Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, “And the King shall answer and say unto them,
Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” So according to the Holy Bible,
someone who attacks a Christian, even the least of the saints, has also
attacked the Lord Jesus Christ! God wants us to know that we're in this thing
together! My
enemies are Jesus' enemies, and His enemies are my enemies! One for all and
all for one! If we don't pull and pray for each other as Christians, certainly
no one else is going to do it!
That is why when the crowd informed Jesus that His mother and siblings were waiting for Him
outside, He said that everyone who does the will of God (i.e., every believer)
is also His family. Mark 3:32-35, “And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy
mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, saying,
Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about on them which sat
about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For
whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and
mother.”
In other words, Jesus is saying that, “We're in this thing together!” If someone hurts you, Jesus says they might as well have hurt Him too! Christians stick together! All for one and one for all! That is how God intended for it to be. Matthew 18:6, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” The very moment that a person receives Christ's sacrifice on the cross as payment for their sins, placing their trust is the risen Christ, they are saved and become a child of God. At that point, guardians angel's are assigned. Every believer has at least two guardian angels, who do always behold the face of the Father, waiting His instructions. Matthew 18:10, “Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” Since the Bible mentions “angels” (plural), we know that there at at least two. Interestingly, when Lazarus died in Luke 16:19-31, two angels were waiting to escorted him to Paradise. So I am convinced that every Christian has two guardian angels.
Jesus washed His disciple's feet and
then commanded them to do likewise. The Lord was teaching us to love and help
each other. It is an important concept for every born-again believer to
understand that Christians ought to have unity in the Spirit. We ought to
stick together and look out for one another. I am all for Christian unity and
brotherly love. Jesus plainly said in John 13:35, “By
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples,
if ye have love one to another.” It is not our
doctrine that convinces the unbelieving world that we are real as Christians;
but rather, our LOVE for one another. Love is the great catalyst! Jude
1:22, “And of some have compassion, making a difference.”
Sometimes We Need to Separate Over Truth Rather Than Unite in Error
Having
said that, taking a stand for the truth supercedes what I just said. There are
many shameful pastors today who foolishly think unity is more important than
doctrinal integrity. When a professed believer uses and supports satanic Bible
versions, there can be no unity. Biblical separation is mocked, shunned and
avoided in this untoward generation, but God is a holy God and commands us
likewise to be holy. James 4:4 says that anyone who is a friend of the world
is God's enemy. Sadly, many believers are actually God's enemies, supporting
the Alexandrian-based, corrupt, modern, Bible versions and pulling on the same
rope as the Devil.
The unsaved world is watching the churches. I receive countless letters from frustrated people, who are attending compromised churches where the pastor is teaching Lordship Salvation and/or wrong repentance. These are not the same heresy, but are often combined. I didn't realize this until one day I heard a Baptist preacher refuting the heresy of Lordship Salvation, but then he followed by teaching that a person must “turn away from a sinful lifestyle” to be saved. Whoa! Folks, that is not the Gospel. You cannot show me one verse in the Holy Bible that says to “repent from sins” to be saved. Someone added those two words “from sins” somewhere along the way in the history of the churches. Biblical “repentance” is changing one's mind. It is “a change of mind” from wrong thinking about what I must do to be saved, to right thinking of believing the Gospel to be saved.
The heresy of Lordship Salvation says that to be saved, in addition to believing the Gospel, a person MUST surrender their life to Christ's Lordship, to follow Him, confess Him before men, live for Him, forsake the world, turn away from sinful bad habits and walk in newness of life. Effectively, Lordship Salvation is manmade reformation! You are changing yourself as a prerequisite to trusting Christ, which is a false gospel that cannot produce the new birth.
Sadly, America's Baptist churches
are woefully divided because of doctrinal debates; such as, wrong repentance
(reformation), Lordship Salvation (partial faith in Christ plus discipleship),
counterfeit Bible versions, et cetera. There can be NO unity as long as there
is no doctrinal harmony concerning repentance, the Holy Bible and the Gospel.
Our churches are a house divided! The truth must take precedence over
cooperation and unity amongst believers; otherwise, there will always be
apostasy over time.
