The Love of The Truth

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What stone Temple ? Jesus, is the True Temple !

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Jesus, the True Temple

By Kim Riddlebarger 

When Jesus declared of himself, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here,” (Matthew 12:6) and when he told a Samaritan woman that he can give her “living water” (John 4:10-14), we are given a major clue that the authors of the New Testament have reinterpreted the pre-messianic understanding of God’s temple in the light of the coming of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah.

When we consider the fact that the temple occupies a major role in the witness of Israel’s prophets regarding God’s future eschatological blessing for the nation, and that this imagery points forward to person of Jesus, we are greatly aided in our understanding of the nature and character of the millennial age as a present reality.

We begin with the Old Testament expectation regarding the temple of the Lord.  Both Isaiah 2:2-4 and Micah 4:1-5, speak of God’s future blessing upon Israel in the last days, when God’s people will go up to mountain of the Lord, and to the temple, where God’s people will once again learn the ways of the Lord. Continue reading →

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The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

As Spurgeon cried with deep insight: “Once a church or individual Christian gets on the downgrade, momentum takes over, recovery is unusual.” And there our modern church is found falling away in profound decadency with most churches having “ICHABOD” written on their doors.

The issue of Women Preachers is just one of the symptoms of this malaise of the church and so from all sides the word now used is “Post Christian Era”. But here we are dealing with this “cancer” of women preachers in the church. The Bible speaks too clearly on this subject for there to be any confusion. The problem is that churches too often are looking to sources other than the Bible for guidance; indeed they are fully steeped in the tenets of secularism. God loves women as much as He does men. Women are as important to the home, church, and society as men are. In Jesus Christ, women enjoy the same access to salvation and blessings before God as men do. This does not mean, though, there is no difference in men and women in their appearance and roles. There is a basic truth, which needs to be restated in the church and society today: Men and women are different and are not interchangeable! Continue reading →

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Usurping Women have been the originators of many false Charismatic movements !

One of the trademarks of Pentecostalism is that women usurp their God ordained place of submission in the church! Pentecostalism: The only religion often founded by women who usurp their place! Dominated by emotionalism!

Teaching or exercising authority over a man in the church. This includes pulpit preaching and administration.

1 Tim 2:12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, andthen Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

Being a pastor/elder/overseer. 1 Tim 3 and Titus 1 explicitly identify that pastors MUST BE MEN.

1 Timothy 3:1 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. 2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, uncontentious, free from the love of money. 4 He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity 5 (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?); 6 and not a new convert, lest he become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. 7 And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Notice that the prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over men in the church is IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY THE CLEAR STATEMENT THAT ONLY MEN CAN BE OVERSEERS/PASTORS! One continuous text!

Miram ~ 1500 BC Continue reading →

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Are you a “Fundamentalist”? More problems with man-made labels

 by Grant Swart

A related post which I placed a few weeks back can be read by clicking here: Are you a Calvinist? The problem with man-made labels . Rather than repeating what I wrote in that post regarding man-made labels, I recommend reading that post in conjunction with this one, which will place the subject in perspective.

It is with predictable regularity that Bible believing Christians today, are confronted with the question: “Are you a Fundamentalist?” More often than not, the question is posed rather as a piercing accusation than an interested or genuine inquiry.  Those who pose the question have generally made up their minds beforehand, what the qualifications for being a Fundamentalist are and accordingly, they label the Bible believer a “Fundamentalist”. However, their assumption is inherently skewed, as most of what the world views as being Fundamentalism, is not akin to biblical Christianity, therefore a truly biblical Christian cannot be that kind of Fundamentalist. Continue reading →

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The History of Dispensationalism

“My brother, I am a constant reader of my Bible, and I soon found that what I was taught to believe did not always agree with what my Bible said. I came to see that I must either part company with John Darby, or my precious Bible, and I chose to cling to my Bible and part from Mr. Darby.” George Müeller (1805–1898)

I am quite convinced that all the promises to Israél are found, are finding and will find their perfect fulfilment in the Church. It is true that in time past, in my expositions, I gave a definite place to Israél in the purposes of God. I have now come to the conviction, as I have just said, that it is, the new and spiritual Israél that is intended. G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945)

