Category: Historic Trends of Church

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.

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)

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.

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.

FALSE HOPE: BABBLING ECSTASY OF SAUL

Babbling unknown ecstatic glossalia was never sanctioned by Paul the apostle, even in the corrupt assembly at Corinth. It is not the gift but a simulation of understandable gift manifest at Pentecost, Caesarea, and Ephesus. 1 Corinthians 14 records not a precedent, but an exception now a delusion since the 1906 Los Angeles’ first Azusa Street Meeting. Even its Pastor, black blind Mr. Seymour said so. (Dictionary of Pentecostal & Charismatic Movements: Ed. Burgess, McGee, Alexander)

1 Samuel 9:2.
Saul’s attractiveness was his sturdy, tall, & unblemished appearance. Goodly did not intone godly character, for he was a self-willed, Narcissistic man from the beginning of his reign until his evil demise from dabbling with witchcraft for answers. His later change of heart and his prophetic utterances were no more than Balaam’s who also was a soothsayer God temporarily used for His purposes when in character he was an unusable mouthpiece. Saul’s momentary decision to accommodate Samuel’s orders was not heartfelt service to God, of which he and Balaam were incapable. Whether a mere equine ass or the wilful giant Saul, they were not beyond transient ecstatic utterance. God can choose to show his omnipotence enigmatically regardless of the vessel chosen.

FALSE HOPE: BABBLING ECSTASY OF SAUL

BIBLICAL GUIDE TO WORSHIP PRINCIPLES
Amos 5:23
Take away from me the noise of your songs; for I will not hear the melody of your viols.
James 4:4.
know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
1 John 2:15-17.
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.17 And the world passes away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abides forever.
Exodus 32.17-29 (excerpts)
17 And when Joshua heard THE NOISE OF THE PEOPLE …18 And he said,…THE NOISE OF THEM THAT SING DO I HEAR. …19 And … he saw the calf, AND THE DANCING: and Moses’ anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, WHO IS ON THE LORD’S SIDE? let him come unto me. … 28 And there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.29 For Moses had said, Consecrate yourselves today to the Lord, even every man …that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day.

