Tag

scriptures

Mar 19 2018
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The Helper

By | Eyesalve

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” John 14:26

 

Everything that Jesus said that the father wants us to know, is recorded in the scriptures. The Helper, the Holy Spirit, will help you know the scriptures when you read them. He will help you make sense of them and understand them. Though you may not understand all you read (no one does), He will help you understand everything that God wants you to know in proportion to the light you walk in. Trust the Helper, He will help you.

Jun 29 2017
1

God Said

By | Articles

GOD SAID

By: Terry Fischer

 

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

 

January of 2017 marks the fifteenth year I have been a pastor. I have ministered in the same church all these years. Without much thinking, I can tell you the one thing I have stressed more over the pulpit than anything, and that is the need for the saints to read the word of God. I believe I have preached and taught every main fundamental truth of the Bible numerous times, yet there is nothing I have mentioned more than the need for every believer to read the WHOLE word of God for themselves and read it regularly. Let me add, there is one more thing I probably mentioned as much and that is the need for the saints to have a real quality prayer life.

The third verse of the whole Bible has these two words, “God said.” That dear saint of God, is where discipleship must start for us all. If you have been a believer for awhile and you have not started with what God has said, then you can just delete what you have learned and start from the beginning. The reason there is such a lack of like-mindedness today amongst God’s people is because when people get saved they are taught more of what man says than what God says. They are taught man’s version instead of the Spirit of Truth’s version of what God says. Imagine what a powerhouse the church could and would be today if she lived by what God said.

The Holy Bible is what God said. It is a record of the words that God has said. You can be certain that He is still saying those words and that they still speaks into the life of the believer today. There is one very disappointing thing that I have discovered through the years and that is the infrequency that professing Christians read their Bible. There are numerous, probably more than fifty percent of Christians, who have not read the whole Bible all the way through. Not that they would have to read it in chronological order, but that over a few years would have managed to read all the books of the Bible. There are Christians who have given little, if any, attention to the Old Testament. Paul, in referring to the Old Testament said, “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (I Corinthians 10:11). If you believe what Paul said, you should be eager to read the Old Testament, in which are the very books Paul was referring to,that has so many examples for us to learn by.

The lack of Bible reading leads to a lack of spiritual knowledge and wisdom. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children” (Hosea 4:6). David craved for the word of God and believed every godly man delighted in the word of God, even when it seemed to be more of the law than anything else. “But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

Christian, you are fooling and depriving yourself if you think that it is not that important to be in the word of God daily. It should not be something you have to be legalistic about, it should be something you desire to do. If you don’t, then you need to make a commitment to discipline yourself to have a determined time that you will read the word every day. You may miss a few days here and there. You may get a little behind, but nonetheless, you are reading your Bible. I hate legalism in the church, but I do see the need and value for a disciplined life. After all, doesn’t everything we do in life require some discipline? Some more, some less?

Reading the word of God is not sufficient in itself. You must believe that which you read. You must believe it truly is the word of God. Even then, that still is not enough. You have to read it with the desire or at least the willingness to be changed by it. One of my favorite quotes is from a Chinese man, Brother Yun, who was put in prison for his faith. He said, “No one can ever really understand the scriptures until they are willing to be changed by them.” How true it is. If a person is not willing to be changed by the word, then he has to be reading the word with a hard stubborn heart. He has to refuse to open his heart to let the Spirit of Truth work in his heart to change him from a carnal to a godly man.

It is amazing to me, in a bad way, when I hear of people who have been Christians for many years and they tell me they have not yet read the Old Testament. A man, who was a deacon at one time, told me that he was reading the Old Testament for the first time in his life. Don’t get me wrong, I was so glad that he was determined to read it, but it made me wonder how does someone become a deacon and they haven’t even read their whole Bible?

Saint of God, I can’t say it enough. YOU NEED TO READ YOUR WORD; YOU NEED TO EMBRACE THE WORD; YOU NEED TO EAT THE WORD. And then let it do the work it does. Fools reject and doubt the word of God. But for believers, THE WORD IS LIFE. If you don’t read the word for yourself, then you will fall prey to believing what people tell you it says. Even worse, they will tell you what they think it means. If you read the word for yourself, the Spirit of Truth won’t tell you what He thinks it means, He will tell you what it does mean. If all Christians would submit to the truth of the word of God as the Spirit of Truth reveals it, denominationalism would collapse overnight. There would come an unbelievable unity to the body of Christ as we would all come to “speak the same thing.” Denominationalism is accepted as the norm in the Christian church today. Denominationalism is not a biblical principle. It is accepted, not because saints read and believe their Bibles, but because Christians don’t! For the most part, when someone gets saved, they are brought into the denomination of the person who led them to the Lord, and there they stay for the rest of their lives. Never questioning what the church believes. Never honestly checking it out to see if everything the church believes lines up with the word of God.

Apr 17 2017
0

Eyesalve: Daily

By | Eyesalve

“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Acts 17:11

 

They didn’t just search the word, they searched it daily. Do you?

Oct 04 2016
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Eyesalve: Not Allowed To Open

By | Eyesalve

“And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” Luke 24:32

 

The reason hearts don’t burn in many of the bible studies that are going on is because Jesus is not allowed to open the scriptures unto the people.

