Exchanging the Short-cuts of Salvation for the Old Paths

 Some of what I am writing right now may be mere opinion or it may be God's wisdom I have been praying for. I am not writing this with a critical spirit, but as a bit of a consultant. I am asking for all of us to examine ourselves. My research from both seeking God, asking for wisdom, praying and fasting, bible study, and studying what the Preachers of the Past did that literally turned the world upside down is not done.

The mess of modern evangelism will affect every church in America today.  That is why I am writing this.  No church is immune, because even if your church is preaching solid doctrine, your members are affected because they don't live in a bubble.  They go online and read people's blogs (just not mine!).  They get invited out to fellowships and bible studies and Christian rock musicals and Christian youth conferences and Ecumenical Good Friday Services. 

Some churches today preach a flat-out wrong gospel.   Some are cults in disguise.  Others have to deal with communities inoculated to the real gospel because everyone in their neighborhood is a "saved false convert".  Meaning they were saved by some invention of man, and now they have little motivation to exchange a lie for the narrow truth.  The modern messages appeal is in the you can have your cake and eat it too.  Who would want to give up the pleasures of sin for a season if they knew God was offering Get out of hell free passes?  Today's evangelism has more in common with the old Catholic indulgences than anything biblical!

I merely believe I have started this journey and I'm no expert but in what I've found I think already I'm on to something that can have a positive impact on our circles, the churches of America, and our world.  I don't think we have to live with our head in the clouds nor in the sand, and I think that is where we like to be, either in denial that there is any problem with today's Christianity, or having faith that defies common sense and accepting everyone into the kingdom.

 I tell men I preach to that if I say I'm a RedSox fan and only have Yankees memorabilia, something is wrong. Yet we accept in our evangelism things that defy common sense in the real world. We know that if someone says "I DO" at the altar and move back in with their high school sweetheart after the honeymoon their words meant nothing, yet we accept in a spiritual sense people that do that to God all the time.

 I have been searching to place my finger on what is wrong today with our evangelism. When you look at the fruit and the Bible stating in the end times there will be a great falling away i am not out of line with that statement. I'm trying to find WHERE and WHEN we went wrong yes, but more important, what we have to do to fix it.   First, it has been a conviction of many strong men of God to state without apology that most of the church today is lost. A.W. Tozer stated many years ago that "Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, have come into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ, and they have not been saved."  How much more are lost today!

The Southern Baptist Churches are a hodge podge of compromise and worldliness but they have a missionary in their camp, Paul Washer, that has some good solid observations regarding false converts filling the churches.  I don't agree with his conclusion, ie, Calvinism, but  his observations are dead on.  He said, "The 4 spiritual laws and sinner's prayer is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that methodology and evangelism has done more to hurt this country than every heresy introduced by every cult combined. Millions of people in this country whose lives have never been changed believed themselves born again because we have so reduced the gospel of Jesus Christ that it means now nothing more than simple decision that will only take five minutes of your time."

One of my favorite 20th century Preachers is revivalist Leonard Ravenhill.  He definitely preached if you came to Christ, expect your sin problem to be dealt with.    Here are some good quotes on salvation and the new birth, and just basic 101 Christianity that most churches can't even grasp.  "You know, we're the most undisciplined generation the world has ever known…how many of you are disciplined? How many go to bed at the same time every night, get up every morning at the same time? How do you discipline your appetites, how do you discipline your tongue? We're the most weak, effeminate Christianity the world has ever had—no wonder nobody wants it. It has no strength, it has no character…" he stated in his sermon Hell has No Exits.  Another time he said, "If you're going to be a true Christian, I'll tell you one thing amongst others: it'll be a lonely life. It's a narrow way and it becomes narrower and narrower and narrower......All you have to do is get in a closer walk with God and you'll find your enemies are in your own church.,,,,,,,,,,,If a Christian is not having tribulation in the world, there's something wrong!.......Why in God's name do you expect to be accepted everywhere? How is it the world couldn't get on with the holiest man that ever lived, and it can get on with you and me? Are we compromising?" In another message he said, "The early Church was married to poverty, prisons and persecutions. Today, the church is married to prosperity, personality, and popularity."

AW Pink said, "Many of the pulpiteers of the past fifty years acted as though the first and last object of their calling was the salvation of souls, everything being made to bend to that aim. In consequence, the feeding of the sheep, the maintaining of a Scriptural discipline in the church, and the inculcation of practical piety, was crowded out; and only too often all sorts of worldly devices and fleshly methods were employed under the plea that the end justified the means; and thus the churches were filled with unregenerate members. In reality, such men defeated their own aim. The hard heart must be ploughed and harrowed before it can be receptive to the gospel seed. Doctrinal instruction must be given on the character of God, the requirements of His Law, the nature and heinousness of sin, if a foundation is to be laid for true evangelism. It is useless to preach Christ unto souls until they see and feel their desperate need of Him."

I never heard of Tim Conway, but I like what is quoted in his sermon, "Few people make it to heaven."  He said, "The whole world is willing to say a little prayer. What does the sinner's prayer sound like? … 'Jesus, please come into my heart.' You know one of the dangerous things about that prayer? You don't find it anywhere in the word of God. Nowhere! That's not how Jesus said Heaven is attained. … We've got a world full of people that are happy and ready to say 'Jesus, I'm a sinner, please come into my heart,' and then you go enjoy all the idols, all the sin, love the same garbage on TV that the rest of the world loves, dress like them, look like them, pursue all the things that the world wants—everybody wants to be able to say a little prayer as fire insurance to get out of Hell and then go live it up and have their sin!.............You've got a little bit of religion, but you, aside from that little religion, are just like the world. You're just like the multitudes, you're just like the crowd. Because the truth is, you play the same video games that the world plays, and you go to the same movies that the world goes to, you laugh at the same things the world laughs at, watch the same tv shows that the world watches. You love the fashions of the world, the idols of the world, the rock stars, the movie stars, the sports stars, they're your idols as well. … You may have some conservative parents that don't let you stay up as late…but you know in your heart you desire those same things, you want them. The truth is, you're just like the crowd. Folks, the crowd is on the way to destruction."

Walter Chantry in his book Today's Gospel said, "The evangelical wing of the Protestant church is saturated with doctrine and practices which have no Biblical foundation. Many teachings and habits touching the Gospel are as much the products of human invention and tradition as were the indulgences of Tetzel. … In the central issue of the way of salvation, large segments of Protestantism are engrossed in neo-traditionalism. We have inherited a system of evangelistic preaching which is unbiblical. Nor is this tradition very ancient. Our message and manner of preaching the Gospel cannot be traced back to the Reformers and their creeds. They are much more recent innovations. Worse, they cannot be traced to the Scriptures. They have clearly arisen from superficial exegesis and a careless mixture of twentieth-century reason with God's revelation....Products of modern evangelism are often sad examples of Christianity. They make a profession of faith, and then continue to live like the world. 'Decisions for Christ' mean very little. Only a small proportion of those who 'make decisions' evidence the grace of God in a transformed life."

True salvation will give you a thirst for God's word just like a newborn baby has a thirst for milk.  One of my favorite old time Preachers is Charles Spurgeon. In his message on Psalm 119:9 he says, "The Bible must be your chart, and you must exercise great watchfulness that your way may be according to its directions. You must take heed to your daily life, as well as study your Bible, and you must study your Bible that you may take heed to your daily life. With the greatest care a man will go astray if his map misleads him; but with the most accurate map he will still lose his road if he does not take heed to it. The narrow way was never hit upon by chance, neither did any heedless man ever lead a holy life. We can sin without thought, we have only to neglect the great salvation and ruin our souls; but to obey the Lord and walk uprightly will need all our heart and soul and mind. Let the careless remember this."
 In today's evangelism over 90% of those making professions never pan out.  The bible promises that anyone truly saved that God will continue to do a work on them.  I can say without a doubt that if God never saved me, there is no way I could have survived this path the past 10 years.  Today we hear of missionaries who write that 2,000 were "saved" this year, 52 were baptized, and 12 were added to the church. That is not the book of Acts results. We will have a major soul winning push and get 200 professions but you won't see any of them ever again. Something is wrong.

 There are many reports of men following up on major soul winning campaigns that find those making professions no different than before, and LESS interested in the gospel after words. This is true in the Billy Graham campaigns but just as true in our Independent Fundamental Circles. Those that are "saved yet still lost" are instantly inoculated to the real gospel and two-fold children of hell. All over on the street I deal with everyone and anyone who claim they are saved and are defensive and angry when pressed about it. A saved person is broken over their sin and failures, yet constantly people in America profess they know God and in their works they deny him and get angry when confronted about that. We should be examining our methods against what brought true revival in the past, and seeing if our methods today have diverged from what our forefathers held. My conviction is that we have taken a turn in the last 100 years that is helping to usher in the apostasy and compromise the Bible prophesied about.

 And no denomination or circle is immune. I find our circles are better, and we have men who do stand by the truth, but mixed in are those who believe in easy-prayer ism, or believe calling on the Lord when there is no repentance still makes you saved. The biggest source of bad evangelism in general is the "Bible Colleges" --they are the ones pumping up and promoting and pushing for decision after decision, and those that have one or two true converts feel they have to apologize.

There is a small remnant of folks amongst the churches that love God but the majority of those in attendance are tares amongst tares and have no clue. A preacher once said most of our time, money, and energy today is diverted into making goats act like sheep. From what I experienced, when you get saved, the Holy Ghost moves in and leads you to more truth, and naturally continues the work he began. He led me through step by step to where I am today, he showed me false doctrines, he sorted out the issues with new evangelism, and he used those years I was in them to mold me and show me the truth.

My conviction is there are a lot of false converts amongst the churches, regardless of denomination and it scares me to death that so many folks have a sense of godliness and deny the power thereof. I can't imagine the day when men who grew up in church, knew in their head all about Jesus Christ, and called him Lord, Lord are told by the Lord Jesus Christ that "I never knew you".

One problem I see today is the gospel has degenerated into a 5 minute shortcut. Yes we sometimes lean toward salvation is a prayer, yes we can give someone without true repentance false assurance -- but bottom line we are giving out cures to those still healthy, at least in their mind. It is one thing to accept a flu shot just in case I could get the flu, it is quite another to see MRI results and see blood work to reveal you have terminal cancer and commit to 6 months of chemotherapy.