*All quotes from the King James Version (Public Domain)
JAMES & JOHN’S USE OF THE WORD: ‘’WORLD”.
1. The world is a word standing for the worldlings in the kingdom of darkness.
a. This means their songs, their lyrics, limericks, beat, and rhythm
b. This means their instruments not listed in Scripture
c. This means their loud needless amplification of same into the blast of excessive decibels.
d. This means their corrupt means of attracting and winning an audience
e. This means using entertainment dependent on worldly methods, not spiritual ones.
2. The music of the Hebrew worshippers had radically changed (see Amos 5.23 above).
a. Alignment with an idol changes everything in worship’s music and song:
b. The idols are instruments of the world, the dance rhythm/beat & emotion of worldlings;
c. The dress and undress (progressive immodesty) revealing by exposure or slovenliness.
d. Israel wanted to change worship because of doubt and distrust of traditional worship.
e. This change in music led to unseemly behaviour and sinfulness of their dance and nakedness.
f. The same Satanic delusion of Christian worship in a majority of churches causes the Spirit to be grieved and God departs to let the alternate deceiving spirits come in to simulate tee Spirit’s work and this started in the 1950s, continuing apace today using the world’s methods of attracting an audience with the same sensual rhythms used by sensual vocalists in the kingdom of darkness.
g. These churches rarely see even an awakening let alone conversions by illumination because God has left and man has taken over.
h. These churches (the increasing majority) in the ‘falling away’ of the last times (Matthew 24) rely on creation of excitement to unwittingly copy the inimitable atmosphere that the Holy Ghost brings in a small quiet voice (c. Elijah at Mt. Horeb escaping from Jezebel) 1 Kings 19:9-13
God is not loud, He works quietly in a reverent quiet congregation.
The average preacher and song leader seeks to awaken the interest of the audience so it will come back and support their unique sectarian movement, But only God can awaken and no man or minister can simulate. It will not be accomplished by instruments and songs using the rhythms and beats of the world.
Most new churches/missions/movements claiming to be unique fail to discern the invisible body of Christ by their sectarianism. Their uniqueness is quite frankly their misled humanism and pragmatism based on the 19th C fundamental emphasis of selecting special words/phrases or verses to be arbiters of truth to the neglect of the whole counsel of the whole Bible. It is tabooed private interpretation when this is done, making those words or passages superior to the rest of Scripture.
This allows each denomination to create its own hermeneutic or interpretative system of the Bible for its own biblical and doctrinal nuances, twisting the Word of God to its own destruction.
Thus following the humanist 18th C Age of Enlightenment the19th C pragmatist can twist the Scriptures to its own liking as it creates new unique doctrines. This had created over two thousand new breakaway splinter churches. 2 Peter 3:16.
Thus the 2,800 (Barratt 1977) separate church denominations, movements, and sects go each their own way and “every man did that which is right in his own eyes”- to the great detriment of the emaciated ‘body of Christ whose shepherding pastors will rarely feed the sheep (Ezekiel 13 & 34) as do not discern the body of Christ this eclipsed by their own misled uniqueness. For this reason, they are often sick and asleep (1 Corinthians 11) as their pulpits judgmentally advocate their sectarian bent instead of expounding Christ in the whole volume of the Book.
Western Christianity is fractious, judgmental, pragmatic, and thinks it has the right to freely use private interpretation of the Bible, tabooed by the apostles in Peter’s Epistle [ 2 Peter 1:20] and John in his Revelation [Revelation 22:18-19].
The result is that God the Father is very limited on how He can draw the lost to His Son, and He is obstructed by the false hopes of modern-day evangelists/ pastors who preach the gospel of affirmation, sacrament, decision, or tongues as evidence of the Spirit.
In their easy religion’s boast of numbers and statistics, they have in fact raised goats shown how to wear fleece instead of bringing lambs to birth. Assumptions of automated faith are at complete odds with the Scriptures.
Services are dominated by the bombastic stage performers with their flatteries and unctuous winsomeness. They act as gods and God often departs to leave the congregation in Ichabod.
God has called the preacher and missionary to preach Christ by expounding the Word of God through the foolishness of preaching without a private doctrinal agenda being foisted upon adulating pews.
Many get them to speak in unknown tongues never used on the day of Pentecost, rejected by the founder of modern-day Pentecostal at Azusa Street, Los Angeles 1906 as spiritism ending in witchcraft. Paul tabooed it for public assembly meetings. Unknown tongues (jargon aphasia of the pagans) was neither manifest at Caesarea, nor Ephesus or on the Day of Pentecost.
Only the corrupt drunken and gluttonous Corinthian church was it accepted until Paul banned it. 1 Corinthians 14.
I. Behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?…
II. and he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord…
III. and, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind … but the Lord was not in the wind…
IV. and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake…
V. and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire…
VI. and after the fire a still small voice…
behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?
 

AWAKENED BELIEVER’S ENLIGHTENMENT.

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)

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 indwelled them.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

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

9. The faith of the believer is not enlightened only his mind and doubts of the ambivalent will remain. His own faith it wavers all the time. 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.

BIBLE REFERENCES.
Preconditions to illumination (conversion).
1. John 6:44. No man can come to me, EXCEPT THE FATHER which hath sent me DRAW HIM:
2. John 6:37. All that the FATHER GIVES ME shall come to me…
3. John 6. 45. Every man therefore that has HEARD, AND HAS LEARNED of the Father, comes unto me.
4. Jeremiah 29:13. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me with all your heart.

REPENTANCE 2 Corinthians 7: 8-10.
1. REPENTANCE is neither automatic nor worldly sorrow (being sorry for yourself). 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 UNCONVERTED APOSTLES UNTIL HIS RESURRECTION.
1. Peter unconverted. Luke 22:32 .I have prayed for you that your faith fail not and when you are converted, strengthen your brethren.
2. Conversion by the washing of the blood purges the conscience. Hebrews 9:14. (Hebrews 10:22)
3. Natural faith cannot bring salvation. James 1:6-7. Natural faith is fickle.
4. 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).

AWAKENED BELIEVER’S ENLIGHTENMENT.

Your Trust in Water or Blood?

