“This book has shocked me to the core. No wonder the writer warns that ‘if you are not willing to have your Christianity seriously examined do not read this book. Spare yourself the trouble of having your Christian life turned upside down!’ Wow. I think this book just took my Christianity to a whole new level of understanding! I am shell shocked that I did not know any of this. Every Christian should read this book. If they dare.” Karen Cochran
Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna
“The Christian faith was born in believer’s homes, yet every Sunday morning, scores of Christians sit in a building with pagan origins that is based upon Pagan Philosophy”.
“We somehow have been taught to feel holier when we are in ‘the house of God’ and have inherited a pathological dependency upon edifice to carry out our worship to God”.
“We are doing great damage to the message of the New testament by calling man made buildings ‘churches’.
“The order of worship includes threefold structure: (1) singing, (2) the sermon, and (3) closing prayer or song. This order of worship is viewed as sacrosanct in the eyes of many present-day Christians. But why? Again, it is due simply to the titanic power of tradition. And that tradition has set the Sunday morning order of worship in concrete … never to be moved”.
“As Will Durant, author of The Story of Civilization put it, Pagan isles remained in the spreading Christian sea. This was a tragic shift from the primitive simplicity that the church of Jesus Christ first knew”.
“We so easily forget that the early Christians turned the world upside down without them”.
“Our study of the liturgical history of the Lutheran (sixteenth century), Reformed (sixteenth century), Puritans (sixteenth century), Methodists (eighteenth century), Frontier-Revivalists (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries), and Pentecostals (twentieth century) uncovers one inescapable point: For the last five hundred years, the Protestant order of worship has undergone minimal change”. Pg.73 .
“As one author put it, ‘The Reformers accepted in substance the ancient Catholic pattern of worship…the basic structures of their services were almost universally taken from the late medieval orders of various sorts'”. pg 74
“In the end, then, the Reformers reformed the Catholic liturgy only slightly. Their main contribution was in changing the central focus. In the words of one scholar, ‘Catholicism increasingly followed the path of the (pagan) cults in making a rite the center of its activities, and Protestantism followed the path of the synagogue in placing the book at the center of it’s services’. Unfortunately, neither Catholics nor Protestants were successful in allowing Jesus Christ to be the center and head of their gatherings. Nor were they successful at liberating and unleashing the body of Christ to minister one to another in the gathering, as the New Testament envisions”. pg 74
“Because of the Reformation the Bible replaced the Eucharist and the Pastor replaced the priest. But there is still a directing of God’s people, rendering them as silent spectators. The centrality of the Author of the book was never restored. Hence, the Reformers dramatically failed to put their finger on the nerve of the original problem: a clergy-led worship service attended by a passive laity. It is not surprising, then, that the Reformers viewed themselves as reformed Catholics”. pg. 74
“Not only is the traditional order of service unscriptural and heavily influenced by paganism (which runs contrary to what is often preached from the pulpit), it does not lead to the spiritual growth God intended”. pg 75
“The Protestant order of worship represses mutual participation and growth of Christian community. It puts a choke hold on the functioning of the body of Christ by silencing its members. There is absolutely no room for anyone to give a word of exhortation, share an insight, start or introduce a song, or spontaneously lead a prayer. You are forced to be a muted, staid pew holder! You are prevented from being enriched by the other members of the body as well as being able to enrich them yourself”. pg 75
The Protestant order of worship strangles the headship of Jesus Christ. The entire service is directed by one person. You are limited to the knowledge, gifting, and experience of one member of the body- the Pastor. Where is the freedom for our Lord Jesus to speak through his body at will? Where in the liturgy may God give a brother or sister a word to share with the whole congregation? The order of worship allows for no such thing. Jesus Christ has no freedom to express Himself through His body at his discretion. He too is rendered a passive spectator”. pg 76
“Every Sunday you attend the service to be bandaged and recharged like all the other wounded soldiers. Far to often, however, the bandaging and the recharging never takes place. The reason is quite simple. The New Testament never links sitting through an ossified ritual that we mislabel “church” as having anything to do with spiritual transformation. We grow by functioning, not by passively watching and listening”. pg 77
“Let’s face it. The Protestant order of worship is largely unscriptural, impractical, and unspiritual. It has no analog in the New Testament. Rather, it finds its roots in the culture of fallen man. It rips at the heart of primitive Christianity, which was informal and free of ritual. Five centuries after the Reformation, the Protestant order of worship still varies little from Catholic Mass-a Religious ritual that is a fusion of pagan and Judaistic elements” pg. 77
“In fact, when the church functions as she should, she is the greatest evangelism known to humankind. When God’s people are living in authentic community, their lives together are a sign to the world of God’s coming reign”. pg. 82
“Remove the sermon and you have eliminated the most important source of spiritual nourishment for countless numbers of believers (so it is thought). Yet the stunning reality is that today’s sermon has no root in Scripture. Rather, it was borrowed from pagan culture, nursed and adopted into the Christian faith”. pg. 86
“The New Testament letters show that ministry of God’s Word came from the entire church in their regular gatherings. From Romans 12: 6-8, 15: 14, 1 Corinthians 14:26, and Colossians 3:16, we see that it included teaching, exhortation, prophecy, singing, and admonishment. This “every-member” functioning was also conversational (1 Corinthians 14:29) and marked by interruptions (1 14:30). Equally so, the exhortation of the local elders were normally impromptu.
In Short, the contemporary sermon delivered for Christians consumption is foreign to both Old and New Testaments. There is nothing in Scripture to indicate it’s existence in the early Christian gatherings”. pg. 88
“The Christian sermon was borrowed from the pagan pool of Greek culture”! pg. 89
“The sermon was conceived in the womb of Greek rhetoric. It was born into the Christian community when pagans-turned-Christians began to bring their oratorical styles of speaking into the church. By the third century, it became common for Christian leaders to deliver a sermon. By the fourth century it became the norm”. pg.101
“Nevertheless, despite the fact that the contemporary sermon does not have a shred of biblical merit to support it’s existence, it continues to be uncritically admired in the eyes of most present-day Christians. It has become so entrenched in the Christian mind that most Bible-believing pastors and Laymen fail to see that they are affirming and perpetuating an unscriptural practice out of sheer tradition. The sermon has become permanently embedded in a complex organizational structure that is far removed from the first-century church life”. pg. 102
“The first-century church planters had a deep and profound revelation(or insight) of Jesus Christ. They knew him, and they knew him well. He was their life, their breath, and their reason for living. They, in turn, imparted that same revelation to the churches they planted. John 1: 1-3 is a good example of this dynamic .
Paul of Tarsus preached a message of Christ that was so profound that it caused immoral, blood-drinking pagans to become full-fledged Christians in love with Jesus Christ in just a few short months. (These new believers made up the churches of Pisidian, Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea (Acts13-17). Paul shared the depths of Christ with them in such a way that they knew that they were holy in His eyes and that they could know Him internally, for Christ indwelt them. This profound, personal understanding of the indwelling Christ affected how they gathered together and what they did in those gatherings.
Furthermore, Paul typically spent several months with these new converts then left them on their own for long periods of time, sometimes years. And when he returned, they were still gathering together, still loving one another, and still following their Lord.
What kind of gospel did he preach to cause this kind of remarkable effect? He called it “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8) To put it another way, he submerged them in a revelation of Jesus Christ”. pg.103
“THE PASTOR. He is the fundamental figure of the Protestant faith. So prevailing is the pastor in the minds of most Christians that he is often better known, more highly praised, and more heavily relied upon than Jesus Christ himself!
Remove the pastor and most Protestant churches would be thrown into a panic. Remove the pastor, and Protestantism as we know it would die. The pastor is the dominating focal point, mainstay, and centerpiece of the contemporary church. He is the embodiment of Protestant Christianity”. pg. 106
“With the fall came an implicit desire in people to have a physical leader to bring them to God. For this reason, human societies throughout history have consistently created a special caste of revered Religious leaders. The medicine man, the shaman, the rhapsodist, the miracle worker, the witch doctor, the soothsayer, the wise man, and the priest have all been with us since Adam’s blunder. And this person is always marked by special training, special garb, a special vocabulary, and special way of life”. pg.108
“Up until the second century, the church has no official leadership. That it had leaders is without dispute. But leadership was unofficial in the sense that there were no religious “offices” or sociological slots to fill. New Testament scholarship makes this abundantly clear.
In this regard, the first-century churches were an oddity indeed. They were religious groups without priests, temple, or sacrifice. The Christians themselves led the church under Christ’s direct headship. Leaders were organic, untitled, and were recognized by their service and spiritual maturity rather than by a title or an office.
Among the flock were the elders(shepherds or overseers). These men all had equal standing. There was no hierarchy among them. Also present were extra-local workers who planted churches. These were called the “sent ones” or apostles. But they did not take up residency in the churches for which they cared. Nor did they control them. The vocabulary of the New Testament leadership allows no pyramidal structures. It is rather a language of horizontal relationships that includes exemplary action”. pg.110
“Because the presbyters were the ones administering the Lord’s Supper, they began to be called priests. More startling, the bishop came to be regarded as the high priest who could forgive sins! All of these trends obscured the New Testament reality that all believers are priests unto God.
By the fourth century, this graded hierarchy dominated the Christian faith. The clergy caste was now cemented. At the head of the church stood the bishop. Under him was the college of presbyters. Under them stood the deacons. And under all of them were the Laymen. One-bishop rule became the accepted form of church government throughout the Roman Empire. (During this time, certain churches began to exercise authority over other churches-thus broadening the hierarchical structure)”. pg.115
“Strikingly, only three passages in the New Testament tell us that elders were publicly recognized. Elders were acknowledged in the churches in Galatia (Acts 14: 23). Paul had Timothy acknowledge elders in Ephesus (1 Timothy 3:1ff). He also told Titus to recognize them in the churches in Crete (Titus 1:5ff).
