God, Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, Bible have taught the truth
Advisory!
I have nothing to sell you, nothing for you to join, nothing to send you, no religious “new thing” to convince you of. What you see here—articles and books that state the simple truth of the Bible and Jesus Christ as best I can—is what you get. If you want the smooth, slick, sophisticated, artificially contrived unbiblical religious imaginative inventions that are creating new idols and which is erroneously called “Christianity” today, then you are in the wrong place.
Back several centuries ago, a German philosopher by the name of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), made a statement. He said, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” (He must have been a prophet, huh?) While I don’t agree with some other ideas he had, I find merit in that particular statement. He also said, “Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world,” which really ties in with the first statement, doesn’t it?
I want to comment on both those statements as they apply to some reactions you may be having to the contents of this web site.
(1) “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
Some of you who come to this web site are on the upper level of the hierarchical clergy/laity authoritarian totem pole. That is to say that you are titled clergy. Others are simply thoroughly brainwashed into believing that the doctrine they have been taught is exclusively and rigidly perfect and that anything that deviates from their way of thinking is wrong and probably evil.
Your reaction to the truth presented on this web site is probably to ridicule it (thinking to yourself, “Well, this is absolutely preposterous, after all we have 2,000 years of tradition and this isn’t what I’ve been taught!”) With this reaction you then begin to mentally and verbally violently oppose it. The next step for you is to get hot-headed and then depart from this web site to never return again.
My point is ... why don’t you hang around and check out what I have stated publicly so you can have an opportunity to get to the third stage, i.e., accept the truth of what I’ve said as biblically self-evident?
You have a Bible and every reference tool available to you that I do. Check out what I’ve said. Show me where I’m wrong!
When you begin to rightly divide the word of truth you’ll have the help of the Holy Spirit also. If you refuse to check out the Bible truths I’ve written about and posted on the web site, then you will simply be exhibiting your disregard and lack of love of the truth. Which means that if you haven’t already been sent a strong delusion from God Himself, then you’ll be setting yourself up for it. You’ll be like an ostrich hiding his head in the sand, and leaving yourself exposed in another area!
So please, cool down, check out the various articles and books and other links on the web site and prove to yourself whether what I’ve written is self-evident Bible truth.
(2) “Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
Why do people think that you’ve been badly hurt, maybe even crippled, and are now bitter, angry and have a grudge against the thing that hurt you and are trying to destroy it by making negative comments against it?
When I hear that, I’ve learned to cast a suspicious eye upon whoever spoke that type of statement. I’m coming to see that they are the ones who are hurting and are crippled and bitter and angry and hold a grudge, but are afraid to remove the source of that hurt from their own lives!
Who really needs healing here? The person who has removed themselves from a hurtful situation or environment, or the one who accuses others of the thing that is destroying them from the inside out? While they continue to remain in that hurtful situation ...
For as long as we are in contact with other human beings, and/or groups of human beings, there will be personal hurt. Some trifling, some great, some even greater. If it should become intolerable, we will naturally get away from that thing, won’t we? Yes, unless ... unless the fear of some greater hurt has been infused into us by the thing that hurts us!
Have untold millions been hurt and are still hurting by their affiliation with an institutional church? Yes. Have untold millions learned that, upon examination and close scrutiny of scripture, that such organizations are totally unscriptural and not of God? Yes. But ... have untold millions still continued to remain in those same abusive and hurting churches? Astoundingly, yes.
Why is this so? Because unfounded fear has reduced their mentality to think logically to a superstitious level of comprehension. It’s called a cult mindset, and based upon fear of punishment ... by God Himself!
“If you leave this church,” you are told, “and fail to give your tithes to God’s work, then God will curse you!” Hey, that’s awful! God Himself will curse you? That just about does the trick, doesn’t it?
But then ... “And if you leave here, you’ll lose our spiritual covering and without our protection then the devil will devastate you and your family and everything that you do!”
Well, gulp ... now not only God is against you and cursing you, but now you have absolutely no defense against the devil and his crowd!
While you’re attempting to digest those two statements then another comes rolling out ... “If you leave here and stop assembling together with the saints, then you’re being disobedient to God’s clear statement in the Bible.”
Oh, wow! It looks like you’re really in hot water, with both God and the devil, huh?
Now comes the clincher ... “If you leave this church, you will be in direct rebellion against God because you did not obey your leaders as the Bible says to do!”
Well, now you’re mincemeat, child of God.
So this fear of God, and the devil, keeps you in that miserable situation and you try very, very hard to persuade yourself that you are a good little Christian, and will continue to tithe at their church so God won’t curse you, and so you will continue to have their “covering” so the devil won’t get you. And, after all, Sunday lunch with your clique can be a pleasant part of the assembling of yourselves together after a spiritually dead, dry and disgusting experience of a one-man band entertainment production that lasted for an incredible period of time. And, lest we forget, we must, simply must, obey our leaders, mustn’t we?
Deep inside you, you in your soul, and the Holy Spirit of God are grieved. You are totally and completely miserable, uncomfortable and frustrated. Everything inside you says this is wrong, wrong, wrong, but you continue to fail to thoroughly study the word of God to see if these things being taught to you are so. What you hear is love, love, love, but what you see is perfected self-centeredness. What you hear is life, and life more abundantly, but what you are experiencing leads to death of all that you should be in Christ. What you hear is liberty in the Holy Spirit, but what you feel is complete and total bondage to those whom you allow to dictate your lifestyle to you. Where do you think this will lead you? When do you think it will stop? How will you ever get free and have peace in your soul and spirit? What is the point of it all? Why are things this way?
You know what? Some time later, when you see that somebody is really, really free in Jesus then you have the unmitigated gall to say that it’s apparent they have been badly hurt, maybe even crippled, and are now bitter, angry and have a grudge against the church that hurt them and are trying to destroy the institutional church by making negative comments against it!
However, you will say that only until you take the time to listen to what they have to say and their scriptural support of their position of love, life and liberty in Jesus Christ.
So don’t talk about something you don’t understand just because you don’t know the heart of the Father and the teachings of His Son, Jesus Christ and what the Bible really says about the things of the Kingdom of God and His ekklesia.
Take your time and check out the articles and books on this web site ... please!
OK, having said all that I’ll say this: Someone once told me that I wrote for theologians. I think that’s a typical indicator of the times we live in. Simply because I thoroughly research what I write about and because I quote and/or reference scripture, Bible dictionaries and older commentaries quite a lot doesn’t put me anywhere in the theologian class. What it is is a normal disciple of Jesus digging into the word and researching in an attempt to get to the truth of what the biblical text really says. I do that because I love the truth, especially the truth of God’s word. All I’m doing is posting on my web site what has taken me many hours to research. That should be of some help to those of you who don’t have the time to do so on your own.
If nothing else I hope that I’m helping you to learn to think for yourselves instead of swallowing the junk that’s currently being taught as “Bible.”
Selah!
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