Bible Q & A with John MacArthur – Grace to You
(1 Corinthians 11)
Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying, disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying, disgraces her head; for she is one and the same with her whose head is shaved. (1 Corinthians 11:4, 5)
It is best to understand that Paul is here referring to activities of believers in ministry before the Lord and the public, where a clear testimony is essential.
Superstition is inherent in fallen human nature and I suppose there is no one entirely free from it.
There are two classes of men who appear to have come the nearest to getting deliverance from the bondage of superstition: the scientist who has developed a mentality that accepts nothing that cannot be proved and the philosophical skeptic who has taught himself to discount the supernatural. By denying the existence of the spiritual they reduce their hopes and fears to the ordered operation of the natural, but that seems too high a price to pay for their freedom.
People say this Bible was good enough for ancient days, but we have men of culture, of science, of literature now, and its value has decreased to the people of our day. Now, give me a better book, and I will throw it away. Has the world ever offered us a better book? These men want us to give up the Bible. What are you going to give us in its place? O, how cruel infidelity is to tell us to give up all the hope we have, to throw away the only book which tells the story of the resurrection. They try to tell us that it is all a fiction, so that
John MacArthur – Grace to You
“The world is full of either philosophic or pragmatic atheists–they either don’t believe in God, or if they do, they live as if His existence had no effect on them. In sharing Christ with them, it’s helpful to know which kind of atheist they are. Determine how you might alter your presentation of God’s truth to match the type of person you’re sharing with. For some ideas, compare Stephen’s address to the Jewish religious leaders (Acts 7) and Paul’s address to Gentile philosophers (Acts 17:18-34).”
With all that is going on today, can you help me gain a basic understanding of Islam? How does it differ from biblical Christianity?
Islam is actually a word that means “surrender” or “submission.” Islam claims to be fully surrendered to the will of Allah. And the will of Allah,Muslims believe, was revealed through his prophet Mohammed. The revelation is written down in the Muslim holy book, the Koran.
There are six basic articles of faith in Islam and five duties. A simple Islamic doctrinal statement would look something like this:
To take Jesus Christ into your life without reservation is to accept His friends as your friends and to know that His enemies will be your enemies! It means that we accept His rejection as our rejection. We knowingly accept His cross as our cross. If you then find
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Religious people are psychologically conditioned to the trite phrase and the hackneyed expression. True, the stereotyped pattern varies slightly between different groups, but there would seem to be no reason why a clever speaker could not preach tonight to Calvinists, tomorrow to Arminians, the next day to Pentecostals, the next to Holiness people, and successively to Separatists and Adventists, and preach acceptably to each one by the simple expedient of finding out what they were conditioned to expect and giving it to them. A clever man could do this, I say, but an honest man would not. And the reason the clever man could do it is that the ability to create a specific pattern of words is all that is demanded of the speaker. That he may be talking about something he has never experienced to people who do not understand him seems not to occur to anyone. The reassuring drone of safe and familiar religious phrases is enough to give the listeners an enjoyable sense of well-being. The absence of reality is not even noticed.
An obscure Hindu holy man named Rao flirted with worldwide fame in 1966. An eccentric, pompous mystic, Rao became convinced he could walk on water. He was so confident in his own spiritual power that he announced he would perform the feat before a live audience-tickets sold for a hundred dollars apiece. Bombay’s elite turned out en masse to behold the spectacle.
The event was held in a large garden with a deep pool. More than six hundred of Rao’s faithful, along with curiosity seekers, assembled to watch. The white-bearded yogi appeared in flowing robes and stepped confidently to the edge of the pool. He paused to pray silently. A reverent hush fell on the crowd. Rao opened his eyes, looked heavenward and boldly stepped forward.
Bible Q & A with John MacArthur – Grace to You
(Titus 2 )
Urge bond-slaves to be subject to their own masters in everything, to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in every respect. (Titus 2:9–10)
The fifth category of believers about which Paul admonishes Titus is not based on age but on social standing. Douloi (bond-slaves) refers to slaves, those who were owned and controlled by their own masters.
Grant Swart
Yesterday, we posted a short piece by J. C. Ryle which illustrates 8 symptoms regarding false doctrine. In other words, it provides some points which assist us in discerning and recognizing some of the negative aspects which can be encountered, to lesser or greater degree, in false church(es), or among the deceived.
The following are 8 values which point to some of the positive aspects of the life of the true believer, which will be encountered, to a lesser or greater degree, in the true church and among those who are being saved.
A Woman to Be Remembered
“Remember Lot’s wife.” (Luke 17:32).
There are few warnings in Scripture more solemn than that which heads this page. The Lord Jesus Christ says to us, “Remember Lot’s wife.”
Lot’s wife was a professor of religion; her husband was a “righteous man” (2 Pet. 2:8). She left Sodom with him on the day when Sodom was destroyed; she looked back toward the city from behind her husband, against God’s express command; she was struck dead at once and turned into a pillar of salt. And the Lord Jesus Christ holds her up as a beacon to His church; He says, “Remember Lot’s wife.”
Long Before Luther: Jesus and the Doctrine of Justification
No doctrine is more important to evangelical theology than the doctrine of justification by faith alone–the Reformation principle of sola fide.Martin Luther called it the article that determines whether the church is standing or falling.
History provides plenty of objective evidence to affirm Luther’s assessment.Churches and denominations that hold firmly to sola fide remain evangelical.Those willing to yield at this point inevitably capitulate to liberalism, revert to sacerdotalism, or embrace even worse forms of apostasy.Historic evangelicalism has therefore always treated justification by faith as a central biblical distinctive–if not the single most important doctrine to get right.It would not be far from the truth to define evangelicals as those who believe in justification by faith alone.
We have developed in recent times a peace-loving, soft-spoken, tame and harmless brand of Christian of whom the world has no fear and for whom it has little respect. We are careful, for instance, never to speak in public against any of the false cults lest we be thought intolerant. We fear to talk against the destructive sins of modern civilization for fear someone will brand us as bigoted and narrow. Little by little we have been forced off the hard earth into a religious cloud-land where we are permitted to wing our harmless
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”
Romans 9:13.
Introduction.
Do not imagine for an instant that I pretend to be able thoroughly to elucidate the great mysteries of predestination. There are some men who claim to know all about the matter. They twist it round their fingers as easily as if it were an everyday thing; but depend upon it, he who thinks he knows all about this mystery, knows but very little. It is but the shallowness of his mind that permits him to see the bottom of his knowledge; he who dives deep, finds that there is in the lowest depth to which he can attain a deeper depth still. The fact is, that the great questions about man’s responsibility, free-will, and predestination, have been fought over, and over, and over again, and have been answered in ten thousand different ways; and the result has been, that we know just as much about the matter as when we first began. The combatants have thrown dust into each other’s eyes, and have hindered each other from seeing; and then they have concluded, that because they put other people’s eyes out, they could therefore see.
For the Love of His Truth 