The word ordain (KJV) in these passages does not mean to place into office. It rather carries the idea of endorsing, affirming, and showing forth what has already been happening. It also conveys the thought of blessing. Public recognition of elders and ministries was typically accompanied by the laying on of hands by apostolic workers. (In the case of workers being sent out, this was done by the church or the elders).
In the first century, the laying on of hands merely meant the endorsement or affirmation of function, not the installment into an office or the giving of special status. Regrettably, it came to mean the latter in the late second and early third centuries.
During the third century, ordination took on an entirely different meaning. It was a formalized Christian rite. By the fourth century, the ceremony of ordination was embellished by the symbolic garments and solemn ritual. Ordination produced an ecclesiastical caste that usurped the believing priesthood.
From where did Christians get their pattern of ordination? They patterned their ordination ceremony after the Roman custom of appointing men to civil office. The entire process, down to the very words, came straight from the Roman civic world”. pgs.124-125
“The contemporary practice of ordination creates a special caste of Christian. Whether it be the priest in Catholicism or the pastor in the Protestantism, the result is still the same: The most important ministry is restricted to a few”special” believers.
Such an idea is as damaging as it is nonscriptural. The New Testament nowhere limits preaching, baptizing, or distributing the Lord’s Supper to the “ordained”. Eminent scholar James D. G. Dunn put it best when he said that the clergy-laity tradition has done more to undermine New Testament authority than most heresies.
Since church office could only be hold through the rite of ordination, the power to ordain became the crucial issue in holding religious authority. The biblical content was lost. And proof-texting methods were used to justify the clergy/laity hierarchy. Perhaps the best-known example is the early Catholics’ use of Matthew 16 to justify the creation of a papal system and the doctrine of apostolic succession. The result: Ordinary believers, generally uneducated and ignorant, were at the mercy of a professional clergy”. pg.127
“The New Testament word for minister is diakonos. It means ‘servant’. But this word has been distorted because men have professionalized the ministry. We have taken the word minister and equated it with the pastor, with no scriptural justification whatsoever. In like manner, we have mistakenly equated preaching and ministry with pulpit, sermon, again without biblical justification”. pg.136
“The unscriptural clergy/laity distinction has done untold harm to the body of Christ. It has divided the believing community into first and second-class Christians. The clergy/laity dichotomy perpetuates an awful falsehood-namley, that some Christians are more privileged than others to serve the Lord.
The one-man ministry is entirely foreign to the New Testament, yet we embrace it while it suffocates our functioning. We are living stones, not dead ones. However, the pastoral office has transformed us into stones that do not breathe.
Permit us to get personal. We believe the pastoral office has stolen your right to function as a full member of Christ’s body. It has distorted the reality of the body, making the pastor a giant mouth and transforming you into a tiny ear. It has rendered you a mute spectator who is proficient at taking sermon notes and passing an offering plate.
But that is not all. The modern-day pastoral office has overthrown the main thrust of the letter to the Hebrews-the ending of old priesthood. It has made ineffectual the teaching of 1 Corinthians 12-14, that every member has both the right and the privilege to minister in a church meeting. It has voided the message of 1 Peter 2 that every brother and sister is a functioning priest”. pg. 136
“But there is something more. The contemporary pastorate rivals the functioning headship of Christ in his church. It illegitimately holds the unique place of centrality and headship among God’s people, a place that is reserved for only one Person-the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ is the only head over a church and the final word to it. By his office, the pastor displaces and supplants Christ’s headship by setting himself up as the church’s human head”. pg. 137
“The contemporary pastor is the most unquestioned fixture in the twenty-first century Christianity. Yet not a strand of Scripture supports the existence of this office.
Rather, the present-day pastor was born out of the single-bishop rule first spawned by the Ignatius and Cyprian. The bishop evolved into the local presbyter. In the Middle Ages, the presbyter grew into the the Catholic priest. During the Reformation, he was transformed into the “preacher”, “the minister”, and finally “the pastor”-the person upon whom all of the Protestantism hangs. To boil it down to one sentence: The Protestant pastor is nothing more than a slightly reformed Catholic priest. (Again, we are speaking of the office and not the individual.)
Catholic priests had seven duties at the time of the Reformation: preaching; the sacraments; prayers for the flock; a disciplined, godly life; church rites; supporting the poor; and visiting the sick. The Protestant pastor takes upon himself all of these responsibilities-plus he sometimes blesses civic events.
The famed poet John Milton put it best when he said, “New presbyter is but old priest writ large!” In other words, the contemporary pastor is but an old priest written in large letters! ” pg. 141
“Leading up to the sermon, those who “lead worship” select the songs that are to be sung. They begin those songs. They decide how those songs are to be sung. And they decide when those songs are over. Those sitting in the audience in no way, shape, or form lead the singing. They are led by someone else who is often part of the clerical staff-or who has similar stature.
This is in stark contrast to the first-century way. In the early church, worship and singing were in the hands of all of God’s people. The church herself led her own songs. Singing and leading songs was a corporate affair, not a professional event led by specialists”. pg. 158
“In 1962, a group of dissatisfied British church musicians in Dunblane, Scotland, tried to revitalize traditional Christian songs. Led by Congregational minister Erik Routley, these artists were influenced by Bob Dylan and Sydney Carter. George Shorney Jr.of Hope Publishing Company brought their new style to the United States. These new Christian hymns were a reform, but not a revolution. The revolution came when rock and roll was adapted into Christian music with the coming of the Jesus movement. This reform set the stage for the revolutionary musical changes to take root in the Christian church through Calvay Chapel and the Vineyard.
The origin of the worship team goes back to the founding Calvary Chapel in 1965. Chuck Smith, the founder of the denomination, started a ministry for hippies and surfers. Smith welcomed the newly converted hippies to retune their guitars and play their now redeemed music in church. He gave the counterculture a stage for their music in church .He gave the counterculture a stage for their music-allowing them to play Sunday night performances and concerts. The new musical forms began to be called “praise and worship”. As the Jesus movement began to flourish, Smith founded the record company Maranatha Music in the early 1970s. It’s goal was to distribute the songs of these young artists.
In due time, the guitar replaced the organ as the central instrument that led worship in the Protestant church. Although patterned after the rock concert of secular culture, the worship team has become as common as the pulpit”. pg. 166
“I (Frank) am no theoretician. For almost twenty years I have gathered with churches where every member has been trained to start a song spontaneously. Imagine: Every brother and sister free to lead songs under the headship of Jesus Christ-even to write his or her own songs and bring them to the meeting for all to learn. I have met with numerous churches that have experienced this glorious dynamic. Someone starts a song and everyone joins in. Then someone else begins another song, and so worship continues without long pauses and with no visible leader present.
This is exactly how the first-century Christians worshipped, by the way. Yet it is a rare experience in the modern-day institutional church. The good news is that it is possible and available for all who wish to experience Christ’s headship through song in a church meeting. The singing in such churches is intensely corporate rather than individualistic and subjective”. pg 167
“Tithing is mentioned only four times in the New Testament. But none of these instances apply to Christians. Tithing belonged to the Old Testament era where a taxation system was needed to support the poor and a special priesthood that had been set apart to minister to the Lord. With the coming of Jesus Christ, there has been a “change of the law”-the old has been “set aside” and rendered obsolete by the new (Hebrews 7:12-18, 8:13
We are all priests now-free to function in God’s house. The law, the old priesthood, and the tithe have all been crucified. There is now no Temple curtain, no Temple tax and no special priesthood that stands between God and man. You have been set free from the bondage of tithing and from the obligation to support the umbilical clergy system. May you, like the first-century Macedonian Christians, give freely, out of a cheerful heart, without guilt, religious obligation, or manipulation… generously helping those in need (2 Corinthians 8:1-4; 9:6-7)”. pg. 183
“In the early church, converts were baptized immediately upon believing. One scholar says of baptism and conversion, “They belong together. Those who repented and believed the Word were baptized. That was the invariable pattern, so far as we know.” Another writes “At the birth of the church, converts were baptized with little or no delay.”
In the first century, water baptism was the outward confession of a person’s faith. But more than that, it was the way someone came to the Lord. For this reason, the confession of baptism is vitally linked to the exercise of saving faith. So much so that the New Testament writers often use baptism in place of the word faith and link it to being “saved”. This is because baptism was the early Christian’s initial confession of faith in Christ.
Baptism accompanied the acceptance of the gospel. For example, when Lydia heard Paul preach the gospel, she believed and was immediately baptized with her household (Acts 16:14-15). In the same way, when Paul led the Philippian jailor and his household to the Lord, they were immediately baptized (Acts 16:30-33). This was the New Testament pattern (see Acts 2:41, 8:12, 35-37). Baptism marked a complete break with the past and full entrance into Christ and His church. Baptism was simultaneously an act of faith as well as an expression of faith.” pgs. 188-189.
“Through our tradition, we have evacuated the true meaning and power behind water baptism. Properly conceived and practiced, water baptism is the believer’s initial confession of faith before men, demons, angels, and God. Baptism is a visible sign that depicts our separation from the world, our death with Christ, the burial of our old man, the death of the old creation, and the washing of the Word of God.
Water baptism is the New Testament form of conversion-initiation. It is God’s idea. To replace it with the human-invented sinners prayer is to deplete baptism of its God-given testimony.