Dispensationalism is a device of the enemy, designed to rob the children of no small part of that bread which their heavenly Father has provided for their souls; a device wherein the wily serpent appears as an angel of light, feigning to “make the Bible a new book” by simplifying much in it which perplexes the spiritually unlearned. It is sad to see how widely successful the devil has been by means of this subtle innovation. A. W. Pink(1886-1952)

It is mortifying to remember that I not only held and taught these novelties myself, but that I even enjoyed a complacent sense of superiority because thereof, and regarded with feelings of pity and contempt those who had not received the “new light” and were unacquainted with this up-to-date method of “rightly dividing the word of truth.” For I fully believed what an advertising circular says in presenting “Twelve Reasons why you should use THE SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE,” namely, that: “First, the Scofield Bible outlines the Scriptures from the standpoint of DISPENSATIONAL TRUTH, and there can be no adequate understanding or rightly dividing of the Word of God except from the standpoint of dispensational truth.”

What a slur is this upon the spiritual understanding of the ten thousands of men, “mighty in the Scriptures,” whom God gave as teachers to His people during all the Christian centuries before “dispensational truth” (or dispensational error), was discovered! And what an affront to the thousands of men of God of our own day, workmen that need not to be ashamed, who have never accepted the newly invented system! Yet I was among those who eagerly embraced it (upon human authority solely, for there is none other) and who earnestly pressed it upon my fellow Christians. I am deeply thankful, however, that the time came (it was just ten years ago) when the inconsistencies and self contradictions of the system itself, and above all, the impossibility of reconciling its main positions with the plain statements of the Word of God, became so glaringly evident that I could not do otherwise than renounce it. Philip Mauro (1859-1952) Continue reading →

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Entertainment and Style of Music Do Not Convert People

John MacArthur,

“It’s not the style of our music that gets people converted. It’s not because of the entertainment level that they enjoy that gets them converted. Sooner or later you’ve got to get down to confronting them with the message and my judgment is sooner is better than later. So what are we waiting for? Let’s just get them to hear the message, that’s how they’re going to be saved. Take out the preaching of sin, take out the preaching of hell, take out repentance, take out the cross, and then people will feel comfortable. That’s the new trend. Build an image of love, care, being nice and if everybody is nice, they like us, they might like Jesus. That is tragically not the case. Continue reading →

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Mormons A Cult

Exposing Mormon Beliefs – Way of the Master – 3 Videos

PURCHASE THIS DVD FROM THE WAY OF THE MASTER’s 3rd SEASON – GO HERE

Summed Up Info on: Mormons the Cult

Mormon’s are a very deceptive Cult, and sadly believe that God lives on a Planet called Kolab!- They believe that God is married to his goddess wife and has spirit children (Mormon Doctrine, p. 516).

Mormon’s wrongly Teach that Men can become gods, and that God Himself is merely an Exalted man.The Founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith— is a False Teacher, who wrongly taught that Jesus & Satan are spirit brothers and we were all born as siblings in heaven to them both, (Mormon Doctrine, p. 163.). He also taught that he (Joseph Smith) would sit in Judgment of the World. He Falsely Prophesied that Quakers lived on the Moon. Continue reading →

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The Shepherd

John 10:11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Luke 15:3-7 So he told them this parable: (4) “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? (5) And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. (6) And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ (7) Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

THEN a shepherd has at last overtaken his poor, silly, wandering sheep, he does not straightway fall to scolding or beating it for having cost him so much toil and trouble. No; but he observes that it is very weary, that it has torn itself among thorns, and cut itself among jagged rocks, and therefore he first tenderly sees to its wounds, and then bears it back to the fold in his own arms. Poor trembling sinner, the gospel has at length laid hold upon you; you cannot longer run into the paths of sin, grace has stopped your mad career, and made you tremble at the guilt of sin. Continue reading →

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How to Discern : Check, Check and Check Again (Part4/6)

By Pastor Anton Bosch 

Check, Check and Check Again (Part4/6)

This is a principle that holds true in most areas in life. Carpenters speak about measuring twice and cutting once. We teach our children that when they cross the street they must look left, look right and look left again. And when it comes to our faith we must be even more careful and check everything we hear.

1Thessalonians 5:21 says: “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” In other words, not everything is good and can be trusted, so everything must be tested first. The noble-minded Bereans even subjected Paul’s teaching to scrutiny and they were commended for doing so (Acts 17:11).

