Category: scripture

Posted in bible, encouragement, scripture

Midday encouragement

Posted on by elizabethprata

I really enjoy photography, looking at photos and taking them. I have many photos that I enjoy digging out and looking at and playing with as digital software technologies continue to be made available.

As I look at them, more often than not, a bible verse comes to mind. like the Penobscot Bay schooner I’d snapped it was while passing by the schooner we were on, the ‘do not drift away’ verse from Hebrews. It’s here.

I’ll be doing this more often. A short burst of encouragement from a verse, with photo. Here is today’s-

Friends, the road is long and we cannot see around the curve. However we know the end of the story. It ends in glory. Keep walking in Jesus’ name, rejoicing as you go.

Posted in doctrine, scripture, theology

Is your doctrinal screw loose?

Posted on by elizabethprata

The tiny screw fell out of my glasses this week. I was standing in the kitchen and all of a sudden the lens to my glasses popped out and fell to the rug. I took off the frames and saw that the screw at the end of the bow had come out. This released the frame to widen itself, and they no longer held in the lens.

It is a very, very tiny screw. I got on my hands and knees with a flashlight and used my other hand to gently sweep all over the entire rug. Of course the screw is the same color of the rug, and it’s about 1/32nd of an inch long. I never found the screw.

Without the screw that holds the frame together that holds the lens on the glasses that go on my head that allow me to see…I can’t see. I have severe astigmatism and I cannot see things even a few feet away. I’m not allowed to drive without glasses, either. I have a spare pair but the lens prescription is a bit outdated, but they had to do until the next morning when I went to the Dollar Store and bought an eyeglasses repair kit.

I got to thinking about the small, tiny thing that holds it all together. Once you take the small thing out, it all starts to unravel.

I’d written about this concept in March 2011 but from a different angle I am taking it today.

The pair of glasses are a system, unified, whole, and each part of it depends on the other for its entire integrity. When all parts are there, the whole thing works

The glasses are like the bible.

If you remove part of it, the whole thing falls apart.

I am NOT saying that the Word of God is in any way insubstantial, tenuous, or will falter. “Is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? ” (Jeremiah 23:29)

His Word upholds the universe and it will ever pass away. (Matthew 24:35).

I am talking about OUR belief in the Word. When you start picking and choosing this little part to believe and that little part not to believe, the unity and perfection of the word is such that each verse relies on the other. Your belief will start to crumble the moment you say something like this (and a church leader actually said this to me:)

“I’m not sure about the whole Jonah and the fish thing. As a matter of fact, I just take the whole Old Testament with a grain of salt!”

Picture the story of Jonah being swallowed by the whale as that little screw. Initially, you might think that not believing that small section of scripture won’t harm your entire theology. It’s just a few verses in a very short book after all. But if you doubt the Jonah story, then what about this:

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40).

Do you doubt what Jesus was saying? If you doubt the verse in Jonah 1, then you must doubt the verses in Matthew 12. And now your theological hold just got wider, and the screw in the glasses frame just got looser.

(Depiction of Jonah and the “great fish” on the south doorway of the Gothic-era Dom St. Peter in Worms, Germany.)

You might give room in your mind to the possibility of theological evolution – as Billy Graham does – and that ultimately to settle that belief in a literal version of the creation story “makes no difference.” But oh, it surely does. Graham said:

“I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man. … whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.” – [Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man, 1997. p. 72-74]

Because Graham gave room in his mind for the possibility of evolution, then he made his hole bigger because Paul said “Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; in 1 Corinthians 15:45, and in 1 Timothy 2:13 Paul said “For Adam was formed first, then Eve;”. Does a person discount those verses, too? One must, if he believes God could have evolved man and not created him, as Graham does.

In the end, Graham decided that all people go to heaven, even those who never heard about Jesus, as he told Robert Schuller and Larry King at different times. His slide away from the faith was long and slow, but just as damning.