In the same vein , the Lord’s Supper, when separated from its proper context of full meal, turns into a strange, pagan-like rite.The supper has become an empty ritual officiated by a clergyman, rather than a shared-life experience enjoyed by the church. It has become a morbid religious exercise, rather than a joyous festival-a stale individualistic ceremony, rather than a meaningful cooperate event.
As one scholar put it, “It is not in doubt that the Lord’s Supper began as a family meal or meal of friends in a private house… the Lord’s Supper moved from being a real meal into being a symbolic meal…the Lord’s Supper moved from bare simplicity to elaborate slender…the celebration of the Lord’s Supper moved from being a lay function to a priestly function. In the New Testament itself, there is no indication that it was the special privilege or duty of anyone to lead the worshipping fellowship in the Lord’s Supper”. pgs 196-197
“In the minds of most Christians, formal Christians education qualifies a person to do the Lord’s work. Unless a Christian has graduated from Bible College or seminary, he or she is viewed as being a “para”-minister. A pseudo Christian worker. Such a person cannot preach, teach, baptize, or administer the Lord’s Supper since he or she has not been formally trained to do such things…right?
The idea that a Christian worker must attend Bible college or seminary to be legitimate is deeply ingrained-so much so that when people feel a “call” of God on their lives, they are conditioned to begin hunting for a Bible College or seminary to attend
Such thinking fits poorly with the early Christian mind-set. Bible colleges, seminaries, and even Sunday Schools were utterly absent from the early church. All are human innovations that came hundreds of years after the Apostles’ death.
How, then, were Christian workers trained in the first century if they did not go to a religious school? Unlike today’s ministerial training, first-century training was hands-on, rather than academic. It was a matter of apprenticeship, rather than of intellectual learning. It was aimed primarily at the spirit, rather than at the frontal lobe.
In the first century, those called to the Lord’s work were trained in two ways:(1) They learned the essentials lessons of Christian ministry by living a shared life with a group of Christians. In other words, they were trained by experiencing body life as nonleaders. (2) They learned the Lord’s work under the tutelage of an older, seasoned worker.” pgs.199-200
“The teaching of the New Testament is that God is Spirit, and as such, He is known by revelation ( spiritual insight) to one’s human spirit. Reason and intellect can cause us to know about God. And they help us to communicate what we know. But they fall short in giving us spiritual revelation. The intellect is not the gateway for knowing the Lord deeply. Neither are emotions. In the words of A.W.Tozer: “Divine truth is of the nature of the spirit and for that reason can be only by spiritual revelation…God’s thoughts belong to the world of spirit, man’s to the world of intellect, and while spirit can embrace intellect, the human intellect can never comprehend spirit.
…Man by reason cannot know God; he can only know about God.
… Man’s reason is a fine instrument and useful within its field. It was not given as an organ by which to know God.” pg. 206
“Instead of offering the cure to the ills of the church, our theological schools worsen them by assuming ( and even defending) all of the unscriptural practices that produce them.
The words of one pastor sum up the problem nicely: “I came through the whole system with the best education that evangelicalism had to offer-yet I really didn’t receive the training that I needed… seven years years of higher education in top-rated evangelical schools didn’t prepare me to (1) do ministry and (2) be a leader. I began to analyze why I could preach a great sermon and people afterwards would shake my hand and say, ‘Great Sermon, Pastor.’ But these were the very people who were struggling with self-esteem, beating their spouses, struggling as workaholics, succumbing to their addictions. Their lives weren’t changing. I had to ask myself why this great knowledge I was presenting didn’t move from their
heads to their hearts and their lives. And I began to realize that breakdown in the church was actually based on what we learned in seminary. We were taught that if you just give people information, that’s enough!” pg. 218
“WHY IS IT THAT WE CHRISTIANS can follow the same rituals every Sunday without ever noticing that they are at odds with the New Testament? The incredible power of tradition has something to do with it As we have seen, the church has often been influenced by the surrounding culture, seemingly unaware of it’s negative effects. At other times, it has, quite properly, recognized overt threats- such as heretical teachings about the person and divinity of Jesus Christ. But in an effort to combat those threats, it has moved away from the organic structure that God wrote into the church’s DNA .
But there is something else- something more fundamental that most Christians are completely unaware of. It concerns our New Testament. The problem is not in what the New Testament says. The problem is in how we approach it.
The approach most commonly used among contemporary Christians when studying the Bible is called “proof texting”. The origin of proof texting goes back to the 1590s. A group of men called Protestant scholastics took the teachings of the Reformers and systematized them according to the rules of Aristotelian logic.
The Protestant scholastics held that not only is the Scripture the Word of God, but every part of it is the Word of God in and of itself-irrespective of context. This set the stage for the idea that if we lift a verse out of the bible, it is true in it’s own right and can be used to prove a doctrine or a practice.
When John Darby emerged in the mid-1800s, he built a theology based on this approach. Darby raised proof texting to an art form. In fact, it was Darby who gave fundamentalist and evangelical Christians a good deal of their presently accepted teachings. All of them are built on the proof-texting method. Proof texting, then, became the common way that we contemporary Christians approach the Bible.
As a result, we Christians rarely, if ever, get to see the New Testament as a whole. Rather, we are served up a dish of fragmented thoughts that are drawn together by means of fallen human logic. The fruit of this approach is that we have strayed far afield from the practice of the New Testament church. Yet we still believe we are being biblical”. pgs 222-223
“Seminaries and Bible college students alike are rarely if ever given a panoramic view of the free-flowing story of the early church with the New Testament books arranged in chronological order. As a result, most Christians are completely out of touch with the social and historical events that lay behind each of the New Testament letters Instead, they have turned the New Testament into a manual that can be wielded to prove any point. Chopping the Bible up into fragments makes this relatively easy to pull off.
.We Christians have been taught to approach the Bible in one of eight ways. See how many that apply to you, you can tick off with a pencil:
.You look for verses that inspire you. Upon finding such verses, you either highlight, memorize, meditate upon, or put them on your refrigerator door.
.You look for verses that tell you what God has promised so that you can confess it in faith and thereby obligate the Lord to do what you want.
.You look for verses that tell you what God commands you to do
.You look for verses that you can quote to scare the devil out of his wits or resist him in the hour of temptation..
.You look for verses that will prove your particular doctrine so that you can slice and dice your theological sparring partner into biblical ribbons. (Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verses of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject).
.You look for verses in the bible to control and /or correct others.
. You look for verses that “preach” well and make good sermon material. (This is an ongoing addiction for many who preach and teach).
.You somethimes close your eyes, flip open the bible randomly, stick your finger on a page, read what the text says, and then take what you have read as a personal “word” from the Lord.
Now look at the list again.Which of these approaches have you used? Look again: Notice how each is highly individualistic. All of them put you, the individual Christian, at the center. Each approach ignores the fact that most of the New Testament was written to corporate bodies of people (churches), not to individuals.
But that’s not all. Each of those approaches is built on isolated proof texting. Each treats the New Testament like a manual and blinds us to its real message. It is no wonder that we can approvingly nod our heads at paid pastors, the Sunday morning order of worship, sermons, church buildings, religious dress, choirs, worship teams, seminaries, and a passive priesthood all without wincing.
We have been taught to approach the Bible like a jigsaw puzzle. Most of us have never been told the entire story that lies behind the letters that Paul, Peter, James, John, and Jude wrote. We have been taught chapters and verses, not the historical context.
For instance, have you ever been given the story behind Paul’s letter to the Galatians? Before nodding, see if you can answer these questions off the top of your head: Who were the Galatians? What were their issues? When and why did Paul write to them? What happened just before Paul penned his Galatian treatise? Where was he when he wrote it? What provoked him to write the letter? And where in Acts do you find the historical context for his letter? All of these background matters are indispensable for understanding what our New Testament is about. Without them, we simply cannot understand the Bible clearly or properly”. pgs. 229-231
“What do we mean by first-century styled church? It is group of people who know how to experience Jesus Christ and express Him in a meeting without any human officiation. Such a group of people can function organically together as a body when they are left on their own after the church planter leaves them. ( This does not mean that church planters never return. There are many times when they are needed to help the church. But after planting a church, church planters should be absent more than they are present.)
The one who plants a first-century styled church leaves that church without a pastor, elders, a music leader, a Bible facilitator, or a Bible teacher. If that church is planted well, those believers will know how to sense and follow the living, breathing headship of Jesus Christ in a meeting. They will know how to let Him invisibly lead their gatherings. They will bring their own songs, they will write their own songs, they minister out of what Christ has shown them-with no human leader present! What is described here is not an armchair philosophy. I (Frank) have worked with churches that fit this bill.
To equip people to do that takes a lot more than opening up your house and saying, “Come, let’s have Bible study”. pg. 234
“Unlike Christians today, the early Christians did not share Christ out of guilt, command, or duty. They shared Him because He was pouring out of them, and they could not help it! It was a spontaneous, organic thing-born out of life, not guilt.” pg.237
“We do well to pay attention to the way that churches were raised up in the first century. I believe that scripture holds for us enduring principles on this score. If you count all the churches mentioned in the New Testament, you’ll find about thirty-five. Everyone of them was planted or aided by a traveling church planter who preached only Christ. There were no exceptions. The church was raised up as a result of the apostolic presentation of Jesus Christ.” pg. 238
“Jesus was never a rabble-rouser nor a ranting rebel (Matthew 12:19-20). Yet He constantly defied the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees. And He did not do so by accident, but with great deliberation. The Pharisees were those who, for the sake of the “truth” as they saw I, tried to extinguish the truth they could not see. This explains why there was always a blizzard of controversy between the ‘tradition of the elders’ and the acts of Jesus.
