The mysterious treasure

I well remember the day the Scriptures came alive for me like they never had before. I remember how fascinated I was to just turn the pages of the Bible and read it at random…just to see if I could see in all of the Scriptures what I had seen in some. And how amazed I was that I could.

I felt that I had been allowed to know a secret that had been there all along but I hadn’t been told until that moment. And I was mesmerized.

My husband says I fell in love with the Scriptures.

Maybe I did. There was just something so…amazing in them that captivated me. There is still something amazing in them. There are verses in the Bible that tell of the mystery being revealed. That was how I felt, like the mystery had been revealed.

Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Ephesians 3:2-6 esv

That verse alone says so much about the mystery. How it was given to Paul through revelation. How it was kept for those that would be allowed to know it. I have found it fascinating to read ‘which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations.’ It was a secret that was kept for those the Lord wanted to reveal it to.

When I think of the world, of all the people in the world, for all time…and how the secret is revealed to those that receive the ability to understand the mystery. How amazing is that?! It’s like being handed a box that holds a secret so great that we can’t fathom it all. And we can’t share it because the secret doesn’t exist except for those that are given the same secret.

And in some ways that is exactly what happens. We are the ‘box’ in which the secret has been placed. We are the ‘box’ that has been entrusted with the mystery. Those of us that are in Christ are not only handed the key to unlock the mystery but the very secret that is kept for those that have been entrusted with it are the key to the ‘box’. They are the ‘box’. We hold within us a secret so great that it has been kept and handed down through all of eternity, from the very creation of the world, so that it will be preserved and passed on to those that are yet to come that will also be the keepers of the secret.

What would you do if someone handed you a box and told you it held the mystery of the world in it? Provided you understood that the box truly held those mysteries and you believed it with everything in you…what would you do with that box? How gently would you handle it? How long would you study the box? How would you transport it? How would you store it? To what lengths would you go to protect it?

I wrote a post a while ago titled ‘how far would you go’. In it I asked how far you would go to see to it that those you love knew the truth. Now I ask how far would you go to protect the secret…the mystery…if it was handed into your care?

How special would you feel to know that out of all the world you had been chosen to protect the mystery and carry on the secret?

Imagine holding that box in your hands and knowing it contained the most powerful thing in the world…and that it explained everything there is about the world…imagine knowing you were responsible for that box.

Several months ago my sister told me about a television program she watched where they speculated on whether the Ark of the Covenant could have been radioactive…nuclear even…because of what happened to anyone that touched it. She said that in the program they said most if not all of the consequences for touching it could be explained by nuclear power. At the time I found it interesting and even thought of Moses. How he glowed after encountering God.

the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him. Exodus 34:35 esv

That, too, I would think could easily be explained through some sort of nuclear power. As could the verses about the burning bush…

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. ³ And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” ⁵ Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” ⁶ And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Exodus 3:2-6

As I was listening to my sister talk of the possibility that the Ark of the Covenant may have been nuclear I found the topic interesting but also had no need to know or even speculate on whether or not it was. I know what or rather Who caused the consequences for touching the Ark of the Covenant. What method He may have used to bring about those consequences isn’t something I feel the need to know. Not that we can ever know.

But as I write this I am reminded of that conversation. What would you do if you were handed a box and told that it is the mystery of all of life but that its nuclear and you must handle it exactly this way.

I am reminded, too, of a program my children like to watch. It’s set in the 1800’s and in one episode the men take a job transporting liquid nitrogen. Oh, the care they take with those glass bottles after being told that jostling can make them explode.

How careful would you be if you held in your hands a box containing a nuclear mystery that would explode if you handle it the wrong way? How afraid of that mystery would you be? How careful would you be to handle it just the right way?

The mystery spoken of in Scripture isn’t nuclear, it won’t explode if you drop it, but it’s no less powerful.

And it’s been entrusted to a select set of people.

And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. Matthew 13:11 esv

            Not everyone can see or understand the mystery. It’s a secret. It’s big…huge even. It’s profound. It’s unlike anything else you will ever encounter. And if you’re truly in Christ…you hold the key to the mystery. You have been told the secret.

            It is a treasure that has been entrusted to a select set of people. Scripture even tells us who they are…

even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, Ephesians 1:4-5 esv

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, Ephesians 1:11

            Now do you see the treasure you hold? Not only have those that were entrusted with the secret been told the mystery but they were chosen…hand picked by the Lord…to know that mystery. And He didn’t just look down on all the people in the world today and select those He would give the secret to…He chose who would know the secret before the earth was made.

            Before He created anything…He thought of His people…the one’s that would be entrusted with the secret. He knew their names before He formed the earth.

            Imagine that box again. Here it is…in your hands. You hold it. Just after being handed the box…before you knew it was nuclear…you held it in your hands amazed at the mystery you were entrusted with. Then you learn its nuclear and if you mishandle it, it will explode. Now you’re afraid of it.

What are you supposed to do with it?

When it was simply…if you can call it simple at all…the mystery of the world it was amazing but now you know. You know it comes with great power. And you now hold that power in your hands.

What…

Are you...

 Supposed…

 to do with…

IT?

I ask again…how would you handle it? How would you treat it? This powerful mystery you have now been entrusted with, that you were chosen before time to be entrusted with…is now in your hands.

And it’s a treasure beyond comprehension. It’s worth more than gold, more than all the money in the world. There is nothing on earth worth as much.

And you have it.

It was hidden ‘through the ages’ and has now been revealed to you.

… the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  Colossians 1:26-27 esv

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages Romans 16:25 esv

            And only those that have been chosen to know the secret can understand the mystery.

And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables,  Mark 4:11 esv

            This mystery…is understandable only by those that were chosen to know it…only those that it was given to.

And not only were you chosen to know the mystery…you were prepared to know it.

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9 esv

            Why were you prepared for this mystery? Why were you chosen before all of creation to be handed this mystery? What did you do to earn such a treasure?

            For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship… Ephesians 2:8-10 esv

            You did nothing to earn the treasure. You weren’t even given a map to find it. You were simply handed the treasure as a gift.

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15 NIV

            Everyone knows that finding a true treasure requires a map…a treasure map. It’s the stuff stories and legends are made of. They are the object of many childhood fantasies. But the treasure you hold came with no map and…if there was no map to get you here…how do you now hold the treasure?

…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit... So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 esv

            You weren’t given a map…you were simply handed the treasure. Nothing you did, will do, or could do would have ever lead you to such a treasure as this. And if you had somehow managed to find the treasure on your own…which Scripture tells us is impossible…you would never have understood it.

            And still the question remains…how? How did I get here? How did I acquire such a wonderful treasure?

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:44 esv

            You were drawn here…dragged here, as the Greek translation says. It was not you that got yourself here but the Lord who prepared you for the secret He chose to impart to you. his preparation was so complete that he began to prepare you for it long before you were born. He chose your parents, your grandparents. He put those people in place and prepared the way for your birth. He chose where you would live, who your friends would be. He set you in the life He wanted you in at every stage. He went ahead of you and cleared the path He wanted you on, placed the people He wanted you to meet on that path, and set your feet in the direction He wanted you to go.

            Whether we wanted to go that way or not…we were made to go the way He wanted us to.

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. 2 Corinthians 2:14 niv

            You were a captive of Christ that was set on a path before the creation of the world. Your course was set long before there was a path to follow. The treasure was yours when you…weren’t. It was yours…held in trust…long before you were born, before you were conceived.

            Why were you given the treasure?

