05/17/18 DASH-CAM MESSAGE (NOTES)
RECOVER THE TEACHINGS THAT WERE ABANDONED, TURN FROM SINNING RELIGION.
(13 minutes overview of the visible church abandoning the Scriptures and then rediscovering Biblical truth, from the time of the Protestant Reformation).
The modern, western world is constantly being told, by followers of sinning religion, that Christians have to sin. This is a hand me down from paganism that infected the post apostolic period of the Church, but has continued to pollute the well of teaching until the present time.
Some folks in sinning religion say we cannot live without sinning. We will sin in WORD, THOUGHT AND DEED, which is just about every way to sin.
Others in sinning religion say that we will sin in word, thought and deed, EVERY DAY.
They want us to understand that we are rotten scoundrels to the core, and even the grace of God cannot save us from sinning, but He will take you to heaven anyway.
Of course it is even more than just EVERY DAY. It is ALL DAY LONG. It is not like they say we will only sin a part of the day, like with an hour long sin. That would only be one out of 24 hours, but that is not enough sin for sinning religion. They mean we are going to sin THROUGHOUT THE DAY, every day.
By the time they stipulate how much we will sin, it will be that so-called born again believers in Christ, covered by the so-called blood of Christ, and saved by the so-called grace of God, then we are no better off than the devil, except that we are "saved."
Sinning religion says that God saves people, simply because He chooses to save certain people and He deliberately leaves others in their sins, without any hope of salvation, without the call, the effectual call of God. The god of sinning religion has not saving mercy for some people, but if he does call them it is taunting and teasing, because he has no intention of saving them.
If we go back to the Bible, which is a long way from sinning religion, we find out that the Church did not get into this condition overnight. Adam got into his condition suddenly, though it was a long time coming. There was a moment when Eve was tempted, deceived, and she yielded and then she tempted Adam and he entered into sin suddenly.
Sinning religion today was spawned from the same source as Adam and Eve's sin. It was the devil, the serpent. Paul said that he was jealous over the church and feared lest believers should be deceived and sin, AS WAS EVE, by that serpent.
Sinning religion is the temptation to do what Satan says to do, rather than obey God. BUT WE CAN OBEY GOD, because we are told, "Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world."
We are told that people in the Old Testament could not obey God, could not keep His commandments. Well, the Bible contradicts that assertion, because God enabled them to keep His word, His laws.
KEEPING, OBEYING THE LAW OF GOD IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH SALVATION. NO ONE IS SAVED BY KEEPING THE LAW, but God does not require us to keep laws that are impossible to keep.
There is so much of the Bible that you have to eliminate in order to follow sinning religion, that I can't even believe it.
If we go back to the New Testament we are told before the life and ministry of Jesus that He would save His people from their sins. But sinning religion says that Jesus saves His people from their guilt, punishment, from the results of their sins, but not from their sins.
John the baptist (John was a good Baptist), said that Jesus was the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
John preached that the kingdom of heaven was at hand and therefore people needed to repent.
Jesus came along and also preached the kingdom of heaven and repentance.
Jesus also told people to DENY THEMSELVES, TAKE UP THEIR CROSS AND FOLLOW HIM.
He said, GO AND SIN NO MORE.
Jesus said, IF YOU LOVE ME YOU WILL KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.
Jesus said, BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART, FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD.
Jesus said a lot of things that sinning religion does not believe applies to us today, or they twist what Jesus said, making it mean what He did not intend for it to mean.
The New Testament after Jesus, with Paul, Peter, James, John, Luke declares a consistent message that the style of life, the quality of life, the standard of life, which was to be lived by anyone who came to Jesus was, TURN FROM SIN.
Eventually someone asked a foolish question like, "Can we still sin if we are saved." The answer was, "
MAY IT NEVER BE, GOD FORBID, HOW SHALL WE WHO ARE DEAD TO SIN CONTINUE TO LIVE IN SIN?"
We are DEAD TO SIN, and alive to God.
We are to WALK IN NEWNESS OF LIFE.
The Old Man is to be CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST.
God gives us enough grace to RESIST TEMPTATION.
We can OBEY THE GOSPEL.
And it goes on and on and on...
Sinning religion has no place in the New Testament.
But after the life and ministry of Jesus, and during the ministry of the apostles, there were movements beginning to rise up in opposition to the doctrines of God.
But the presence of the apostles kept the rise of false doctrines at bay.
But once the apostles were gone, the attacks on Scriptures intensified.
During the time of the Early Church Fathers (subsequent to the apostles) the doctrinal foundation of the Church began to crumble. resulting in a collapse of Biblical teaching, replaced by a multitude of false doctrines, propagated by a slew of anti-Bible groups.
A long list of groups, from within the Church and outside of the Church introduced false doctrines that eventually found acceptance in some local congregations.
Augustine came along, with his own baggage of confusion and then led the organized Church further from orthodoxy. Since he became a major voice in the western Church (Rome), his errors became authoritative. His errors were really the foundation of Calvin's major errors. Calvin himself said that his beliefs were based primarily on the teachings of Augustine.
Calvin's teaching became fundamental to the Reformers. The belief in unilateral and unconditional election the continuance in sin and the connection of sin with the human flesh as seen in dualism, the belief in using force and violence in the name of God and the Church, the veneration of Mary.
Because the Reformers continued to cling to Roman teaching they responded to persecution, not as Biblical Christians, but as Romanists, by raising up armies to fight the Catholic armies which were sent to kill the Protestants. Then the Reformers sent their armies against other armies raised up by other Reformers. Then the Reformers sent armed men against other believers who did not believe in violence or bearing the sword or killing anyone. The Reformers also saw themselves as rulers over civil issues, and even executed, killed other professing believers because they did not submit to the doctrines of the religious rulers of the region.
This is the religious beliefs and training that has come to the modern, western world, through the Reformed and Calvinistic influences.
In the days of the early Church, the light of truth shone brightly through the Divine revelation of the Holy Spirit to, and through the apostles. Darkness began to fill the Church in various regions after the demise of the apostles until the the word of men replaced the word of God. Through the efforts of the Reformers, light was being rediscovered and restored to the Church. Little by little the abandoned truths were reclaimed.
The Reformation was not a complete return to Biblical Christianity. It would take considerable more time to rediscover doctrines concerning missions, the church, the Holy Spirit, heart purity, eschatology. As someone has pointed out, the problem is not that there were Reformers, but that the followers of the the Reform leaders did not continue to move away from their own limited understanding of Biblical truth.
Today there is much more Bible truth available to us than the Church had for for over a thousand years. Sadly, the truths are not usually found in a single group, because various groups followed their founders only as far as the founders went in their reforming.
Christians today are needing to rediscover Biblical Christianity, just as the reformers and Christian leaders have in the past. This means that we must turn away from the teachings and traditions, with which we have been raised, and follow other Biblical teachings that have been rediscovered outside of our own denominational heritage.