Jun 01 2016
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Eyesalve: We Can Too

By | Eyesalve

“And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Acts 17:10-11

 

Too often the saints settle for the idea that every church is going to have things that are wrong and have people who refuse to be faithful to the word of God. I guess that brings some kind of comfort to the people to think that they are not expected to, as a church, walk in a manner that fully pleases God and really demonstrate a true New Testament church. However, if a town called Berea can have people, who were not yet born again believers, be committed to search the scriptures, why would we think that we cannot be a part of a church that has most, if not all the members committed with a readiness of mind and search out the scriptures daily to live by them?

Dec 22 2015
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Eyesalve: Love Who You Know

By | Eyesalve

“And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. 39Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” Jn. 5:38-39

 

You must not love what you know, but love Who you know.

Jan 30 2015
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Believe The Whole Book

By | Articles

“For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” Revelation” 22:18-19

We believers, can have a rather proud attitude sometimes when we proclaim that we believe the whole bible. We can talk as if we are so grounded and unmovable when it comes to the entire word of God, but saying you believe something is not proof of actual belief. It is a very disturbing thing to have millions of Christians, including whole denominations insisting that they believe the whole bible, yet there seems to be a thousand differing and divisive beliefs that they all claim the bible teaches. How is it that Christians, who all have the same book, and claim it is their final authority, are so divided? Well, it isn’t the fault of God’s word; the problem lies with man.

Because our human nature hates correction and self-denial, it isn’t hard to understand why man at times will resist the bible and even teach the scriptures in a way that accommodates the lifestyle of man. There are those who water down scripture and even teach a false view of scriptures for convenience sake. Those who do that are called false teachers. They do this for a variety of reasons. Some do it to justify their sinful life style, some do it to form their own brand of religion, some do it to please man and some do it to scare or rule over people. Some will try to make the scriptures say less than they do, while some try to make them say more than they do. I have often said, “The bible has enough rules already without someone adding more to it.” Whatever the motive is, it is of the highest offense against the kingdom of God to carelessly and falsely handle the word of God.

I want to address something of great concern, which has to do with this subject of mishandling the word of God. What makes it such a great concern is that this mishandling that I am going to talk about is widely accepted in the Christian church. Since it is so accepted, few see the danger of this violation. What I am talking about is what we all agree is forbidden to do, and that is, “take away from the words of this book.” No, it isn’t that a publisher has printed bibles with some of the words missing, it is that some of the words and verses have been marked as obsolete by some of the most popular bible teachers of our day.

I can give you two strong examples of what I am talking about. The first example has to do with the ministry. Let’s look at Ephesians 4:11-13. “And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; 12For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:” You can see that I highlighted the words, “till we all come.” This simply means that there is a time that we will no longer need, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, but now is not the time. The time is when we all come into “the measure of the stature of the fullness in Christ.” Kind of sounds like heaven to me. Have any of you come to be a “perfect man?” If so, has the rest of your brethren? If not, then you still need ministers in your life. Has the church come into “the unity of the faith?” This is highly unlikely, since we have hundreds of denominations and different doctrines that separate us. It is plain to see that we need ministers in our life. Well, you may say, I believe we have pastors and teachers, others may say, we have pastors, teachers and evangelists. I will not disagree with them, but we also have prophets and apostles. However, we have those today that say we no longer have prophets or apostles, and that they died off in the first century. Just because we don’t have men anymore that can pen us scripture does not mean that we don’t have apostles in our day. I think some of the problem is that we over spiritualize the office of an apostle. Apostles were simple men like you and me that God used to establish and oversee the body of Christ. We still need that done today. Therefore we still need apostles.

Another example is the gifts of the Spirit. It is amazing to me how widely accepted it is that some of the gifts aren’t for day. The spiritual gift that is most commonly refuted is “speaking in tongues,” but it doesn’t stop there. I know of Christians that don’t believe that divine healing is for today. When I first heard that as a young believer, I just shook my head in disbelief. I have come to find out that this teaching is more widely accepted than I thought. All I can say is that Jesus said, “let it be done according to your faith.” If you don’t believe in speaking in tongues, you aren’t going to receive the gift. If you don’t believe in divine healing, you are never going to pray for someone to be healed.

The thing that is the most disheartening about the claim that not all of the gifts are for today is the desperate attempt to find scriptures to support that belief. One of the more common scriptures is I Corinthians 13:8-9. You would never come to the conclusion that this scripture is telling us these three gifts, “prophesies,” “tongues” and “knowledge” will cease during this church age. The bible experts that believe that, violate the principles of bible study by not reading that passage in context and not reading the verses around it. In fact, just read verse 10 and it will clear up the whole passage. The “perfect” that verse ten is talking about is obvious, it is heaven, and it is our completeness in Christ.

So we have prominent teachers and church leaders that tell the church that there are no longer apostles or prophets today. They tell us that some of the gifts have ceased, but there seems to be confusion and disagreement about which gifts have ceased. So I end this article with this immensely important question: Who has such authority today to tell us what offices and gifts are not for today? Who has the authority to make the final decision for all of us on these matters? Simple respect for God’s word tells us that the safest ground to be on is to just believe it all for today. Do you really want to get into trying to pick and choose what is for today and what isn’t? I don’t know about you, but the scares me to death.

“But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)

“But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” (I Peter 1:25)