Category: Myths in the Church

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.

HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE.

HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE.
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 analyse 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 with out help of church or clergy until there arises within your heart a 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
Please write to:- Bible Simply c/- biblesimply@gmail.com or 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.

HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE.

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 SERIES (2): False joy.

FOLLOWER’S EXCITEMENT IS SELDOM CONVERT’S JOY.
Of the 2,800 different Church denominations (Barratt 1977)) most of their followers will enjoy in varying measures the excitement of following Him. Judas Iscariot followed Jesus and while he was with Him he saw and did great things. He was a member of one of the six couples Jesus sent to evangelize. Peter also saw and did great things while with Jesus. When Peter was away from Him he soon denied Him. Judas, like Peter, betrayed his Lord and then repented. The Lord told Peter that only when he became converted would he strengthen his brethren. Jesus said that on the day of the harvest when the angels shall gather all to face God, many followers will declare that they have done great things in His name, but he will declare that he never knew them.

GOD’S PRESENCE WITH THE MERE DISCIPLE IS OFTEN TEMPORARY, UNLIKE HIS PERMANENT INDWELLING SPIRIT.
It is no wonder that for the most part the churches are filled with goats taught to wear a fleece. Some have become pilgrims in their devotion, and a small number have been awakened by the preaching of the Word, but vainly think their sudden awareness of God’s presence is eternal life. Yet the temporary sensitivity to God’s omnipresence is a temporal state, not an eternal one. Jesus said that they need His indwelling Spirit. Only regeneration converts disciples, not by affirming biblical knowledge. Thus after Judas Iscariot’s betrayal, He told the remaining eleven disciples they needed conversion by that Holy Spirit, which he gave them after he rose from the dead.

SCRIPTURE.

“Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, RECEIVE YE THE HOLY GHOST:”

John 20:19-22

SCRIPTURE.

“And ye shall seek me, and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13
“With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early.” Isaiah 26:9

• It is very easy to seek God with an ulterior motive. E.g. you want to avoid the suffering of hellfire by taking out an eternal assurance policy. This is self-preservation. So you are persuaded to make a decision and join the church. Compare John 6:26.

SCRIPTURE: “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Psalm 14:2-3/ Psalm 53:2.

• You say you were made in the image of God so you naturally seek God and naturally have enough faith and can understand the plan of salvation the preacher showed you. That’s Christian humanism’s great lie of free-will. Yet the Bible says in Romans chapters 5 and 7, that the human will is neither free nor has any propensity towards God. It does not want God except in the case of self-advantage. God’s image in Adam’s race was marred beyond repair as St. Paul and David the Psalmist pointed out. Until a man is in utter need of grace and ceases to depend on the falsity of his own natural faith he can only become a follower, but never a true convert. Only Christ can open his eyes; only Christ’s Spirit can give true sorrow for sin; only Christ can give hope and accompanying faith; only Jesus can give transforming grace which exceeds anything free-will efforts could accomplish. This alone is conversion and only occurs when you wholeheartedly seek Him. Only the risen Saviour can give you the gift of His Spirit when you truly seek him. Do not trust in the deception of signs so popular today. His inner witness to your heart, mind and spirit is unmistakable but indescribable.

SCRIPTURE “He expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”…”And their eyes were opened, and they knew him”… “And they said one to another, Did not our HEART BURN WITHIN US, while he talked with us by the way, and while HE OPENED TO US the scriptures?”… “And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together”…”Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.”.[ Luke 24:27-33;45]

• SCRIPTURE. “… break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” [Hosea 10:12]

• SCRIPTURE. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:22-24.

Quotations from King James Version of the Holy Bible: Public Domain.
Article by Brother John of bonitabiblemission@gmail.com

TRUE CONVERSION SERIES (2)

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.

ISAIAH 2: Foreword

Isaiah’s future hope: the 1st & 2nd coming of Christ.
Having described Jerusalem’s decadence and its self-inflicted woes, God’s voice through Isaiah his mouthpiece, calls Jerusalem a wayward woman. Albeit, the prophet sees Jerusalem through the eyes of the distant future. He encompasses both the First Advent and the Second Coming of Christ (the Second Advent) to planet Earth. Prior to the second advent he foresees the apocalyptic judgment of Earth by a wrathful God acting in vengeance for its endemic wickedness and rejection of his entreaties offering merciful forgiveness to genuine penitents. Whether from prophets, apostles, evangelists or saints the resistance was impenetrable.