            …I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. Exodus 33:19 esv

for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 esv

            You were given the treasure…they mystery…given the secret…because it was the Lord’s good pleasure to give it to you. He chose you to be the recipient of his mercy.

All who are in Christ were given the secret of this great mystery. They were chosen to be the recipients of the mysterious treasure.

Oh, what a gift we have been given.

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sinless perfection

 

Can we ever get to the point where we never sin? That idea was recently introduced to me not as a question but as an idea I encountered through several sources. What I didn’t know as that idea was presented to me was that that idea is what is called sinless perfection.

The problem as I see it with sinless perfection starts with the very idea that it’s possible to even consider the idea of being sinless in any way. We are born into sin through the sin of Adam and therefore can never live a sinless life. It’s not possible. We are all sinners and as I recently heard from someone speaking against the idea of ‘God loves everyone’ the wonder isn’t that the Lord doesn’t love everyone…the wonder is that He loves anyone. We are all so sin filled, so filthy in our sins before a holy God that it’s a wonder that He loves any of us.

So to consider the idea that anyone can ever, in any way, be sinless is to disregard the fact that we are all born full of sin. That very basic fact keeps me from ever being able to believe in the idea of anyone ever being sinless. But the fact that I can never believe in any form of being sinless there are those that believe they can in some way be sinless. At least they seem to believe that if they live out a life as sinless as they can that somehow God owes them something.

Scripture doesn’t support that theory but it’s an idea some hold to nonetheless. Sinless perfection…to me…doesn’t need to be explored beyond the term to know it’s unattainable. There is no person that will ever live that will be perfect…Christ was the only one. And there is no one that will ever be sinless. My mind, in my beliefs, stops at that very point. But I’m going to push past my own stopping point in order to tackle the subject of sinless perfection as I understand it.

I would assume that we all want to live sinless before the Lord. Anyone with any type of belief in God would…I assume…want to be found as sinless as possible. Many will in fact even claim not to sin. That’s impossible but it is a belief many hold to. How many people would tell you they haven’t sinned today?

If I open my eyes in the morning it’s a guarantee that I will sin. Not because I want to but because something…possibly everything…I do will fail to meet the perfect, holy standards of the Lord. Scripture even tells us that even once we are saved we will sin. 1 John 2:1 says…

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. ² He is the propitiation for our sins…

If the Lord has truly saved us it should be our greatest desire to avoid sin but complete sinlessness will never happen and so we are told that we have an advocate in Christ if we do sin.

I have to ask…based on the above verse alone…does it sound like those that are in Christ will ever reach a state of complete sinlessness? The idea that we can live a sinless life not only goes against my beliefs…it goes against Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible does it teach that we can ever reach a state of sinless perfection.

And if it isn’t taught in the Bible…it’s a false doctrine. If I ever heard anyone teaching or preaching the concept of sinless perfection I would have no choice but to walk away from that teaching knowing I had just heard a lesson of heresy. And that the person teaching that concept was nothing short of a false teacher.

I’m absolutely positive I’ve heard many a false teacher teach from a false doctrine but the idea of sinless perfection isn’t one I’ve ever heard preached or taught. It’s only been very recently that I’ve encountered the idea. Even still it’s something that should be opposed for the false teaching that it is no matter how we encounter it.

As I understand sinless perfection it’s a works system that holds at its foundation the idea that we can somehow attain a level of sinlessness…or at least of conscious sinlessness…that we manage to work ourselves into a place where the Lord can…and will…save us.

It’s something we do…rather, it’s something some people do…it’s an experience. It’s human workings with the idea that those deeds will get a person closer to Christ.

As I was researching the concept of sinless perfection I came across an article that said those that try and attain sinless perfection and think they have reached it often tend to be proud of their accomplishment and often try and get others to work toward the same state.

That very pride is enough to completely ruin their attainment of becoming sinless.

An high look, and a proud heart…is sin. Proverbs 21:4

But I can understand their pride in what they see as becoming sinless. I really can. If I held to the belief that it’s possible to live in a state of sinless perfection I think not only would I be proud of the fact that I had attained such a difficult feat but that my thoughts would go something like…if I can work my way into this perfect condition where I have reached the Lord then I need to show others how to get here. Much the way we…as Christians…want others to share in our faith and the security we have in Christ. But we can’t bring others to Christ any more than the sinless perfectionist can bring someone into a state of sinless perfection.

But I can understand their reasoning. I can even understand the pride that goes with the belief. We know that pride is a sin but to my way of thinking so is sinless perfection. And as a sin it’s something we should strive to avoid but for the person working their way toward Christ through sinless perfection they have already missed some key points in Scripture and therefore are already dealing with this concept out of what seems to me to be sin. I will give them credit though…it must be hard to be that perfect, to work that hard, to attain something…or to try to attain it.

So in their own pride, in their self-satisfaction, in that place where they believe they have reached sinless perfection…why wouldn’t they want to bring others into their hope? They now believe that they do not sin. If they can just convince the sinners to work hard enough…convince them to do enough…give up enough…act a certain way…then they can help them find salvation, or at least get to a place where the Lord can reach them so that He can save them.

The trouble with that is that we can never work our way to Christ. Salvation is a gift we are given and there’s nothing we can do to attain it. No amount of working or living as sin-free as we can manage will ever be good enough for our holy Lord. Our greatest works are but filthy rags to a God that is holy.

And shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. Isaiah 64:5-6

Imagine for a moment the most filthy rag or item of clothing your mind can conjure up. Is it covered in blood? Bugs? Mud? Rotting food? Does it smell of death? Of decay? That is what our greatest deeds are before the Lord.

How then can anyone reach a place where the Lord looks on our works and calls them good enough for Him?

We can’t.

It’s only by His mercy that He will ever look at anything we do as good. But for those who believe in sinless perfectionism they often don’t see the many sins they commit. Or they soften them to see them as less than sin. In my research I discovered that sinless perfectionism isn’t just an idea that some believe will work them to a place where God can save them…for some they believe it is a state they must reach in order to be saved. To them…it is a necessity.

I can’t help but wonder how they manage to reach their idea of salvation if they somehow have to be perfect…without sin…before they can be saved. Scripture tells us that even after we’ve been saved we will never attain perfection. We will continue to sin, we will fail. We are to try to avoid sin but we aren’t told that we will ever be able to live a life free from sin.

Anyone subscribing to the belief of sinless perfection would have to disregard so much of Scripture that I can’t begin to list them all. I’m not even going to try. I would however like to point to one verse that sums it all up for me. This verse says so much to me on the topic of sinless perfection that I believe I could easily know that sinless perfection is heresy if this was the only verse I had to refute it.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1 John 1:8

Can that possibly be any plainer? If we…if anyone…says we have no sin…the truth is not in us. So anyone that believes they have reached a state where they do not sin…is in a state where they do not have the truth.

If that single verse isn’t enough to show us that sinless perfection is a false doctrine then we can look to…

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 1 John 1:10

What more do we need to disprove the teaching of sinless perfection? What more can be said?

 

 

Hold fast

Trials and tribulations come our way. There’s nothing we can do about it but ride out the storm when it hits. We must simply get through it the best we can. I recently had a discussion with my daughter where I told her that it isn’t in the easy times that we grow and learn but in the midst of the hard times that we gain our greatest growth.

It’s in those hard times that so many cry out to the Lord, both the saved and the unsaved…the regenerate and the reprobate. Many people who won’t acknowledge Christ at any other time do so in the midst of trouble or despair. That seems to be something ingrained deep in our human hearts and minds. For many this reaching out to Christ in times of need is as natural as breathing even if they don’t acknowledge His existence at any other time.

