.
Varieties of Religious Experience by William James the Father of Modern Psychology added fuel to the fire trying to burn out the true biblical conversion.

FOUR STAGES OF A BELIEVER.