The Sin Solution: Quarantine It?

sandres2k8 — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:05:34 +0000

Christendom has this strange view of God’s solution for sin. They believe that He will quarantine it on some dark outskirt of His universe forever. He will incarcerate the overwhelming majority of His creatures in a vast and horrific torture chamber while He and a very small minority of His creatures proceed to enjoy themselves with eternal bliss. This outpost will make Hitler’s concentration camps look like child’s play at Disney World by comparison.

An amazing solution for sin, is it not? Do they really believe that this is the best God could come up with?

Is the true God of Scripture not greater than this? Is He not wiser than this? More loving than this? More responsible? Really?

Is Christendom’s presentation really God’s solution for sin? Not a chance!

The problem is not with God, or His Scriptures, but with the religion that professes to represent Him. Christendom has adapted pagan Greek mythology (e.g. Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato), Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Dante’s Inferno as their theology, and translated their Bibles to support their creeds.

The God of Scripture is far bigger than all of man’s little imagined gods.

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound (Romans 5:20).

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
© Daily Email Goodies™

Theology

sandres2k8 — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:07:43 +0000

Theology is less and less about God and God’s world, and more and more a department of ancient history, absorbed in minute details of historical and literary criticism. The whole business is wildly out of proportion.

Oliver Fielding Clarke
For Christ’s Sake (1963)

Passwords

sandres2k8 — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:08:07 +0000

The “in” labels that we make sure can be seen when we drape our faith over the back of a pew, vary from time to time, from church to church, from group to group …

There are words I go to any length to avoid, not because they are meaningless but because I refuse to be coerced into giving passwords in order to gain admittance to something. I would rather stay in God’s outdoors, where the best response one can make sometimes is a heart-brimming and soul-shaking silence, an inarticulate groan of spirit, a humbling bafflement of mind, even a shattering but strangely liberating doubt. There is so little one can say in a password; to use one always requires paring down one’s own spirit so that it may fit precisely against some other’s. To demand one means that the demander cares only secondarily about what a person is, primarily, about what he says.

Time and again, Jesus deflated “seeming” as against “being.” … When an adulteress caught in the act was brought to Him for judgment, his accusers saw a broken law. He saw a broken woman.

When he went to dinner with the wrong people, the self-righteous rulebook-quoting, password-demanding, label-reading religious leaders saw winebibbers and sinners. Jesus knew what His hosts were, but evidently He preferred generous, honest sinners who enjoyed living life to penny-pinching, hypocritical sinners who did not. Besides, there is no evidence in the record that those who criticized the tablemates of Jesus ever themselves invited Him home to dinner or even to lunch.

Kenneth L. Wilson (1916-?)
Editor of The Christian Herald)
Have Faith Without Fear (1970), pages 34-36

Religion’s God

sandres2k8 — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:12:04 +0000

… The foolish people have blasphemed Your name (Psalms 74:18).

Religion’s “God” tells us to love our enemies, while he tortures his for eternity.

Religion’s “God” tells us not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good, while he himself does not overcome with good.

Religion’s “God” tells us to forgive others 70×7, while he leaves most of his creation unforgiven.

Religion’s “God” tells us that love never fails, while his fails to win back the majority of his creation.

Religion’s “God” tells us that Christ is the propitiation “for the sins of the whole world,” while holding the world’s sins against them.

Religion’s “God” tells us that he is the “Savior of all men” and then does not actually save all men.

Religion’s “God” tells us that the wages of sin is death, while changing it to be eternal conscious torment.

Religion’s “God” tells us that the payment for sin is eternal conscious torment, and that Christ made the payment for sin, but it was not eternal conscious torment.

Religion’s “God” tells us that he will be “All in all,” while he will actually only be “All in some.”

Religion’s “God” will somehow “reconcile all things unto Himself,” while leaving most of his creation unreconciled.

There is something wrong with religion’s “God!”

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
Daily Email Goodies
© 2010

Religious Resistance to the God of Love

sandres2k8 — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:24:17 +0000

The history of organized religion, at least in the Western tradition, is a record of our human resistance to the proclamation that God is love, that His love extends to everyone, and that it is in no way conditioned upon human obedience or human faithfulness.

Thomas Talbott
The Inescapable Love of God

Paul on “Hell”

sandres2k8 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:04:08 +0000

Since Paul is God’s spokesman for us today, we should always consult his teaching when considering any subject. “Hell” is no exception.

We may be in for a great surprise. Have we ever stopped to consider that Paul, our Apostle, never once even used the word “hell”? He didn’t use the word “hell” in any recorded messages from the Book of Acts. He didn’t use the word “hell” in any of his epistles. Not once! Get your concordance and, like the Bereans, check to see if this is so.

How could this possibly be? How could Paul have conducted his entire teaching ministry – one that brought glory to God – and yet never even once used the word “hell”? Isn’t the traditional, orthodox doctrine of “hell” at the very foundation of our religious creeds?

How could Paul have been so negligent in his solemn teaching responsibilities? How could he have gone through his entire ministry forgetting to use such a crucial word? What was up with that?

Or, was it possible that Paul understood something Christendom doesn’t? Consider Paul’s declaration found in the Book of Acts:

Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God (Acts 20:26-27).

The plain and simple fact is that Paul was not negligent in his teaching ministry. This passage makes that abundantly clear. Paul clearly states that he was “pure from the blood of all men,” because he had declared “all the counsel of God” – a counsel which obviously did not include “hell” at all. Period!