If we convince of the disease like the men of old, the sick won't have to be begged and bribed to get born again. The truly sick will sort all that out, which cure is needed at the moment, where Romans 10:13 comes in vs. Romans 10:9-10 vs. Romans 6:23vs John 3:16 for example. God will use various means and ways to explain how the sick are to meet the great Physician-- entering a door, drinking water, true bread from heaven, the gift of God, come unto me, look unto me, call unto me, etc. The cure is fine tuned for the individual for the moment he needs it. There is no one single method that is one size fits all. God must be drawing, convicting, and giving the increase. It is the same cure, but different examples in the Bible show that cure comes in various flavors and routes of administration that causes the light to turn on in that individual. Everyone gets saved the same way --faith and repentance ---but no one is saved in exactly the same way!

Lost men of yesterday had strong bible backgrounds and a great foundation of the fear of God and who God is. Yet these same men didn't seem to be ushered into the gates of Heaven as quickly as our methods are today. We may use the Bible, we may use verses that are true --- but shallow evangelism and more reaching the emotions than the conscience and our quick moving of goats down the evangelism road is creating most with just a HEAD knowledge.

 They think they are saved because they "believe" and they "did the minimal requirements we laid out for them". They had an "emotional experience at one time" in accepting Christ --- but did Christ accept them? Did he not say Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish? And if repentance is only going from unbelief to belief, why does Revelation say unbelievers and whore mongers and murderer and all liars shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone? Why separate categories if it is only unbelief that damns a person? Bottom line is the soul that sinneth it shall die.

False converts are satisfied to not hunger and thirst after righteousness, and they live in denial and without growth. But when tares look around they see other tares behaving the same way and think that is normal. This issue is in all the churches. I was saved before I ever went to a church after searching evidence for Jesus and the Bible, becoming convinced, and when challenged to make my own verdict, saw Jesus was clearly the Messiah and saw he had a right to rule.

After being convinced of that, John 1:12, “receive + believe = become” became real in my life and I was instantly changed and converted from that moment on. It was on my couch in March 2002 and I have had ups and downs but I haven't looked back, and God took me out of Egypt. God saved me and it is God who is keeping me saved to this day, and God who will keep me saved. My tastes are different now, and he changed by direction, desires, and my destiny.

After salvation I only knew about the mega modern circles so that was where I began. God still used that to grow and develop me and it was not a waste. I have been in all kinds of churches -- I spent 3 years in the mega-church movement, went on a medical mission trip to Honduras and later to Arizona to an Indian Reservation. I spent a week in Denver Colorado and was a guest at YWAM (Youth with a Mission), a discipleship program. I toured Denver Seminary for a couple days. I went to youth conferences, Kingdom Bound (where I camped out there and attended the full event), college groups weekly (Twentysomething at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church and Vintage at The Chapel), attended Eastern Hills for 3 years, visiting the Tabernacle and the Chapel regularly as well, did an addictions course at Love Joy Gospel Tabernacle, attended many sessions of Christian counseling, and read a lot of books from Rick Warren, John Eldredge, John Ortburg, and many other new Evangelical Authors. I went through the Purpose Driven Life twice. I read the NIV daily for 3 years. I listened to CCM regularly and attended many many concerts in those circles. I read articles, did many chats "witnessing to folks", wrote a lot of emails to people, and shared my faith before I ever knew it was something we were supposed to so.  I did a "share Jesus without fear" small groups course where we were taught how to witness. 

I say all that to say that in the 3 years in that "camp" I ate, drank, and slept New Evangelism. There was some good in it, but I knew something was wrong because what I would see and what I would read did not match up. I never fit in and while I didn't feel I was this Super Saint, everyone treated me like this fanatic.  I kept an attitude that I'd rather have the truth than stay right, and I would keep searching until I would get something settled to the point of it being a conviction I'd die for.

When they mostly said you witness by your life and life alone, I was witnessing at work, on college campuses a bit, and gave out Chick tracts (before I knew what Chick tracts were!) in Niagara Falls with a friend of mine, Mike Cooper, who died a year ago in an accidental fall. I left the circles for good when I found the KJV and embraced the Independent Baptist Churches with full steam ahead and didn't look back.

Why I am stating all that is this --- I am not being mean or a "Fruit inspector" but I am trying to say I have some experience to say this. The majority of those I was around in New Envangelicism I believe were lost. I say that because every place I would go God would put me around a small minority who were on fire for God and had a walk with God. There is a major difference fellow shipping with those with the light on.

Everyone else we would encounter did not appear to know God apart from a head knowledge about him. Men my age were on fire for the things of this world and God was their hobby and their hobbies were God. When I left those circles, I was expecting to find people in the "truth", the KJV folks, to be what I was looking for. I was naive obviously, but to be honest there is not much difference from the majority of men my age I spent a lot of time around in New Evangelicalism and the majority of men in the KVJ circles.

Both groups attend church, but the world is clearly their first love for the majority. In those circles I left it was about going to movies and rock and roll and TV shows. In our circles it is more pro sports and hobbies. Talking about spending time outside looking up at the sky talking to God and singing praise songs is not something they would be interested in. Going out soulwinning is not a desire. If you mention you street preach, you will intimidate the average christian.  Young men and women cared more about finding boyfriends and girlfriends than finding God. There is not much difference between the average New Evangelical, the average Ind. Baptist, and the average Catholic today.

Most seem to have merely a head profession, live oblivious to the fact that Hell is real, and that God is also a God of vengeance and wrath besides a God of love and mercy. Most are clueless that Judgement day is coming and the Rapture is coming and JESUS is COMING!!!!! We may say we love God but we deny Him by our lives, and we may say we love him with our lips but our hearts are far from him by our actions.  Where is the fear of God? Where is the hatred of sin? Where is the stand for Jesus? Where are the men who are as passionate about God as they are for their favorite team? Where are the men who talk about Jesus as openly and naturally as they talk about their favorite player?

What has happened to Christianity?

Like I said I believe it is the shortcutting of the Gospel that is responsible.

In the 1700's and early 1800's you had the great awakening. It began in the early or mid 1700's with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield and John Wesley, and it's fruit spread to the 1800's. Then you had Dwight L. Moody (1837 to 1899) in the late 1800's and R.A. Torry(1858-1928) in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Then you have in the mid 1900's men like Jack Hyles and Bill Bright, then Billy Graham and now Rick Warren and Joel Olsteen. What I think we see is a movement from strong sowing and emphasizing repentance and the fear of God where men cried out, "What must I do to be saved?" to now having a plea for people to come and receive Christ.

Before men ran to the Savior, not we have to bribe and beg them to come.</em></strong> Now in general we try to win them over with the positive attributes of God --his mercy, his joy and peace, Heaven -- or by moving them emotionally. I think that emphasizes pushing the cure on someone unconvinced of the disease. In other cases, men are pushing a false cure, or worse, no cure, because there is no disease to report.

Originally we convinced of the disease and men naturally sought the cure. In the Dwight L. Moody and R.A. Torry stage, there was a bit of a shift toward the cure, but there was so much awareness of the disease of sin, as men had a respect for God's word, that they could harvest those who were ripe for salvation. Today we are trying to reap a harvest but nothing has been planted the past 100 years except false Christs, shallow evangelism, and a God who loves you so much that hell seems unreasonable.

You take today's average church member who comes in with nothing but knowledge of evolution, and the religious Christ that is just assumed today to be Jesus, and you take him through the doctrines that men of the great awakening would spend days and weeks preaching and sowing, and squish it down into a 5 minute attractive presentation, and no wonder that people accept it but there is little fruit and little evidence anything real is taking place.

 We have made the gospel into a little formula that if you agree with the 4 or 5 points you are immediately ushered into the Kingdom, no questions asked.  Just try Jesus! Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!  We need to slow down, take a step back, and stop and think about what we are doing! Let's not look to the Bible college hyper soulwinning methodology that is watering the gospel down to the point it can not fan the flames of Hell.

 Let's go back to old fashioned Christianity and boldly proclaim a Real and Living and Returning Saviour to a world that needs to be convinced they have a disease. Jesus came for the sick and to call sinners to repentance. He said he would build his Church. We have to go, but go with the right message and go back to not what will produce decisions but what will raise the dead in their trespasses!

We need to get back to following the Bible and not a formula. Jesus said FOLLOW ME and I will make you fishers of men. That might not be something that you can pick up in reading Jack Hyles Easy Prayerism pamphlet, Let's Go Soulwinning. It comes from faithfully witnessing and going and God will grow us as we go! Let's return to the old paths before too many follow us on the new road of new evangelism. We claim to be against their doctrines, so let's not embrace their evangelism!!!!

A Crisper Christianity

A good way to describe our walk with God today is what God showed me here.  I title this "A Crisper Christianity".

Let me start with the fact I need to eat more salads.  They are good for me and they satisfy my appetite.  If I don't eat a salad, I can eat 3 slices of pizza (topped with bleu cheese), a half dozen chicken wings (dipped in bleu cheese), an order of onion rings, down a chocolate shake, and have oreos and an ice cream sundae for dessert.  And later in the evening I can make a ham sandwich with swiss and mayo on it.  And another oreo after. Or three. My favorite Oreo is the double stuff kind, but I take the top off of 2 oreos and make a quadruple stuff cookie.

  And of course if you give a Mike a cookie, he will need some milk to go with it. And if you give him some milk he will now ask for some cereal to go with it.  And the cereal will be lucky charms, and the green leprechaun will remind him of Ireland and when he thinks of Ireland he will think of the wonderful fish and chips.  And he will ask for some.  And of course he will need tarter sauce to go with it.  So it is off to Wal Mart because there is none in the cupboard.  And as he heads to Wal Mart he will pass Tim Hortons, and likely get a donut.  And if you give him a donut he will need coffee to go with it.  The coffee will be hot, so he will want to wash it down with a cold glass of milk.  And if you give Mike a glass of milk, he of course will ask you for a cookie.

The following tale was inspired by my boy's children's book collection! 