IS YOUR TRUST IN WATER OR THE BLOOD?
1. So were you baptized to follow the kingdom example of Christ?
a) Did you know that He as a conforming Jew was baptized before He began the kingdom of heaven and that as the ‘Son of David’ in the Messianic lineage of his forbears that he needed to honour and fulfill all the promises of the patriarchs, the prophets and the Psalms of David?
b) He needed to ‘fulfill all things’ as John the Baptist was at first reluctant to baptize him because John himself insisted that he had not been baptized.
c) Did you know that Jesus declined to baptize John, the last prophet of the first testament era: Law and Prophets of which the Lord called John the greatest?
d) To fulfill the promises of the first testament of blood predicting a new High Priest would arise from the tribe of Judah
• Mark’s differing place of ascension- not Olivet-unnamed-
• Baptismal commission yet LJC neve baptized-only the twelve
• No place in the4 gospels where LJC baptized in water-not once-despite dispelled rumour in John 3 &4
• John 3-4 was started by a rumour and hearsay notwithstanding John 4:1-2 reiterated claim that the twelve baptized which has never been corroborated in the Gospels-even once.
• John B prophesiedthat Jesus would baptize others bin fire nopt water.
• The true commission from Jerusalem’s ascension mount of Olivet (Mt of Olives) reported in Acts 1 was not a baptismal commission but one that preempted the baptism of fire 50 days later at Jerusalem on the day of the feast f Pentecost.
• It is commonly known among a wide cross section of theologians (even evangelicals of the right,that the last part of Mark 16 (v9-20) was lost and replaced by another ending. Thus it is thought generally to be an unreliable section of the Word for doctrine and practice not withstanding the radical fundamentalist who may well be a pragmatic bibliolater.
• Many have advocated since the 19th C age of doctrinal pragmatism that the NT teaches baptismal regeneration like the church of Rome

REFORMATION’S NEW TESTAMENT FROM ORIGINAL GREEK.

REFORMATION’S NEW TESTAMENT FROM ORIGINAL GREEK.

Reformation’s Published New Testament from Original Greek.
(*Marked editions were the six Reformation New Testaments.)
1. 1400 Islam invades Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) forcing Greek scholars to flee into Europe with their invaluable Greek manuscripts of the New Testament.
2. 1439 Gutenberg invents the printing press.
3. 1450 The printing of Europe’s first book: the Latin Bible of Rome in polyglot format.
4. 1516 The Renaissance Dutch scholar Erasmus prints the Greek New Testament.
5. 1517 Martin Luther begins the Reformation at the University of Wittenberg.
6. 1522: Luther publishes the New Testament in German from Erasmus Greek NT
7. *1526: William Tyndale publishes the first English edition using Erasmus Greek NT
8. 1527: The pope burns and bans Tyndale’s English New Testament (NT)
9. *1535: The Crown (UK) unwittingly publishes Miles Coverdale Bible, (Tyndale NT).
10. *1537: The Crown (UK) unwittingly again prints the tabooed Tyndale N.T. of John Rogers under the pseudonym: Thomas Matthew’s Bible, (includes nine OT books).
11. *1539, The Crown (UK) prints The Great Bible, a Miles Coverdale revised edition of the Thomas Matthew Bible (Tyndale NT reprinted).
12. Changed English monarch (RC) forces Puritan scholars, translators, & publishers to flee to Geneva (Switzerland) as a refuge and safe harbour.
13. *1560, Geneva Bible published. Widely used by Shakespeare & American colonies.
14. *1611: King James Bible, the sixth and last Bible of the Reformation using the Greek New Testament of Erasmus.

The English Inquisition saw arrests, torture, imprisonment, and execution of those who dared defy the conflicting powers of Canterbury (Roman), the monarchy, the Holy Roman Empire’s pontiff in Germany, and the pontiff in Rome itself. Even Henry 8th at first pro-Protestant, later banned reading or possessing the Tyndale NT of 1526 and 1534.

As Tyndale was burning on the stake in 1536 he was also strangled to stifle his stentorian prayer’s voice: “That the eyes of the king (UK) be opened.” Within the year came the miraculous Crown publications of the very same contraband New Testament of Tyndale in various formats, under Puritans like Coverdale and Rogers. His prayer had been speedily answered and its impact changed the English speaking world’s culture on both sides of the Atlantic.

The humanist 18th C Age of Enlightenment led to the 19th C replacement of the Erasmus Greek New Testament by Westcott & Hort, the basis for all the so-called new and better translations of the Bible unleashing the covert denigration of the Scriptures’ final authority present today.

Originating in German rationalism it hatched liberal modernism and Higher Bible Criticism. Each of these unholy branches of academia conveniently rejected Reformation scholars, translators, and publishers. In so doing it invented its own hermeneutic of private interpretation, condemned by the New Testament.

This ejection of the Byzantine tradition included the Elzevir Brothers’ Received Text published by Stephanus, (Robert Etienne) the well known French publisher. He also versified the English New Testament of Tyndale to make its twenty-seven books more readable. All of such work was due to the monolithic translating work of Erasmus in 1516, rendering the New Testament for the first time in its original language.