Someone once said that ‘a rebel attempts to change the past; a revolutionary attempts to change the future’. Jesus Christ brought drastic change to the world. Change to man’s view of God …. Change to men’s view of women. Our Lord came to bring radical change to the old order of things, replacing it with a new order. He came to bring forth a new covenant – a new Kingdom – a new birth – a new race – a new species – a new new culture – and a new civilization.
As you read through the Gospels, behold your Lord, the Revolutionary. Watch him throw the Pharisees into a panic by intentionally flaunting their conventions. Numerous times Jesus healed on the Sabbath day, flatly breaking their cherished traditions. If the Lord wanted to placate His enemies, He could have waited until Sunday or Monday to heal some of these people. Instead, he deliberately healed on the Sabbath, knowing full well it would make His opponents livid.
This pattern runs deep. In one instance, Jesus healed a blind man by mixing clay with spittle and putting it in the man’s eyes. Such an act was in direct defiance of the Jewish ordinance that prohibited healing on the Sabbath by mixing mud with Spittle! Yet your Lord intentionally shattered this tradition publicly and with absolute resolve .Watch Him eat food with unwashed hands under the judgmental gaze of the Pharisees, again intentionally defying their fossilized tradition.
In Jesus we have a man who refused to bow to the pressures of religious conformity. A man who preached a revolution. A man who would not tolerate hypocrisy. A man who was not afraid to provoke those who suppressed the liberating gospel He brought to set men free. A man who did not mind evoking anger in His enemies, causing them to gird their thighs for battle”. pgs 244- 246
“For most Christians, this is a side of Jesus Christ they have never known before. Yet we believe it explains why exposing what is wrong with the contemporary church so that Christ’s body can fulfill God’s ultimate intention is so critical. It is simply an expression of our Lord’s revolutionary nature. The dominating aim of the nature is to put you and me at the center of the beating heart of God. To put you and me in the core of His eternal purpose – a purpose for which everything was created.
The early church understood that purpose. They not only understood God’s passion for His Church, they lived it out. And what did such body life look like?
- The early Christians were intensely Christ-centered. Jesus Christ was their pulse beat. He was their life, their breath, and their central point of reference. He was the object of their worship, the subject of their songs, and the content of their discussion and vocabulary. The New Testament church made the Lord Jesus Christ Central and supreme in all things.
- The New Testament church had no fixed order of worship. The early Christians gathered in open-participatory meetings where all believers shared their experience of Christ, exercised their gifts, and sought to edify one another. No one was a spectator. All were given the privilege and the responsibility to participate. The purpose of these church meetings was twofold. It was for the mutual edification of the body. It was also to make visible the Lord Jesus Christ through the every-member functioning of His body. The early church meetings were not religious “services”. They were informal gatherings that were permeated with an atmosphere of freedom, spontaneity, and joy. The meetings belonged to Jesus Christ and to the church; they did not serve as platform for any particular ministry or gifted person.
- The New Testament church lived as a face-to-face community. While the early Christians gathered for corporate worship and mutual edification, the church did not exist to merely meet once or twice a week. The New Testament believers lived a shared life. They cared for one another outside of scheduled meetings. They were, in the very real sense of the word, family.
- Christianity was the first and only religion the world has ever known that was void of ritual, clergy, and sacred buildings. For the first 300 years of the Church’s existence, Christians gathered in homes. On special occasions, Christian workers would sometimes make use of larger facilities (like Solomon’s Porch) {John 10:23, Acts 3:11} and the Hall of Tyrannus {Acts 19:9}. But they had no concept of a scared edifice nor of a spending large amounts of money on buildings. Nor would they ever call a building a “church” or the “house of God.” The only sacred building the early Christians knew was the one not made with human hands.
- The New Testament church did not have a clergy. The Catholic priest and the Protestant pastor were completely unknown. The church had traveling apostolic workers who planted and nurtured churches. But these workers were not viewed as being part of the a special clergy caste. They were part of the body of Christ, and they served the churches (not the other way around). Every Christian possessed different gifts and different functions, but only Jesus Christ had the exclusive right to exercise authority over his people. No man had that right. Eldering and Shepherding were just two of those gifts. Elders and Shepherds were ordinary Christians with certain gifts. They were not special offices. And they did not monopolize the ministry of the church meetings. They were simply seasoned Christians who naturally cared for the members of the church during times of crisis and provided oversight for the whole assembly.
- Decision making in the New Testament church fell upon the shoulders of the whole assembly. Traveling church planters would sometimes give input and direction. But ultimately, the whole church made decisions under the lordship of Jesus Christ. It was the church’s responsibility to find the Lord’s mind together and act accordingly.
- The New Testament church was organic, not organizational. It was not welded together by putting people into offices, creating programs, constructing rituals, and developing a top-down hierarchy or chain-of-command structure. The church was a living, breathing organism. It was born, it would grow, and it naturally produced all of what was in its DNA. That would include all the gifts, ministries, and functions of the body of Christ. In the eyes of God, the church is a beautiful woman. The bride of Christ. She was a colony from heaven, not a man-made organization from earth.
- Tithing was not a practice of the New Testament church. The early Christians used their funds to support the poor among them, as well as the poor in the world. They also supported traveling itinerant church planters so that the gospel could be spread and churches could be raised up in other lands. They gave according to their ability, not out of guilt, duty, or compulsion. Pastor/clergy salaries were unheard of. Every Christian in the church was a priest, a minister, and a functioning member of the body. (elders who labour in the word and doctrine to feed and equip Christ’s sheep are to be thought worthy of “double honour” which means sufficient financial compensation – 1 Timothy 5:17-18; 1 Corinthians 9:1-14, etc.)
- Baptism was the outward expression of Christian conversion. When the early Christians led people to the Lord, they immediately baptized them in water as a testimony to their new position. The Lord’s Supper was an ongoing expression whereby the early Christians reaffirmed their faith in Jesus Christ and their oneness with His body. The Supper was a full meal which the church enjoyed together in the spirit and atmosphere of joy and celebration. It was fellowship of the body of Christ, not a token ritual or a religious rite. And it was never officiated by a clergy or special priesthood.
- The early Christians did not build Bible schools or seminars to train young workers. Christians workers were educated and trained by older workers in the context of church life. They learned “on the job.” Jesus provided the initial model for this “on-the-job” training when He mentioned the Twelve. Paul duplicated it when he trained young Gentile workers Ephesus.
- The early Christians did not divide themselves into various denominations. They understood their oneness in Christ and expressed it visibly in every city. To their minds, there was only one church per city ( even though it may have met in many different homes throughout the locale). If you were a Christian in the first century, you belonged to that one Church. The unity of the spirit was well guarded. Denominating themselves ( “I am of Paul,” ‘I am of Peter,’ ‘I am of Apollos’) was regarded as sectarian and divisive (see 1 Corinthians 1:12).
We believe this is God’s vision for every church. In fact, we have written this book for one reason: to make room for the absolute centrality, supremacy, and headship of Christ in His church. Fortunately, more and more Revolutionaries today are catching that vision. They recognize that what is needed is a revolution within the Christian faith-a complete upheaval of those Christian practices that are contrary to biblical principles. We must begun all over again, on the right foundation. Anything less will prove defective.
And so our hope as you finish this book is threefold. First, we hope that you will begin asking questions about the church as you presently know it. How much of it is truly biblical? How much of it expresses the absolute headship of Jesus Christ? How much of it allows the members of His body the freedom to function? Second, we hope you will share this book with ever Christian you know so they too can be challenged by its message. And third, we hope you will pray seriously about what your response should be to that message.
If you are a disciple of the Revolutionary from Nazareth… the radical Messiah who lays His axe to the root…you must eventually ask a specific question. It is the same question that was asked of our Lord’s disciples while He walked the earth. That question is: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?” (Matt 15:2)”. pgs 246-250
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Apostasy
Beware of the Crown Stealers! [video]
by Glenn and Dezi Langohr
“Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” Revelation 3:11
In the next teaching we are going to go over all of PAUL’S WRITINGS that false teachers manipulate.
False teachers today — OSAS, Hyper-Dispensationalists, Free Gracers, and Pretribbers — are crown stealers . They twist Paul’s writings to promise a salvation that requires no endurance, obedience, or holiness. But Jesus and Paul speak the same Gospel . Jesus warned through parables: some hear the Word with joy but fall away in tribulation ; servants who neglect their calling are cut off ; virgins without oil are shut out of the wedding feast ; unprofitable servants are cast into outer darkness . These mysteries of the Kingdom reveal that salvation is conditional — not “once saved, always saved.”
Paul confirmed the same truth . He warned believers not to believe in vain (1 Cor 15:2), to run the race and fight the good fight of faith (1 Cor 9:24; 1 Tim 6:12), to hold faith with a good conscience or risk shipwreck , and to lay hold of eternal life through endurance. He declared that believers can be cut off if they do not continue in God’s goodness (Rom 11:22). He said Christ could be hindered from being fully formed in the heart (Gal 4:19). He exhorted believers to test themselves to see if they were truly in the faith, warning that without Christ in them, they would be reprobates (2 Cor 13:5). He even named names FOR CAUSING OTHERS TO SHIPWRECK THEIR FAITH LIKE PRETRIBBERS DO— Hymenaeus, Philetus, and Demas FOR FORSAKING PAUL DURING PERSECUTION FOR A LOVE OF THIS PRESENT WORLD — DEMAS was a fellow laborer with Paul so let that sink in. Paul preached the full counsel of God (Acts 20:27), the same Kingdom Gospel Jesus proclaimed, not a new “Paul’s gospel.”