Anyway, if I eat a salad, with dinner, I am not as hungry after and I may eat a slice of pizza and 2 wings instead.  Salads seem to get my body to surrender and say, ok we are serious about this health thing. Salads seem to get my appetite in line.  That may be why it is so hard to get on the salad kick.  My flesh fights it because it would rather have lettuce on a double bacon cheddar burger than in a bowl.  It would rather have blue cheese on a slice of pizza than on some green leafy things.  I would rather have tomatoes in the form of tomato sauce.   The last thing I had that added more green to my diet was a Shamrock Shake.

There are several obstacles that get in the way of building my salad momentum.  First, my current diet is tasty and addictive and I don't have huge reasons to change right now.  I am following the American path of destruction that the food industry and the health care industry have concocted so I am slowly destroying myself and putting myself in position so only the wonderful wide world of prescription medication can keep me alive.  And if I can't afford the health insurance, I must bow down to the gods of the government to keep me healthy. Our diets leave us dependent on refined sugar and processed flour and the crack cocaine known as high fructose corn syrup.  Our dependence destroys us and our destruction makes us desperate for a deliverer that got us into this mess to begin with.   Because of our desperate need for health care which is self imposed we welcome socialism as a right. 

The first lesson for the church is serious.  Back in the 60's men of God like AW Tozer had strong convictions that most of the church is lost.  I say without apology that in my experience of every shape and form of Christianity today that is even more true today.  In 10 years of being around people and knowing that the truly saved are new creatures that naturally desire God and naturally want God and have an internal drive that drives us, the true convert is few and far between.  I think most pastors today are lost in America, most churches wouldn't even notice if the rapture hit during their services, and most Christians will grow up in the church and attend every service and be shocked to find out they spend eternity with the perverts and Satan worshippers.  Even in good solid churches I hear of an evangelist coming in and preaching and the host Pastor suddenly realizes he was never saved and gets born again!  Pastor's wives come forward and realize their long profession is meaningless!  My point is this  --- in the circles I am in (and if they weren't the most biblically sound circles in America I would head for the hills) that preach and teach being saved, examining your salvation, and salvation by faith and repentance, countless teens, leaders, and members on a regular basis testify of thinking they were saved early in life only to find out they were deceived.  If that can happen in a church that hammers salvation on a regular basis, how much more are the churches that don't even teach salvation, teach salvation is by works, teach everyone is saved, teach only the certain elect can be saved, or teach you can lose your salvation???

There is another reason why it is difficult to build salad momentum, and I think this gets to the bottom of our church crisis.  It is called the crisper.  It is in ever fridge, and it was invented by the pizzeria industry.  The crisper is the official storage place for vegetables.   It should be called the wilter.  It never keeps anything crispy, because it makes the salad and everything else in there long forgotten until you do your fridge cleaning.  When I open the fridge in my face are the oreos, and the chocolate milk.  I see the open can of vanilla frosting, I see the cheese drawer almost eye level.  I see the yogurts and chocolate puddings.  I see the high fructose corn syrup laced apple sauces.  I see everything and anything but the crisper down below.

Usually by the time I remember we have such a place, the tomatoes I bought last week are mushy and bruised, the lettuce is brown and battered, the cucumber is flexible, and the carrots are white unto harvest.  Then I throw everything out and remember my good intentions last time I went to the store.  I vow next time it will be different.  Yet the very next time, I buy all the salad stuff, make my wife a fully functional and fully loaded salad and the leftovers get stored in the crisper.  And stored.  And stored.

This is a lot like our Christianity today.  There are some of us saved and would love to serve God more.  I read stories of missionaries like Hudson Taylor and Jim Elliott and American Baptists who were pivotal in the forming of the United States Bible Belt, men like Stubal Sturnes and Obadiah Holmes.  I read of preachers like Charles Spurgeon and evangelists like Billy Sunday and men like John Wesley and my heart burns.  I long to be one of those real men of God, ones who left a legacy and left churches and who's fire lit the torches of men who were near them.  I long to escape the grasps of this modern hodge podge Christianity.  A preacher tonight described us to a "t".   We are palm tree Christians, blown where ever the wind takes us.

In America today, there is not much God because God in a spiritual way is kept in the crisper.  In our hearts, in our homes, and in our churches.  We have the world on our top shelves. Our sports idols, our Hollywood movies, our sin, our lust, our envy and self righteousness and our pride.  The false religions and new false Jesus is at eye level in the spiritual refrigerator.  On the door on big bright magnets are our accomplishments and our diplomas and our money clip.  We can open the freezer and easily have access to all that is inside, our intellect and our reasoning and the media and our resources.

God is down below, quietly there for anyone looking for a healthier diet.

On the top of the freezer is a big screen tv, always on.  

God stays in the drawer, quietly waiting until the fridge gets cleaned out and the freezer de-thawed.

He is there, we just are too distracted to notice.

What must I do to be SAVED?

I am trying not to slam certain circles or Christianity in general. However, I think we all to some degree have given in and given over to doctrines of great compromise in the past 100 years and have turned away from the true gospel.

The biggest error I think we are making is in looking at numbers and "results" of our techniques and assume that if it draws a crowd it must be of God.  Whether we mean to or not, we allow sinners to merely ADD the doctrines of salvation to their present lives without that true repentance where people turned into new creatures.

The reality is this: if I try anything new, there is that honeymoon period. People can get excited, maybe even get baptized, and have an emotional response to the gospel, but that seems to be the extent of a lot of our converts. Praying a prayer, asking Jesus into my heart, trusting Christ, asking the LORD to save me --- all these are perhaps have a degree of truth to them, or perhaps at times manipulating scriptures, but regardless, if people are not convinced of the disease, trying to push the cure does not cause salvation because they respond with that just in case attitude.

Once they "accept the cure" they are inoculated to the real gospel, and have this attitude of "God, I let you save me, what more do you expect from me?" By our actions we act like we did God a favor to let him save us! Also, at some point of emphasizing some of God's positive attributes and neglecting, ignoring, or downplaying his negative ones creates a False Christ.  A false Christ will not save anyone.

What must I do to be saved? should be the most important question that we make sure gets answered correctly.

The battle today is WHAT is the GOSPEL and HOW do MEN get SAVED?  I think what is important to first address is how men are not saved.  In the last 100 years from what I've studied, modern evangelism methods have replaced the old fashioned Bible Christianity.

What seems to be the clear method of the Bible that produced a great harvest of truly regenerated Bible believers was:

1) sowing of the fear of God

2) real true conviction to the point people naturally cried out,"What must I do to be saved?"

3) genuine repentance and genuine conversion that impacted the world around them and left no doubt they met the risen Christ.

Today I think we have a two fold problem ---

A) we don't deal enough with sowing the right seed, combating their already false Christ they have grown up with, and instead we teach them what to do with their false Christ.

 It is like someone who survived the Atomic Bomb of Hiroshima keeping a bottle of arsenic around because he believes that it is potassium iodide for radiation exposure. The earthquake hits, and there is radiation exposure again, and the man digs out the bottle he's held for years, and I counsel him about treatment, I counsel him about how to take the medicine, I explain the side effects. Problem -- I didn't think to see if his medication was expired or if it was even the correct medicine. We both thought we are talking about the same cure, but we weren't.

 B) (Addressed in the Flu shot posts) We're pushing a cure on a world who doesn't think they are sick. That is why we try and repackage it and sugar coat it and offer great rebates and incentives to take it. Instead if we spent more time convincing the disease, it wouldn't be that hard to get someone to accept the cure.

I want to look at some false cures today. Modern evangelism has bad fruit, but it looks impressive because it produces decisions. Decisions are not to be always taken as serious as our missionary prayer letters make them out to be. In the Gospel of John, Jesus had a whole bunch of shallow followers who "decided to follow Christ". When Jesus brought them to a point of conviction, and revealed their shallowness, many turned away.

Words don't mean much.

Not everyone that saith unto me LORD LORD says Jesus, shall enter the kingdom of Heaven. He makes little of our words, so why does modern evangelism let everything hang in the balance by our measly professions? I've been to sodomite parades (preaching at it!) where practicing sodomites profess they know God and claim the love of God for themselves. Be not deceived!

Here are some lies and bad doctrine of today's Christianity:

1. The Sinner's Prayer Saves. (Salvation is a person, not a prayer.)

2. You just gotta believe. (True saving faith vs. the devils believe and tremble)

3. Just ask Jesus into your heart. (You can do that in your sin!)

4. Follow the Romans Road. (too generic! it takes the great doctrines of the past and makes it a 5 point formula you have to just nod your head to--i.e. it produces head knowledge!)

5. IF you want to go to heaven, pray this prayer. (it emphasizes heaven and produces a selfish motive for salvation)

6. Try Jesus. (Jesus is Lord, not an experiment)

7. The only sin that sends a person to Hell is rejecting Jesus Christ. (why does it say in Revelation listing the people headed for hell that both unbelievers and all liars are hell bound if there is only one sin?)  Also, neglecting a cure is just as damning as rejecting that cure.  

8. Eat the meat and spit out the bones. (What about poisoned meat?)

9. Whosover shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. LORD, SAVE ME. (it neglects the context of that verse. you can call on the Lord if their is conviction and repentance mixed in, but you can't contradict Matthew 7 either)

10. Repentance is agreeing with God and merely a change of mind. (no, no, no. God saw their works in the book of Jonah. Jesus called that repentance. their must be some fruit if their is genuine repentance!)

Good night for now.

Jesus is not a Flu Shot Part III

Is Jesus the flu shot or chemotherapy?


I wrote this article about 2 years ago and posted it 02/28/2011.  When I blog I tend to just write an article beginning to end and at times it seems I am beating a dead horse or just rehashing things over and over.  A lot of my articles I see God unfolding truth and layers over time and I can see depth and progress over time.  I may get an idea during my bible reading or when witnessing or during normal day to day living or working.  Then I start writing it out.  Then I will get another article with a different angle on my heart.  When these truths and ideas all come out, I may sort through them all and end up with another tract or maybe a pamphlet.  In the flu shot series, I first started observing the way us pharmacists were promoting the flu shot thing.  Then I preached it at our New Years Eve service and at a prison revival. Then I wrote the articles.  There I started chasing the rabbit trails it exposed, and wrote articles like "Don't recruit with the fatted calf."  Next it will be a tract and maybe a chapter or two in an evangelism book.