The Devil is in the world, but as believers we have Jesus Christ in us. We
are the light of the world. 1st John 4:4, “Ye are of God, little children,
and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is
in the world.” I LOVE CHRISTIANS! I LOVE PREACHERS! I LOVE PASTORS! I love
them all, faithful and imperfect alike, just so long as they are on the Lord's
side! I'm not talking about garbage like Benny Hinn, who is a shyster conman
and swindler. Benny Hinn is an actor, not a Bible preacher! I am talking about
preachers who proclaim the truth, but being human beings they still have
faults and sins! I love them anyway! Jonah fled from God, but I thank God for
Jonah! Peter denied knowing Christ, fled while Christ was nailed to the cross,
he quit the ministry; and when Jesus raised up from the dead, and found Peter
in a boat fishing, he was butt-naked in public! Albeit, I still love the
apostle Peter, who later repented and preached one of the greatest revival
sermons in history that led to 3,000 souls getting saved on the Day of
Pentecost!!! (See Acts 2:41.) Amen!
God only has imperfect believers to work with! There are no perfect saints. Albeit, when it comes to the purity of the Word of God and the integrity of the Gospel, we MUST separate from compromised believers who don't care! I learned from Dr. Jack Hyles (See: “What Is A Fundamentalist?”) that a “fundamentalist” is not someone who adheres to the fundamentals of the Christian faith; but rather, someone who separates from those believers who no longer believe the fundamentals. This means today's true fundamentalists must separate from the Bob Jones University camp, because of their ongoing horrible support of the Alexandrian-based, corrupt, Bible perversions. And sadly, BJU also supports Calvinist preachers, even hiring Calvinist teachers at BJU. Dr. Peter Ruckman talks about this in his needful book, “King James Onlyism Verses Scholarship Onlyism.”
You know, the whole idea of Lordship Salvation is ridiculous if you think about it. I mean, Paul Washer, Ray Comfort and John MacArthur go around teaching people that to be saved they must try to stop sinning, which they misunderstand to mean biblical “repentance.” However, if that be true, then there is a really big problem, because a giant gray area opens up concerning how much sin is “too much” until you're not saved. How do you know? I mean, since we all still sin, how can you ever really know if you've crossed the line with God?
If salvation included a change of action, that opens a huge can of worms when trying to lead people to Christ:
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- What if there is no change at all?
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The truth is so much more simple. To be saved,
you simply acknowledge what Christ did on the cross to pay for your sins, and
you believe on Him because He is risen! In God's plan of salvation, there is
no amount of sin that is tolerable in your life, because God's holiness
demands absolute perfection! Clearly, neither you nor me, nor anybody else,
can achieve that absolute perfection. This is why God the Father sent His only
begotten Son into the world, to die on the cross as our substitute, paying a
debt that He did not owe because we owed a massive debt of sin that we could
not pay! JESUS PAID IT ALL!!! You get saved by submitting to God's
righteousness, through faith alone in Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:9, “And
be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but
that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God
by faith.”
Sometimes You've Got to Fight When You're a Christian
Kenny Roger's has a popular song called, "Coward Of The County.” The song has some clever lyrics, about a man whose father always taught him that he didn't have to fight to be a man; but when some thugs rough-up his fiancée, he avenges her, finishing the song with the words, “Papa, sometimes you've got to fight when you're a man!” That is a good illustration of being a Christian. We don't have to fight to prove anything. Any man who walks with God is a peacemaker (the Gospel brings peace between sinners and God); but there is a world of difference between being a fundamentalist peacemaker verses an ecumenical yellow coward!
What Bob Jones University is doing by remaining neutral in the ongoing battle over the inspiration of the Word of God is cowardly! I am fighting the good fight of faith for my Lord. Jude 1:3, “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” I cannot think of anything more depressing than to sincerely think that God preserved His words in hundreds of English Bible versions, and that I am at the mercy of intellectual scholars who can't agree on what God really said. I mean, does Acts 8:37 belong in God's Word or not? It's missing from the modern perversions!!!