For the regenerate though…what do we have to gain during the times of our greatest trials? It’s easy to hold onto our faith…whether real or only surface deep…when things are good, when life is easy. It’s during those times of great stress and personal pain that the truth is so often seen.

I know of at least one person that was saved, regenerated, during a time of deep personal pain. In crying out to the Lord in that pain this person was saved. It was instant. And this person felt the difference. How many people are saved by the Lord during their deepest moments of anguish?

But for those that have already been saved what do we have to learn and gain from that deep place of pain? The Lord has a purpose for all our trials and tribulations. There’s a purpose for everything we experience. What might He be trying to teach us in those moments of despair when we’d do anything to escape the troubles we’re going through?

He’s already saved us, already brought us to Him. That can’t be the purpose of the pain. There has to be something else there. Why would He put us in a situation to go through such hurt when our salvation can’t be the reason?

Is it to teach us a lesson? To punish us for something? To bring us to a deeper understanding of Him? To change something in us? To get us to do something that is in His plan?

We can’t know the answers to those questions until after the pain has passed, until after we have weathered the storm and come out on the other side. Even then we may never know the reason but we can know that there is a reason. We can know that He has a purpose and a plan. We can know that we are to hold fast to our Lord and our faith and ride out the storm.

And we can trust that He is taking us somewhere even if we would rather not go there at the time.

Free will

I’ve found myself in several deep conversations lately as a result of an ongoing discussion with a friend. My husband and I speak often of deep subjects but this conversation with my friend has spawned not only many discussions with my husband but it has also been the cause of a discussion with my sister in law and the cause of much research and Bible reading.

During the course of this conversation with my friend the topic of free will came up. I don’t know who was more surprised…my friend when I said I don’t believe in free will, or me that she was surprised I don’t believe in free will. My surprise came because this friend is second only to my husband in how much she knows about me.

I’ve talked to this friend about so much, let her be privilege to so much of who I am and what I think and feel. And so it was something of a surprise to realize that she didn’t know I don’t believe in free will.

Instead I believe in a God that’s sovereign, a God that controls everything.

I watched a video not long ago by a man that was refuting free will. In it he said something like the Lord is in control of everything that comes to pass. But what stuck with me so strongly, so profoundly, was what he said next…and what comes to pass? The wind blows, we blink, dogs run. That was so meaningful for me.

We blink.

And the Lord controls it.

Yet…this friend of mine, this friend that knows me so well, had no idea that I held that belief. And that surprised me. I’ve been careful what I say to family, careful what I say to most others, but this friend…she’s been privy to my innermost thoughts and beliefs. But more than that she’s one of the few people that actually knows I am the writer of my blog. And there in the posts are all my beliefs.

But apparently…somehow…not my belief on free will.

Years ago I told my mother that I wished I was like a pawn on a chessboard, that when I made a wrong move the Lord would reach down and move me back to the place I was supposed to be. My mother told me to be careful what I said because I wouldn’t really want life to be that way. My response then was the same as it would be today: Oh, yes I do!

Little did I know then that life is very much that way. We are completely within the Lord’s control.

And that is exactly where I want to be.

But somehow I have failed to convey that to the person that, after my husband, knows the most about my innermost thoughts and feelings. That has left me questioning how, exactly, this friend didn’t know that. Did I fail to tell her what I truly believe? If so that’s no longer the case. Did I somehow fail to convey those beliefs in the things I’ve said? Or did she not pick up on what I was meaning since I didn’t spell it out in so many words?

I don’t know how it happened but either way…she knows now.

And so much of what I believe can be summarized as the man in that video said…

We blink.

So simple, so profound. We blink. And the Lord controls all that comes to pass. We blink. Our eyes close for a second and open again. Our eyelashes flutter. Something so insignificant that we don’t pay it any attention. We blink.

I read somewhere that the urge to blink is triggered by the feel of tiny dust particles on our eyelashes. So we blink our eyes to dispel the dust before it gets into our eyes.

As we go about the course of our day, of our life, we blink…how many times? Hundreds? It’s something that holds no meaning, seems to serve no purpose. And yet it does. We blink. Blinking is apparently the result of our bodies clearing away a foreign object before it can invade one of the most sensitive parts of our bodies. It is our bodies way of keeping the eyes clean and moisturized.

There is a purpose to it.

We blink.

Not because it’s insignificant but because it clears away foreign objects so small we can’t even feel them…but the tiny hairs on our eyelids can…and protects our bodies from who knows what. And we see blinking as just something we do.

But it has a greater meaning. It’s part of a bigger plan. It has a purpose, a point. It doesn’t just happen. It’s a response, a reason.

We blink.

We don’t freely choose to blink. Sure, we can make our eyes blink. Sometimes we do so to entertain a child, or even ourselves, but most of the time we blink without thought.

Much like breathing. Have you ever noticed how hard it gets to breathe when you try and make yourself do it? Breathing is so effortless that it happens while we sleep, while we walk and talk, while we’re occupied with the hundreds and thousands of other things we do but that effortless action ceases to be effortless the minute we start trying to control it. I’m not talking about holding your breath. I’m talking about trying to consciously make yourself breathe.

If you’ve never tried it I highly recommend you do so.

All of a sudden what is a natural function goes from happening without any thought or action on your part and becomes something that takes your total attention. You must actively think about making yourself breathe. Your attention becomes focused on that single effort. You can’t make yourself breathe and do something else. The minute your mind goes to doing something else the effort it took to make yourself take a breath is gone…it goes back to being a natural function that requires no effort on your part.

You must battle your own body to make yourself breathe.

Or…you can simply relax, focus on other things, and let your body do what it was designed to do. When you do so the battle against your body ceases.

Why?

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵ nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Acts 17:24-25

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: Isaiah 42:5

I can’t help but see the profound sovereignty of my Lord in the above verses. What do they say about our Lord?

The God who made the world and everything in it… gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. What does that say? What does it mean? He gives not only life, not just breath but everything. Everything.

We have nothing without him.

What then of ‘free will’? We have nothing without the Lord…do we then have the freedom of choosing everything we do? Man would have us think we do. But if we do…then we become responsible for that everything. Scripture says it doesn’t work that way. Scripture says we have everything because God has given it to us.

We’re not only told that the Lord gives us breath but that it’s His breath that gives us life. In Genesis 2:7 we’re told…

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

We didn’t choose life, we don’t just have what we have because…well, because we do…breath and everything is given by the Lord.

I’ve been told that my marriage is a result of a choice I made. This doesn’t take into consideration that Scripture tells us…what God has joined together. It only takes into consideration that I chose to marry my husband. It was a choice I made, something I entered into…apparently out of my own ‘free will’...even though Scripture tells us that in marriage it is God that joins the couple together.

I’ve been told that having babies was a choice I made. That I deliberately chose to have them and therefore they weren’t of the Lord’s will.

How can that be?

… he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Everything. My husband is something that was given to me. My children were given to me. Scripture tells us that children are a blessing from the Lord. Take note of the last part…from the Lord. Anything from the Lord isn’t the result of our choosing. It isn’t a result of our will.

If God is sovereign how can our will make him give us something? How can we acquire a husband…which Scripture says is what God has joined together…out of our choice? If the breath of life is given to man from the Lord how could any choice I made bring my children into existence?

None of that…none of anything…comes about out of our ‘free will’ but out of the will of the Lord and the things He chooses to give us. He…gives…everything. And what is everything?

