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Why Did Jesus Tell His Disciples to ‘Beware of the Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees’?

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part two of a series. Read part one.

Today we continue the discussion of questions we receive more and more frequently: “My church is no longer true to the Word of God on essential Christian truths. What should I do? Should I leave? Should I stay and try to fight error? Will I be guilty of schism if I do either one?” Our focus in this installment is on the pernicious nature of compromise.1

Why Beware?

Jesus warned His disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” By this, He meant their heretical doctrine (Matthew 16:5-12). Their doctrine, like much that is found in today’s Evangelical church, was founded primarily on two false principles: preaching a counterfeit salvation by adding works to faith, and debasing the authority of Scripture by subordinating it to the words of fallible men. Why was it necessary for even these men, the twelve who were closest to Christ, to “beware”? It was because they were men of sinful flesh, as we are. It is easy to be deceived.

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Confronting Apostasy: The Biblical Steps

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part eight of a series. Read part seven.

You need to understand the Biblical steps in confronting apostasy — and how apostates’ allies and enablers may try to block, complicate, or circumvent the process.

We have now come to the fifth and final key to a Biblically loving response to apostasy: You need to understand the steps that God’s Word tells you to follow when you find apostasy in the church. We shall see that the Bible is very clear about this. There is no guesswork involved. God’s Word sets forth a clear process; it tells you exactly and precisely what to do.

Implementing Key 5: Three Vital Principles

Now before we consider the process itself, I believe it is important to emphasize three very important principles once again. We have discussed them before, but I want to stress them because they relate directly to this process.

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Confronting Apostasy: Dealing With Scripture-Twisters

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part seven of a series. Read part six.

How will you respond when people twist Scripture to try to prevent you from doing what God’s Word commands you to do?

In our last article, we began considering a scenario that is becoming increasingly common in the church today. What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? You discover false teaching or even outright apostasy in your church. But others in the church – perhaps even your own pastor and church leadership – tell you to keep quiet about it, and they quote Scripture to back up their demand.

This is not some far-fetched scenario. It is very real. Many people in Evangelical and Reformed churches are facing this challenge today.

Over the past several years I have had the privilege of ministering to many people, literally from around the world, who are dealing with this kind of a situation. Many of them have asked for my advice because they know that I have faced such a situation myself. Two of my books, Christianity and Neo-Liberalism and A Denomination in Denial, described that particular crisis which unfolded in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I am grateful to say that I was not alone in confronting apostasy in that case, although those of us who did so were a minority. By God’s grace I can say to you that I am thoroughly convinced that we who confronted that particular apostasy did so in a manner that was thoroughly Biblical.

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Is It Wrong to Name Names?

Dr Paul M Elliott

Some readers criticize us for citing, by name, individuals and institutions that promote heretical doctrines. They tell us that naming names is “unloving”. We respond that Scripture does not support this accusation. Consider the example of the Apostle Paul.

What is the Truly Loving Thing to Do?

Paul considered it vital to demonstrate his deep agape love for Christ and His church by warning believers to beware of those who would seek to “overthrow the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2:18). Paul’s consistent policy was to name names, recognizing that speaking in generalities is not always enough.

So great was Paul’s concern for the Galatian church’s departure into legalism – “another gospel, which is not another” (1:7) – that he cited the example of a fellow apostle’s temporary departure from soundness:

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New Citizenship, New Bodies, A Secure Inheritance

By Dr Paul M Elliott

Part three of a series. Read part two.

We come now to our last question: What does adoption promise the believer in the life to come? To answer that question it is important for us to understand one other element in the kind of legal adoption that the Apostle Paul speaks of in Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians.

That final important element has three aspects: inheritance rights, citizenship rights and responsibilities, and the restoration of the marred image of God.

A Rich Inheritance

Under the Roman law that Paul is using as his metaphor, the adopted son was given the right to the Father’s property. He was given an inheritance. The father’s property was his by right of adoption. And that is true for us. We have an inheritance. Our inheritance is our Father’s property — all the riches that are in Christ Jesus. The spiritual riches of life in Him now, and the riches of the new heavens and new earth in the life to come. And the Holy Spirit, Ephesians chapter one tells us, is the guarantee or the down-payment of that inheritance.