We live in dangerous times and the world is filled with deceivers, false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing and heretics. Those who preach the Truth are a small minority while the false apostles wield massive budgets with which they dominate every form of media. No matter whether you listen to “Christian” radio, watch “Christian” television look at “Christian” websites or enter a “Christian” bookstore, the odds are stacked against the possibility that you will be exposed to truth. Yet every day thousands are deceived into believing anything that is sold under the banner of “Christian.” Continue reading →

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But Spiritual Discernment is Wholly Lost Until we are Regenerated

by John Calvin

The following selection by John Calvin was taken from book 2, chapter 2 parts 18-21 ofThe Institutes of The Christian Religion, translated by by Henry Beveridge, Esq. A must read for all Christians who aspire to better understand the Bible’s teaching on man’s spiritual impotence prior to the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

18. The limits of our understanding

We must now explain what the power of human reason is, in regard to the kingdom of God, and spiritual discernments which consists chiefly of three things – the knowledge of God, the knowledge of his paternal favour towards us, which constitutes our salvation, and the method of regulating of our conduct in accordance with the Divine Law. With regard to the former two, but more properly the second, men otherwise the most ingenious are blinder than moles. I deny not, indeed, that in the writings of philosophers we meet occasionally with shrewd and apposite remarks on the nature of God, though they invariably savour somewhat of giddy imagination. As observed above, the Lord has bestowed on them some slight perception of his Godhead that they might not plead ignorance as an excuse for their impiety, and has, at times, instigated them to deliver some truths, the confession of which should be their own condemnation. Still, though seeing, they saw not. Their discernment was not such as to direct them to the truth, far less to enable them to attain it, but resembled that of the bewildered traveller, who sees the flash of lightning glance far and wide for a moment, and then vanish into the darkness of the night, before he can advance a single step. So far is such assistance from enabling him to find the right path. Besides, how many monstrous falsehoods intermingle with those minute particles of truth scattered up and down in their writings as if by chance. In short, not one of them even made the least approach to that assurance of the divine favour, without which the mind of man must ever remain a mere chaos of confusion. To the great truths, What God is in himself, and what he is in relation to us, human reason makes not the least approach. (See Book 3 c. 2 sec. 14, 15, 16.) Continue reading →

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Beware False Prophets

Do not think it is the obvious that we can now who is a false teacher/prophet, it is those who profess to be believers who can lead you astray. Mat_7:15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

This is an excellent sermon and exposition done by Pastor Vodie Baucham.

Please listen here :

OR DOWNLOAD SERMON HERE

Voddie Baucham 

Some sermon exert noted I jotted down :
Though the culture at large has a problem with judging, Christians are not only allowed to do so, we are commanded to do so. In this portion of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus informs us that we must learn to discern and expose false teaching and false teachers.

False prophets are not always easy to spot.D A Carson ” Warnings against false prophets are necessarily based on the conviction that not all prophets are true, that truth can be violated and that the gospels enemies usually conceal their hostility and try to pass them selves of as fellow believers” (Quote used by Voddie) Continue reading →

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The Beatitudes and Christ

by Arthur Pink

The Beatitudes and Christ The Beatitudes and Christ Our meditations upon the Beatitudes would not be complete unless they turned our thoughts to the person of our blessed Lord. As we have endeavored to show, they describe the character and conduct of a Christian, and as Christian character is nothing more or less than being experimentally conformed to the image of God’s Son we must turn to Him for the perfect pattern. In the Lord Jesus Christ we find the brightest manifestations of the highest exemplifications of the different spiritual graces which are found, dimly reflected, in His followers. Not one or two but all of these perfections were displayed by Him, for Me is not only “lovely,” but “altogether lovely.” May the Holy Spirit who is here to glorify Him take now of the things of Christ and show them unto us.

First, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Most blessed is it to see how the Scriptures speak of Him who was rich becoming poor for our sakes, that we through His poverty might be rich. Great indeed was the poverty into which He entered. Born of parents who were poor in this world’s goods, He commenced His earthly life in a manger. During His youth and early manhood He toiled at the carpenter’s bench. After His public ministry had begun He declared that though the foxes had their holes and the birds of the air their nests, the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. If we trace out the Messianic utterances recorded in the Psalms by the Spirit of prophecy, we shall find that again and again He confessed to God His poverty of spirit: “I am poor and sorrowful” (Ps. 69:29); and, “Bow down thine ear, O Jehovah, for I am poor and needy” (Ps. 86:1); and again, “For I am poor and needy, and My heart is wounded within me” (Ps. 109:22). Continue reading →

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Bewitched

Acts 20:29-30 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; (30) and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.