All I am saying is sometimes my articles may produce a "Hey I already read that!" observation.  You likely did in one form or another.  I forget the circumstances, but after I wrote the flu shot articles I started to dwell on how vaccinations actually work.  Then it was like God opened my eyes and I got a clear picture of the problem with the gospel today.  I had read an article about Easy Prayerism by David Cloud and he mentioned how today's false repentance-less gospel produces false converts INOCULATED to the real gospel.  But as I started meditating on vaccinations I saw clearly why that is so.  A vaccine is intended to be a weakened or false version of the real thing.  And when you are vaccinated against the real agent, your body will immediately attack the real thing and fight it off.  That is what happens in evangelism today.  A person is led in a prayer and given false assurance and then someone tells them that if to be truly born again, God will change their desires and they will turn from a sinful lifestyle and turn to Jesus Christ.  They fight you off as they already have the false vaccine and it fights off the real thing.   This happens over and over and today you have straight fornicators and married sodomites and both have no desire for the real gospel.   Both will tell you to their death beds they are saved. My sister in law prayed a prayer when she was 3 because she didn't want to go to hell.  She is a stripper and prostitutes herself but she "knows she is saved."  She fights off any rebukes or any attempts to correct her thinking with anger and threats.  She has not one single biblical reason to suspect she is saved but she received Jesus like the flu shot illustration and has no desire for the real thing.  I fear that until she wakes up in hell, she will never come to the knowledge of the truth.

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Blog post -- Is Jesus a Flu Shot  --- or chemotherapy?


God showed me something very clear this morning. The problem with the majority of Christianity today is that Jesus Christ is sold, shown, prescribed and dispensed as a flu shot. The Lord Jesus Christ has been repackaged and sold as a one-time thing you do, and there are millions of people today inoculated to the real gospel because they have put their trust in such an empty "event".

 But as many as received him (Jesus Christ), to them gave he power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on his name (John 1:12) says the Bible but how we receive him is now open for debate when you don't carefully study the Bible. 

This flu-shot comes in many flavors. Bottom line is that truly receiving Jesus Christ is not at all like receiving the flu shot! Some are trusting a flimsy prayer they prayed, some are trusting "THE SINNER'S PRAYER", some are trusting an experience (ex: I got healed of chicken pox in 2007 and now I'm saved), some are trusting their baptism infant or otherwise, or receiving "Jesus" in communion, and some are trusting their church membership.

 The bottom line is salvation is a PERSON, not a prayer or performance. The Bible says in 1st John 5:13, He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. You either have Jesus or you don't. You are either saved or you are not.

If Jesus is only to you a flu-shot event that you did one time and you have no desire to live for God now, you don't have a natural desire to want to please God, and you don't naturally love his Word, you don't have the Jesus of the Bible!!!!

Jesus says about the saved, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my father's hand. (John 10:27-28) and Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. (John 15:14).

To the lost, he says, He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. (John 8:47) and ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. (John 5:35).  Many of today's professing "saved" folks merely received a temporary spiritual flu shot.

The reality is Jesus is chemotherapy in the sense Jesus is not a forgotten event but a life-changing reality that doesn't stop with the decision to begin "treatment".   Sin is a disease that will send us straight to Hell and Jesus is the only cure for that disease. Ezekiel 18:4 says the soul that sinneth, it shall die.  In Revelation, the Bible says Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.

In Jesus we have eternal life and escape the eternal death of our soul in hell forever after the dying of our physical bodies. You don't need the fire escape insurance of the false Jesus the flu shot. You need the permanent cure of Jesus "the chemotherapy".

The difference is huge.

 It will make or break a convert. It will separate the sheep from the wolves, the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, and will turn pigs into sheep. The biggest waste of energy today I heard with ministry in general is we are pouring our money, time, efforts, and energy to make goats act like sheep.

A flu shot is a one time, been there, done that, paid the copay type of thing. I am a pharmacist. If I see someone with asthma, per say, I might generically say, "Sir, you have asthma. You might want to get a flu shot. The flu can be serious for someone with your condition." He is not super motivated to get the flu because he has things to do. Yet, he thinks, I might as well. It is covered by my insurance, for a $0 copay. There is no line today and it will be over and done in 15 minutes. I can get the shot, not worry about getting the flu, and go on with my day.

The man likes the convenience, and it is a "just in case" thinking. He is not convinced this is that big a deal. While the flu really isn't normally a life threatening condition, because he doesn't have to pay anything he might as well get all his insurance offers. It is sold by the ease of the cure.

Contrast that with chemo. The man going for chemotherapy personally had a face to face encounter with a disease that will destroy him soon. Chemo is not a simple shot but begins a long term-commitment once a "one-time decision to undergo treatment is made"and it is something that will demand his life be totally changed.

 Hours will be consumed sitting under an IV. Health will be destroyed by a med trying to kill the disease before it kills the man. Money will be exhausted by high deductibles, hospital stays, high brand co pays, and multiple blood work. Side effects will be noticeable. A man who goes through that has counted the cost. His life is more valuable than all the inconveniences and challenges he must face.

It all began after being convinced of the disease.

Salvation is a gift of God, but it is conditional. Gifts can be conditional, such as "once you get your driver's license son, I will buy you a car!" It is not "whosoever shall pray a prayer one time and go on unchanged" shall be saved. The condition if you read the Bible as a whole is FAITH plus REPENTANCE!

One's interpretation of Romans 10:13's "Whosover shall call"  can't overlap Matthew 7's "not everyone that saith to me Lord Lord shall enter the kingdom of Heaven".  Works have nothing to do with it, but it is not a flu-shot. It is not something you defensively say, "I already did that" when someone asks if you are saved. Salvation changes your desires, direction, and destiny. There are good benefits and strong side effects. You can't enjoy your sin ever again. You become a target of the devil and get side effects now of temptation, tribulation, and persecution.

 Your life is never the same!  If it is, you only have the Flu Shot Jesus. Let's stop pushing the cure, Jesus Christ, on a world who thinks they are healthy! IT is time to go back to convincing of the disease to the point the world cries out, What must I do to be saved?

Jesus is not a Flu Shot Part II

Jesus Christ is not a flu shot.

 When you get a vaccine you get a false or weakened version of the real thing. This means when you get exposed to the actual version, your immune system is automatically trained to recognize and fight off the real thing. You are hence inoculated to the real virus.

The gospel works the same way. If someone "receives Jesus" and has some sort of emotional experience, but has never been born again through saving faith and Biblical repentance, they have received "Jesus the flu shot". This is a false gospel that comes in different versions, but it all produces the same effect. The false convert is lulled to sleep thinking he is ok with God, gives an "I've already done that" when given the true gospel, and produces not a changed life that walks with God, but a walking contradiction.

Every one of God's creatures have defining characteristics that are very unique to that creature. Pigs love the mud, sheep have wool, lions roar, rabbits hop, koalas like eucalyptus trees, bees make honey, and so on. If you saw a lion eating a salad, an octopus in a creek, a monkey in an igloo, a penguin in the desert, a camel in the ocean, or a llama feasting on a zebra, you'd know something was gravely wrong.

The bible says in 2nd Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. Before we were saved we were creatures of our habits and creatures of the devil. We loved sin, and acted like the world. When we are born again, saved for the Glory of GOD, we are NEW Creatures, and there are characteristics of these Christian Creatures. 1stJohn 5:13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

 Note! These things in 1st John Chapter 5 are THINGS DESCRIBED in 1st John chapters 1-5! Modern evangelism will use 1st John 5:13 to describe someone who intellectually agrees or emotionally responds to the Romans Road for example. 1st John describes a born again child of God. Today, modern evangelism turns Jesus into a flu shot and ushers them into the kingdom if they ever one time received the shot. 

 It asks, Did you pray the prayer? Did you believe the prayer? Did you ask Jesus into your heart? Did you really mean it? Yet, it is completely oblivious to the person who exhibits absolutely not one characteristic describing a Christian in the book John wrote to know for sure we are really God's children.

The Bible says in 2nd Corinthians 13:5 to Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?1st John provides the questions to examine! Don't miss that. Many say that calling on the Lord is the same as repentance. I believe the Bible says that is not true because one can call on the Lord in their sin, stay in their sin, and refuse to move from their sin. You can't pull a bible verse out of context PAST where it contradicts another verse.

 The Bible says in Romans 10:13 that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, yet it also warns in Matthew 7:21 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.  If you received the false Jesus the flu shot in the form of the false vaccines of false religion. false doctrine. false assurance. or false Christs you may be one of those false converts.  Eternally damned for hell because you were almost completely inoculated to the real gospel.  Friend, examine yourself with 1st John and really ask yourself if your receiving Jesus created a permanent life changing ongoing walk with God where you know that you know that you know the creator of heaven and earth.  Or if it was merely a one time flu shot you took just in case you ever were threatened with the hell bug.

Jesus is not a flu shot!!!

Jesus is not a flu shot.

Jesus Christ in the past 100 years has been turned into a 5 minute, no commitment required, convenient, just-in-case FLU SHOT.

 The biggest problem I see in today's evangelism is this --- we are pushing a CURE on a world unconvinced of the DISEASE.

The church today is good at explaining the cure. Jesus is the cure. We are good at explaining what the cure will do. It will forgive your sin and take you to heaven when you die. We are good at explaining what will happen if you don't take the cure. Eternity in a place called Hell for whoever dies lost. We are sometimes good at explaining how to take the cure. Sometimes we say it is praying a prayer, sometimes we say it is asking the Lord to save you, but in general we to some degree or another teach it is only by repentance and faith.

What we are very weak at, and often totally neglecting, is convincing the disease. The reason for that is for the past 100 years or so we have for multiple reasons turned Jesus Christ into a Flu shot. Jesus is more like chemotherapy.

What I mean by that is ---Salvation today is geared more today of getting the person whatever it takes to make a one-time decision to "receive Christ", and we usually motivate them by either

 1) advertising the benefits of getting the cure.

2) explaining the consequences for not getting the cure.

