Recently I spent some hours re-reading, The Westminster Confession of Faith (1643-46), Articles of Religion (Thirty-nine Articles 1571: Church of England), The New Hampshire Baptist Confession (1833), Baptist Faith and Message (1963 version) and The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978). For any Christian today who’s in doubt and confusion, or who simply desires to be refreshed in spirit and mind as to what Christianity truly is and stands for, I highly recommend you read these great documents of the Christian Faith. If ever there was a time for Christians to know what it is we believe and why we believe it, now is that time.
The hour is late, it belongs to the devil and he’s working overtime seeking to erode from Christians what we already know! Granted, there has never been a time in history like our time for such easy access to multiple Bible translations, studies, books, dvd’s, radio, TV, Internet and other electronic devices, yet for all of these God-given helps, doubt, confusion, uncertainty and fear reigns in the hearts and minds of many Christians just as much as they reign in unbelievers. Perhaps easy access is the problem. Human nature does not value the easy way; it takes advantage of it where it suits to do so, but it is rarely valued. The other issue with lots of Bible material today too is that it creates doctrinal bias among Christians resulting in spiritual disunity.
It was somewhat different for God’s people back a few hundred years ago. Spiritual unity was important. Under the sentence of death they willingly put their lives on the line for Bible truth, ensuring too that it would be preserved for the generations to follow. Not so in today’s church with men and women standing in pulpits (or other wise) telling us the God we worship is the same god every other religion worships. With Bible in hand, to read and study these great documents is to put paid to that lie very smartly. Such men and women don’t speak for God; they speak for Satan no matter how convincing they sound to the contrary. You can back it in too; none of them would be willing to die for what they believe.
In fact for most of them, it is fear of death at the hands of religious extremists that causes them to teach this stuff. They have no fear of God, but plenty of fear of these people. As a result, they daily give witness to the truth of Scripture; the fear of man brings a snare…. Proverbs 29:25. People who don’t fear God fear people no matter who they are, no matter how hard they work at concealing it. It’s all about self-preservation for them. These great documents leave us in no doubt as to Who the one living and true God is; God in three Persons, of one substance, power and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost: the Father is of none, neither begotten, nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.
Today we’re being manipulated and intimidated into accepting the lie that Jesus Christ is not God Almighty Incarnate. Cults and non-Christian religions teach this, but now devils in the church teach it too. Don’t believe them when told, “These people believe in Jesus too.” They don’t believe in this Jesus: The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect natures….the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for actual sins of men.
Devils in Governments and secular society tell us the Bible is a hate book, “full of hate-speech … a book of lunacy.” And devils in the church are agreeing with them! The Bible is under a massive, relentless attack today and those entrusted to defend it are failing to do so. Worse, they will continue to fail; they’re not going to defend it. Think of it: Up until just a few short years ago, the Bible was the only Book looked upon to be the best guiding light for all humanity. Constitutions, Laws and Statutes of both Western and Eastern nations were drawn from Bible truths, principles and practices turning disorder into order, poverty into prosperity, sickness into health, ignorance into knowledge and spiritual darkness into spiritual enlightenment.
The mouth of fools feeds on foolishness Proverbs 15:14. Indeed! I wonder how many of these foolish devils realise how much they insult their own family members by referring to the Bible as “a book of lunacy.” Parents, grandparents and family ancestors who unashamedly believed, the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds and opinions should be tried. (Underline emphasis mine)
Would they be prepared to stand up and declare of them that they were lunatics too? No, they would not … “two-faced” is the apt description for such people – one face for family, another face for everyone else! The Bible has plenty to reveal about this under other names – ‘hypocritical’ ‘double-dealing’ ‘deceitful’ – we’ve all been there! Were it not for Christ the Mediator I’d still be there! It pleased God, in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man, the Prophet, Priest and King, the Head and Savior of His church, the Heir of all things, and Judge of the world: unto whom He did from all eternity give a people to be His seed, and in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified and glorified.
Of the multitudes of things I love about the Bible, one is its forthrightness – its direct, unapologetic, no-explain straight-forward approach. On the other hand, that’s one of the things Bible-haters loath about it. They want God to explain Himself. ‘Explain to us six-day creation!’ they demand. It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or to make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good. No explanation ever suits proud, arrogant people who whittle God down to the size of their own puny minds, but if God’s people will stop and meditate on this statement, it’ll blow them away!
‘Explain to us the Fall of Man and sin!’ they demand (with ears well and truly blocked and locked). Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to His wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed it to His own glory. By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all parts and faculties of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation. From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgression.
‘Explain to us Free Will!’ they demand. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so, as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good……..
Both religious and non-religious Bible-haters loath that answer! The religious like to think it’s their good works and self-effort that wins them favor with God. The church is full of such people, as are mosques, synagogues and temples. The non-religious are insulted at any thought of themselves as altogether averse from good and dead in sin. “I am the captain of my soul” may well be the last words in a short Victorian poem, but they are the first words in multitudes believing themselves to be masters of their own destiny. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death Proverbs 14:12. As Bible commentator Matthew Henry says, “……they will persish with a lie in their right hand. Self-deceivers will prove in the end self-destroyers.”
These great documents, if diligently read, studied and embraced by Bible loving/living Christians, will help us become unshiftable in our faith in the one and only Lord God Almighty, the one and only Lord Jesus Christ, and the one and only living word of God to all humanity – the Bible. The same cannot be said of everything coming at us from all directions in the name of Christianity today. Go into any Christian bookshop these days and you’ll find the bulk of it consisting of me-centered Christianity not Christ-centered Christianity. Therein lies the deception, therein lies the problem. It is only as we endeavor to fulfill the purposes of God do we fulfill ourselves, it is never the other way around.
To entertain for a moment any idea that biblical Christianity can be tailored to blend with any other of the world’s religious belief systems is to entertain demonic deception and foolishness. It’s offensive to God. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all Ephesians 4:5 is as true for us today as it was the day that truth was first declared. Biblical Christianity does not bow to the pressures and dictates of its enemies whoever and whatever they are in our time – political correctness, world culture … or coming world tyranny. Embrace the truths declared in these great documents of the Christian Faith. It’s my prayer you’ll experience the embrace of our Lord God Almighty as you do so. “………And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and Savior; there is none besides Me” Isaiah 45:21. “Remember the former things of old…..” Isaiah 46:9.