One main influence in the vacuum created by the false scholarship of the 18th C was the re-elevation of the ancient Vatican manuscript: Codex Vaticanus. The second significant portentous change under Roman and pro-Roman liberal scholars of the 19th C was the highlighting of another non-Byzantine manuscript: the Codex Sinaiticus.

It was discovered at Mt. Sinai monastery by Count von Tischendorf in the 1840s. He opined that both Codices were scribed by the same hand around the same period as Emperor Constantine, who founded the Church of Rome. The new emperor with the recruited team of Bishop Eusebius re-translated the 3rd C Old Latin NT and ordered his team to scribe fifty new Latin Bibles from it. Reformed and Puritan scholars later purged five of the added seven sacraments of Constantine in deference to the Greek New Testament’s originality.

Rome’s Counter-Reformation continued denigration of Reformation scholarship against the Erasmus Greek New Testament was the undercurrent, not always visible to the naked eye of the politically correct wings of Christendom today.
THE CONTINUING COUNTER-REFORMATION OF 16th & 17th C VIA ACADEMIA.
• 1568, Bishops Bible more for Roman Catholics, not liked by Queen Elizabeth.
• 1582: Douai-Reims New Testament for Catholics: against Protestants
• 1609-10: Douai-Reims Old Testament for Catholics: against Protestants

REFORMATION’S NEW TESTAMENT FROM ORIGINAL GREEK.

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES:(PART 3)

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES (Part 3).
New England Theology of easy-religion based on the errant Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, had progressively captivated America between 1746 and 1846. Edwards, who after the First Great Awakening had waned, renounced the biblical tenets of the Reformation and turned to the modern philosophy of the 18th century liberal Age of Enlightenment.

New-England Theology has had a massive impact upon, both American and global evangelism completely distorting the message of salvation by grace. It radically reversed the Bible’s Protestant Reformation message of ‘FAITH ALONE BY GRACE ALONE’ to ‘GRACE ALONE BY FAITH ALONE’, and it became the behest of the individual’s own faith instead. This false claim by the unbiblical liberals of the Enlightenment declared:

1) HUMANISM’S FREE-WILL OF EASY-RELIGION: Faith is universally resident in all from the time of birth due to an innate enlightened conscience from the image of God placed in Adam from creation.

a. THE BIBLE’S REPLY: This denies that the image of God in Adam was irreparably marred through his fall into sin. That sin was not merely eating fruit from the wrong tree, which had been taboo. Romans 5 is the truth not the church.
b. It was Adam’s free-will choice to reject eternal life for the short term gain of spiritual knowledge. Thus, ever since, humans mistakenly reason that ‘spiritual knowledge’ will give eternal life.
c. Knowledge of the plan of salvation, and the Scriptures can never bring regeneration (conversion) without the ‘gift of Christ’s faith and the hope of eternal life, at the behest of his grace to wholehearted seekers.
d. There is no unconditional immediate endowment of His grace or of eternal life. This divinely implanted faith cannot be compared to weak, unreliable human faith, even at its very best.