Anyone interested is given the cure, and it is made as painless as possible. Biblical doctrines are turned into an abbreviated short-cut method, so someone has all the head information to make the most reasonable choice --- to get a Free one time, easy ticket to eternal life in exchange for gaining heaven and rejecting Hell. Who wouldn't want that?

What is wrong with it? And is this not the Gospel?

Well, think of the prodigal son. Yes he was given the fatted calf, but he didn't know that when he headed for home. It was unexpected. Someone getting a flu shot expects something totally different than someone who has cancer. Not many flu shot patients are content if they survive the flu shot. They better survive! They are entitled to have a wonderful flu season.

If a chemo patient has a round of chemo where they feel somewhat normal, they are excited. Back in the Great awakening times, you heard extensive preaching on SIN, YOUR SIN, the Holiness of God, Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God, the righteousness of God, God's expectations, God's penalty for your offenses against him, etc. It was a negative message. People responded like they did in Nineveh from the preaching of Jonah.

 "WHO CAN TELL?" was Nineveh's response.

Jesus said "they repented at the preaching of Jonas."  That was God's response, but it is only for those who respond Biblically.
 
The Bible said God saw their works, and God spared them. Jonah did not come down and say, "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Won't you please come and ask the Lord to save you? He really wants you all in heaven so that is why he died on the Cross." The emphasis was on the sin problem, not the cure and not the consequences of not getting the cure.

When the emphasis is on the disease-- specific and clear and targeted for that audience --- then the hammer of God's judgment will fall and people cried out "WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?". They didn't come expecting heaven, they came fleeing from the wrath to come. That produced a repentant group of people. Yes, when people come to the end of their selves that will produce repentance when people see the goodness of God when God is all they have left.

However, most folks in America never get there, and they instead choose the easy, watered down modern gospel where they come not convinced they have sinned against a holy and righteous God. They come excited to go to heaven, they are glad to get a vaccine against hell should they really catch the hell bug, but they never saw themselves as truly wicked and evil and hell deserving because their disease was never exposed for what it was.

Hence, the seed is only falling on stony ground, and that seed is not going to hold up and it will not bear fruit. There is something radically different about our converts than even 100 years ago, and how I think that can be explained is we have changed the gospel of faith and repentance into the Flu Shot Gospel.

When you look around at our methods the past 100 years I think you clearly see the fruit is not the same as what you saw for thousand of years before that. Today, the majority of professing Christians are not true Bible Christians, instead they are Christian Hindus. False converts who have the Flu Shot Jesus as their fire escape, and they still have their gods of this world as well. True saving faith is turning from idols to serve the true and living God.

A Flu Shot is something you can just get in the state you are in, and keep living your life just as before. You don't have to give it a ton of thought afterwards, and if someone asks you about it, you simply say, "Yes, I had my shot, I am good to go!"

Jesus Christ is not a flu shot, so most people are not good to go at all. It is time to renounce this false method and replace it with sound bible teaching. A person will get a flu shot just in case they were to get sick. 

Especially if it is quick, painless, and covered by their insurance.  The flu is something that only might happen to them. They are not super concerned, but JUST IN CASE, WHY NOT? What have I got to lose?  

The Flu shot Jesus Gospel is just like a real Flu shot, as it is something you:

1. Agree to get JUST IN CASE even though you are currently OK.

2. It is a ONE TIME thing you never have to think about again (until immunity wears off)

3. It will not turn your world upside down.

4. You can get it even if there is nothing physically wrong with you from what you can tell.

5. You can get it even if you've never had the flu nor would ever get the flu!

6. There are low chance of any adverse effects.

7. Has minimal demands. You should stick around for 15 minutes after to make sure you don't have a bad reaction -- but we won't hunt you down!

8. Appealing if there is no wait and no cost.

9. No appointment necessary! Come whenever you feel like it, 7 days a week, whenever the pharmacy is open!

10. The Flu Shot givers have to get our quota of 5 a day! (7 at other chains!)

11. Flu shot advertisement is so heavy that often people get it so we pharmacists doctors and nurses quit bugging them!

12. Flu itself is usually not too serious and only fatal in certain immune-compromised situations.

13. If your immunization records burn up, there is no proof you even got it!!!

14. We use such a fine tip needle that leaves no impact nor draws blood that often people don't realize I gave it to them!

Contrast that with chemotherapy.  One will only commit to chemotherapy if they know they are dying. Chemo changes a person inside and out. Chemo is something that changes everything.

It will change your plans, it will affect your finances, it will affect your mood, it will affect your blood, it will not be a flippant decision, and it will be something you won't forget - and can never Doubt or DENY you received it!!!

Yes bible salvation is a moment, and yes, there is no such doctrine as works for or works after salvation, but I believe God showed me the clear contrast in the modern gospel and the old fashioned gospel we've mostly abandoned.

Today in general we have repackaged the chemotherapy gospel for one of a one-time easy flu shot. The cure is Jesus Christ, the way to get the cure is faith and repentance. What needs to be better emphasized is WHY you need the cure. Without that, you merely have a flu shot Jesus!

Example --- who would volunteer for 40 weeks of intensive chemotherapy just in case you get cancer? Who would hook their arm up to a 4 hour cocktail of chemotherapy just in case? I could tell you how bad cancer is, i could give you statistics about how bad cancer is and how it is killing people and how most people get it and what the risk factors are,but it will not affect you one bit until YOU PERSONALLY GET DIAGNOSED and hence CONVINCED Of THE DISEASE!!!!!

Yet, if I tell you how bad the flu is and how it could kill babies and old people and people with asthma, you might volunteer for that.  No one wants to go to Hell. Everyone wants to go to heaven. People will take a Flu Shot Jesus because it appears to immunize them on the rare chance they truly one day get caught being a sinner. <But what population is going to volunteer for the reproach of the cross, and accept the temptation, tribulation, and persecution that comes from accepting the true Christ? Only one convinced of the disease!!!

The Flu shot files

This next post is based on a message I preached at my church last new years and is inspired by merging my career as a pharmacist and my calling as an evangelist.

I have an older blog, etvfc.blogspot.com. My real last name is not Etvfco but it stands for my ministry idea the Lord gave me, The End Times Vol. Fire Co, ie ETVFCO.    My older blog fell out of preference for me because for some reason it won't let me put my writing into paragraphs nor do spell check. Each of my long winded posts became one long winded run on rambling paragraph with a myriad of spelling errors. 

Hence, this blog was born, and I'm praying next splitting my posts into 2 blogs perhaps, one for Christians, and one for the lost or one for the church.  One to wake up the lost, another to wake up the churches and encourage people to evangelize.  These flu shot posts are for both at different times, but since I don't really know who everyone is who is reading this, it may not always reach the right group of people. 

Also, please pray for these blogs, that God will direct and draw people and it will awaken the lost and charge the saved.  Also, many of these posts will eventually become gospel tracts I will have published and will be distributed all over by the grace of God.  Eventually I want to have a blog set up where you can add your church and/or ministry information to one of my pre-written gospel tracts and you can download it and print them out yourself and hand them out.

Giving out just 3 tracts a day reaches a 1000 people a year!  I can also have a front cover version you can edit with your location.  Example, the tract would be called How to find God from "BLANK".  You could put a picture of your hometown or city and then you fill in the blank!  It would be the same message but on the front you change locations and put your own favorite picture and on the back you put your church information and contact info. 

In no time, you can have your own personal gospel tracts to hand out!   How to find God from Germany!  How to find God from Long Island!  How to find God from St. Lucia!  If you are getting a blessing from these writings, let me know.  If you are not sure what this whole Christian thing is about or if you are not % sure you are saved, send me an email, etvfco@gmail.com. 

America's Real Coke Addicts

I don't know the exact statistics but 40% of Americans are addicted to coke.  And 30% are addicted to Pepsi.  The rest drink diet Dr. Pepper.

The number 1 addiction is sugar in America.  Honestly.  Another one on top of the charts is prescription medication abuse.  I strongly feel a neglected one is prescription medication USE in general.  The food industry addicts us with high fructose corn syrup, and our fast food nation infuses the calories at an off the charts pace, and we are too busy spending 50 hours a week sitting on a chair eating chips and clicking a mouse at our jobs to exercise, and this translates to the medical industry convincing us that we need their drugs to survive.  The diet causes the health problems, but the food industry is in cahoots with the medical industry it seems, and they claim they care about our health, but they lie.  Why change when we can just give you pills so you can live and eat as you want?   The drug store that sells the smoking cessation products also is selling the cigarettes.  They want the money plain and simple, and they don't care what you buy as long as it is one of the two.  Either get addicted to the food or totally depend on the medical and pharmaceutical industry to keep us alive.  And rack up the medical treatment bills and make healthcare as essential to survival as oxygen and cause the people to embrace socialism and communism by the government in the Trojan horse called Universal Health care.

I don't know all the answers, but I think that the devil is ultimately deluding us.  One huge problem in the church today is instead of true holiness produced, and Christians exhibiting true fruits of the spirit, where the world looks at the church and says, "Eureka! There is where we can find the TRUE AND LIVING GOD!", we instead exchange addictions.  We came in drunks and pornographers and adulterers and fornicators and drug addicts and crack heads.  We get saved (though most stay lost but know have a head knowledge of salvation) and the world comes at us in a Trojan horse. 

I try fasting and by 3pm I have a headache and am in withdrawal.  I will leave early so I can go through Timmies (for those who don't know Timmies is Tim Hortons, a coffee and donut drive thru place where your car automatically pulls into every time you pass it for some unknown)unexplainable reason) but I don't have that same ability to get out early to do bible study.  I am addicted to sweets, sugar, soft drinks, and Spot coffee (Timmies didn't begin with an S).  Try dropping sugar and caffeine cold turkey and see what I mean.  We get irritable and sluggish and can't function.  We depend on our coffee more than our God.  We would fast but we just past a McDonalds.  We want to lose weigh, but Easter dinner is just around the corner.  We would diet after Easter, but we have Timmies 2 year old bash to attend, and then it is Mother's day all you can eat brunch, and then it is the 4th of July Picnic and then the graduation parties and cookie fellowships and bake sales and candy bar drives and after easter 50% off Cadbury eggs, and the food courts after our summer revival.  We get more calories from junk food than most get from normal diets in third world countries.