Noah’s Ark, by Edward Hicks, Wikipedia

Some people say they do not believe the ark story, the animals could not possibly have fit onto a boat. But then one must discount what Peter said in 2 Peter 2:5- “if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;”

The point is, you must believe all of it, or none of it.

I can’t afford to go get more glasses. I decided it is more prudent to periodically make sure my glasses frames don’t have a screw that’s loose. If I have a screw loose, it could all too easily come breaking apart, and we would not want that to happen, would we! I’m pretty fond of seeing.

Henry II suit of armor,
Wikimedia Commons

Same with our doctrine. Periodically check to make sure you are using proper discernment. Pray to God for Him to sanctify you daily. Put on the full armor of God and pray ceaselessly (thus oiling the armor) so you will be protected from satan’s screwdriver that will try to find a loose screw to unhinge it.

“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” (Hebrews 2:1)

“John Jefferson Davis writes:

Even though Calvin believes that regeneration is irreversible . . . he does not conclude that the Christian has any cause for spiritual complacency. Persevering in God’s grace requires, on the human side, “severe and arduous effort.” . . . The believer needs to continually feed his soul on the preaching of the Word and to grow in faith throughout the whole course of life. Since it is easy for the believer to fall away for a time from the grace of God, there is constant need for “striving and vigilance, if we would persevere in the grace of God.” Calvin thus balances his theological certitudes with pastoral warnings. . . . The believer must continually exercise faith and obedience to make “his calling and election sure.” (Davis, “The Perseverance of the Saints: A History of the Doctrine,” 222.)

Believe all of it. If you doubt, ask the Holy Spirit to help you. That is one of His ministries!

In the end belief in what some claim are the more the more fantastical parts of the Word boil down to this:

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,” (2 Timothy 3:16)

The scriptures doesn’t say some parts are good, or a few parts, or even most parts. It says all scripture. Check to see if you have a screw loose. The lens could pop out and then you will not be seeing clearly. But regular maintenance of your eye-wear will result in seeing clearly, and beholding Jesus is the most beautiful thing you could ever hope to view. Having a right view of scripture is that beautiful perspective.

PS: I did fix my glasses. It was very difficult and it took a long time, and many tools. The screw is so small, I needed to use tweezers to even pick it up. I gripped too hard and the thing went flying off somewhere. Repeat the search on hands and knees with flashlight and hand feeling around everywhere. Not to be found.

I spent about 45 minutes reconstructing the frames, setting the lens on the thin frame just right, squeezing the clamp together, trying the different size screws, using the teeny screwdriver, had to use the tweezers again at the end to hold the clamp tight enough so the lens would be securely held. Let me tell you, the whole thing was such a pain that it is WAY easier to make sure that it is tight in the first place than to re-do the whole thing at time, expense, and frustration, and risking having to spend even more to get new glasses!

Posted in charismatic, god told me, personal revelation, scripture

The "God told me" crowd – satan’s tares are doing very bad things to the church

Posted on by elizabethprata

Why did Paul so often tell his people to persevere? We often suppose that it was because of the persecution they were undergoing, and that is surely true. But there is another reason, also.

“It is so hard, to know – that’s why the work of the church is difficult. The work of the church isn’t difficult because of what Satan’s doing in the world, it’s difficult because of what Satan’s doing in the church.” ~John MacArthur, sermon, “The Faith that does NOT save“.

Here is a biblical example of what satan is doing in the church- the Parable of the wheat and the tares

The Parable of the Weeds
“He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24-30)

This is an amazing and potent parable. There are a lot of ways to go with looking deeply into this, but I’ll restrain myself. The main thing is the obvious point: satan will steal into the kingdom of God by stealth and APPEAR to be wheat and not a weed. This will be a successful tactic until the harvest.

Therefore we can say that though some of the more obvious satanic tactics are destructive to the kingdom- such as Benny Hinn and Todd Bentley’s false healings, and false teaching like Islam and Buddhism, the more destructive tactics use quiet, secrecy, and stealth. They closely match the true faith.