Wasn’t Paul presented as a pattern (I Timothy 1:15-16)? Didn’t Paul tell us to follow him (I Corinthians 4:15-17; 11:1; Philippians 3:17)?

Didn’t Paul tell us to,

Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus (II Timothy 1:13)?

Did we hear “hell” from Paul? Was it a Pauline form of “sound words”? Have many been duped into accepting a religious tradition contrary to the sound scriptural teachings of our Apostle?

Wouldn’t we be Pauline if, like Paul, we also excluded “hell” from our teaching? Or, more pointedly, could we possibly be truly Pauline in our teaching if we continued the use of a theological system that includes the traditional “hell”?

Why not just follow our Apostle in teaching a pure grace gospel that has no place for, nor need of a religious “hell”?

Christendom is steeped in the traditions of men, and not in the traditions of Paul.

Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle (II Thessalonians 2:15).

We are to hold Paul’s traditions, “whether by word, or our epistle.” Holding to Paul’s very words and epistles will remove “hell” from your teaching.

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.
Bible Student’s Notebook
© 2007, 2010

Free to Obey

sandres2k8 — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:41:30 +0000

Men have never been given authority by Scripture to make laws for the church that are binding upon Christians. We must be free to obey “The Book.”

John McKay
“The Sin of Dividing the Church”
Journal of Pauline Dispensationalism (2009); Volume 21, Number 83, page 1795

The Patriarch’s Teaching Responsibility

sandres2k8 — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:10:12 +0000

It is the responsibility of the patriarch to teach his family the Scriptures. No one else has been given this responsibility. It is a responsibility that he cannot delegate to others. He is the divinely appointed head of the home, and he alone is responsible for the spiritual welfare of those under his headship. This is a God-given responsibility that cannot be surrendered to anyone. This is a serious matter before God.

This, by the way, relates directly to the truth of “the church in your house” – a home, with extended family and guests, led in ministry by the head of that home, the husband and father. As a general principle, other family men from time to time may be there – ideally on a temporary learning basis – until they, too, can or will take on their own God-given family responsibility.

The primary teaching place is the home. That is the standard of Scripture.

… Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).

… The father to the children shall make known Your truth (Isaiah 38:19).

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6).

And you shall teach them diligently unto your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up (Deuteronomy 6:7).

And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home … (I Corinthians 14:35).

James Wesley Stivers writes concerning the truth of these verses,

Can a pastor do this for your family? Can your child’s Sunday School teacher? No. It is impossible. What God is describing in this text is a live-in spiritual tutor. One must live with the person he is discipling [training]. Jesus lived with His twelve disciples for three years. They ate and slept in His presence … All this talk about church discipleship is fantasy. So is the concept of home cell groups. These are phony substitutes.

There seems to be something lost in a relationship between a parent and a child, if it is the decision of the parent to commission a third party to provide biblical instruction and spiritual nurture to the child in his stead. I argue that it is a dereliction of duty … Parents are to disciple their children. It is an immutable part of the vocation of parenthood.

Stuck in Weekly Religious Tradition

We naturally suppose that the “institutional church” is the primary agent in proclaiming the Gospel and teaching the Word of God. That is the primary role assigned to the “church” in our day. But it has not always been so. In early America, as it was in the earliest church, the Christian home was the spiritual center …

It is impossible to provide the basis for Christian character and spiritual experience in one or two hours a week. Constant contact with a Christian leader is necessary. That is why the “discipleship movement” was so popular in recent years. It recognized the inadequacy of the “institutional church” to provide even the basic spiritual foundations in a person’s life …

Some people believe, as I was prone at one time, that if one wishes to do anything for God, one must do it within the confines of the “church” apparatus – that God’s work is done primarily at “church.” Actually, … the family is the chief agent for the passing on of the Christian faith from generation to generation …

Even the work of evangelism, once thought to be the principle purpose of the pulpit preacher, is better done through the home. The most effective evangelist, as many men and women with tender emotion admit, is that of a godly mother or father. Better than three-fourths of all conversions come through the work of family and friends …

It is a personal faith which must be transmitted, not an abstract and institutional one. (Restoring the Foundations, Patriarch Publishing House, 2007)

Religious Tunnel Vision

sandres2k8 — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:24:07 +0000

Bible studies are tailored to fit “Church” doctrines and thinking; emphasizing only the Scriptures they want to promote. Sermons are also directed at the teachings and doctrines of that particular denomination, and you will very seldom hear anything from the pulpit that would be considered controversial. Without realizing it we are “spoon-fed” with the ingredients that will conform us into “one of their own.” The “Church” becomes the interpreter of the Scriptures – after all, the pastors and teachers are the scholars, right?

In the religious environment … you can read the Bible over and over and never see the obvious until you are removed from this “Church”-controlled atmosphere. Often, religion indoctrinates and blinds people with its “tunnel-vision” thinking. Religion itself can be a real “mind binder.” Organized religion is basically for those finding comfort in someone else telling them what the Bible has to say; they prefer not to do any research on their own. In this way the “Church” is in complete control of their thinking. For myself, I have chosen the path of “religious freedom.”

Robert W. Stace
Why Weren’t We Told? (2001), p. 94

Ecclesiastical Background of Tithing

sandres2k8 — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:47:00 +0000

Tithing was not established [in Christendom] until 585 A.D. by [Papal] Emperor Charlemagne.

Robert W. Stace
Why Weren’t We Told? 2001, p. 81