Meanwhile, we don't see we are still a bunch of addicts.  The Bible says the truth will make you free and the Bible says our body is not our own.  We have liberty yes as Christians, but our country and our churches needs us to be fasting and praying for our nation.  Do you fast anymore?  Am I the only one struggling with American cuisine?  If I went to a gas station and the gas there was polluted and full of junk, I would go to another station.  Why do we put junk in our bodies and instead of embracing help with our diets, we shun them off as legalists.  How much junk food do we buy in a week?  How much soda do we drink?  How much do we spend out on coffee? 

Having a treat or a date with our wives is one thing.  But daily dropping $30 bucks on fast food and $10 every time you pass a Timmies is absurd but that is reality.  We can't give to missions, we can't fast and pray, but we can eat everything we want because I have liberty.   We are too fat to have any stamina for God, too broke to support the work of God, too irritable when we put God over our appetites, and too tired running on empty to do much for God.  If I diluted my gasoline with 50% water my car would have problems.  We dilute our diets with 50% junk and wonder why we crash by 3pm.

And at 3:02 it is time for my Snickers break. 

All I am trying to say is we need to really see how much the devil is coming in the back door like a Trojan horse and wearing us down not by starving us but by fattening us up so we are fat and happy and loving the hand that feeds us.  The world's junk food and world's processed garbage and the world's fried fast food and the world's liquid crack cocaine called high fructose corn syrup (which literally causes a sugar HIGH) give us a great appetite for the World.  We could care less about praying but are excited because we have a $10 Outback coupon to use up. 

I had my coffee with 2 sugars today and half of a toaster strudel and 3 cokes at Outback during our family dinner and a frosted cookie from Wegmans ($11.99 a pound) and another coffee and a slice of chocolate fudge cake for dessert and wonder why I don't feel like fasting.  It was funny, as I was heading to check out at the grocery store today,with my cookies and cake in hand, I passed a guy doing a demonstration for a special $500 juicer.  I tried the juice, it was good.  I had the credit card and almost bought the thing.  And it would have sat with all the other impulse purchase because I am too lazy to take care of it.  And if I really did buy it, it probably would have been used to make milk shakes instead of fruit smoothies and if I did make fruit smoothies I would probably just have added them to my pizza and wings. 

Anyone else guilty?  The bible warns about the glutton and drunkard coming to ruin.  The church nails the drunkards.  I am afraid instead of true repentance, the majority of us switched addictions.  Even us saved folks seem to be addicted to either our diets or coffee or our sodas or our double Whoppers.  And if we aren't snagged by food, then it is the media, our cell phones, etc.  Those are the addictions we wear and everyone sees and yet we tell everyone they need to quit their smoking and stop boozing while we are chomping down our 3rd vanilla dip donut of the day.  We are like the Baptists down South who were so shocked at the European Baptists drinking wine at the bible study that they choked on their cigarettes.  And the North East Baptists were so disgusted by the smoking Southerners and the drinking Europeans, they couldn't finish their coffee.

We think we are better because the guy in our cell killed 6 people and we only killed 3.  That is self righteousness.  We need to humble ourselves and repent and pray. And if we can't pray and fast because our diets control us, something has to change. 

I speak for myself.  Am I more in love with a hot fudge and peanut butter Dairy Queen Sundae with whipped cream and a cherry and chopped pecans than a soul that is about to drop into hell?  I think I can top that sundae with extra souls and be ok.  Yet as my embracing of the American foods increases, the intensity of my prayers decrease.  I am full and content now.  After I go get myself another bowl of ice cream, of course.

American Christians we need to fast for our country.  But I am finding that the power to fast and desire to fast is FAST FALLING AWAY.  Maybe it is just me.  Maybe everyone around me is fine and fasting.  But as one who used to regularly fast without problem and now is finding major obstacles and major withdrawals now, I suspect that is not just me.

I know I need to radically change my diet to get into position to truly fast on a regular basis to impact this world.  Prayer makes a difference.  Yet I am too selfish and addicted right now to do so.  Am I the only one?  Will the rapture happen before I can see my diet turned around?  And do I see that this is a big enough deal to bother?

Power Shortages and Outright Outages

I have my laptop plugged into the same surge protector as our lamp.  There are times when my computer is "plugged in" but the only way I will truly know if there is any real current flowing to my computer is if I try to turn the lamp on.  When I turn the knob for the lamp and nothing happens, I can deduce that in all likelihood the power strip was flipped off by one of my young-ins.  If I don't do the lamp test, I can go typing normally on my laptop, thinking it is plugged in.   Only when the low-battery warning comes up would I then realize something was wrong.

By no means am I slamming the church.  But if you love something you long for it to be better than it is.  The Bible warns in the end times there will be a great falling away and the church will be assaulted with false prophets, false converts, and false doctrine.  In the last days, says the Bible, perilous times shall come.  We are living in that day.  World War III can happen at any moment, and only the Lord Jesus is restraining everything and hitting the pause button on the world events.

 Jesus is coming.  For every mention in the Bible of his first coming, it is reported there are 8 times as many mentions of his 2nd coming.  The first time caught most of the world off guard, and for many it wasn't until they woke up in hell the second after they died did they truly realize the opportunity they missed.  How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?  If I have cancer but don't know I am sick, or I never fill the prescription because I don't believe it will do anything and hence neglect the cure, or if I flat out tell the doctor off and dismiss him as a quack, I die.  Jesus is coming but this time there will be no hiding the fact but then it will be too late. We are in the last inning, the signs are everywhere, and I can almost hear the trumpet.  When the trumpet from heaven blows and Jesus cries, "Enough! Come up hither!" we fly away!  The we, though, only pertains to the saved, blood bought child of God.

This is the message of the hour, and the message the churches need to  convey to a lost, blind, and dying world.  When I preach at a Sabres Hockey Game, I see thousands of blind and indifferent people all walk past me and I get a sense of what Noah felt.  Noah preached righteousness and just wanted to tell people to get in the boat and that God is angry with the wicked every day. The Bible says that.  The Bible says knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men.  The churches in many instances are repackaging the Lord Jesus into this warm fuzzy cozy teddy bear who loves humanity too much to send them to hell.  They deduce since God loves them then he must let them into heaven.  What mankind doesn't understand is God is a God of love, but just as strongly are his other divine attributes, holiness, justice, wrath. If you truly love God, you will hate evil.  You will hate anything that is ungodly and seeks to destroy what God loves.  You will hate hypocrisy because  God cannot lie.  You will hate things that blind those from the truth.  You will hate sin.  When we see our sin, we see how hell deserving we really are and we run to the cross for mercy and deliverance.  We see our sin will put us in hell and we flee from the wrath to come and come to Jesus.

Most churches are doing more damage than good because they present a powerless Christ and the world loves this new and improved Jesus who is more like the fun genie of Aladdin than the God of the Bible.  They have "powerful emotionally charged" services with loud music and their Sunday Morning services are often a pep rally laced pregame church tailgate party minus the booze.  We don't need to give Jesus a hand.  We need to give him our lives.

The power is out in most churches, but unless they look at the world and see their light is dark, they won't see they are not plugged in.  Jesus is standing outside the end times church and waiting to be let back in.  Like I said before, the rapture will hit and many churches won't even notice because the only ones who would be gone, they were trying to run off anyway.

Churches, make sure to see you are truly plugged into the Lord Jesus Christ.  When you see the light out there in the world, it should be obvious that there is a major power shortage.  The problem is we are examining the impact of the church by the amount of the world it draws, not how much light it produces.  When you use the world to draw the world, you will look like the world.  And the world likes the darkness.  The church is supposed to be the light because Jesus is the light of the World.  We are supposed to let our light so shine before men so they can see our good deeds and glorify our Father which is in heaven.

Maybe the fact there is no light is related to the fact most churches are not truly glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ.     It is one thing to jump your spiritual vehicles every Sunday and have enough battery to get home.  It is another to have enough power to drive the whole week.   As John Wesley said, if Jesus Christ sets us on fire for him, people will come to watch us burn.

If the church can admit our fire is out, and as Evangelist Don Hardman puts it, "the church is producing paper fire", we can get back to the source and get re lit.  The churches today are more imitation fireplaces and from a distance they look inviting and it looks like real fire.  But it is not melting the cold hearts, it is not pushing back the flames of hell, it is not causing the cockroaches of sin to flee, it is not shining a lighted path to those blind in sin, it is not dissolving the metal chains of bondage around people, it is not exposing the errors of false doctrine and liberal opinions, and it is not a warm inviting fire that the lost want to hover around because they have such hypothermia because the world has chilled them to the bone. 

The Bible says our God is a consuming fire.  If we get around him long enough,  our hearts will burn for the things of God because that fire will be a purging fire.  I fear that the next time the majority of professing Christians all across America face the fire of God it will be Hellfire.  Whosoever was not found written in the book of life shall be cast into the lake of fire warns Revelation. Church today seems to merge their church membership roll and the book of life.  Head knowledge and a membership card are not what makes you saved.  Jesus makes you saved.  He that hath the Son hath life the Bible says. 

And if you are truly saved, your heart will burn with the things of God like a furnace, and the light that is produced will be seen by a dark dark world.

Christian, church, can you see that the light is getting dim, and in many cases, out completely?

Extra Extra Read all about it ---and then Obey what you read!

We have been talking about the Bible.  There is a new mini series out called "The Bible" that is taking America by storm.  We shall see if a TV series about the Bible truly gets people back to the Bible.   If America went back to the Bible, there might be some hope for our country.  However, to go back to the Bible, you have to turn off the TV for a while, and if you turn off the TV you might miss the next Bible episode.  So goes the dilemma for the 2013 American.

The Bible is the best seller of all time.  It is written by God through men in a sense like this blog is written by me through my computer.  It is the evidence inside that proving that claim, and the closer you look at the preserved word of God, found only in the 1611 Authorized Version, known as the King James Version, the more you will know it is God's word.