The more Christian-appearing the tactic, the more successful satan will be. Most of western Christianity is somnolent, like a satiated picnicer taking a nap in the summer sunshine. Just can’t keep his eyes open.

John Singer Sargent: the Chess Game

Along those lines, I’d like to bring your attention to an excellent article by TA McMahon. It delves specifically into who and how the subtleties of satan are especially brought to the fore in the current Charismatic movement. The excesses of this movement are going to be addressed by the conference later this year called Strange Fire. The reasons we need to confront this strange fire movement of satan are spelled out here.

Meanwhile, this essay by Mr McMahon outlines just how devastating it is to our faith when we listen to people who CLAIM TO SPEAK FOR GOD.  He writes, “The root fallacy of the movement is the view of how one receives communication from God. … in practice this false teaching elevates what (supposedly) God has spoken to them as equal to or above what is written in the Scriptures. It goes far beyond someone stating that he “believes” that the Lord has impressed something upon his heart.”

To be clear, this is the crowd who says things like –

“God told me”
“God revealed to me”
“I have a word from Jesus”
“I had a vision and He said…”

John MacArthur says of this kind of activity:

“God told me . . . “ has be come the anthem of the Charismatic Movement. Strange private prophecies are proclaimed by all kinds of people who evidently believe God speaks to them. … that the Bible is not our final source of God’s revelation but simply a “witness” to additional revelation that God is giving today. Williams is declaring that Christians can add to the Bible—and that they can accept others’ additions to Scripture as normal and conventional. He believes the Bible is a “model” for what the Holy Spirit is doing today to inspire believers.”

Today’s ‘God told me’ crowd includes Mark Driscoll, Beth Moore, Kim Walker Smith of the band Jesus Culture, Steven Furtick, Todd Burpo, Joyce Meyer and many others.

The impact of these direct revelation, Charismatic excesses can’t be overstated. Please take a moment to read the article.

It begins this way:

They Claim to Speak for God (Part 1)
T. A. McMahon

“A very large part of Christendom in the United States is enamored with those who claim to speak for God. If you think that’s an overstatement, simply tune into some of the programing on Trinity Broadcasting Network or some of the other cable religious networks. What you will see are churches filled with thousands of Christians hanging on to every word of a man or a woman who is declaring what God has just revealed to him or her. The content ranges from the mundane to the bizarre. To some observers who are fairly well versed in the Scriptures, what they are hearing and seeing is laughable. But that’s a tragic reaction by some who are forgetting that many of those being led astray by the so-called new prophets and apostles are their brothers and sisters in Christ.”

…

“Not only is such a cavalier attitude wrong biblically, but it is extremely shortsighted and therefore blinds a person to the seductions and ultimate deceptions that are involved. In this series of articles we want to present a wider view of what’s involved with those who “claim to speak for God,” demonstrating that it’s far more than a few delusional zealots but rather a host of men and women, ministries, and movements that have an agenda and methodologies, all of which are contrary to the Word of God.”

The sad part is that today’s “God told me” people are not just fringe Pentecostals but as you can see from  the above list, conservative evangelicals who should know better. Even sadder, the movement has swept up many multitudes of conservative youths too.

I’ll end the same way I started, with the quote

“The work of the church isn’t difficult because of what Satan’s doing in the world ,it’s difficult because of what Satan’s doing in the church.”

You can be a sleepy sunshine napper like this-

Thomas Mora Picnic, Wrentham, MA c. 1900

Or you can wake up, put on your armor, and look around, like this,

I am reminded of the song of Deborah. In Judges 5:12, Deborah incites Barak to carry off as his prey the captive Canaanites and their sheep and cattle-

“Awake, awake, Deborah! Awake, awake, break out in a song! Arise, Barak, lead away your captives, O son of Abinoam.”

