WHEN THE CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER.
Introduction
The real church on earth is the invisible body of regenerated believers, called saints, in the New Testament. There are hundreds of denominations who say they are the unique church, or that they alone have the real Christian congregants. The common disease of preachers is sectarianism: not discerning that invisible body that transcends all artificial denominational boundaries.
The falling-away of these last days (Matt.24) has caused multitudinous sheep and shepherds to adopt the worldly trend of goat-filled churches and become sectarian separatists since the 19th C.
These overemphasize their own human visible church and obscure the invisible body of Christ on earth, the sheep of the true flock. Thus they impoverish their walk with the Lord. (Romans.12;; 1st Corinthians 12). Consequently they become a liability to the kingdom, notwithstanding their recruitment of followers. There is no doubt that many have responded to their church and become followers of Christ. But following a doctrine or a method to gain eternal life falls far short of regeneration by faith through grace.
Church expansion under the guise of evangelism requires little more than consistent advertising, and visiting the homes of the community. The birth of new babes in Christ is a different matter and can only take place after travail in the labour ward where brethren meet to wait on God for the lost as the Spirit directs. This fell out of fashion well over a hundred years ago. Merely teaching another soul how to wear a fleece is not the second birth through faith by grace.
END OF INTRODUCTION.
Next post: Part 1 of When the Church is a Distracter.
WHEN THE CHURCH IS A DISTRACTER. (Intro’.)
Published by
Bible Simply
PROFILE of BIBLE SIMPLY
SIMPLE KEYS
TO UNDERSTANDING
AND KNOWING YOUR
BIBLE’S CONTENTS
HOW TO START READING YOUR BIBLE.
As we are educated to be doubters and skeptics, one way or another, you need to employ the willing suspension of disbelief at the very start and if you have not believed the following tenets enumerated below you must pretend they are true while reading.
1. Read it as if it is the infallible Word of God.
2. Remember in the first chapter of the first of sixty-six books: Genesis, these words appear:
a. “God said-God made-God called”
i. God said what you’re reading
ii. God made the patriarchs, prophets & apostles write them.
iii. God called ordinary men to write His Words. Do not treat them as in any other book.
3. Do not analyze it by your own intellect for logic or truthfulness;
4. Do not judge it by your powers of mental reason or of popular philosophy;
5. Read it as God’s Word demonstrating the waywardness of rebellious human nature cursed by sin;
6. Read it noticing the rare men or women that wholeheartedly seek God sincerely without ulterior motive;
7. Read it noticing the futile attempts of men to keep the moral law, vainly worshipping with lip service;
8. Read it and continue the habit even when you do not understand it for God is secretly at work because the Bible says:-:
a. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God:
i. Romans 10: 17.
b. The pre-eternal Christ’s name is the Word, in the triune godhead of the Father, the Word & Spirit:
i. 1st John 5:7; 1st John 1:1; John’s Gospel 1:1.
9. Read it without the help of church or clergy until there arises within your heart a pang of hunger to wholeheartedly be a daily Bible reader.
10. Read it until God’s grace enlightens the eyes of your understanding to fathom Christ’s message to you in both the Old and New Testaments (excepting the uninspired Apocrypha in some Bibles)
11. Read it noticing the principles of the wise reader found in the following Bible references:-
a. Proverbs 3:5-6; 1st Corinthians 2:14; 2nd Timothy 3:16; Romans 1:17; John’s Gospel 1:17.
12. Keep in mind that the minute your mind asserts superior wisdom over your Bible reading you are a fool.
a. Romans 1:22.
13. The reason the mind blindly argues against the credibility of Scripture that the problem is from the heart:
a. Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
PROFILE
John David’s Bible Simply is a Know Your Bible program. Bible Simply has been formed to reach the ‘household of faith’ and the god-fearing pilgrims struggling to understand the Bible. Bible Simply would encourage spasmodic readers to become daily Bible readers and regular readers to become more acquainted with the Old and New Testaments.
For a free Bible Study or New Testament sample: c/- biblesimply@gmail.com or
Please write to-
Bible Simply
PO Box 366603,
Bonita Springs FL 34136.
Bible Simply is neither church-based nor sectarian in approach. It does not solicit church attendance or use follow-up methods unless requested.
Bible Simply holds to the tenets of our Puritan forefathers and their early English Bible translations based on the Greek Text of Erasmus, not the unreliable 19th C Greek New Testament of Westcott & Hort upon which most modern translations of the Bible are based.
MOTTO: “Faith alone- by grace alone- through Scripture alone.”
‘The just shall live by faith,’ not of themselves but of grace.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/how-to-start-reading-your-bible/
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