 If it had no power, there would be no cries to remove it.  It is alive!  Atheists can't handle it, the cults can't stand it, the government cannot stop it, the religious cannot see its simplicity, and the devil cannot destroy it.  The word of God is quick and powerful and it is a weapon of mass instruction.  It will destroy the sin in our lives, it will push back the forces of evil, and it will brain wash it's readers.  And heart wash.  And tongue wash.  And hand and feet wash.   And eye wash.

  It is a book to be loved, and a book to be cherished, a book to be discovered, a book to transform, a book of promises to claim, and a book to be obeyed.  It is never out of date, and often ahead of it's time.  It satisfies, it quenches, it feeds, it nourishes, it is food to the soul and water to the thirsty, it is Jesus on paper, it is the power of God in print, it is more valuable than gold, more precious than silver, and no book compares to it.  It contains more wisdom than all the libraries in the world, it's paper holds more value than all that is printed by the US treasury, it is priceless, and valuable, and is medicine for the sick and life for the dying.

 It is everything we need in a world that only has what we think we want.  It is a filter, it is a furnace to put a fire of God in our hearts, it is a detox machine, it is an antidote, it is the answer no matter the question, it gets us in tune with the heart beat of God.  It is reality in a world of illusion.  It is truth in a world of lies.  It is hope in a world with none.  It is the way in a world going in the wrong direction. It is sobriety in a world drunk on sin.  It is peace in a world at war.  It provides tranquility in a nightmare world.  It is a bullet proof vest for the devils attacks.  It is a shield, it is a sword. It is more powerful than the Niagara rapids.   It's light is brighter than 1,000 explosions.

 It gives strength to the weak, joy to the depressed, eternal life to the condemned, mercy to those who see their guilt, and it brings the knowledge of our sins against a holy God.  It is wonderful, eye opening, heart stirring, and edge of your seat expectation.  It is passion on paper, it is God's love letter, it is God's appointment book, it is God's mind in print.

 It is the history book of the Universe, it is scientifically accurate, it is a compass, it is a lamp to our feet, it is our GPS, it is our gift from God.  It is never duplicated, man cannot improve it, new translations can't touch it, bible scoffers can't handle it, the government can't remove it.  It is God's word, God's book, God's thoughts, God's truth, God's mind, God's love. 

The words that said Let there be light are just as powerful in book form.  This book is better than the movies.  This book is life changing, earth shaking, world impacting, destiny desire and direction changing, damnation prevention instruction giving, always riveting, salt to a tasteless world, light to a dark land, directions to the lost, guidance for the found, adoption for the fatherless, treasures for the seeker, rewarding to the hunting, and an open door to those knocking.

Have you read it?  And will you let it read you?

If you are lost, this world is still your home.  This world is not my home since I have been saved.  Now I am just a passing through.   The Bible - don't leave home without it.

B.asic I.nstructions B.efore L.eaving E.arth

I often get many questions on which  Bible versions as well as the overall translation process.  I am a bit harsh, but I say the new versions are good for toilet paper.  Or if you have a canary.  One preacher calls them Bible perversions.  Another Preacher, Allan Jones, said we never had HIV until we had the NIV. 

God is a God of love, but He also is Holy and he is to be feared in a good way.  If you had a fear of God you would not have additions, you would love God because you would understand what he saved you FROM, and Hell would make sense.   The Bible promises blessings and cursings.  The Bible warns that God will bring judgment if you mess with the book.  After each of the 3 biggest phony translations hit the stands in America, after just a few months we had a Presidential assassination in our country.  A few months after the Bible was taken out of the schools, JFK was assassinated.  Our country has forgotten God and God's book and we watch drought after drought, earthquakes, floods, oil spills, hurricanes, stock market crashes, food increases, gas price increases, shootings, wars, disease, depression, cancer, anger, anxiety, and 9/11 and wonder what is going on. It's all in the book.  God is trying to get our attention.  And get us sick of the consequences of doing things our way.

The Bible promises if you do God's will you will know that Jesus was sent by God the Father.  The Bible says if you love God and obey him, he will reveal himself to you.  The Bible really is a living book, but it meant to be obeyed.  If you come with an expectant heart, and an open heart, the Bible is an open book.  Most come with their minds made up and dare God to change it, and hence it is a closed book. The response of the AUTHOR is 100% determined by the attitude of the reader.  Today it is a challenge because there is so much distraction out there.  God speaks in a still small voice.  Think of someone whispering.  You won't be able to hear a whisper if we are busy on our cell phones or IPhones or IPODS or GameBoys.  The biggest obstacle today for the Bible is everything that is competing to distract us.  A good question to ask is what is going to matter 500 years from now?  Who won the Super Bowl?  Which country won the tiny gold medal that they now have to pay taxes on? The latest hollywood movie?  Or maybe where you are then? 

Ultimately the Bible is important because it provides the correct answers for our final exam.  Right answer--- right password to the right eternal destination.  Wrong answer-- wrong password to the wrong eternal destination.  Hell is eternal truth realized too late.  The Bible allows you to get the information about who God is and what he requires BEFORE it is too late.  "The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing the world he doesn't exist."  We can't see it, but we are at war right now.  The devil is a real being, with a legion of angels at his disposal.  He hates you, he hates God, and he will use every trick not in the book to fool you, blind you, numb you to sleep, or distract you.

 He will tell you to write me off.  Too fanatical.  Too radical.  Too intense.  Don't buy it.  The Bible says he is the father of lies.

In a war, the goal of the enemy is going to be to disrupt communication between the leaders and the troops.  We are at war, and if the enemy can bring confusion over God's word he wins.  Where is God's word?  What is God's word? Is it the Holy Bible? Book of Mormons?  TV guide?  Watchtower?  Koran?  If it is the Bible which is it? KJV? NEW KJV? NIV? RSV? NLT? Good news for Modern Man?  TNIV? NWT? Message Bible? Amplified Bible?

See how confusing it is?  How do you know which one?

For starters, the main key is an FBI tactic. They don't study counterfeit bills.  They know the real bill inside and out and this makes them spot a fake. 

I have been reading the KJV for 7 years (I read the NIV mostly the first 3 years after I was saved) and there is power in that book.  I read the NIV or other versions and it does not flow.  It is not easier to read.  It is just like reading a book of man.  The KJV comes with it's own interpreter, free of charge.  When you read the KJV the Holy Spirit hovers around that book and confirms that what God wrote is true.  Most people get uncomfortable there.  They run from God instead of running to God.  Don't be afraid.  You are going to face that author of the Bible one day anyhow.  The Bible says every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.  It is far better to face him on this side of eternity when you can repent and receive God's free gift of forgiveness than to neglect so great salvation, and still have to face God on Judgment day.  Lost. 

That is my secret ulterior motive to this blog.  I want you to know God like I know him. I want you saved like I was saved.  I want you to escape Hell like I escaped Hell.  I want you freed from sinful lusts like I was freed.  O taste and see that the Lord is Good!!!! 

After that intro, what was the question? Oh yes, on which version, and the translation process. 

How do you know the Bible is God's word?

1. By studying the real thing you can spot a phony a mile away.  The book of Mormon, the Koran, the Watchtower.   The Hindu book Bhagavad-Gita.  New versions.  There are blatant contradictions. Their science is not correct.  The bible has tons of scientific facts before man discovered it.  The bible says the earth was round when science said it was flat.  The Bible said the life of the flesh is in the blood where science taught that sick people must be bled.  The Bible teaches God made this earth where science teaches the crazy impossible Big bang.  Explosions do not produce order!  The new versions fruit is rotten.  The Bible says THUS SAITH THE LORD. It claims it is written by God, and it backs it up.

2. The Bible is 66 books written over hundreds of years from all kinds of men.  Shepherds. Kings. Prophets.  Fishermen.  Different cultures.  Different languages. Yet these books all form one book with a beginning  middle and end.  And a common theme throughout.  Two college professors can't even agree on much.  That unity was truly a miracle.

3. It's preservation.  It was attacked all through the ages.  Burned by emperors, banned by Popes. Yet it lives on. It is the best seller of all time. Have you read it?  Has it read you!?

4.  No copyright on the KJV!  God's word is not bound says the Bible.  You have to get Zondervan's permission to use the NIV!  The love of money is the root of all evil says the Bible.

5.  Fruit of the KJV.  It is a Holy Holy book.  Do the experiment I did.  Read nothing but the KJV every morning for the next 30 days.  Start with the Gospel of John, and read the Psalms and Romans too.  Ask God to show you if it is truly the WORD of God, the very preserved Words of God.  Ask, while letting God know that if He shows you the truth you will embrace it and obey it. Desire the truth more than you want to stay right.

6.  The bible has it's own system of checks and balances that fall apart in the new versions. Example is Bible codes, i.e. Bible numbers have meanings.  For example the number 13 is the number of rebellion.  Genesis 1: 1-12 says GOD in each and every verse.  Verse 13 God is omitted.  Genesis 13:13 says the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord.  6 is the number for man.  Revelation 18:14 says that (666).  Man was created on the 6th day.  The 6th book of the bible is the first names after a man, the 6 lettered Joshua.  The 6th book of the New Testament, ROMANS, has 6 letters, and named after man. Guess what the 6th word in the 6th verse of the 6th chapter in Romans is?  MAN!!!  That does not work in the other versions.

7.  "Inspiration without preservation is a divine waste of time."  --Evangelist Sam Gipp.  God used men to pen the autographs, and to protect them so we could be confident we can hold in our hands the very same word of God that men had through the ages, in our language.  God knew in 1611 that English would be the language of today.

8.  The new versions are all based on translations of altered manuscripts from Egypt.  Egypt is a type of the world in the Bible, a place of rebellion and corruption.   The KJV is based on pure manuscripts from Antioch.  The book of Acts says that they were first called Christians in Antioch.  Antioch is a good place to get a bible. Egypt is not.

9.  God is not the author of confusion.  If everyone had the KJV there would be unity over what the Bible says.  Instead you have fights over which version to use in the message today. 

10.  It satisfies.   Snickers and the new versions do not.

Thanks for reading this. If you have any questions, don't hesitate!  I am not an expert but I love sharing what God has given me in his word and helping others know God too!  Come to God for who he is, not what he has!  You will seek him and find him, the bible promises, when you search for him with all your heart!