2) THE REPLY OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY:
a. William James, the Father of American Psychology falsely claimed in his “Varieties of Religious Experience”, that any action towards God is an act of faith.
3) REBUTTAL:
a. James confused human free-will with the divinely imparted gifts of grace.
4) TODAY’S CHURCHES OF CHRISTENDOM.
a. Most professing Christians and church members are only AWAKENED, at best, and though they might follow God’s presence they have never received the indwelling Christ of eternal life.
5) THE HUMANISM OF LIBERALS, EVANGELICALS, CONSERVATIVES & FUNDAMENTALISTS.
a. Their ministers or evangelists have assured them that believing what they have learned and KNOW of the Scripture and his doctrines of salvation are adequate insurance for eternity and enough to miss hellfire.
6) THE FORGOTTEN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AWAKENING & CONVERSION.
a. There is no denying that some ‘followers’ have been awakened by Christ’s call to ‘follow Him’, and become disciples. However, awakening and its limited enlightenment is not the same as conversion. It was the illumination of the regenerating Spirit of Christ that burned within those at Emmaus (Luke 24). The eyes of the Eleven disciples at Jerusalem were thereafter also opened to understand the Scriptures and the Christ of the Word on the first day Jesus rose from the grave.
7) HUMANISM’S HOAX IN THE CHURCH:
a. The automatic free-will evangelism that pervades the pulpit everywhere declares that all disciples and followers possess God’s grace of redemption from mere voluntary acts of confession, affirmation or a participating sacrament of water, wine, or wafer.
b. All disciples automatically repent and believe if they utter words of prayer and affirm their committed allegiance.
i. COMMENT. With rare exception, these have never known godly sorrow of biblical repentance, let alone having wholeheartedly sought the Lord. They have instead been misled by clergy, rightfully described as Goat-herders pontificating in pulpits of false hope.
8) THE DECEPTION BY THE CREAM OF EVANGELICALS.
a. These same pulpits teach the mere awakened that wholeheartedness (full surrender) is a second decision they need to experience. They alternately call it:
i. Second-Blessing;
ii. Baptism of the Spirit,
iii. Entire-Sanctification.
b. Among the 1500 + new denominations of the 19th century plague of humanistic bibliolatry (coupled with its reactionary pragmatism) the birth of Holiness and Charismatic/Pentecostal movements were conceived which propagated
i. The easy-religion of conversion by free-will of one’s own faith (1st blessing);
ii. The better religion of the deeper life, mistakenly called:
1. The Holy Spirit’s infilling;
2. The Baptism of the Spirit with evidence: ecstatic incoherent utterances;
3. Entire sanctification from inbred sin.
9) THE BIBLE’S REPLY.
a. For the eleven apostles the first blessing (conversion) was by the regenerating Spirit Christ gave at His rising from the tomb on the third day (Luke 24 & John 20). Their second blessing fifty days later was the baptism of fire & Holy Ghost.
b. After Pentecost there was no further need for a gap period between the two blessings. In Acts chapter two the Jews heard the converted apostles preach. They had just been baptized with fire from heaven, and gathered Jews of the Diaspora heard eleven messages each in a different language for the respective foreign visitors. This, Paul says was a sign to unbelievers: the gift of ‘Diverse Tongues’ ( 1st Corinthians 14). The three thousand converts were both regenerated by receiving Christ’s Holy Spirit within them, and were baptized with the fire of the Spirit simultaneously. The 1st blessing had merged with the 2nd blessing in an instant after the Day of Pentecost. This was so when Peter and the apostles preached at Jerusalem; then with Cornelius’ assembly at Caesarea; and finally at Ephesus when Paul preached to twelve of John’s former disciples.
c. Nowhere else in the Book of Acts does the sign manifest at conversion for God works in three’s. He is a triune person.
d. Among gathered foreign worshippers Paul instructed the church at Corinth that the gift of Diverse Tongues was acceptable if proved to be validly understood by a hearer in his own language and interpreted by him into a common language. Otherwise such unknown utterance of language (unknown tongue) was forbidden by Paul at Corinth, where the church had a prevalence of pseudo-Christians living in immorality etc. (1st Corinthians 14)
e. Eradication of inbred sin is an idea posed by 19th C Holiness movements an extension of John Wesley’s doctrine of Perfect Love. Paul makes quite clear in Romans chapters one to seven that this is not possible. (cp: salient of Romans 7) This was confirmed by the apostle John in his epistle of 1st John, and again by Paul in Galatians 5.
10) THE MASS CONVERSIONS FALSELY CLAIMED TODAY.
a. This has all come about since the 18th century humanistic Age of Enlightenment. These ideas are very suitable to mass conversions by automation and rapid growth of religious empires including the current day mega church phenomenon. Thus Jesus Christ’s standard for conversion and discipleship are ignored. Shallow and worldly followers are called Christian converts when they are far from it. The Puritans of the Reformation would turn in their graves.
11) RESULTS IN WORSHIP SERVICES (for goats wearing fleeces)
a. Music, mood, and beat allows the falsity of humanism in the pulpit-stage to be acceptably palatable.
b. Infusing the popular doctrine of easy-religion into non-Roman churches that were once citadels of Protestant Puritanism has enabled exponential growth.
c. Increase in false conversions and the sowing of tares has risen to such an extent that the mega-church phenomena has become the norm.
d. Such converts are, more often than not, just zealous goats taught to wear the garb of a fleece, rather than newborn lambs.
e. In the ever-increasing personality-cult styled church pseudo-prophets and posturing pastors titillate the ears of congregants in the mass euphoria they create by their prepossessing personas and the mastery of crowd control.
f. The pastoral skill of creating heroes makes audiences both addicted and susceptible to itching ears in a feel-good comfort zone where the audience is beguiled, even as Eve in the Garden. The mastery of the feminine pews comes first and the men follow suit. The congregants’ normal sense of discernment is muted, allowing humanist truths to be acceptable and seen as biblical truths by the literalist use of bibliolatry.
g. The notion of unconditional eternal security inures them from the truth.
EVALUATION.
a) Most certainly these type of believers have KNOWN and learned some spiritual knowledge from Scripture, but this falls far short of life everlasting and the indwelling Spirit of the risen Saviour. Many today twist Romans 10.9 coupled with Romans 10.13 teaching goats to affirm with their lips and say that they, therefore, have believed. This is totally wrenched from the context of Romans itself and even the tenth chapter’s import.