We blink.

Something so small, so ordinary, so every day, that we pay no attention to it. And yet it was designed to serve a greater purpose. It is an important part of the functioning of our body…so much so that it happens in response to the least stimuli.

We blink.

Think again of what happens when we make ourselves breathe. How hard does breathing become. Scripture explains that too.

If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.  Job 34:14-15

How long could we survive if we had to make ourselves breathe? How long would that breath of life stay in us if we had to control our breathing? What would happen to our breathing…something it takes all of our focus to make happen…when we eat? When we sleep? Sleeping wouldn’t even be a possibility. We would suffocate ourselves the minute we fell asleep. And there would go life. In fact life would never happen because there is no newborn baby that can ever make themselves breathe. They don’t have the ability to do so. It must be involuntary until they are old enough…have grown and developed enough…to not only control their thoughts but to control their bodies. They would die the minute they were born because they wouldn’t have the ability to breathe.

But that doesn’t happen. Why? Because the Lord breathes life into us, He gives us breath as well as life. And so we live. Not because we will it but because He does.

What person ever asked to be born before they were even conceived?

It’s not our will to have life but His. How then can we assume that the God that made the earth, the God that gave us life out of His will then sits around waiting for us to use our ‘free will’ before he can work in our lives?

The answer to these questions…and so many more…lie within the pages of the Bible. Acts 17:26 goes on to tell us…

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,

Look closely at that last part… having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. In that verse we’re told that the Lord has determined…decided…chosen…the time period in which we will live and the location that we will live in. If that isn’t enough to tell us that we are but a product of the Lord’s will…

 “‘In him we live and move and have our being’ Acts 17:28

In him we live. In Him we move. In Him we have our being. In Him. Not out of our ‘free will’, not out of our choices but in Him. In Him we have…everything.

We blink.

²⁹ Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

To say that man has the ‘free will’ to choose and to do disregards so much of Scripture. It takes away the Lord’s sovereignty and places control in the hands and minds of man. It makes God an image in the mind of man…an image that sits around ‘allowing’ us to mess up the life He gave us. It takes the sovereign God of the Bible and turns Him into some paltry being that must wait on man to do something before He can act. Paul so clearly covers that with only a few words that it is so profound in its simplicity.

But who are you, O man…Romans 9:20

Who are you, O man? He is clearly calling the will of man into question. Who do you think you are you mere mortal? You’re questioning a holy God and you think you have the right. Who are you…O man?

Who are you, O man… Who are you, who am I, in reference to an all holy God? Look at a single grain of dirt. Can you make it? Can you make something so simple, so basic, as dirt? I can’t. God did. He made that and more. It’s all there before us. In his creation. He made the dirt and he placed it where He wanted it to be. And He made us and put us where he wants us to be. And yet people want to say that man has the free will to decide if they will believe in God.

 

We blink. Because He made us to do so. We breathe because He gave us life. The above paragraph was taken from the response I wrote to my friend. We can’t make dirt and we can’t make ourselves breathe long enough to sustain our lives for more than a short time. Can you make your heart beat? Can you make your brain function?

 

But people dare to believe that their will controls anything in life. We can’t even control our own ability to live.

 

Who are you, O man…

 

Who are you to question God? Who are you to answer back to God? Who are you…O man…he’s saying you’re nothing but man. God is sovereign, he’s holy, he’s so far beyond man that man is only…o man… and we have no place to question Him.

 

If God is sovereign man has no free will. If man has free will God is not sovereign. It’s either or. It can’t be both. That’s like saying the sky is the ground. Either its sky or its ground. It can’t be both. It’s one or the other. To say that God is sovereign but man has ‘free will’ is to say man and God are on equal levels. God is sovereign…he can do anything, can control anything, but man is powerful in the exercising of his own desires. That puts man on the same level as God. We have the total ability to control what we will believe. We have the total ability to choose…’free will’…to believe in Christ or not. And it disregards John 6:44…

 

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…

 

This says it’s not man that chooses Christ. It’s God that draws man to Christ. It’s not man’s ‘free will’ to choose Christ but God’s will to call him to him.

 

Who are you, O man?

 

Who am I?

 

We can see the very nature of God in all of Scripture. We can see so much of Who the Lord is and who we are not.

 

Who am I that an all sovereign God would take the time to care anything about me? Who am I that a holy God would notice that I even exist? Who am I that he would pay any attention to me? Who am I that a perfect God would love me despite my sins?

 

We’re talking about a God that spoke the world into existence. A God that formed man from dust. A God that wiped out nations. A God that destroyed everything in the world.

 

Who am I?

 

We’re told… What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (James 4:14). And still there are so many that speak of ‘free will’.

 

It hurts my heart to even think of ‘free will’. I ache when I read…who are you, O man. My soul cries out as I say…who am I.

Who am I?

I’m nothing. Just a mere person. My life is but a moment in time for a purpose not of my doing but of my Lord’s. I’m here to take my place in his plan. So much of my life feels as if it’s about me but in reality it’s but a marker in the entire plan of a sovereign God that is working out His will for all of mankind.

Who am I in that?

We blink…

And I’m told that ‘free will’ is the very core of being a Christian. My friend, in her questioning, told me to look to the scriptures. What can I do but cry out…I have. I have looked at the Scriptures. I have studied them. And I’m left asking…who am I, O man?

I see the verses that speak of choosing and I admit I don’t fully understand how all that fits in with the so many verses that show, and prove, that the Lord is working His will in mans life. But when I look to Scripture all I see is the Lord’s will. I can’t find man’s ‘free will’ anywhere.

My friend pointed me to Revelation and the verse that says “'Whosoever will, take freely of…”

I looked that verse up. It’s Revelation 22: 17 and it says…

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.

Look at it. Think about it. Remove the idea of ‘free will’ from your mind and look again. It does say… whosoever will…but…think of that in light of Scripture. Use Scripture to interpret it. How many places in Scripture do we see that man’s hearts are hardened? We can go in depth and look at the why, and the Who, does the hardening of those hearts. Yes, Scripture says whosoever will but it isn’t the ‘free will’ of man. It isn’t God sitting by idly twiddling His thumbs while He waits for man to…Please, please, please…come to Him.

It’s whosoever will according to Scripture…according to the will of God.

And so…look to the Scriptures. I have. And I see God. All God…no man. It’s His creation to do with as He pleases and do with it He does.

We blink.

Who am I…

 

 

What do you have to lose?

I’ve written quite a bit recently on hell, Arminianism, false teachers…

My husband tells me often that I should only write when the Spirit leads me. And I try hard to do just that. This blog started as a place to organize the many thoughts I had about the Lord and Scripture. It’s still that but it’s also more than that. Not all that long ago I wrote a number of posts on marriage, so many, in fact, that I began to wonder if I should stop writing about marriage for a while. As it happened the Lord led me in a different direction not long after I thought that. Now I’ve been on deep, hard issues lately.

There have been things in some of those posts that I hesitated to write or felt bad for writing. The reason I wrote those things despite my feelings was because my feelings shouldn’t be a factor in speaking truth.

There were many times that I spoke of hell in those posts. I have warned against hell in them, posted sermons by preachers that warned against hell.

Now I want to clarify a few things. I’ve been accused of believing that anyone that doesn’t believe as I do will go to hell. I don’t believe that way. I believe that it is the Lords place to determine who does and does not go to hell. I have met many an Arminian that seemed to hold a very deep faith in God. I don’t, nor do I want to, know where and how they fit in with some of the things I read in Scripture. If they are going to hell…I don’t want to know it. If they’re saved…that’s wonderful.