Revelation seals the testimony . Jesus calls His churches to repent, endure, and overcome — warning that names can be blotted from the Book of Life (Rev 3:5) , crowns can be stolen (Rev 3:11) , and lukewarm believers will be rejected (Rev 3:16). Seven blessings are promised to the faithful: eating of the Tree of Life, the crown of life, hidden manna, authority to reign, the first resurrection, entering New Jerusalem, and eternal life with God. But alongside these blessings are terrifying judgments : beast worshippers tormented forever, Babylon’s fall, the great white throne, and the fearful and unbelieving cast into the lake of fire. The conclusion is clear: endure, overcome, hold fast — let no man steal your crown .
Follow the Langohr’s youtube channel here: Jesus Preachers
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Abiding
“Them that Seduce You” 1 John 2:26 [podcast]
From the book I Die Daily
“Them that Seduce You” 1 John 2:26
“He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.” Matthew 27:42
“Come down from the cross” is the cry of the enemy of all souls. Here he inspired God-less men to tempt Christ to not complete the work of redemption. In the same way, today, God-less pulpiteers and writers say nothing of the daily cross Christ commanded to be taken up by any person who would follow Him (Luke 9:23-24). These are the very “enemies of the cross of Christ” Paul warned us about (Philippians 3:18-19). Of this phenomenon, a disciple writes:
“Satan works both angles. First, he tried to keep Jesus (and us as His body) from going to or staying on the cross. On the other hand, he puts us on the cross as per what he did through Judas, the high priests of Judaism, and Pilate, and the Romans. Satan is somewhat schizophrenic as to this. But 1 Corinthians 2:8 is making the point that had he, the main prince and his underling princes, if they had known what they were doing (defeating themselves as a house divided), they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory. Satan’s house is a house divided against itself and is therefore laid waste by his own forces just as Jesus stated in Matthew 12. Peter himself reviled Jesus when Christ told him He would be going to the cross. Jesus attributed that work to Satan.”
When Peter, being used of Satan spoke, the Son of God turned, and said to Peter…
“Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matthew 16:23-26
Here Jesus spoke not only of the necessity of His own redeeming cross, but also of the daily cross to be taken up by each and every one of those who would follow Him. This should forever underscore and cement in our understanding the necessity of the daily cross.
One preacher wrote:
“Galatians 2:20 says, ‘I am crucified with Christ,’ and Romans 6:5 says, ‘For if we have been planted (united) together in the likeness of His death.’ These are both in the Greek perfect verb tense.
This indicates a past event WITH CONTINUING EFFECTS. So, it could literally say ‘I have been and continue to be crucified with Christ’ and ‘For if we have been and continue to be planted ….’ Romans 8:36, 2 Corinthians 4:10, and 1 Corinthians 15:31 clearly speak of a daily death with Christ.
Ephesians 4:22-24 talks of a continual putting off (death) of the old man, as does 2 Corinthians 4:16. Martin Luther taught of a daily Spirit baptism and called it ‘dying upward.’ These people who teach otherwise resist the daily cross. This is the error of triumphalism.
As we appropriate the finished work daily, we become more
and more what we already are. We possess our possessions.
Compare Colossians 3:3 with Colossians 3:5.
Let’s take the advice above and put together verses 3 and 5
of Colossians 3: “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ
in God … Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil
concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
T. Austin-Sparks stated the following:
We have not to die; we are dead. What we have to do is to
accept our death … In baptism … we simply step in there and
say, ‘That position which God has settled with reference to
me is the one which I now accept, and I testify here in this
way to the fact that I have accepted God’s position for me,
namely, that in the Cross I have been brought to an end.’
The true disciple is always “delivered unto death for Jesus’
sake” (2 Cor. 4:11.) He has “crucified the flesh with the
affections and lusts” (Gal. 5:24). He is daily putting to death
“the deeds of the body” and being “raised up” by the power of
the same Holy Spirit “that raised up Christ from the dead”
(Rom. 8:11, 13). He rejoices in “Christ Jesus” and has “no
confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3).
“I die daily … Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake … that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” 1 Corinthians 15:31; 2 Corinthians
4:10-12
Concerning the raising up process of the Gospel of God, T. Austin-Sparks wrote:
“The unalterable basis of an open heaven is a grave, and a
crisis at which you come to an end of your own self-life. It is
the crisis of real experiential identification with Christ in His
death.”
Though we entered into His death upon initial salvation, accepting and experiencing that death is still a daily choice, an individual decision to be made on an ongoing basis. One’s choice to continue to persevere, following Christ as He clearly prescribed, will determine his eternal destination (Luke 9:62; 19:13; 21:19; Romans 6:16; Galatians 6:7-9).
The insidious circumventing of the cross can come in many clandestine ways that are masked with pious outer garb. Today, while refusing to utter the full counsel of the One they claim to be representing, smiling and charismatic men stand in sheep’s clothing, promising heavenly life to those who live in sin. They only prosper due to the volitional biblical illiteracy of the masses. Ignorance of the truth is a choice with eternal consequences (Hosea 4:6; Matthew 22:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).
Many like to hide behind works they do in and surrounding their local church home. They relish singing in the choir, ushering, doing drama or being a part of the technical team, helping in various ways, or even preaching a message, and yet the life of Christ is not manifesting in their personal lives as they go out into their world daily. His light in them is not bright enough to shine into the darkened hearts of men through personal evangelism. They have been steeped in a mere formula of godliness that does not manifest the evidential fruit of one who is truly in Christ, radiant by His glory, and flourishing in His life. A. W. Tozer wrote:
Another substitute for discipleship is: Our Lord referred to
this when He reproached the Pharisees for their habit of
tithing mint and anise and cumin while at the same time
omitting the weightier matters of the Law such as justice,
mercy and faith. Literalism manifests itself among us in
many ways, but it can always be identified in that it lives by
the letter of the Word while ignoring its spirit. It habitually
fails to apprehend the inward meaning of Christ’s words,
and contents itself with external compliance with the text.
If Christ commands baptism, for instance, it finds
fulfillment in the act of water baptism, but the radical
meaning of the act as explained in Romans 6 is completely
overlooked. It reads the Scriptures regularly, contributes
consistently to religious work, attends church every Sunday
and otherwise carries on the common duties of a Christian
and for this it is to be commended. Its tragic breakdown is
its failure to comprehend the Lordship of Christ, the
believer’s discipleship, separation from the world and the
crucifixion of the natural man.
Literalism attempts to build a holy temple upon the sandy
foundation of the religious self. It will suffer, sacrifice and
labor, but it will not die. It is Adam at his pious best, but it
has never denied self to take up the cross and follow Christ.”
Prayer—Forgive me, Lord, for trying to follow You without taking up that self-death instrument daily.
Yet another way the depraved heart, cloaked fully in a mere form of religion, seeks to circumvent the work of the cross, is by denying or ignoring that there is a cross to take up “daily.” The one whose theology is undergirded and poisoned with the unconditional eternal security lie, must resist all personal responsibility. He must take the line of least resistance. He is a moral coward, who while feigning to be walking in grace, has actually acquiesced to such a mythical position in order to avoid dying the death.
He refuses to buy into the truth of the Gospel when it threatens his own personal comfort zone he has built around himself, using half-truths and twisted and convoluted blends of philosophy, clichés, and Scripture. At all cost, he must remain intoxicated with the lie that he can do nothing to violate and fail the grace of God, and forfeit his place with God, which he erroneously believes is eternally secure—no matter what rebellion he may choose to commit against Him who is “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). So, he must fight the truth violently using his keyboard, pulpit, or pen to defend his paper-thin position. He must at all costs make sure anyone he leads believes that “God requires nothing of him, that salvation is of the LORD, and there is absolutely never any personal responsibility placed upon the individual recipient of salvation.”
What a tragic, fraudulent lie this deceiver is casting upon those naïve enough to give him ear! The bowels of hell have been nourished by millions who have bought this lie and have descended into the gaping and inescapable abyss (Isaiah 5:14). God forbid that anyone under the care of the “grace” deceiver be burdened with the slightest incentive or motivation to live holy, because in his evil theology, God Himself is no longer holy and just and doesn’t punish sin in His own people. Using whatever deceptive means and even Scripture-twisting, the deceiver will do away with all thought of personal responsibility from among his flock. He further seeks to lull them asleep with himself, as they bask in the lukewarmness of hell-bound Laodicea and those “at ease in Zion,” refusing to hear and hearken to the severe warning to turn back to the LORD—“Repent” and “Woe to them” (Amos 6:1; Revelation 3:14-21).
Circumventing Schemes
In order to accomplish keeping his flock asleep, the beguiler must only acknowledge the positional cross, while seeking to deny the experiential or daily cross Christ commanded His followers to take up (Matthew 10:38-39; Mark 8:34-39; Luke 9:23-24). Those who deny the “daily” cross Christ commanded, deny Christ (Mark 8:34-38). To deny His words is to deny Him (Mark 8:38; John 8:47; 14:21). Those who do not teach Christ’s command to deny self and take up the cross daily, hold a position of lawlessness; such are false teachers, “ungodly men” who are “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness (a license for sin)” (Romans 6:1-2, 15; Jude 3-4). We are to “earnestly contend” against them and the heresies they spread.