b) Having mental knowledge of the Scripture does not give the seeker the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The vast masses of those in Christendom’s 2,800 Church denominations have never truly been converted by Holy Spirit, but are converts of men. (Matthew 7.)

c) These all presume following Jesus Christ’s presence is eternal life. The best they have is God with them, but that is not the oil they need in their lamps. Five of the ten virgins discovered this to their chagrin. (Parable of the Ten Virgins by Jesus Christ.)

d) God’s presence with them is temporal or temporary while they choose to follow Him in some shape or form. At death, their lamp has no oil, just like the five foolish virgins readying themselves for the Bridegroom’s wedding feast. The oil in the lamp is likened to the Holy Spirit entering within the wholehearted seeker. Only this is everlasting.

e) The oil of the Spirit comes only by faith. This is peculiarly the gift of God and is not related to natural human faith, the falsity popularly taught throughout the church today. Most of the myriad false converts have been misled by the fallacy that their own human faith was wholly adequate. They assure themselves because false prophets and preachers first assure them with their false hopes of salvation and eternal life.

f) The reason they possess faith is from the humanist idea or Christian idealism, built upon positivist psychology.
g) No sacrament replaces that gift of faith, which is ushered in by the grace of the godly sorrow (repentance) of sin and self-righteousness.
h) When faith comes it is accompanied by transforming hope from His incoming Spirit making His abode within the believer.
i) Most church members today have never sought the Lord with all their soul, strength and might. Those few who have done so have never had the patience or even the inclination to seek the gift of faith that precedes conversion and have instead been taught to trust their own faith.
j) Thus they experience the anti-climax of easy-religion’s false hope that eternal life is automatically and unconditionally available to all who will call, confess and profess their own faith.
k) What is that faith? It is merely the knowledge that the ministering preacher has imparted to them by indoctrination.

CAN TRUE CONVERSION BE UNDERSTOOD?
Speaking of true conversion there is no logical or reasonable explanation to that glorious translation of one soul from the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Paul says that the natural man cannot understand it from afar. 1st Corinthians chapters 1 & 2.

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES:(PART 3)

TRUE CONVERSION MISUNDERSTOOD.

TRUE CONVERSION TO CHRIST.
There are myriad professors and only a few possessors of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. The former are secure in their false hopes based on church myths. Those myths were introduced into the persecuted Christian minority 1700 years ago by a new Roman emperor bent on forcibly nationalizing Christianity for the vast masses of both East and West.

During Christ’s earthly ministry, before he was arrested and executed, he primarily ministered to the Jews and educated his Jewish disciples. His new kingdom of heaven would be radically different from the earthly kingdom of Moses’ Law and Prophets that ended with the beheading of John the Baptist, who ministered under an old testament covenant but foretold of a new testament by the Lamb of God: Jesus Christ. He did so in the legacy of the Prophet Isaiah the evangelist of the Old Testament.

The Scriptures demand wholeheartedness. This is the one command of the Old and New Testaments that qualifies the true follower, mostly ignored by easy-evangelism and quick affirmation process of automated conversion. It is declared by the Law, the Prophets, the Psalms and the Gospels: that one must first seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt.6.33; Isaiah 55.1) with all the heart, soul and might trusting not in self-help or any other assurance but God’s.

The church instead rushes to tell its audience that they are all eligible for God’s grace of conversion without such wholeheartedness, which it claims will develop in due course. It uses different ordinances and sacraments to initiate seekers, who for the most part have never genuinely sought God. Once initiated they are indoctrinated with false hopes. These disciples mostly fail to possess Christ’s indwelling Spirit even as the first Twelve lacked the Indweller before Jesus rose from the grave. They think that following him and thereby being WITH him is eternal life. Read Luke 24 and John 20 closely to understand how conversion opened their eyes to understand the Scriptures, and how the new indweller made their hearts burn within, and their disbelief was turned to faith, hope and joy. “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” he said, and their lives were transformed. John 20. 2 Cor. 5.17. No wonder that in the next 40 days 109 were converted to join the Eleven in the Upper Room after the Ascension.