Salvation rests in the Lord’s hands and only in His hands.

I simply write what comes to me. I’m sure that there will be many times that I will write something and I’ll get it wrong. And I’m equally sure that there will be many more times that I will write something that offends the person reading it.

That may very well be the case in some of the posts I’ve written lately. Those were hard posts to write and they may well have been hard posts to read.

If they were hard for you as the reader I beg you…consider why they were hard. What I wrote on was the Truth straight from the Bible as I understand it.

If you believe in any of the beliefs I spoke against…please don’t take my word for it. I am but a fallen person writing about the things the Lord brings my direction. Please look those subjects up for yourself. Don’t take my word for what you read, test it against Scripture yourself.

But I beg you…

Test it against the black and white version of what Scripture says not against any interpretation of Scripture that you’ve heard. While you test what I’ve written…please…disregard everything you’ve been taught and take it straight from the Bible.

Many a professing ‘Christian’ thinks they’re going to heaven when in fact they believe in a ‘Jesus’ that doesn’t exist. Test your Jesus against Scripture. If He’s the Christ of the Bible everything you believe about Him will stand true but if he’s a ‘Jesus’ created in the mind man then he won’t be able to stand up to some of the deeper truths of Scripture.

Test everything you think you know if that’s what it takes.

How many ‘Christians’ are in hell today because they believed in ‘Jesus’? Many ‘Christians’ have been lied to and tricked into believing in a ‘Jesus’ that doesn’t exist. They followed their ‘Jesus’ straight into the flames of hell.

I don’t know what anyone’s beliefs are. I don’t know where you stand. I’m begging you to examine yourselves. Not for me but for you. Test yourself. Test that which you believe in. If what you believe in is the true Christ you will only gain a deeper understanding of your Lord. But if you’re believing in a farce…you stand to gain eternity.

What do you have to lose?

 

How sad

In our modern society so many people see ‘church’ as something that must be attended every Sunday. I saw online where someone asked ‘do you think it’s wrong to play hooky from Church?’ When I saw that my mind immediate answered ‘no’ but then there came one after another responses I could have given.

I wanted to ask her why she would see not attending a service in a worship building as playing hooky from ‘church’. I wanted to say that to even ask such a question was to put too much emphasis on the building and the service. I wanted to say a lot. Instead I said nothing.

But I’m still left with the surprise, amazement, and sadness that came from knowing that this woman put so much importance on ‘church’ that she needed to ask the question. And although I say it was a surprise, it really wasn’t all that surprising. I know of people that equate being a ‘Christian’ with whether or not they go to ‘church’.

It is a product of the lessons taught in so many ‘churches’ even in reformed ‘churches’, so I hear. In a recent blog post I spoke of ‘church’ as being an institution that depends on the people in it falling in line with what is expected of them. That is very much what it is. ‘Church’ buildings depend on member to be there Sunday after Sunday. Preachers depend on the congregation to quietly listen.

They don’t want empty pews and they don’t want their audience asking questions and pointing out where they are wrong. And many of them don’t want you missing a service unless you are deathly ill. They tell you that you need to be in ‘church’ but in reality they need you to be there.

And ‘Christians’ fall for that kind of teaching. They succumb to what they are taught because it’s what the preacher says they need to do and the preacher knows more than they do, right? They think that if a preacher says it, it must be right. They believe what they are taught over what the Bible says because they often don’t know what the Bible says and if they do they assume that they must not know enough of what the Bible says.

They have been raised in the institution of ‘church’ and they fall in line with the teachings it contains much the way a child in elementary schools learns to form their letters a certain way because the teacher tells them they are wrong if they form them a different way. The teacher must know what they’re talking about so the child changes what comes naturally to them to do what the teacher says is the right way. The ‘Christian’ in the ‘church’ does the same thing. They accept what the ‘teacher’ says as the gospel because they assume that that man, being a preacher, knows what he’s talking about. And many times what he’s talking about isn’t from Scripture but from what he thinks is in Scripture or what he’s been told is in there.

The ‘church’ I sometimes attend has a preacher that is fond of quoting James 4:2…You do not have, because you do not ask… I’ve heard him say that many times, in many different sermons. It seems like everytime I visit that ‘church’ he works that verse into the sermon. And yet he fails to read the next part. He stands before a thousand people and tells them ‘you do not have because you do not ask’ and that is where he stops. I have never heard him go any further with that verse…

You do not have, because you do not ask. ³ You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. ⁴ You adulterous people!^[c] Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. James 4:2-4

Where is the rest of the verse? Where is the rest of the teaching? Where is the part that might teach his listeners, his followers, to believe in more than their own wants and desires?

And so sermon after sermon this preacher teaches a half-truth that tells those he teaches that all they need to do is ask to receive. And his listeners put stock in what he says because he is the preacher.

And that is only one example of things preachers teach that don’t portray what Scripture says. And so the false teachings continue. Week after week. ‘Church’ after ‘church’.

And the people that fill the pews don’t suspect that they are being led wrong. They don’t realize that they are placing their faith in the teachings of man and not in the true Christ.

One of the biggest false teachings in the modern ‘church’ is that man must come to Christ, that he must find Christ, that he must ‘choose’ to believe in Jesus, ask Jesus into his heart. Nowhere in Scripture is that taught. Nowhere within the pages of the Bible…except in those added notes and introductions…will you find that. It is a system of working for salvation that in no way supports the true way to salvation.

You did not choose me, but I chose you…John 15:16

Man does not find Christ. Christ draws us to Him and through Him we are saved. But so many ‘Christians’ believe that they must ask Jesus into their hearts to be saved, they believe in the false teaching of the sinners prayer and they place their lives, their salvation in that belief. They are essentially playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun. There is no salvation in a prayer that comes from what man does.

Yet it is a false teaching that is taught in ‘church’ after ‘church’. There are huge mission organizations that spend millions of dollars to further that teaching. They go into foreign countries and teach it to people desperate for a way out of the life they live every day. They teach it to the rich, the poor, and the desperate. They teach it to anyone that will listen then they speak of how many have been saved.

They spread the false gospel that man can save himself by what he does and by what he believes. They are taught that man chooses of his own accord to come to salvation. It is on their own merit that they make the choice to believe in Jesus. It is his decision alone that saves him and only after he makes that decision does he receive grace.

It is a teaching that goes against Scripture.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast… Ephesians 2:8-9

That false teaching has such a strong hold that trying to dissuade anyone of that belief is pretty much like trying to pick up the ocean and move it. It simply can’t be done. There are those, I’m sure, that will listen to Truth but they are few and far between among the I-said-the-prayer-I’m-saved believers.

Despite the fact that so much of what is being taught in the modern ‘church’ people flock to it in large numbers. They accept what is being taught as gospel. So much so that they wind up asking questions like ‘is it okay to play hooky from ‘church?’

They need permission, confirmation, acceptance to be able to stay home from a physical building that labels itself as ‘the church’.

How sad.

 

The 'God' of Arminianism

There was a time when I thought that idols were the little gold statues, or big statues, that are worshipped in other religions. I know now that idols are much more than that. Those are idols, sure, but so are the many, many other things both physical and mental that are put before God.

I was recently in a large city where there stood on every street corner…or so it seemed…large ‘church’ buildings. These buildings were look-at-me buildings. They may or may not have been designed with the intent to draw a person’s attention but the sheer size of them made sure that they caught your attention.