Concerning the “remnant” which is a descriptive word defining the only people to be eternally with Christ, Isaiah 37:31 says: “And the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.” No one can “bear fruit upward” unless he is willing to humble himself “under the mighty hand of God.”
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:” 1 Peter 5:6
The Last Days
God’s Word forewarns us that only a few among those once righteous will be in Heaven. “And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:18).
With all the popular last days type books in print, it is regrettable that few of them if any deal with readiness as the Scriptures present it. The human authors seem to completely overlook such an essential truth, because they have been schooled in this cross-denying way themselves. They completely overlook Christ’s severe words of warning in Luke 21:34-36. The typical modern church posture is that if one has at some moment in the past received Christ, he is forever and indelibly secure for Heaven no matter what, with no possibility of losing out with God. Is this what the Bible teaches us?
Great tribulation is coming, such as has never been experienced upon the earth. “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).
We are told by the Son of God that only those with the oil of God in their vessels will be admitted into the marriage feast of the Lamb (Matthew 25:1-13). Only those who are intently connected with Jesus Christ, foregoing the things that would hinder their relationship with Him, will “escape all these things that shall come to pass.”
“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Luke 21:34-36
He told us that if we will overcome and be with Him, we must “be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” By this we know that some shall not “escape.”
The LORD Jesus beckoned those who would follow Him to the end, to be waiting and ready for His imminent and pending return:
“Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning. And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching: verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.” Luke 12:35-40
The enduring saints must discern keenly, and the only way to do such is to fully repent, love Him personally and supremely, and cast off all worldly ties that draw us from the Bridegroom (Revelation 3:14-18).
In order to escape this promised and epidemic onslaught of the enemy of God, one must be daily “crucified with Christ,” being separate from iniquity and abiding in Christ (John 15:1-6; Galatians 2:20). It is only in being “dead” that we are “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). It is only in experiencing His “death” that His “life” can work in us and through us to others (2 Corinthians 4:10-12). It is only in taking “root downward” that He will raise us up to “bear fruit upward” (Isaiah 37:31).
As was prophesied, the enemy’s seduction of souls is in full swing and ever-increasing as the time of the return of Jesus draws nigh:
Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them.
Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the
devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because
he knoweth that he hath but a short time. Revelation 12:12
In the above passage, those who are already safe with Him in Heaven are told to “rejoice,” while those who remain upon the earth in this last hour are solemnly warned to beware because “the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” Perhaps there would yet remain among us some who are still ignorant of the devices of the enemy, and not so sure about the activities he is perpetrating among the remnant. Listen closely to what Jesus says concerning the final days which we are now living in:
These things have I written unto you concerning them that
seduce you (this is John’s inspired reason for writing to us). But
the anointing which ye have received of him abideth (remains)
in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie,
These things have I written unto you concerning them that
seduce you (this is John’s inspired reason for writing to us). But
the anointing which ye have received of him abideth (remains)
in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie,
and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. And now,
little children, abide (remain) in him; that, when he shall
appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before
him at his coming. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that
every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. Behold, what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we
should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth
us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we
shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him
(the hope of Christ’s soon return) purifieth himself, even as he
is pure. 1 John 2:26-3:3
According to these Holy Spirit inspired words penned by John the apostle, there are “many deceivers” seeking to “seduce you” (1 John 2:26; 2 John 7-11). One of the most insidious ways these wolves, who “lie in wait to deceive,” operate, is by refraining from preaching the true Gospel which includes the taking up of the daily cross (Matthew 16:24-27; Luke 9:23-24). If one will be safe in heavenly glory, never to suffer another iota of pain for all the eternal future, he must stay clear of the “many deceivers” who have answered the call of evil, and are sent forth to “deceive” those who would be prey due to:
• Having a lack of knowledge—not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God (Hosea 4:6; Matthew 22:29)
• Not watching and praying (Matthew 26:41)
• Not submitting to God (James 4:7)
• Not being crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20)
• Not being “dead” and having their lives “hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3)
• Not having their affections set upon things above (Colossians 3:1-4)
• Minding earthly things (Philippians 3:18-19)
There is abundant proof that so many today vainly believe they can have the benefits of the cross without the responsibility of the cross. They want the crown but not the cross. They are self-serving (“whose god is their belly”) and so desire to feel secure by trusting that because Christ died and was buried and rose again, they are safe.
As was long ago foretold, many in this deceived generation are trusting in Christ’s atoning death without their own personal participation. They call Him “Lord, Lord,” but in the end will hear the horrific words of termination, “Depart from me” (Matthew 7:21-23.) From His blessed presence they will be forever alienated, vanquished into “the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity (lawlessness).” Matthew 7:21-23
So many who claim the name of Christ conveniently ignore what Jesus said about taking up the cross and following Him to the end. In the riveting words listed in the above passage, did Jesus not tell us that only “he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” will be allowed into His Heaven? The daily denial of self, taking up the cross, and following Him is at the heart of the Gospel Jesus gave us.
According to the Son of God, overcomers will be allowed into Heaven and no one else (Revelation 2-3).
Readiness test:
• Are you daily taking up your cross? (Matthew 16:24-25)
• Do you daily deny yourself so that Christ can reign in your mortal body? (Luke 9:23-24; 2 Corinthians 4:11-12)
• Are you following Christ in the way He prescribed? (Matthew 7:21; John 8:47; 1 John 2:3-6)
• Are you purifying your life of all that offends God? (Acts 15:9; 2 Corinthians 7:1; 1 John 3:3)
• Are you coming out from this sinful world system and the apostate religious system? (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; 1 John 2:14-17)
• In obedience to the LORD, are you remaining clear of any and all wolves, who preach or pen a cross-less gospel? (2 Corinthians. 11:2-5; Philippians 3:18-19)
• Are you learning yet more and more to hate this sinful and rebellious world system, lest you become the enemy of God? (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17)
• Are you daily in the Word so the Word is getting into you and washing your heart and mind of all that is not according to the mind of Christ? (Psalms 119:9, 11; Proverbs 4:4, 21; Jeremiah 15:16; John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26)
• Are you keeping your lamp full by daily communion with Jesus? (Matthew 25:1-13; 1 John 1:3-9)
• Are you abstaining from fleshly lusts and departing from all iniquity? (2 Timothy 2:19; 1 Peter 2:11)
• Are you overcoming the wiles of the enemy who seeks to seduce you from self-denial? (1 John 2:26-3:3)
• Are you watching and praying, so as to be blessed to take up your cross daily and not be seduced from essential obedience in following Christ? (Matthew 26:41; Luke 12:35-40)
• Are you watching and praying so as to escape all sin and remain ever ready for Christ’s soon appearing? (Proverbs 8:34; Matthew 26:41; Luke 21:34 -36)
• Are you calling others to come to the Fountain of living waters from which all life flows, and in which all blessings abide? (Revelation 22:17)
In this late hour, may God bless each of us—His children—to be in fellowship with those who are embracing instead of evading the daily cross, and who “call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22).
As we were long ago forewarned, the “great wrath” of the one who “knoweth that he hath but a short (brief) time” has “come down” upon us through an epidemic of apostate leaders, who like the deceivers of old, erroneously promise His eternal life to those who refuse to take up their crosses to follow Him (Jeremiah 23:17; Amos 9:10; 2 Peter 2; Jude 3-4). Beware! “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
PRAYER: Jesus, please deeply quicken Your holy fear in my inner most being. From this instant forward, I look fervently for Your soon return. Heavenly Father, I beg You to unite my heart to fear Thy name and make ultra-sensitive my conscience—to be so easily convicted upon the slightest thought that varies from Your holy will. Into Your hands, I now commend my spirit. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Capture Points
• Read and discuss Matthew 27:43 and how it applied to Christ when He was on the cross, and how this same temptation applies to the believer in his daily walk with Jesus.
• Transcribe 1 Peter 4:18 on an index card and discuss. (KJB recommended)
• Read and discuss Luke 12:35-40. (KJB recommended)
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Apostasy
“The Collection for the Saints”
Are Money Collections Biblical?
Yes, yet what should money be collected to do?
1 Corinthians 16:1
KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE: Money collections to do GOD’s work are not a sin but rather an opportunity for God’s people to crucify, to put off the sins of greed and covetousness and to lay up treasure in Heaven as He commanded (Matthew 6:19-21; Ephesians 5:7-9). Also, to say that allowing people to support GOD’s work is wrong, is to declare Jesus to be a sinner because He had a treasurer which could only mean that people chose to support the work.
Recently the subject of giving has arisen several times in a short period of time so I wanted to treat it with God’s Word. When the topic of the Word of Faith prosperity pimps came up recently, a few people raised the question as to whether money should be collected by anyone today (any ministry). In addressing the question as to whether or not it is right or wrong for a ministry to facilitate the collection of money, the following reply was given.
There were collections among the saints in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 16:1-3), Jesus had a treasurer in case people wanted to participate and lay up treasure in Heaven…. yet the prosperity scammers falsely teach people to give in order to get God to bless them instead of giving out of love, obedience, gratitude, and worship to the LORD.
Okay, let me insert this: ANYone who doesn’t like ministers speaking about money has money as their god and are not saved according to Jesus because they have chosen money/mammon over God (Matthew 6:24). Those who truly serve the One who gives all good gifts delight in giving Him the first portion of what He gives them (Proverbs 3:10-11). By doing so they continue to establish that He alone is LORD and Master of their lives!
