Archive for October, 2011
Covenants and testaments are based on promises and agreements between two or more parties.
Our Creator God is a God of infinite, unfailing, unwavering, uncompromising love. It always has been and always will be that He would have His erring sinful proud and unbelieving creatures to know this love, and therefore, to know Him.It has always been His heartfelt yearning that God and man should be on the most if intimate of terms and that both may know the joy and peace that would come from a loving relationship with one another. The entire Government of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, and the laws by which it is governed, is based on this love. And everything God purposes to do, promises, accomplishes, says and does, has as its motivating principle God’s perfect love. (Deut. 7:7,8; Isa. 63:7-9; 1 John 4:7-21; 1 John 5:1-4)
That is why, when Adam sinned, God still sought him out. (Gen. 3:9) Love was the motivating factor behind God’s promise (Genesis 3:15; Nahum 1:9) that the damage to the relationship caused by sin would ultimately be undone (Isa 59:2); that the power of Satan over our lives would be reversed (John 8:34; Romans 6:16,20; 2 Peter 2:19) and the power of death would be overcome (Ezek. 18:4,20; Romans 5:12; Romans 6:23). How was God to accomplish all this while at the same time honouring justice, love and mercy? Through Jesus Christ. View full article »
We have two choices. Either immortality comes to us as a gift from God, or God made us immortal from the beginning. I put it to you that immortality is a gift, a gift that comes to us on the day of the resurrection, at the second coming of Jesus. I could cite many scriptures to support this, but only one should suffice.
1 Cor. 15:51 ΒΆ Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
Allow me to paraphrase the above texts, and reduce them to just the bolded portions.
We shall all be changed at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and this mortal must put on immortality.
Permit me to quote from a sermon by Amos Phelps:
This doctrine (the immortality of the soul) can be traced through the muddy channels of a corrupted Christianity, a perverted Judaism, a pagan philosophy, a superstitious idolatry to the great instigator of mischief in the garden of Eden. The Protestants borrowed it from the Catholics, the Catholics from the Pharisees, the Pharisees from the pagans, and the pagans from the old serpent who first preached the doctrine amid the lowly bowels in paradise to an audience all too willing to hear and heed the new and fascinating theology…“Ye shall not surely die”. (Genesis 3:4)
It is a strange infatuation that the vast majority of Christianity today teaches a doctrine, the immortality of the soul, based on no greater authority than that of the great deceiver.
Every reformer, from the 12th to the 18th century, from Wycliffe to Luther, from Calvin to Cranmer, and dozens in between, pointed their collective fingers at Rome and proclaimed the Roman papacy as the Antichrist of prophetic scripture. Were they right? Judging by today’s views, the reformation was a major mistake, and the reformers all religious radicals deceived and influenced by the times in which they lived. If they were right, then why do so few proclaim it today? If however they were wrong, then why don’t we all forsake the title “protestant” (who’s protesting today anyway?) and return to Rome? View full article »