I’ve driven through neighborhoods with houses made on the same scale. Whatever the owner’s reason for building or buying such a huge house it’s quite impossible to drive past one and not notice that it’s there.

And that’s just houses.

            I’ve seen cars that you couldn’t pass without looking at them, whether you liked them or not there was something…the color, the size, the number of toys in the window, the bumper stickers plastered on it…something that drew your attention. How about stores? Playgrounds? Restaurants? The list goes on and on. As you drive through any town, any area, there will be something that draws your attention. On an old country road with no buildings in sight your attention may be drawn to the biggest tree, the brightest flower, or the deepest pothole, but whatever it is…your attention will go to something.

In nature your focus is at least on that which the Lord created. A Christian might drive down that country road or walk through those woods and think about the One who created such a display. But even a Christian is hard pressed to find the Lord in the midst of the look-at-me everything’s that our society has built.

My mind goes time and again to those large ‘church’ buildings. I’ve written of them before and will probably write of them again. They simply stand out in such an extreme way that it’s hard not to think of them.

There’s no doubt in my mind that those huge ‘church’ buildings are idols or at least a place to worship an idol. The building wasn’t built to worship the Christ that was born into this world in a barn. They weren’t put there to worship the God that hates the wicked.

The God I spoke of could care less about big buildings. He’s more concerned with the condition of hearts than of outward appearances. He’d rather have one of His true Children worship him from a cardboard box than a million idolaters from inside a monstrous building.

There is no building that can get anyone closer to Christ.

But it isn’t just buildings that serve as idols in the eyes of those that claim to worship Him. I could probably write a blog post every day for a year on a different something that is worshipped, that’s an idol, and I’d still have so many more things to write about that I could fill another year with daily posts.

The other day my husband said that our country has reached the point of being lovers of pleasure.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. ² For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, ⁵ having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. 2 Timothy 3:1-5

            They will become lovers of pleasure… What in our society hasn’t come to the point of pleasure? What hasn’t moved from serving a purpose in our life to being pleasure? Hunting has gone from a way to feed ones family to a sport. Fishing has done the same thing. Cars have gone from a means of getting from one place to another to a hobby. Clothes are collected to the point of overflowing closets and dressers rather than having just enough to clothe us. And the list goes on.

            I was surprised to discover the other day that there is…at least one…entire website complete with forums dedicated to a certain kind of ink pen. I knew there were websites with forums for flashlights, cloth diapers, parenting, fertility, child raising… But a pen? What can anyone find to talk about a pen enough to dedicate a whole website to it? But there it was before me. When I stumbled on it I took the time to look around. Who wouldn’t? What is there to say about a pen?

            As it turned out…pretty much what you’d expect. Designs, colors, types of ink, colors of ink, ways to use the pen…

            If that’s anything short of idolatry I’m not sure I want to know what it is. Basically if your mind is captured by something…anything…you can probably find a website, and mega store, to support it.

            But it isn’t just things that become idols. It can be a person, a place, or even the way you worship.

            I recently wrote a post on Arminianism. I don’t mind admitting that I felt ill equipped to write that post. I simply didn’t know enough about Arminianism to feel like I could adequately cover it but the need to write on that topic was there and with research I learned what I needed to know to turn out that post.

            It wasn’t until after I finished the post that I began to think of something else. I wrote the facts and my thoughts in that post but I failed to take note of a rather large…rather glaring…detail.

            The Arminian belief is idolatry.

Yes, I said it. It is idolatry. I grew up with that belief, have written many times of how I was taught to believe as a child. I know that other people hold different beliefs than my family did. I know that they practice those beliefs in different ways.

But I’ve noticed something among those that hold to the Arminian belief system. Some of them hold so fast to what they believe that they simply won’t accept correction. Not even if it’s delivered straight from the pages of the Bible.

 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 2 Timothy 3:16

How does a person that professes to believe in the Bible refuse to take correction straight from the pages of the Book they claim to base their most basic beliefs on, claim to learn from?

I’m not saying all Arminian’s are this way, I’m saying some of them are. I know there are others that are easily swayed from one type of belief to another and yet they all hold fast to the same basic belief that if you accept Christ then you are saved. I don’t know enough about the various denominations to be able to give examples of how they all do it but the general consensus seems to be that you must accept Christ to be saved.

That belief puts the individual and their decision, their choice, their free will, above God. And that becomes idolatry.

2 Timothy 3:6-7 goes on to say…

For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, ⁷ always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Something I learned while I was reading about Arminianism was how Arminius started it. He accepted a position to teach at a University that held to reformed beliefs. He pledged that he believed the same way. Then while teaching what was required in his classes he turned around and handed out private…confidential…papers that taught Arminianism.

He was a sneak. He didn’t just stand up and admit what he believed then try to teach it to those that wanted to hear it. He crept into a University teaching reformed faith and secretly taught something that went against, not only his job, but the very Bible he supposedly believed. He led students that trusted what he said was truth astray by teaching them a different doctrine than the one they were supposed to hear at the University.

He poisoned their minds under cover.

And today the things he taught are the number one type of Christianity in America. What he taught under cover in the late 1500’s is now being openly taught in ‘churches’ across the country. It’s filling books and movies. It’s even infiltrated the Bible to the point that one must be careful when buying a Bible with any kind of manmade notes in it lest they get one filled with the same heresy written within its pages.

That is idolatry.

 Arminianism has become synonymous with Christianity. When a person hears the term Christian they think of the Arminian belief. When most people hear the name God they think of the ‘God’ of Arminianism.

And anytime we think of anything higher than we think of God…it’s idolatry.

We’re warned time and again in Scripture to have no other gods, that our God is a jealous God, that idolatry is punishable by eternity in hell and yet…Arminianism is taught as the way to Christ. Those that hold to the Arminian beliefs scoff at those that see the Bible as it is really written. They call the regenerate Christians that try to teach them the dangers of their erroneous beliefs all sorts of names and often kick them out of their ‘church’ buildings.

If their beliefs are the right ones according to Scripture then why do they need to remove those that are using Scripture to point out something other than what they believe? Why can’t they simply use the Bible to contradict the reformed belief being presented to them?

Because idolatry isn’t easily given up. No idol is. And because most of them don’t know the Bible well enough to be able to use it to contradict anything.

Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21

The Arminian belief in ‘God’ is an idol that gets them no closer to Christ than does total disbelief. What’s worse is that in all their certainty…many are still going to hell.

What would the Armenians say about any religion that believed something that went against the Bible? What would they say about a person that believed their salvation lay in anything other than Jesus? And yet they believe strongly in a system of religion that is based on

a gospel that isn’t taught in the Bible. The gospel that was once taught by Arminius and is now so widely accepted and believed was easily seen as being something other than the true Gospel in the 1500’s. Today it is what is considered by most to be the gospel of the Bible.

Arminius’ beliefs catered to the flesh and became popular with in the secular world but was seen by the Church as a heresy, as false doctrine. Arminius was very much a wolf in sheeps clothing. He slipped into a University where only reformed faith was taught, lied about his beliefs to secure a position there, then quietly and secretly set about spreading his beliefs.

These were brand new beliefs, beliefs that Arminius himself held and wanted to share. Like a burgler in the night he snuck into places he wasn’t wanted and took what wasn’t his. He spread lies and gained believers.

How?