Immanuel, Christ would first come as a Lamb, and then return at the end of the age as King of Kings to rule and reign with a rod of iron from Zion. The millennial reign of Jesus Christ would be from Jerusalem where he is due to return on the Mount of Olives, from which he ascended not Galilee as the 4th C amended Matthew 26; 28; Mark 14; & 16 purport. As Luke, John, and Acts declare: His passion, resurrection, and ascension was not from Galilee’s unnamed mountain, but Jerusalem near Bethany on the Mt. Olivet. The major prophets and the minor prophets agree with John and Luke that the second advent return of Immanuel will be to Jerusalem. Importantly and precisely Zechariah 14 correlates with Luke where (in Acts 1) before the apostles the angel heralds the eventual returning descent of Christ to the very same Mount of Olives. This made the apostles of Christ beholden to proclaim that same message as harbingers of the Second Coming.
John David
KJV Scripture Chapter Isaiah 2: public Domain see:
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/isaiah-2-foreword/

ISAIAH 2: Explanatory Foreword

The Message of Apostate Christendom in the Last Days.

THE GREAT DECEPTION OF THE LAST DAYS (see Matthew 24 warnings by Jesus)
1. Easy religion = those preachers and churches that evangelise to get the most people responding to their message by eliminating genuine repentance (gift of godly sorrow)
a. Jesus spoke of them in John 10 as thieves and hirelings that do this
b. It is popular today to preach how easy it is to receive Christ, but this error is unbiblical and both Jeremiah and Jesus said that it is not enough to want heaven after death. It is not enough to want to miss hellfire after death. It is not enough to seek the Lord by attending church and/or reading the Bible, saying prayers, or being baptized in water. The prophets and Jesus demand:-
i. wholeheartedness, seeking the Lord with all of one’s heart
ii. that one admits his lack of faith and need of divine faith as His gift
iii. that one admits his heart is deceitful and wickedly self-righteous
iv. that one admits his inability to have faith or grace and that he went astray from the womb under the curse of Adam’s sin passed on through his forbears
v. that one admits, when he is religious, that this is a self justifying motive and not the so-called inner desire to seek the Lord by the promptings of conscience (which is also fallen and corrupted by sin). Paul calls the conscience “evil”.
vi. That one admits that he is made in the image of the earthy (i.e. Adam’s image, not God’s image as he was originally created in his innocence).
“The easy religion offering unconditional acceptance into the Kingdom by SELF FAITH and automated repentance is justified by the moral majority who twist Romans 10:9 away from its context and bibliolatrously venerate it (& verse 13). Then the clergy of easy-religion use them to interpret all other Scriptures. This illogical hermeneutic becomes the arbiter of all New Testament truth and acts as a blocking filter to disallow both the effects of the curse and its legacy of ORIGINAL SIN to deny man’s utter dependence upon the endowment of grace to repent and believe the Gospel.”

http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/beware-hirelings…-sheeps-clothing/

THE HERESY OF EVANGELICAL MESSAGE TODAY

POPULAR HERESY OF EVANGELICALS SINCE 1948.
The hidden humanism of the evangelical churches promotes the easy religion of do-it-yourself salvation.

1. God said it.
2. You say it.
3. You have therefore believed it.
4. You automatically have it (irrevocable eternal life).

This is the humanistic psychology of New England Theology that pervades America and much of the global outreach in the third world after one hundred years of the Golden Age of Evangelism. This libertine right wing humanism was refined in a redefinition of faith by William James, the Father of American Psychology, in his Varieties of Religious Experiences in the 1850’s. This plague of easy religion that went global, in the 1948 B.G. Crusades, is a complete distortion of the Reformation’s message of grace.

In 1746 America turned away from the message of its Puritan Fathers with the lapsed evangelist of the First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards. After reading the English philosopher John Locke, he wrote, ‘The Freedom of the Will. He had not only rejected the Puritan Fathers, but re-echoed the humanism of Origen, Pelagius, and Jacob Arminius.