TRUE CONVERSION MISUNDERSTOOD.

EARLIEST PUBLISHED BIBLES IN PRINT.

EARLIEST-PUBLISHED-BIBLES-IN-PRINT.
The earliest published English Bibles or New Testaments after Gutenberg’s 1450 invention of the printing press were from the Puritan minded Protestant Reformers in the immediate wake of the Reformation. Though the first book printed in Europe was a Bible it was merely a publication of the Latin Vulgate Bible of the Holy Roman Empire, understood by a limited few in 1450.

After the Reformation New Testament translators used the Greek New Testament of Erasmus producing editions in German, English, French, etc. To the English reader the six authoritative and unadulterated editions of the Bible were printed in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Rome’s Latin Bible, had remained unchallenged for a thousand years since the 3rd century until John Wycliffe scribed it into common English parlance around the1390’s, and Tyndale printed it in 1526 nine years after Luther’s German N.T. Wycliffe, whose bones were later burned in protest, died before he could be martyred and Tyndale was burned and strangled at the stake in 1536. Needless to say the Holy Roman Empire protected its Latin Bible with a vengeance.

By 800 AD it was protected under the criminal code from being retranslated into any other language. The two exceptions were however, in the 4th and 5th centuries, when Constantine and then Jerome revised the Old Latin. Nevertheless, Jerome’s Vulgate perpetuated Roman Catholic dogma of its seven sacraments included in Constantine’s first revision of 3rd C Old Latin N.T.

After the formation of the Holy Roman Empire by the Pope in 800 AD, the Vatican ensured that any further revision or translation, within its vastly growing empire, would be illegal and offenders would suffer capital punishment. It martyred any would be reformer. In the Reformation of 1517 many translators and publishers fled to Geneva to escape imprisonment.

Later restrictions were tightened to include any private reading or ownership of any part of the Bible. This was to make sure that its reading and propagation publicly was limited to the Catholic priesthood. Even the priesthood was under this taboo.

John Wycliffe was called the Morning Star of the Reformation 200 years before it occurred. Shortly after Wycliffe, the Muslims conquered Constantinople (formerly Byzantium, now Istanbul) causing the Greek scholars of the church to flee to Europe with their trove of New Testament Greek manuscripts.
Thus Renaissance humanist scholar Erasmus used these to compile a Greek New Testament, the original language in which it had been written. The literati, linguists, translators and publishers like the Frenchman Robert Entienne (alias Stephanus) showed new interest in the veracity and authority of the Holy Bible and versified it for the reading public.

But Erasmus in translating the Greek New Testament ignored Constantine’s seven sacramental inclusions into holy writ of the Latin Bible. This spurred both Luther and Tyndale to produce the first German and English New Testaments respectively. Indeed four more English updated translations of the Puritan era were published in London and Geneva before Roman Catholic scholars began to undermine the translation process in the 18th C Age of Enlightenment. This was a resurgence of Renaissance humanist endeavour, but far more libertine in character. It elevated reason against the sacrosanct inspired preservation of holy writ’s absolute authority.

The six most reliable translations led often to the translator’s martyrdom by the long reach of the Vatican and the Holy Roman Empire based in Franco Germany. Of these translations only two remain in print for the public: the 16th C. Geneva Bible and the 17th C. King James Bible. In 1611 it marked the end of one hundred years that had changed Britain and America and the regions beyond by the impact of Reformation reformers, translators and publishers.

The final demise of respect for inspiration and authority of Reformation’s preservation of Scripture began in the next century by Roman resurgence promoting the re-elevation of the Vatican’s Codex Vaticanus Bible MS in Latin and their scholars progressively influencing Protestant scholars to adopt Reason (logic); Philosophy (Thomas Aquinas etc); and Psychology (William James) to interpret, and, or, translate holy writ.
Bible criticism became a humanist science in itself encouraging readers to understand and interpret the Scriptures.

As a result of the strayed 18th C Enlightenment, two 19th C. Anglo-Roman priests: Westcott and Hort wrote their own Greek New Testament, spurning both the Reformation and the invaluable work of Erasmus. They used the abovementioned libertine rationale of reason. All modern Bible translations from the 19th C to the 21st C are based on this spurious work.

But modernization under the guise of readability in common parlance was totally eclipsed by using a spurious key of hermeneutics: understanding the text through reason employing pragmatic comparison rather than comparing Scripture with Scripture. This which relied upon the rationale of the early post-Reformation Bible’s irrevocable and absolute authority.