Because the belief he shared was something that the secular mind could grab onto. It was a ‘god’ that anyone could have. It was a ‘god’ that man need only to accept to gain acceptance by. Where the reformed church taught the Truth which stated that man can only be saved by God and that unless God saved him he had no way of attaining salvation, Arminius changed all that with a ‘god’ that man need only accept and choose to follow.

No wonder the Arminian belief is so popular today. No wonder it has thousands, millions, of followers. The modern day ‘church’ in America has not only embraced the Arminian belief they have grabbed onto it with both hands and refused to let go. It’s a life raft for a drowning person. It’s hope when there is no hope.

The modern American ‘church’ has not only grabbed onto the Arminian belief…they are chasing after it in large crowds. They’re selling books, movies, and music that promote the belief’s they hold dear. They have conferences and conventions that uplift and encourage, they have revivals, they have Bible studies, schools, colleges, that all promote the Arminian belief.

And they promote a belief that is an idol and not the real Gospel. They promote a ‘God’ that isn’t the God of the Bible.

People that hold to the Arminian belief go into countries where people are desperate for help, they promote the same ‘gospel’ that Arminius did so many years ago, and they ‘convert’ hundreds and thousands of people to a belief system that’s false. Then they report on the vast number of people that have been reached ‘for Christ’.

All this is done because the Lord allows it to happen. It’s done for reasons we can’t know. I have no doubt that the Lord is using the Arminian system to save some of His elect…I’m proof of that.

But it’s still a religious system that not only believes in a false doctrine…they try and share it with as many people as they possibly can.

Years ago mothers used to take their children to what was known as chicken pox parties. The idea behind those parties was that children needed to catch the chicken pox while they were young so when one child came down with them other parents deliberately exposed their child to them in the hope that they would catch them and get them over with.

Arminianism is much like a chicken pox party only most of them don’t realize they’re spreading a false gospel. They ‘catch’ Jesus and then want to spread to it as many people as they possibly can. So they go from house to house trying to share their gospel, they go into impoverished countries offering to help the people there but in exchange those people have to listen to the beliefs they hold dear. They share their ‘Jesus’ and count the number of converts that ‘catch’ him.

And it’s a success because the numbers keep climbing. Their brand of chicken pox has reached epidemic proportion and they keep spreading it.

Never knowing that they’re spreading lies to millions of people. What they believe in gives them hope on earth and they want others to have it. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone needs something to hope in. The problem comes in that what they hope in isn’t there. And when you hope in something that isn’t there…there is no hope.

It’s all a smokescreen that serves no purpose.

‘Here is my ‘Jesus’, accept Him and you will go to heaven with me. We’ll be together in eternity.’ Only their ‘Jesus’ doesn’t save people. He can’t save people because he must wait for them to save themselves. The heaven they think they’ve bought into isn’t waiting for them because it’s being set aside for those that Christ has saved.

The same ‘Jesus’ that they’re sharing with anyone and everyone is so sought after because he supports the secular mind. He allows them to live as they want, to continue to chase after bigger and better things. Their ‘Jesus’ is proud of their big tabernacles they call ‘churches’ and he applauds the sheer numbers of converts that ‘catch’ him. Their ‘Jesus’ is a god of the flesh that puts few if any demands on how they live their lives.

And he is happy when they sell him in their ‘Christian’ books. Happy when they portray him in their movies. Happy when they sing about him in their music.

Whole stores have been opened dedicated to selling the ‘Christianity’ of Arminius. Walk into one of those stores and you must look long and hard to find anything that promotes the true Gospel. Where in that store filled with ‘Christian’ materials is the real Christ? ‘Christians’ are turning out books and other materials sold in those stores at a rate that nearly rivals those in the secular world. ‘Christians’ are making millions off their ‘Christian’ bookstores and the things that are sold there. They’re making millions off false teachings that are spreading heresy.

And the ‘Jesus’ of Arminianism thinks it’s wonderful.

Hollywood, and its miniature versions coming from wherever they come from, have discovered that there’s money to be made in ‘Christian’ movies and they’re turning them out. Some of the more recent so-called ‘Christian’ movies are nearly impossible to find any form of God in them. But people are making millions off these ‘Christian’ films and ‘Christians’ are flocking to them.

And the ‘Jesus’ of Arminianism is thrilled because he is being sold to so many people.

The Arminian ‘Jesus’ is being taught in the seminaries, new preachers are being turned out ready to spread their ‘Jesus’ to anyone that will listen. They’ve been taught where to find their ‘Jesus’ in the Bible and how to teach him to the masses. New ministers are ready to go out and spread ‘Jesus’ far and wide. They’re ready to teach him from their pulpits to people that trust everything they say to be true. They’re ready to push him further by instructing the children they encounter by teaching them ‘Jesus loves you’.

And the ‘Jesus’ of Arminianism loves it.

Arminius taught a religion that the secular mind could grasp and grab onto. The modern day preacher teaches the same religion. It was a religion based on the work of man when Arminius taught it and it is a religion based on the works of man today.

Arminianism has been called many things from great to ‘deep darkness’ (Johnathan Edwards). I think I like the term deep darkness best. There are many people out there that believe in nearly anything but Christ. They chase their ‘gods’, and their beliefs that there is no God but I think for me the saddest part is when they come so close. Some Arminians have a deep belief in their ‘Jesus’. Some of them change their lives for him.

I heard a reformed preacher once say…they will get to heaven and say I was so close. It was there before me.

Armenians are so close. They know that Jesus is the Son of God. They believe that He is. And yet their belief is not in the Jesus that the Bible teaches it’s in a Jesus that they’ve made up in their own minds.

It’s in a ‘Jesus’ that is nothing sort of an idol that stands in the place of Christ. Their ‘Jesus’ hangs on their walls, speaks on their shirts, walls, and cars. Their ‘Jesus’ encourages the spreading of him to as many uninfected people as they can reach.

Let me ask you something…Does that sound like the Jesus of the Bible? It is the Christ that taught that he came not to bring peace but a sword? Is it the Christ that said if they hated me they will hate you?

Christians are told not to worship idols…

Do not turn to idols, nor make for yourselves molded gods: I am the LORD your God. Leviticus 19:4

That hasn’t changed. God’s people have always been forbidden from worshipping idols. Idols are anything that are placed as more important than Christ in our lives. They are things that take His place in our hearts and minds and lives. They are what we seek after, what we chase after.

There are gods for just about anything man can think up. ‘Gods’ of fertility, gods of the stars, gods of prosperity. There are gods of money, gods of things, gods of loved ones…dead and alive.

Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. Isaiah 2:8

Arminianism is just as much idolatry as the worshipping of golden statues. It’s idolatry because it is worshipping a god that doesn’t exist. It’s idolatry because it’s being spread like a disease to those that are desperate for hope in a depraved world. It’s idolatry because it takes the place of Christ and gives credit to a ‘God’ that isn’t the God of the Bible.

Scriptures warns that idols are not to be worshipped. Anything that is worshipped in the place of the one true God is an idol and should be seen as such. But the Arminian ‘God’ can’t be seen that way because he is promoted as being the God of the Bible.

This ‘God’ isn’t the God of the Bible. He holds little resembalence to the God of the Bible even though that ‘God’ did many of the same things that God did. That ‘God’ created the earth. That ‘God’ sent His Son to earth to die for sins. That God can be learned about in the pages of the same Bible that the real God can be.

That ‘God’ takes what God is and changes Him into some idea of what ‘God’ should be based on man’s ideas. The God of the Bible is pushed aside, ignored, laughed at…forgotten…to make way for the ‘God’ of man, the ‘God’ of Arminianism.