Collections were taken up in the early church (1 Corinthians 16:1-3). Jesus’ apostle Paul wrote:
“Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. 2 Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. 3 And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem.” 1 Corinthians 16:1-3
First off, this tells us that Paul set in order, set up the order, he had “given order to the churches” to collect, to take up a “collection for the saints” when they gathered. He instructs Christ’s saints to “let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” There is much in this revelation. The saints of Christ are to be intentional and order the wealth God gives them, according “as God hath prospered” them. They are to “lay be him in store” or store up, to set aside that which they are going to give. The implication seems that we are to do such deliberately, and with joy as God prospers us.
According to the Word of God and the pattern and teaching of the apostles and early church, each disciple of Jesus should weekly and cheerfully set aside money, etc. to give. He/she is to “lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” (1 Corinthians 16:2)
Note that the “collection” was “for the saints” and not to be wasted on building a physical building of an enterprising pastor or to buy him a million dollar home, expensive cars, and watches, not to mention the extravagant accessories lavished upon many modern pastor’s wives. Oh, don’t forget that in the modern apostate church world, while some struggle to make ends meet and others go under financially, we must not forget to throw the pastor a birthday party and give him an expensive gift, right?
So, obviously collections are ordained of God to grant privilege and opportunity to those who would choose to give to His cause of helping Christians who lack and ministers of His Gospel. The collections are a blessing to us and yet, what we give to is the question. Supporting true, Great Commission, New Testament ministries is very important lest we fund a work that is not fulfilling the mandate of Christ and in doing so waste the resources He put in our temporal of care.
John Wesley writes:
“Let every one – Not the rich only: let him also that hath little, gladly give of that little. According as he hath been prospered – Increasing his alms as God increases his substance. According to this lowest rule of Christian prudence, if a man when he has or gains one pound give a tenth to God, when he has or gains an hundred he will give the tenth of this also. And yet I show unto you a more excellent way. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Stint yourself to no proportion at all. But lend to God all you can.”
Anthony Terry writes:
“Scripture is clear on the gatherings of the saints. They are for the saints only. They are to bring their offerings into the gatherings so when a need arises it can be met. Scripture also tells us that those with earthly goods should sell them when a saint is in need and to supply that need. This also is not done today. Too many are storing up treasures here and not in the kingdom. Scripture says if you have the ability to meet a need and don’t do it then how can you say God dwells in you? (1 Cor. 16:1-2; Acts 2:44-45; 4:34-35)”
HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED IN THE MODERN HOUSES OF EXTORTION THAT SOME CALL “CHURCHES” THAT THE PASTORS WILL OFTEN SAY THINGS LIKE “WE’RE FAMILY” AND YET, WHEN YOU HAVE A NEED, THEY COULD CARE LESS? THEY ONLY CARE FOR YOU INASMUCH AS YOU ARE GIVING TO THEM! BUT THE BIBLE TEACHES EQUALITY AND EVEN DISTRIBUTION, ESPECIALLY AMONG THOSE WHO ARE TRULY WORKING AND DILIGENTLY OBEDIENT (ACTS 2:44-45; 4:32-35; EPHESIANS 4:28; 1 THESSALONIANS 4:11-12; 2 THESSALONIANS 3, ETC.).
To illustrate the gross misuse of money in the modern church world, please allow me to relate the following true story:
An example comes to mind that was related to me by a good friend. The story goes …. This brother and his family (close friends of mine) were struggling financially and were on the brink of their second foreclosure. Their house was getting ready to be foreclosed on and a few members of the leadership fully knew this. Yet, during this same time period those very leaders organized and solicited the people of that particular local church to chip in to buy the pastor a $30,000 watch for his birthday. They totally ignored the needy brother’s necessity/lack and so that brother’s house was foreclosed on. This is an example of unthinkable inequity and brazen disobedience to God’s Word where one member of the body of Christ was elevated unduly above the other members. Among the earliest believers there was equity. Take note to what was transpiring just after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost at the end of Acts 2. Compare. Take close note to the blessed and exemplary state of the church before the greedy, self-serving wolves and their thieving practices entered in among the people of God (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35).
Now, the above is a revelation to most today who have been duped into believing that all the giving must be done to some “official” mere man or board of mere sinful men who have set up their church franchise businesses all over our cities. Before we move forward, let’s expand that revelation:
“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.” Acts 2:44-45
Notice in the above passage that “EVERY MAN” mattered and not just some group of thieving wolves who were collecting and squandering the money on their own self-serving lusts!
While the collection of money is biblical the misuse of the money collected is sin. And for this reason, we must learn from God’s Word what that collected money is to be used for.
WE MUST STOP FEEDING THE WOLVES FRIENDS! FIND INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANS WHO HAVE NEEDS AND GIVE TO TRUE GOSPEL WORKERS/MINISTRIES. THAT’S THE TRUE NEW TESTAMENT WAY!
To further establish that collections were always allowed and encouraged in the gatherings of our LORD’s people, check out this explosive message titled Jesus Sat Over Against The Treasury [podcast]
Here’s more early church practice that we must model/follow:
“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own (they understood that God owns all and they were just stewards); but they had all things common. 33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. 34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, 35 And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” Acts 4:32-35
Compare. You will want to read this passage prayerfully and several times, remembering where it is to share with others. Note in the above passage that “they had all things common.” In other words, as each individual saint had need, they would share. Today, we have multi-millionaire wolves who parade and flaunt their lavish riches before their prey who many times can’t even pay their bills. Go figure!
Collecting and giving are a vital part of the divine economy from Genesis to Revelation but not in order to misuse – to misappropriate those funds. That’s what covetous charlatans have always done and are doing today. Yet, such evil does zilch to negate the God-given personal responsibility the LORD has given every individual believer to be a giver – of their lives which will translate into the giving of their substance.
Now, so far we have exposed the greedy wolves we are so often warned about in the Scriptures. Yet, before someone gets the idea that God wants His honest, true workers broke, think again. The LORD says that those elders (Gospel workers, servants of God) are to “be counted worthy of double honour” which refers to a good financial reward. This would be at or a bit above the average income of the median earning man that that Gospel worker feeds/tends to. Paul also inserted in his longest discourse on this very topic that those who are called out to labor for Christ can have a wife and family which of course requires more income to support (1 Corinthians 9:5).
“Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. 18 For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward.” 1 Timothy 5:17-18
Did you note that those who “rule well” is a condition and it is defined as “they who labour in the word and doctrine“? True Gospel work must involve diligently getting God’s Word into the hearts of men, especially God’s own people. It is never ending because there are always saints to edify, help mature, pray for, teach the Word to, etc. It never ends and neither does the need to reach lost souls.
Because so many wolves have devoured people’s lives and finances, some want to forbid any and all provision from going to God’s workers which would be unscriptural and certainly to Satan’s advantage. The distribution of resources is to go to all of God’s people, not just the people collecting the money, which is what the modern, apostate church is doing. Compare what they are doing to Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35. It’s a scam. People should study this topic in their Bible as the article link above seeks to help them do. We cannot exclude the provision of those God calls out into full-time serving. The apostles gave themselves “continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:4) The Word of God sets forth the clear argument and case for provision for divinely called-out servants – those called out to give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of God’s Word. There’s no other calling so important in the earth or with eternal consequences. We must rightly divide and not overcompensate because others have abused. God bless you all.
Some people like to throw around cliches that are not direct Bible quotes such as, “Where God guides, God provides.” While that is generally true, we must be careful of blocking full-counsel Bible learning by cliches that are only half-truths. To stand on ANY cliches is a dangerous endeavor to the truth-seeking disciple. Stand on God’s Word alone which is what David said it is: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” (Psalms 119:105) Of our Father’s written Word, Christ said “Thy word is truth.” (John 17:17)
God’s people are divinely called and are to be allowed and granted the blessed opportunity to give to HIS work – not forcefully coerced but given opportunity (2 Corinthians 9:7). This is clear in Scripture. When we give, we thereby learn to trust Him who replenishes our supply as He so often promised to do (Proverbs 3:9-10; 2 Corinthians 9:6-11, etc.). It would be wrong to disallow God’s people from giving actually. Moses did not stop God’s people from giving until there was so much given by God’s people that there was nowhere else to contain it! He had to tell them to stop bringing their things to the work of the LORD because they had nowhere else to store it – there was too much of it (Exodus 35). To tell people not to give to God’s work(ers) would mean he forbade them from doing what the LORD told His people to do from the beginning – give. The Levites were one of the twelve tribes of Israel set forth to continually worship and serve the LORD and His people and Paul, Christ’s apostle, draws from this very truth/fact in 1 Corinthians 9 – below.
God provides, yes, and His stated desire to supply, at least in part, is through His body – and that is so that they partake of the blessings both now and eternally (Galatians 6:6; 1 Corinthians 9:1-14; 1 Timothy 5:17-18). A proper and more thorough view of God’s kingdom reveals that to shut off the opportunity of giving and forbid His children from giving, stifles blessings.
The apostle Paul’s case for provision being given to called-out servants of Christ is clearly and profoundly set forth below.
1 Corinthians 9
1 Am I am not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord?
2 If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord.
3 Mine answer to them that do examine me is this,
4 Have we not power to eat and to drink?
5 Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?
6 Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working?
7 Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock?
8 Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also?
9 For it is written in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen?
10 Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope.
11 If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?
12 If others be partakers of this power over you, are not we rather? Nevertheless we have not used this power; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of Christ.
13 Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar?
14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
The above passage makes it abundantly clear that God wants those He calls out to serve Him full-time supplied.
Collecting money is biblical – for the right use and reason which the LORD reveals in His Word. We must simply make sure that the collection is going to bless the people of God and not just one or a few staged deceivers who are running an entertainment business they have set up and call “church.”