The result is today’s mayhem of Christendom polarized between the status quo using different shades of pragmatic Bible reading, and minority right wing bibliolatrous Bible reading by the popular fundamentalists (usually misusing the KJV) who will venerate one word, phrase or verse doing an injustice to both Scripture and the biblical method of interpreting the text.

Somewhere in the fog of apostasy and the mayhem of hundreds of modern translations, most have forgotten the cause for the exponential increase of sectarianism in the 19th C. that ushered in such a rise of controversy that there are now 2,800 separate sects and denominations under the banner of Christendom. (Encyclopaedia of the Christian Church 1977).

NOTES.
(N.T or NT = New Testament. Holy writ = the Bible.)
Article by John David of Bonita Bible Mission public domain.
KJV is the King James Version Public Domain ex (biblegateway.com)

EARLIEST PUBLISHED BIBLES IN PRINT.

FOREWORD to Isaiah 9

Isaiah sees the present darkness of Judah and Israel to the north which gives him no hope. He also sees seven hundred years into the future: where hope and light is suddenly birthed by a young man (Immanuel) in Galilee. The present vexation of Judah by Samaria and her allies is a dark day indeed living under the ‘shadow of death’. In Joel’s words, ‘Joy had withered away’ from the people of Judah. By faith he sees the threatening yoke of Syria broken.

He saw hope when there was no hope: the attribute of faith by endowed grace (Hebrews 11:1). Paul’s ensuing verse shows the natural man void of faith by hope, no matter how he musters up his bravado of positive freewill. Only God could give embattled Isaiah hope against hope. Indeed the New Testament says that we are saved by hope.

However, this Prince of Peace, though he would be raised in Galilee, would reign from Jerusalem in the end days after the great apocalypse when he returns as prophesied to Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14). This Wonderful Counsellor, the embodiment of the divine heavenly Father; this mighty God in human flesh, would centre most of his focus upon Jerusalem of Judea with his ‘great light’ during his last three years.

While Tiglath-Pileser is ravaging neighbouring Syria, Samaria, and Galilee among other regions of Palestine, Jerusalem is shaking in fear, even though the Assyrian has come at Ahaz’s request to defend it. How could hope ever arise in Galilee?

*Foreword; heading; sub headings; and footnotes by John David.
Holy Scripture from the King James Version (1611) Public Domain ex biblegateway.com

ISAIAH 9
Amid prevailing darkness Isaiah forecasts Christ the Light..
1 Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations.
2 The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
3 Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.
5 For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.

Birth of Immanuel predicted.
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

The advance of the Assyria into Syria and Samaria.
8 The Lord sent a word into Jacob, and it hath lighted upon Israel.
9 And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in the pride and stoutness of heart,
10 The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars.
11 Therefore the Lord shall set up the adversaries of Rezin against him, and join his enemies together;
12 The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

13 For the people turneth not unto him that smiteth them, neither do they seek the Lord of hosts.
14 Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, branch and rush, in one day.
15 The ancient and honourable, he is the head; and the prophet that teacheth lies, he is the tail.
16 For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed.
17 Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

18 For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
19 Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother.
20 And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm:
21 Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

(King James Version of the Bible 1611: Public domain-biblegateway.com)

FOOTNOTES
Isaiah 9:1-2.
Matthew 4:15-16 records Matthew’s quote of Isaiah’s prophecy. There are more quotes from Isaiah in the New Testament than all the other prophets combined.

Isaiah 9:4.
This is a remarkably accurate description of Jesus, the babe of Bethlehem, who would first come to earth in peace, and then after they had killed him he would return to rule and judge the nations at the end of the age in which we live. The prophets, the Psalms, the apostles, the Gospel writers, and Christ Himself all confirmed this description of Isaiah.

Isaiah 9:8.
“The Lord sent a word into Jacob.” This was the message of God’s retribution and wrath upon the ten rebel tribes of Israel lapsed and lost in horrific and beastly idolatry. The messenger of wrath would be the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser invading Samaria, Galilee, and Philistia.

Isaiah 9:12. The merciful loving Father had to mete dire judgment upon his people before his extended hand of atoning mercy would be received. John 1:11-12. My God is holy, just and merciful, but his entreaties through preaching prophets to wayward sinners have a time limit. Cp.vs 9:21; 10:4.

Isaiah 9:21. This alliance of Israel (Ephraim) and Joseph’s descendants with Syria against Judah would fail.

FOREWORD to Isaiah 9