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How Pietism Deceives Christians: The Errors of Elitist teachings in the Church

By on Jul 28, 2011

By Apprising Ministries special correspondent Bob DeWaay

There are no extraordinary Christians; but being an ordinary Christian is an extraordinary thing. How I wish I would have understood that when I was a new Christian. But I didn’t. Soon after my conversion I began a quest to become the best possible Christian.

In so doing I fell prey to teachings that promised me a Christian life superior to that of ordinary Christians. What I did not know was that I had embraced pietism. I didn’t become an extraordinary Christian and I did walk straight into error.

My journey into the “deeper life” oftentimes involved embracing contradictory teachings. For example, two of my favorite teachers in the early 1970’s were Watchman Nee and Kenneth Hagin. One taught a deeper Christian life through suffering[1]) and the other taught a higher order Christianity that could cause one to be free from bodily ailments and poverty.[2]The hook was that both claimed to have the secret to becoming an extraordinary Christian. I found out that they didn’t.

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Always Ready (1 Peter 3 )

John MacArthur – Grace to You – Bible Q & A

Always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. (1 Peter 3:15)

Christians must be ready to make a defense of the faith. The Greek term for defense (apologia) is the word from which the English terms apology and apologetics derive. It often means a formal defense in a judicial courtroom (cf. Acts 25:16; 2 Tim. 4:16), but Paul also used the word informally to denote his ability to answer those who questioned him (Phil. 1:16). Always indicates believers’ need for constant preparedness and readiness to respond, whether in a formal courtroom or informally, to everyone who asks them to give an account for why they live and believe the way they do. Account is simply logos, “word,” or “message,” and it calls saints to be able at the time someone asks (present tense) to give the right words in response to questions about the gospel.

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What is conviction of sin?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled

“An Old-Fashioned Conversation,” delivered March 16, 1873.

The Lord shuts us up to hopelessness and helplessness in order that he may come, as a God of grace, and display his abounding mercy. All our hope lies in him, and all other hopes are delusions. The great work in conversion is not to make people better, so that they may come to God on a good footing, it is to strip them completely and lay them low, so that God may come to them when they are on a bad footing, or rather on no footing at all, but down in the dust at his feet. The Son of man is come to seek and to cave that which is lost, but it wants* God himself to convince men that they are lost; and the Spirit’s work of soul-humbling is just this – to get man to feel so diseased that he will accept the physician; to get him to feel so poor that he will accept the charity of heaven; to get him to know that he is so stripped, that he will no longer be proud of his fig leaves, but will be willing to take the robe of righteousness which Christ has wrought out.

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Promoting Contemplative SPIRITUALITY/MYSTICISM ok in Southern Baptist Convention

By

on Jul 14, 2011

Lately I’ve written pieces like “Good” Experiences Aren’t Necessarily From God and Supernatural Gatherings In The New Downgrade here at this online apologetics and discernment work Apprising Ministries showing the sad slide of largely pretending to be Protestant evangelicalism and the growing falling away of the mainstream visible Christian community.

I’ve been documenting all of this for you as well as giving you much evidence of the apostatizing evangelical camp embarking on a spiritual game of Russian roulette by embracing highly subjective Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM).

This is the type of Reformation-reversing so-called Spiritual Formation that’s being taught by Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster along with his spiritual twin and Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard in their festering cult of Foster-Willardism.

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Criticizing other religions: Divisive hatred or Christian duty?

Grant Swart

I recently had the privilege of responding to a blogger’s comment, one which advocated that there be no criticism of religions opposed to, or religions other than, Christianity. Furthermore, the opinion of the concerned blogger was that evangelical Christians should gain a full understanding of other religions, by listening to everything followers of those religions have to say, rather than warning them of their error in love and out of concern.

Satan’s deceptively brilliant idea of punting religious tolerance among the nations, in opposition to the biblical instruction to speak only the truth in love and in accordance with the Gospel, has gained mammoth religious popularity and has invaded the psyche of converts to the globally accepted interfaith protagonists.

