It is the goal of this web site to edify both
my brethren in Christ as well as to edify my neighbor who still
sleeps in a spiritual slumber. Therefore, it is my goal to edify
and exhort you to sound doctrine. But, more than that, I hope
to cause you to wonder, to seek, and to find the answers of your
questions yourself. I want you to know exactly what and why you
believe that you hold to be trueso that when the enemy comes,
you shall not be shaken from the firm foundation of your faith
in the Lord Christ Jesus who walked among us in the flesh and
died for our sins, rising bodily three days later in glorious
triumph over the enemy and death!
To accomplish this goal I have provided
you, the reader, this web site and stocked it with a variety of
material assembled across timebut mostly written by contemporary
pastors, theologians, and evangelists to aid in your own discovery
of the truths contained in the Scriptures. Yet at the same time
I want you to recognize that not one of these men, or myself,
claim to have a perfect understanding or a perfect comprehension
of biblical truth. Therefore, in this regard, it is up to you
dear reader to use your discernment of the truth and test the
commentaries against Scripture to see if they are indeed true.
Further, it is to heed wise council and note that because commentators
are decidedly uninspired, that commentary in and of itself is
only useful in the light that it draws our attention to teachings
and doctrines that either are or are not presented in Scripture.
Thus, it is the challenge to you, the reader, to test what is
the truth by the facts, and not to argue against the evidence
by what "feels" right, or what "seems" true,
or that you "wish" to be true. For if you do that, you
run the risk of falling into error.
Therefore, the fulfillment of my goal,
should you agree with the commentators presented on this web site,
is that you know what and why you agree with them rather than
merely agreeing because you like the way it sounds. And like onto
that, should you disagree with the commentary presented on this
web site, then you should also know exactly why you do so without
the need to spurn rational arguments or factual evidence in favor
of what you may believe is a self-verifying experience. In this
regard I pray that you trust only in the Lord and lean not upon
your understanding, for if you fail to trust in the Lord, then
your faith is misplaced and you are already in error.
On Salvation
Indeed, the whole world would be saved
if salvation were only forgiveness, or even justification (Romans
5:18, 19). But salvation is life; and the world is lost because
it will not come to Him who offers life (John 5:39, 40; Romans
5:21; 6:23). The Bible does not teach universal salvation, but
it does teach universal redemption. The blood was shed for all
men (1 John 2:1, 2; Hebrews 2:9; 1 Timothy 4:10). Therefore, let
us look at 2 Peter 2:20, 22:
"For if after they have escaped
the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and
overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb,
The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was
washed to her wallowing in the mire."
These verses show us a warning to those
who know the way of salvation and still reject it. There is no
conceivable way for a dog or a sow to become a sheep except to
be born again. And so there is no conceivable way for a sinner
to become a child of God except to be born again. It is not enough
to know the Gospel. The Gospel must be believed.
The question that I have asked of people
in the past is if God would be seen as a failure if all the people
the Lord desired to be saved were not saved. To those of you who
would respond, that yes, God would be a failure if He failed to
save all those who He wished to saveyou are in error. It
is an error because the great triumph of the Gospel isn't mans
salvation, but that God Himself is justified by succeeding in
justifying sinful men! Therefore, if God only succeeding in the
salvation of but one disgraceful sinner, then His glory would
be sung through the heavens for all eternity!
As an illustration of this I have, in
the past, been asked to differentiate between "called and
chosen," I can go in a number of different directions to
answer: Those who are called include people who reject the invitation,
and thus prove that they are not chosen (saved). That is Spurgeon's
argument, a man who taught that Calvinism should be taught as
the Gospel. An Arminian may respond that many are called to work
in God's vineyard, but few retain the humility and submission
onto God and begin to believe their righteousness is not of God,
but of themselvesthus the falling away from the truth. But
the Bible reveals that called or chosen is a type because God
does not adapt those whom are not his children already. In biblical
times a boy was not called a son until he came of age; and then
he was proclaimed as his father's son and heir in a ceremony called
huiothesia. Therefore, a man may have many boys, but only the
sons are chosen as his heirs. Therefore "chosen" is
a word of position rather than of relationship. When a person
is born again from above they move from being a potential heir
to the household of God to being a heir to the household of God.
While Jesus Christ is the only begotten, or natural, Son of God,
those who believe, the choosen, are the adopted sons of God. This
gift is incomprehensible and the saints shall praise and glorify
the Giver of this gift throughout all eternity!
There is a great and often overlooked
lesson in 1 John 5:11-13, that we may know that we have eternal
life: "And this is the record, that God hath given to us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son
hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not
life. 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"
(emphasis mine). To quote Jesus Christ Himself, "And whosoever
liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"
The solemn fact remains that it is possible
for a doubting man to come to a place where he is unable to believe.
In John 12:39 it is declared of certain people that "they
could not believe." And in the next verse quoting from several
verses from Isaiah, we read, "He hath blinded their eyes,
and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their
eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I
should heal them." Therefore it is tragically possible for
people to trifle with the word of God so long that their hearts
become hardened and they are unable to believe. Unfortunately,
the world is overflowing of living examples of this.