Gill’s Exposition explains,

“Awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake, utter a song, &c. Either perceiving some languor and remissness in her spirits, while she was delivering this song, and therefore arouses herself to attend to this service with more ardour and zeal; or rather finding herself more impressed with a sense of the great and good things the Lord had done for Israel, calls upon her soul to exert all its powers in celebrating the praises of the Lord, and therefore repeats the word awake so often as she does.”

Be not languorous and accept the false teaching of the ‘God told me’ crowd! Be diligent to know your bible well enough to see the very ‘fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel’ on its glorious pages. Awake and arise!

Posted in authority, discernment, hell, scripture, visions, wiese

Discernment: are people’s visits to hell actually true?

Posted on by elizabethprata

So many people these days have had a trip to heaven or hell. Jesse Duplantis, Beth Moore, Colton Burpo, Don Piper, Rick Joyner, Kenneth Hagin, Rebecca Springer, Richard Eby, Dr. Mary C. Neal, Kim Walker Smith of Jesus Culture … the list of people taking a tour of heaven or having had a personal visit from Jesus in another dimension goes on and depressingly on. And hell is not to be left out, either, several people claim to have been personally escorted by Jesus in the underworld as well, such as Victoria Nehale, Mary K. Baker, Bill Wiese.

So what are we to make of all this?

Lies. All lies.

Let’s take a look at the visits to hell. I’ve written several times about the trips to heaven. The bible says that even though you may have had a personal experience, we have a more sure word. Peter wrote that, and he was referring to his own personal visit from Jesus at the Mountain, and having seen the heaven glory and Jesus transfigured. Even Peter says that the word is more sure than a personal experience!

“And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.” (2 Peter 1:19-20).

Peter is saying that the prophetic word, which is the word spoken by the prophets, is sure. Remember Jeremiah 23:16, “Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.”

Peter is not saying we should not interpret scripture, he is talking about the source of it. In 1 Peter 1:10, Peter wrote, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully,”

In other words, the prophets heard the word from the LORD, and they carefully searched out what it meant. The false prophets did not have to search out what it meant because they made it up. Explaining it was just as easy- they made up the explanations. And the word was almost invariably happy, too. See what Jeremiah says,

“They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’” (Jeremiah 23:17).

Sound familiar?   I know that it does.

Peter’s credentials were impeccable, being hand chosen by Jesus and endowed with miraculous powers to heal, raise from the dead, and preach! Every single person who came after Peter has credentials which are less stellar, so by default, if he says not to trust his experience, we trust the bible and not our own experience. Otherwise you’re saying, “I trust Jesus Culture’s Kim Walker Smith’s experience of seeing a Gumby Jesus, she seems to be more credible than Peter.”

Laughable, isn’t it? The word is sure!

Now about the people who travel to hell, what of them? Well, those visions and visits are false, too. How do I know? Look at Lazarus.

“The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:22b-31)

If we are to believe the people who visited hell, then we are to disbelieve the holy word. First, because we would believe that Jesus changed His mind about sending people from hell to tell the story, and secondly that before, while we are told that people would not believe even a dead brother returned to life telling his family, but now they will believe an unknown person telling the world on Youtube.

Wiese says that he encountered Jesus in hell, who told him to tell other people that hell is real. This varies directly with the word. Do we have a more sure word, or do we not have a more sure word?

Some people are totally unbelievable and are obvious charlatans. Others, like Wiese, or Don Piper, for example, are likable and sincere. However, sincerity of their message does not make it true. Only the word is surely true, and if what someone says is against what the bible says, you must disregard the person’s message and not the bible.

However, isn’t that the point of what satan is doing, with all these Charismatic visions and visits? Even though Piper or Wiese’s message may be good, the source is demonic. Look at what Paul did when the fortune-telling slave girl followed him around.

“She followed Paul and us, crying out, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation.” And this she kept doing for many days. Paul, having become greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour.” (Acts 16:17-18)

What was Paul’s problem? After all, she was saying something that was true. The problem is, her source was from satan, and a divided house cannot stand. Clarke’s Commentary says, “The Gentiles, finding that their own demon bore testimony to the apostles, would naturally consider that the whole was one system; that they had nothing to learn, nothing to correct; and thus the preaching of the apostles must be useless to them.”