John MacArthur – Grace to You

Galatians 3:1-5

 

Our study tonight takes us to the third chapter of the book of Galatians in our continuing look at this most exciting and helpful book. We will be considering verses 1-5. Galatians 3:1-5.

Defection is an ugly word. So is the word deserter. Certainly, there is nothing more bewildering, and few things more sorrowing, than to see a Christian who defects, or deserts, the purity of the Christian faith by which he has been born again and by which he has been nurtured, to settle for something less. But strange as it may seem, many Christians do. We find that they begin well. They receive the grace of Christ extended in salvation; they live in humble faith, but soon they fall into systems of legalism, systems of ritual, systems of works. I wonder how many Christians, for example, have come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ in a very personal way and have then fallen into a very liturgical church pattern, where they merely go through formalities and functions that have only external symbolism and no internal significance. I wonder how many people begin well, but then begin to substitute things like confirmation and communion and baptism and the Mass and any other kind of particular church rite for the realities of the Christian faith.

This is an issue that comes to full force in the book of Galatians, because this is the issue that confronts the heart of the Apostle Paul. He had been used as the mouthpiece of God to introduce the Galatians to the truth of the Gospel. He was the one who preached the gospel of grace; he was the one who exposed them to the magnificence of the Christian experience (which was by faith plus nothing) in the perfect and finished work of Jesus Christ. But since that time when he had begun with them, they had defected. They had deserted the simple purity of a grace gospel and substituted a form of religion, inferior and impotent.

This is not to say they had lost their salvation. It is to say, rather, that they substituted for the fullness of their life in Christ a form of religion that had no power and no joy. Furthermore, the unsaved world would get it’s doctrine of salvation from their lives and if they live legalistic lives, the world then is to conclude that salvation comes by legalism and nothing could be further from the truth. Continue reading →

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Should One Venerate a Dead Roman Catholic Nun?

Teresa of Calcutta may have followed another Jesus…..we must not exalt human beings like Teresa of Calcutta, and give to her a free pass to heaven because of a work done amongst the poor. She was a sinner who needed true shepherds to guide her to Jesus Christ as the sole and sufficient Saviour of the lost. I am told that John MacArthur had opportunity to present the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to Teresa of Calcutta, and she rejected it. To accept Christ she would have had to renounce the whole Roman Catholic deception and the pride of her own spiritual works, and this she was unwilling to do.

For us the lessons are at least two: One: we need to ask ourselves whether we who know Christ as Lord and Saviour are as dedicated to his cause, and as sacrificial, as a Teresa of Calcutta who knew not the truth of God in Christ. And two: does not her sad ‘angst’ of soul cause us to see that we still have a work to do in witnessing to our Catholic neighbours? For clearly their bondage is great, and they need the light of Scripture to know God’s forgiveness and to have the assurance that their souls are safe in Christ.

Continue reading →

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Spiritual Gifts, Revelation and the Local Congregation

By Bob DeWaay

There are no new revelations. That is what we were taught in Bible College and our professors were correct. Then we encountered passages such as 1Corinthians 14:26 which taught that members of the assembled church could have a revelation and it caused some of us to question what we were taught. In this paper the conclusion we come to will depend on how we answer the apparent contradiction between our teachers’ claims and how we define the range of meaning of the term “revelation” (apokalupsis). Understanding this range of meaning will help us clear up much of the church’s confusion about spiritual gifts and provide support for our Bible College instructors. We shall begin by examining the claims of two groups: those who believe there are new revelations (such as those involved in the modern day apostles and prophets movement) and those who claim that the “revelatory” gifts ceased when the canon of scripture was completed around 100 A.D.

The first group includes those of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and some other Charismatic and Pentecostal groups who argue that gifts of the Spirit exist today and are God’s means of giving revelation to the church, both individually and corporately. In practice this leads to individuals receiving “words of knowledge, words of wisdom, and prophecies” that contain supernatural information which is beyond Scripture and is not available through ordinary means. Such practices are outside the bounds of Scripture. Continue reading →