The word of God itself, unless it is believed,
becomes a snare in this case, and through it the heart becomes
hard and callous. It is vital to remember that God never reveals
any truth to a man except to have that man obey the truth. If
a man goes on believing, God goes on revealing, but if a man disbelieves
and keeps disbelieving truths when they are presented to him,
then the time comes when God no longer reveals truth to him and
the eyes of the man are blinded to the truth and his heart is
hardened. In 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 we read of "them that
perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that
they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might
be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
This is solemn language and we all would do well to heed it.
On the Road to Maturity
To aid you in your investigation for the
benefit of both your own growth and the growth of others that
the Lord in heaven may have you touch, I believe it would be wise
to heed advice put forth by Charles Finney that I have advanced
upon:
Why stereotype your theological views?
Why place God in a box? I have ceased to try and expect never
to do so. The idea is preposterous. None but an omniscient mind
can continue to maintain a precise identity of views and opinions.
Finite minds, unless they are asleep or stultified by prejudice,
must advance in knowledge. The discovery of new truth will modify
old views and opinions enriching truths held fast to. There is
perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world.
True Christian consistency and maturity does not consist in stereotyping
our opinions and views. We should not refuse to make any improvements
to our faith fearful we should be guilty of change. Instead, we should hold
our minds open to receive the rays of truth from every quarter
and change our views, language and practice as often
and as fast as we can obtain further information. This course alone accords with a
Christian profession—the growing maturity one gains in their
life-long walk in and with Christ. A Christian profession implies the profession
of candor and of a disposition to know and obey all truth. It
must follow that the road to Christian maturity implies continued
investigation and change of views and practices corresponding
with increasing knowledge. No Christian or theologian should
be afraid to change his views, his language, or his practices
in conformity with increasing light. The prevalence of such a
fear would keep the world, at best, at a perpetual stand-still,
on all subjects of science, and consequently all improvements
would be precluded. We should be as the Boreans of Acts 17:11readily
accepting all good news, but checking by the Scriptures as our
only authority to see if it is true and trust not in ourselves,
but in the righteous Spirit of the Almighty in heaven to morally
convict us of His truth.
Adopting this attitude towards Scripture
demands that you be both open-minded and fixed on a goal at the
same time. Open to new light as it shines upon your conscious
thought, and fixed in consideration not in your own knowledge,
but upon the knowledge of the Lord with all consideration given
to Him by the Holy Spirit. We are to approach the Scriptures with
a childlike manor, absorbing all the details and wisdom it contains.
We are not to approach the Bible as a pure rationalist would through
the proposal of an idea and then trying to shove as much Scripture
into that idea or pattern of thought as possible—hammering
passages into submission that seek not to oblige us. Likewise,
when we read Scripture we are not to argue against it; or seek
to force points of a desirable theology we've become accustomed
to. Rather, we are to encompass our beliefs by what the Scriptures
teach us and modify our views as necessary to harmonize with the
consistency of Scripture. For it is true that Scripture is internally
consistent with itself, and it is also true that it is we, and
our theology, that are at odds with Scripture.
Because men, upon discovery of a truth,
are given to excess, it is wise to understand that it is at the
extremes of beliefs, out in the margins of thought and idea's,
where the enemy, called Satan, does his best work. For example:
the hard determinist undermines the righteousness of our Lord
in heavenfor by him it can be shown that he makes the Almighty
Creator the author of sin (God Forbid!). Likewise, the hard self-determinist
undermines the sovereignty of the Almighty and his own depravity
by claiming he alone determines his destiny. It is in these and
other realms of thought that the great battle for the souls of
men take place. Therefore, it is not the flesh that we contend
against, for we are all sinners, but against the dark principalities
of thought that we take up the good fight.
My prayer for you dear brethren, is that
your righteous prayers are magnified and that your lives bring
glory not to yourselves, but to honor the Spirit in which you
keep. Like onto that, dear skeptic, I pray that you deal honestly
with the factsfor literally, God will bring an army of witnesses
to you throughout your lifetime. This fact was the basis of Pascal's
wager; that one cannot loose by wagering that God and immortality
exist. Even if one is unable prove God or an afterlife, it is
a good bet to believe in Him. We have nothing to loose, for if
God does not exist, the life of a believer is a great life anyway.
But if God does exist, then so much the more! It is a wager that
we cannot avoid making. We must either believe in God or not.
Since we cannot avoid betting, the odds overwhelmingly favor betting
on God, therefore trust in Him.
It is the goal of this web site to edify both
my brethren in Christ as well as to edify my neighbor who still
sleeps in a spiritual slumber. Therefore, it is my goal to edify
and exhort you to sound doctrine. But, more than that, I hope
to cause you to wonder, to seek, and to find the answers of your
questions yourself. I want you to know exactly what and why you
believe that you hold to be trueso that when the enemy comes,
you shall not be shaken from the firm foundation of your faith
in the Lord Christ Jesus who walked among us in the flesh and
died for our sins, rising bodily three days later in glorious
triumph over the enemy and death!