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary explains, “Paul being grieved-for the poor victim; grieved to see such power possessed by the enemy of man’s salvation, and grieved to observe the malignant design with which this high testimony was borne to Christ.”

Isn’t the phrase ‘malignant design’ so very wonderful!

Matthew Henry says of the slave-girl, “Satan, though the father of lies, will declare the most important truths, when he can thereby serve his purposes. But much mischief is done to the real servants of Christ, by unholy and false preachers of the gospel, who are confounded with them by careless observers.”

So even though the message at one point or another from one false prophet or another, may be true, satan’s malignant design in using the message will always be dishonoring to Christ. Bill Wiese and Mary K Baker may be sincere, but satan’s design is to usurp the authority of the Word, just as he was trying to do against Paul (who was speaking the true word) in using the slave-girl who was possessed.

Be discerning about these visits to heaven and hell, and of people’s tales of visitations from Jesus in visions. It is not enough that their message borne from experience may seem consistent with the bible, the bible tells us that we have a more sure word in the Prophets. And that is enough, more than enough, for me. I hope it is for you too.
————————–

FMI:

Justin Peters essay “Your Best Afterlife Now: (An examination and critique of claimed visits to heaven and hell”

Tim Challies reviews Heaven Is For Real and 90 Minutes In Heaven.

Pertinent part begins at 41:14–

Posted in bible, scripture, truth

Scripture cannot be broken

Posted on by elizabethprata

I’m watching a sermon from John MacArthur from this week’s Master’s College conference. It is titled “The Word of God: The Divine Revelation to Man – Truth & Life Conference ’13”

In it, MacArthur spends some time describing Isaiah 53, an amazing chapter. Isaiah 53 describes the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He said, “This chapter is full of truth that dominates the New Testament: salvation, forgiveness, reconciliation, eternal life; all provided by vicarious, substitutionary sacrificial death of a divinely chosen acceptable lamb who bears all the sins of His people by taking on himself willingly the full weight of divine punishment. It sounds like Romans in the NT. It looks like it is completely out of place.”

Now, get this. He said,

“Isaiah is 66 books. It is divided the same way the bible: 39 chapters and 27 chapters. The first 39 are about judgment. The next 27 are about salvation.”

“Of the last 27 about salvation, the first 9 have to do with the salvation of the nation Israel. The last 9 have to do with the salvation of the earth. The middle 9 have to do with the salvation of the soul.”

“If you go to the middle of the middle 9, you get to chapter 53, and if you go to the middle of 52:12-53 you come down to verses 4,5. and 6, “He was wounded for our transgressions.”

The bible is a wondrous book. John 10:35 says, “if he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—“

Scripture cannot be broken. It is uttered from the mouth of God through His Holy Spirit and His Son. It is easier for the world to pass away than for one jot or tittle of scripture to pass away (Matthew 5:18).

It is tightly woven tapestry that is perfect. The Law is perfect (James 1:25; Psalm 19:7). His works are perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4). Psalm 18:30 says His way is blameless. His way is perfect and His word is perfect! (2 Samuel 22:31).

Once someone said to me, “I just take a lot of the Old Testament with a grain of salt.” This bothered me then and it bothers me now. You cannot take one jot or tittle away from His word and expect that the tapestry will remain woven.

Revelation 22:18-19 says “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.”

Woe to those who say “I have a word from the Lord and I am here to teach it to you.” No one can add to His word. Woe to those who take away from His word by claiming some part is untrue and it doesn’t mean what it says it means.

It is all perfect and true. If you start picking threads out that are true and not true, or to believe or not believe, and it becomes YOU who are broken, for the scripture cannot be broken. It is perfect!

What is the point here? Read your bible. It is really good!