While this is in agreement with the worldly message emanating from the post-modern emergent church, and is certainly what followers of false religions necessarily endorse, it is nonetheless contrary to the Scriptural instruction Continue reading →

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Demons and Magic

One of the best explanations I have heard on this subject – I pray this brings the truth to many – Elmarie


John MacArthur- Grace to You

January 14, 1973

The subject upon which we will be speaking tonight is one that perhaps has captured the attention of many of us in our particular modern day because it exists, in a certain sense, as a kind of a paradox. This is a very intellectual day. This is a day when men pride themselves on being rational. This is the era that is after the rational era in the sense that we’ve all discovered what logic means and what rationality means. And yet it is the midst of just such…such an era of education and higher learning and rationality and logic and all of these things that there seems to be a tremendous boom in the occult, the mysterious, the mystique, the things which are supernatural and which are irrational, unreasonable, and beyond education. And it’s becoming such a practical thing that it seems as though it hits us in every place in every way.

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“Is the Doctrine of Election Unfair?”

By John MacArthur

 

In spite of the clarity with which Scripture addresses this topic, many professing Christians today struggle in their acceptance of God’s sovereignty — especially when it comes to His electing work in salvation. Their most common protest, of course, is that the doctrine of election is unfair. But such an objection stems from a human idea of fairness, rather than the objective, divine understanding of true justice. In order to appropriately address the issue of election, we must set aside all human considerations and focus instead on the nature of God and His righteous standard. Divine justice is where the discussion must begin.

What is Divine justice? Simply stated, it is an essential attribute of God whereby He infinitely, perfectly, and independently does exactly what He wants to do when and how He wants to do it. Because He is the standard of justice, by very definition, then whatever He does is inherently just. As William Perkins said, many years ago, ‘We must not think that God doeth a thing because it is good and right, but rather is the thing good and right because God willeth it and worketh it.’

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What is the Church of Christ?

Grant Swart

Ever since I can remember, I have overheard people of varied Christian persuasions, discussing the merits and shortcomings of the myriad of , and some dubiously so, Christian denominations. For years before I had any real knowledge of, or interest in the subject, I listened with fascination to the enthusiastic and opinionated discussions of certain overly contentious religious people. More often than not they insisted on serving the Lord from within the confines of a specific church or denomination which, according to their perceptions, was the “right” or “correct” church.

I think back to the time when I was effectually called by the Lord to serve His Word and to His glorious purpose. The first year or two of my walk with the Lord was marked by a growing frustration in that I simply could not come to fully identify or encounter the Truth in all aspects of the Word. What I encountered in the local churches was fragmented truth at best, and total lies at worst. Continue reading →

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Was Jesus Polite to False Teachers?

 

 

John MacArthur – Grace to You – Bible Q & A

(Matthew 23)

Many Christians today are greatly concerned about the rising influences of communism, humanism, secularism, and social injustice. Yet those evils, great as they are, do not together pose the threat to Christianity that false shepherds and pastors do. Throughout the history of redemption, the greatest threat to God’s truth and God’s work has been false prophets and teachers, because they propose to speak in His name. That is why the Lord’s most scathing denunciations were reserved for the false teachers of Israel, who claimed to speak and act for God but were liars.

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Word Faith Heretic Cindy Trimm receives award from Billy Graham Evangelistic Ass

By Ken Silva pastor-teacher

on Jun 22, 2011

While spiritual darkness continues to creep across apostatizing evangelicalism in The New Downgrade, a major part of my commission as pastor-teacher here Apprising Ministries becomes helping to apprise you of developing trends within the church visible during this time parallel to Amos 8:11-12. As a leading online apologetics and discernment labor in the Lord, for the time I may have left, I’ll continue reminding you about the vital importance of the proper Christian spirituality of sola Scriptura; as in recent pieces like Apprising Ministries Hits Mark On The Wild Goose Festival, Critical To Know Your Bible! and Jay Bakker, Homosexuality, And Gospel Reductionism.

You need to know that there’s a rapidly growing syncretism—combining of beliefs, e.g. Chrislam; and adhering to what the text of the Bible actually says is our safest course now that myriad serpentine deceptions are slithering deeply into the mainstream evangelical camp. Much of this can traced to the perverted practice of critical thinking skills-numbing corrupt Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), such as that taught by Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster along with his spiritual twin and Southern Baptist minister Dallas Willard. Again, another bad by-product of evangelicalism’s embrace of the sinfully ecumenical neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church aka the Emerging Church, of which that dubious duo were key mentors.

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