I Love the Old Bible

A new 10 hour 5 week mini series called "The Bible" is a surprise hit on the History Channel.  It is drawing as many viewers as American Idol and is produced by Touched by an Angel actress Roma Downey and her husband, reality show producer Mark Burnett.  At the very least this proves America has a thirst for spiritual things.

While I don't know how "biblically correct" a History Channel show is, it may be a step in the right direction.  When Jim Carrey was 19 years old he spent his first night in Hollywood in a seedy motel.  Something he was watching made him want to look for a Bible in his room. He was surprised to find no bible in his hotel room.  He went down to the front desk to ask for a bible and the clerk said, "Son, you won't find a bible anywhere in Hollywood."

It also may just mean America is open to spiritual things but only on their terms.  I haven't watched the show but I find it hard to believe they are going to take the Bible literally.  There are many places
where men today compromise the Bible.   For example, many folks do not take Genesis literally and instead merge it with evolution to blend the truth of the Bible and the myth of millions of years.  Others wrongly teach a local flood.  The flood covered the whole earth 4,300 years ago and it left clear evidence that only a blind evolutionist can miss.  Others teach that the newer bible versions are better more faithful translations, which is a lie.  Only the King James version is faithful to the original writings and can be trusted.  Many teach the clear miracles of the Bible and things they don't understand as symbolism.  Jesus is our authority and he taught events like Jonah in the belly of the whale and the destruction of Sodom as facts.  The bible literally is the history book of the universe because it's author created the universe.

The Bible describes the condition of men in the last days in 2nd Timothy 3.  Verse 5 says of mankind, Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.  One reason it is not actual Godliness is there is no fear, respect, or obedience of God's word today.  Sitting down for 5 weeks and watching the action packed war scenes and David take down Goliath is not the same as obeying it as the literal word of God.

God's word is the History book of the Universe and as accurate as a newspaper from the future.  Because of the translation of the month club, the bible has become a book that people scoff at and laugh at and IGNORE.  However, we will be judged by that book whether we have read it or not. 

If I pour Kool Aid in my car because I think it is cheaper than $4 a gallon gasoline, my car will still DIE even though I can plead ignorance because I didn't see any warning because I wouldn't read my car owner's manual.  Folks, we are not doing so hot in America now that the Bible is replaced with Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Maxim, Cosmo, TV Guide, USA Today, and Newsweek.  Schools before maybe had a problem with school spitballs.  Today we have school shootings.

 The Bible says BLESSED IS THE NATION WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD.  The LORD and The Bible go hand in hand.  When the GOD of the Bible was our GOD in AMERICA we were blessed and the BOOK was read, revered, respected, and the RESULTS WERE AMERICANS who didn't need 4 different anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to get through life or a case of Bud-Dumber to get through the weekend.  Weekends were made for the Lord Jesus and Sunday was the Lord's Day.

Now Sunday is a day one has to sacrifice because they can't buy beer until noon.  Revelation saw this all coming.  The Book of Genesis says WHO Began it and AND HOW it BEGAN.  The Book of Revelation says WHO will END it and HOW it will END.  It will not end by nuclear invasion. It will not be us destroying  the environment.  It will not be by us not saving the whales. God is going to show true GLOBAL WARMING so he is giving you a GLOBAL WARNING RIGHT Now!!!!

 Revelation is a prophetic book, teaching modern history as it unfolds from a book written 2,000 years ago.  It is exactly like having a newspaper from the future in our hands.  The mistake the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches have made with the Book of Revelation is turning the book into a book of symbolism and mystic mumbo jumbo that no one can understand (not even them!). 

God is not the author of confusion says the Bible.  The book of Revelation is meant to be taken literally except where it is obvious the author is using a metaphor.  It also defines words that might be confusing and the book provides it's own built in dictionary for items like the 7 Golden Candlesticks and Golden stars, etc.  Revelation 1:20 defines the Candlesticks and the Stars, for example.

 The book of Revelation, like the entire Bible is a CLOSED and OPEN book.  God is the author of the Bible, and the Bible is 66 different Books written over hundreds and hundreds of years from all kinds of authors that forms one book with one central theme.  You can't even get 2 University Professors to agree that closely in their writings!  God wrote the best seller of all time, the bible, and God wrote it THROUGH men, just like I type a text through a cell phone.

 The Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. (1st Tim 3:16). Job 32:8 says But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Did I write the text or did my cell phone?  I could say my blog is "inspired".  It might be an outrageous claim.  But if 65 other people around the world all posted the same themed blog posts, and if you connected our posts together and they formed ONE blog with a beginning, middle and end, you could say with confidence that you were witnessing something supernatural.

 The Bible is like that.  If you look at anything man makes, say my $27 8-pack of Gillette Fusion Razor Blades, or perhaps a 747 plane, the closer you looked at it the less impressive it would look.  My gourmet razors would look dull and pathetic under a microscope.  Instead, anything God designed looks wonderful the closer up you look at it.

 Look at a common fly or a tick under an electron microscope!  Wow! Amazing!  A cell of a tree is more complex than the NASA Space Shuttle!  There is a factory inside!  Design demands a designer!  The Bible works like that.  The closer you look at the Modern Perversions-- the NIV, the New KJV, the RSV, Good NEWS for Modern Man, the Living Bible, the Amplified Bible, the Message, etc, the less impressive it looks.  Missing verses, contradictions, strange confusing statements, missing words, and just plain nonsense.

 The closer you look at the KJV the more impressive it looks.  Yet despite the impressive evidence, it still takes faith to believe 1) The bible is God's Word.  and 2) the KJV is God's Approved, Authorized translation.  The way to approach the Bible is this--- with an open mind and hungry heart.

The attitude of the reader determines the response of the Author.  If you read the book to JUDGE IT, it is a CLOSED Book. IF you read the book to let it JUDGE YOU, it is an open book. Modern scholars like to let the ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHS which are LONG GONE, TRUMP the TRANSLATION you can hold in your HAND in the form of the 1611 Authorized version known as the King James Version.  Then the SCHOLAR BECOMES THE AUTHORITY to tell you WHAT HATH GOD SAID?  God wants His word in the Hand of the Common Man!!!

 The Catholic church for years convinced man that they cannot understand the scriptures and you need a Priest to tell you what it says.  Now no one reads the Bible anyway, so they don't act as dogmatic about it.  They now encourage you to read it (so they look more "Protestant") and we humans are a bunch of rebels so now we don't read it when we are told to.   Anyway, the book of Revelation works like that --- if you are open it is open.  Seek and ye shall find.  Ask and it shall be given unto you. 

The Bible is alive. 

You will honestly get help and answers to problems you are facing today, 03/17/13 from a book written before 03/17/0013.  It is a living book but we are spiritually dead.  It is like an unplugged fax machine.  We may be sending messages, we may be sending heart felt prayers and questions to God, but if we aren't willing to turn to God his way, we continue to operate a machine with potential, but one that is useless at the moment. 

When you are saved, you get plugged into God.  Saved, or lost, though, the Bible will be open to the honest seeker of truth. If you respond positively to the light God sheds on both HIS WORD and YOUR SIN as you come toward Him, the more light he will shine.  And like a garden, the word is a seed.  With LIGHT and WATER you will see something growing sooner than you'd expect. 

Why do we doubt the Bible when college books from just 10 years ago are already outdated? In Revelation 3, it describes today's Christians, and this is the final church age before Jesus returns.  Jesus calls them lukewarm, and they say, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing."  (See Revelation 3:13-15). Lukewarm and a form of godliness are good ways to describe the average Christian today. 

Most are false converts and much of the church has a head knowledge of God but end up in Hell over a mere 18 inches.  It never went the 18 inches from the head to the heart, and there was just a form of godliness only.  Many know the right answers, but don't KNOW the God asking the Questions.  They know every sports statistic and can recite every beer jingle, but the only Bible verse they know is Don't judge.  I am merely warning to let you LET The BOOK do it's job and let it JUDGE YOU.

It is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.  Let it do it's job.  It will cut you open to perform the operation of God, but it will quickly heal you up before you hurt too long. It never just hurts without a reason. Conviction and guilt are wonderful things-- they reveal our need for a Savior and make us thirsty for God.  Read God's word, but come open and hungry.  Have an expectant attitude.  Pray for God to reveal himself in His word.

 One time I prayed for God to reveal Himself when I was reading the Bible on a lunch break. I closed my 1000 page Bible at a certain verse.  That night when I went to go home, I turned on the car and my radio, and a Preacher was on the radio. The very first thing he said was that verse. Another time I asked God to reveal Himself, I was kneeling at my seat in prayer, and the Pastor said, Open your bibles. I opened my bible randomly I thought to a certain chapter in Psalms. He then announced turn to chapter so and so. When I went to turn I was shocked to see I was staring right at the verse, having already turned to it.  Just tonight in church, Preacher was reading a portion from 2nd Timothy.  He made some comments and moved on.    Then he said to go back to 2nd Timothy. Something in me caused my eyes to lock on a verse in the middle of the page when in reality I had no idea where I was to read as he didn't announce which verse.  As he announced the exact verse and started reading it, my eyes were exactly in step with his readings.  There was something supernatural going on.  I can't even find an address my wife needs when I am looking right at it in her address book! 

This morning on my way to work I listened to a revival meeting message Bro Hardman preached last October.  His main thought was in Proverbs, A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.  When I got to work I had time to read my proverbs for the day. Since there are 31 Proverb chapters a good discipline is to read the chapter that corresponds to that day on the calendar.  That verse was in today's Proverbs I read for the day -- correlating to a message back in October.

 It is a living book.  It is different than the newspaper which only has bad news.  The Bible has both good and bad news.  It will ignite in you a fire for God and if you get the word in you, and let God bring it to fruition, it will make you alive to God.  Blessed are the PURE in Heart for they shall see God says the Book of Matthew.

 It will clean up your heart, it will filter your  mind, wash you and make you clean from the inside out, it will change your desires, it will speak to you, it will feed you, it will nourish you, and it will satisfy your hungry soul.  Read it! Love it! Learn it! Teach it! Share it! Cherish it! Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee says Psalm 119. Meditate and Memorize it! Sing it!

And most IMPORTANTLY DO WHAT IT SAYS! OBEY IT!!!!!