What was their root problem that led them into Christian humanism? They rejected both the Genesis account and the Romans 5 description of hereditary original sin and were deluded by Rome’s notion of Adam’s original righteousness. The logical extension of this main error is to misunderstand the image of God in human creation, and then innately arm all humans with the faculty of preserved freewill and an active light of conscience. Implied in this heresy is the notion of a universal residual vestige of inner faith enabling receptivity to God’s overtures.

RE-EXAMINING THE CREATION RECORD.
1. Adam was crated in a state of innocence from which he and Eve fell when they rejected God’s offer of grace through the tree of life by grasping for paranormal knowldge from the Tree of Knowledge.
2. Adam was made in the tripartite image of God with a body-soul-spirit. As such he was unique to the animal kingdom with his reflective capacity to confer with himself, internalize, rationalize and cogitize accordingly beyond mere instinct. Of the trinity God the Father; God the WORD; and God’s Spirit self reflection is manifest in the Scriptures in Genesis and In the Gospel of John etc.
3. God created Adam with a definitive difference. He gave him a LIVING SOUL
4. When Adam and Eve fell from their state of innocence

Instead of the biblical faith through grace, it is now grace by human faith (that Jesus, the apostles and the prophets said we lack). Instead of seeking the Lord wholeheartedly with earnest pleading for the gift of faith hearers are told to use their own faith to claim what rightfully belongs to them so they can miss hellfire in the after-life. This DIY religion claims that:
A. God said it (Romans 10:9)
B. You believe it by saying it.
C. Once you say it too, you’ve got it
D. Now you have received the irrevocable gift of ETERNAL LIFE. (they are assured by the indoctrinator).

However, the psychology of positivist religious humanism can never be a substitute for radical, real, conversion.
Even when the church is apostate and in a state of Ichabod the method of easy religionists will gain converts. More so when the preacher is a powerful speaker full of charisma. But, one may ask: What sort of converts? And: To whom have they been converted? The preacher, the church, or a denomination? It is most doubtful indeed that they have been ushered into the kingdom and translated from the ‘kingdom of darkness’ to which they belong.

Evangelists compass land and sea to make one more convert, but in the above context make them twofold more the child of hell, Jesus claimed.

KNOWLEDGE and the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE has unwittingly been made a replacement for the TREE OF LIFE.
whether EVANGELICAL, LIBERAL, ORTHODOX, OR ROMAN the emphasis is SALVATION BY KNOWLEDGE of creed, doctrine, confession, or sacred writ of Scripture.

There is no doubt that God will use any avenue to attract and arrest souls for He is not willing that any should perish. But the best that can be expected from the evangelicals today is that one might be ARRESTED by the Spirit and awakened, though this rarely occurs where Ichabod prevails where personality cult pulpiteers lead an assembly. However, when such does occur it is unfortunately called conversion and the victim is rushed into indoctrination to such an extent that he/she is brainwashed.

Perhaps pastors, evangelists, and soul-winners should be reminded that there is a Holy Spirit ready to do the work of grace once they stop interfering.

1. The Father will arrest and draw the lost awakened soul towards Calvary and self discovery in the process
2. The Father will ensure that the arrested seeker will HEAR AND LEARN OF THE FATHER so he can later come to Christ.
3. Like the Twelve the lost soul who has heard the CALL TO FOLLOW will be drawn to self distrust, self revelation, and broken readiness for the eye opening ILLUMINATION of the WORD at the hands of the risen Christ Himself. John 20, Luke 24.

The arrested, and slightly awakened soul shows such earnest gravity in his seeking that this disturbs the comfort zone of the hirelings wearing fleeces, who are unaccustomed to such a manifestation. If they cannot soothe the dying pillow of the lost with false hopes they then call for the psychologist or psychiatrist to ease his disturbed mind, because apostate church pulpiteers today have never seen God work before in genuine conversion. They do not know the signs of the godly sorrow or the anguish that a smitten seeking sinner experiences. It is foreign to the religious Protestants of our day and cannot be counterfeited even by paranormal physical aberrations common to mystics and phenomena seeking assemblies who claim to possess the Spirit’s fulness.

THE HERESY OF EVANGELICAL MESSAGE TODAY