One problem we see today is the defense of these beguiling, thieving wolves by the covetous, greedy folks who support them. These deceived people are full of self and “love to have it so.” (Jeremiah 5:31) In other words they love the greedy, covetous wolves they have submitted themselves to because these worldly rich wolves model the lifestyle their greedy, self-serving audience want (Hosea 4:9; 2 Timothy 3:1-6; 4:2-4).
There is a correct use of collections. Receiving money for true Gospel ministry work is according to the apostolic doctrine which we are to continue “stedfastly in.” (1 Corinthians 9:1-14; 1 Timothy 5:17-18; Philippians 4, Acts 2:42, etc.) Now, manipulating people – making merchandise of them – is the work of “false prophets,” Peter told us (2 Peter 2:1-3). Yet, that doesn’t negate the opportunity given to disciples of Christ to lay up treasure in Heaven by giving to God’s true work (Matthew 6:19-21). The key is simply to make sure the ministry is doing the Word and not just entertaining and keeping folks biblically illiterate in order to be able to continue to control them.
It’s time to get biblically learned, astute and cease being ignorant! – “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6)
Further, Paul gave the divine promise that God would supply all the needs of those who gave (Philippians 4). That promise and blessing of divine provision is specifically to those who had given to Paul who was a Gospel worker.
“But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of me hath flourished again; wherein ye were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity.” Philippians 4:10
Taking care of those whom the LORD has called out – not self-appointed but God-appointed – is the privilege of the saints. Those giving are the blessed ones according to Jesus (Acts 20:35). If you can’t give out of a “cheerful” (joyful, generous, thankful) heart then don’t bother – you are wasting your money. The Bible reveals to us that Jesus actually watches each one of us and how we give (Mark 12:41-44). He looks at the heart posture and percentage that we give (Mark 12:41-44; 2 Corinthians 9:7).
You want to be blessed? If so, find a true Gospel worker and begin giving into his life and work. In fact, a lady called this week who said that as she gave to a certain Gospel ministry, God blessed her. This is biblical. It doesn’t matter if some have collected and wasted money. The true Gospel worker is “worthy of his reward” and not just honor but “double honour” which means sufficient supply, pay, and a bit more (1 Timothy 5:17-18). Anyone who doesn’t like that needs to take up their beef with the LORD. Getting a biblical foundation in this subject by thorough study of the Scriptures on this topic is essential. Begin with 1 Corinthians 9:1-14. Those who do the infinitely most important and only eternal work on the earth are the most worthy souls on earth to be sustained, and supplied – so they can continue to fruitfully serve the LORD and His blessed people, equipping them to “do the work of the ministry.” (Ephesians 4:11-12) This is God’s program and anyone who participates in it is going to be blessed – now and eternally!
The LORD told us He would fill the barns and overflow with blessings the person who puts His “firstfruits” into His cause (Proverbs 3:9-10).
“Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: 10 So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10
It’s not a sin or wrong to facilitate what the Bible teaches – giving. The early believers in Jesus went so far as to sell off the things they didn’t need in order to liquidate and turn those properties, etc., into cash to help the other believers who were in need and surely a bit of that went to the apostles to sustain them as they gave themselves “continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:4) See Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35. The apostles didn’t tell those people to take their money back because giving is an integral part of serving God who “So loved the world that he gave” (John 3:16) In fact, Christ says that “It is MORE blessed to GIVE than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) It would be wrong to disallow God’s people from giving actually.
Jesus Christ was betrayed by a thieving wolf!
Extorting thieves are nothing new. Jesus had one in His ministry while on earth. The fact that charlatans have misused money they collected from gullible people who didn’t discern correctly does not make giving wrong. The people who give must examine, best they can, if that ministry is fulfilling a New Testament purpose. Most people don’t even know the Bible, regrettably, so they have little to go by. A good place to begin is to see what Jesus’ commission to His church is (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-20). After reading Christ’s commission, one should begin to examine the fruit of any ministry they are thinking of giving to – such as 1) are they endeavoring to teach the whole counsel of God’s Word in His holy fear and with no fear of any mere man (Matthew 28:18-20), 2) are they reaching out to lost souls (Mark 16:15-20).
Notice for example that the Word of Faith wolves don’t bother to give money to the general body of Christ – individual saints. That’s obvious in that they take that money to themselves in undue fashion and build mansions. Most of them have several mansions, fly over the the world on their own jets, stay at the most elite hotels, etc. This is complete misuse of resources given to them by people and fulfilling what Peter wrote about.
“But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. 2 And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. 3 And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” 2 Peter 2:1-3
We have the divine promise here that God is going to eternally judge those who “make merchandise” of others. There are some extorting wolves operating as pastors, evangelists, etc., but that doesn’t mean His disciples shouldn’t give!
STEWARDSHIP IS SAID TO BE THE MOST PREVALENT OR FREQUENTLY OCCURRING SUBJECT IN GOD’S WORD. ACTUALLY, ABOUT HALF OF JESUS’ PARABLES DEALT WITH STEWARDSHIP. THIS IS A HUGE TOPIC AND VERY IMPORTANT TO THE LORD. HE TOLD US THAT WE ARE TO BE “RICH TOWARD GOD” AND THAT OUR VERY “HEART” AFFECTIONS WOULD FOLLOW WHERE WE PUT OUR “TREASURE.”(MATTHEW 6:19-24; LUKE 12:15-20, ETC.) OUR LORD EVEN TOLD US THROUGH JAMES THAT IF WE HOARD INSTEAD OF FREELY GIVING, THAT WHICH WE HAVE LAID UP WILL FRIGHTENINGLY BE A WITNESS AGAINST US IN THE JUDGMENT (JAMES 5:2-3).
Some hide their own greed behind exposing the obvious greedy wolves who hold ministry positions. They use those beguiling thieves as an excuse to stop giving altogether. Don’t cease giving just because you were deceived by a wolf. If you do, you will hurt and hinder the work of our LORD Jesus in this late hour. Continue to obey God by giving Him your whole being and will daily. Your treasure will be His as long as you are truly His (Matthew 6:19-24). Just pray for more discernment and stay in the Word. Measure everything according to His Word (Acts 17:11). Be ready to help other Christians in need all around you and prayerfully find a good called-out brother in Christ who fears the LORD truly and preaches His pure Word and begin giving to his life and work – God’s work! The LORD promises to bless you for doing so.
Where you give is very important. You should ask: Is this ministry or church fully vested in Christ and His mission to save souls and feed His flock and teach HIS pure Word? Such a question eliminates 95% of all ministries which are nothing more than a flesh-flattering entity designed to rob the resources Christ ordains to go directly into His work and workers. There is no work on earth today that has eternal ramifications except the work of Christ. Are you a contributor? Why did He give you a way or ways to earn money? See in Ephesians 4:28 and begin supporting His true Gospel work – His Great Commission.
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QUESTION:
“Should those in ministry take up collections? Is that biblical? Also, should those who write books have to pay for the whole funding of those books and for that matter, should they have to fund the LORD’s work themselves?” What does God’s Word tell us about money?”
ANSWER:
So, where are true ministries supposed to get their money/resources? Question: Is that not our privilege and opportunity to give and thereby support the work of Jesus? In fact, is this not exactly why God gave us an income – to support His work? And, on top of that He puts money into an eternal investment “account” in Heaven? Wow! Philippians 4:17; Matthew 6:19-21.
“Collections” are biblical yes and they are the privilege of the giver much more than the mere human servants receiving the treasures to be stored up in Heaven for their own eternal benefit (Matthew 6:19-21). Giving also keep idolatry and greed away from the one who gives, securing his eternal soul with Christ. These are clearly soul damning sins specifically listed in Holy Scripture as such (Ephesians 5:5-7; Revelation 21:8, etc.).
Is it a sin for a person in ministry to not have enough money to pay for everything? No, that’s not a sin at all and in fact, it’s a blessing to those ministered to by that outreach. God actually ordains it that way usually so that other of His people can lay up treasures in Heaven, just like Jesus told us to do (Matthew 6:19-21). In fact, the apostle Paul cared much about the heavenly “accounts” of those he ministered to and so should we – “Not because I desire a gift: but I desire fruit that may abound to your account.” (Philippians 4:17) Most men in ministry have not studied biblical stewardship very closely and for instance, do not even know about the verse posted in the previous sentence. God told us here that we have an “ACCOUNT” in Heaven. Now the question is, what’s in our “account”? What have we given into His true New Testament work?
“But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. 7 Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: 9 (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever. 10 Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) 11 Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.” 2 Corinthians 9:6-11
Some are misled by their own situations, opinions, and impartial knowledge of this important subject …. go read about some people Jesus actually puts in His trophy case in what we call “The Hall of Faith” …. read Heb. 11:37-39 and let’s talk about that.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” (Hosea 4:6) Notice that it’s not that most people don’t have at least some knowledge of a topic and yet that can be deadly. God is good….. a little knowledge is enough to kill us all.
Getting a tad of knowledge can be deadly …. if we don’t keep studying the topic all the way through Scripture to gain a thorough biblical knowledge on that subject and thereby be blessed to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15).
Support | STORE | Podcasts | The Return of Christ | Stewardship | Where to Give and Where Not to Give | Fruit Abounding to Your Account! | Consider Your Ways [podcast] | Consider and Build [podcast] | Holes in Your Money Bags? [podcast] | Dollar Dialogue | Jesus Sat Over Against The Treasury [podcast] | Escaping Sodom! | Waste | Stewardship | Giving
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More on Stewardship here.
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