Because My people have forgotten Me, They have burned incense to worthless idols. Jeremiah 18:15

They have forgotten God.

When Arminianism was first being taught Arminius was investigated. His beliefs were seen as lies, they were seen as the heresy that they are. Today most people in the American ‘church’ don’t know that there’s any other God than the one that’s being taught from their pulpits.

I grew up in ‘church’ buildings, surrounded by ‘Christians’, even went to a ‘Christian’ school and yet I had no idea that the ‘God’ I was taught loved me was a ‘God’ that others said wasn’t the God of the Bible. I never knew until long after the Lord had changed the way I understood Scripture that the ‘God’ I had grown up believing in didn’t exist. I’ve known many other ‘Christians’ in the Arminian system that don’t know there’s any other God than the one that they’ve been taught. Though they hold the Word of God in their hands they simply have no idea that what they’ve essentially been brainwashed to believe doesn’t exist within the pages of the very Book they base their entire belief on.

Most of them wouldn’t know the term Arminian if you asked them what it meant. It was a term I never heard uttered in the many years, the many ‘churches’, I was a part of that system.

The ‘Jesus’ of Arminianism is a well guarded idol  and most of his followers have no idea that he is nothing more than an imaginary idol created hundreds of years ago by a man that promoted him in secret.

Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. Jonah 2:8

How many people lose all hope of mercy when they believe in this ‘Jesus’ that doesn’t exist? How many place their faith in a ‘God’ that will do nothing for them? How many ‘Christians’ that spent their lives believing in, teaching about, ‘Jesus’ are in hell right now?

How many of them cry from the depths of torture ‘I was so close’?

What of the ‘God’ that wants only good things for you? What of the ‘God’ that allows you to claim all the blessings of this life? What of the ‘God’ that encourages chasing the things of the world?

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul… Matthew 16:26

Does that sound like a God that wants you to have prosperity on earth? Does it sound like a God that wants to give man the many blessings this earth has to offer? Or is it a god made up in the secular mind of man? A god that has been created to cater to the earthly desires of man?

What profit is the image, that its maker should carve it, the molded image, a teacher of lies, that the maker of its mold should trust in it, to make mute idols? Habakkuk 2:18

What profit is an image of god that isn’t God? What good does it do to have a god that can’t save the people he supposedly loves? How powerful is a god who sits back with tied hands awaiting man to come to him before he can act on their behalf?

But more than that, notice the words in the middle of the above verse… a teacher of lies. That is exactly what Arminius was…a teacher of lies…and it is what those that continue to teach the Arminian belief are. They are teachers of lies.

Teachers of half-truths, deceptions, outright lies, that they go around teaching to others, filling their heads with those things until they can’t see that there’s any mistruth to them.

Where does such a deception come from?

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44

I have heard many a preacher tell his audience that if the devil isn’t afflicting them then they aren’t ‘right with God’ because the devil doesn’t need to try to tempt those that aren’t ‘right with God’. Based off that statement…I have to ask…does the devil even need to mess with the ‘church’ in America today? His lies were spread far and wide and the many believers have fallen victim to them, they worship a god that doesn’t exist, they hold to doctrines that aren’t true, and they refuse to believe the ‘lies’ of people that try and show them the God of the Bible.

Idolatry is rampant in what is commonly believed to be ‘God’s’ people. They worship a god that doesn’t exist and because their god allows it…they worship many of the things of the world. Their god is a god of the secular mind, a god that lets them live as they want to and hold fast to ‘god’ at the same time.

People study the Bible, think on its verses, interpret them with their ideas of what they should be instead of seeing them for what they are, they write it in books, put it in movies, teach it as gospel…and other people grab onto it like it’s a rope thrown to a drowning man.

Christians are to keep themselves from idols…

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. 1 John 5:21

We are to keep ourselves from idols whether they are physical idols or mental, real or imaginary. God hates idolatry. He specifically spoke against it in the Ten Commandments, warned against it time and again in Scripture, gave examples of what it is.

Idols are imaginary gods made up by man’s deprived mind to give the sinner something to focus on because he can’t focus on Christ. No matter what the idol is, what form it takes, it is simply something that takes the place of Christ. Idols are useless things that serve no purpose beyond the need that the unregenerate place on them. They have one purpose…that of leading people far from Christ. Sinners minds and hearts are so busy following after their idols that they have no room for Christ.

Arminianism is an idol that pulls people far away from the real God and gives them a ‘god’ that they can grab onto.  It gives them a ‘god’ that has no real value, a ‘god’ that is held captive by the will of man, a ‘god’ that can do nothing unless man allows him to. A ‘god’ that serves the whims of man, a ‘god’ that caters to his desires, a ‘god’ that is what man wants him to be.

You can find this ‘god’ in just about any place that you see the term ‘christian’. If you don’t like the ‘god’ that’s in one ‘Christian’ establishment you can shop around until you find the kind of ‘god’ that you like.

That ‘god’ has no value beyond what man places on him. That ‘god’ does nothing for man’s soul. That ‘god’ gets his believers no closer to salvation than they were when they caught him.

Years ago while attending an Arminian ‘church’ I was taught that the earth is only a battle ground where souls are tested so that it can be figured out which ones follow Satan and which ones follow Jesus. That isn’t what I believe now but it was widely taught in that ‘church’ building. Earth was essentially seen as a war zone between Jesus and the devil. People were put here so that Jesus could know who followed Him that way only those that believed in Him would make it into heaven.

Let me say…I do not believe that way, I’m not sure I ever did, but it was taught in a ‘church’ I went to.

But…if a person subscribed to that philosophy…why would the devil need to do anything in the modern American ‘church’? The battle for souls has already been won there…if it were a battle…because the masses of people that flock to their buildings, that fill their pews, believe in a ‘god’ that doesn’t exist. There’s no need to fight over something you already own.

The truth of why man was put on earth is far different than the reason that was given in that ‘church’. There is no battle because God doesn’t need to fight for those that are His.

But if things were as that ‘church’ said…why would the devil have to battle when he’s already won?

The Bible is clear that idolaters will go to hell. Those in the idolatry of the Arminian belief are already lost. If earth were a battle ground the war for those souls is over.

Sadly, that’s just one of many of the false teachings served up in the Arminian ‘church’. The ‘deep darkness’ of the Arminian belief system perpetuates that which does not come from Scripture and they do so at an alarming pace, converting as many as they can to their belief.

And many of them do so in ignorance.

Will ignorance save them from condemnation from the God that they don’t serve? Scripture says it won’t.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6

Week after week, service after service, the ‘god’ of Arminianism is worshipped, often in ignorance. He’s perpetuated far and wide. He’s accepted and revered while the true God of the Bible is forgotten.

I don’t know about you but I find the verses about God forgetting our children, or visiting the iniquity of the fathers onto the children… I don’t know what it makes me feel exactly other than the fact that it is a vivid reminder of the power of God and how far He will go in His wrath against the wicked.

He will forget the children because the parents forgot Him. While Arminians believe they are worshipping God, they have…instead…no knowledge of Him. The ‘God’ they worship is not the God of the Bible.

You shall have no other gods before^[me. Exodus 20:3         

… for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…Exodus 20:5

If you read through Exodus 20:3-5 you get a very clear picture of what God thinks of idolatry…

You shall have no other gods before me. ⁴ “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me

Those verses pretty much spell out the whole of idolatry. Have no gods before me. Do not bow down to serve them. I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children…of those who hate me.

God equates idolatry with hating him and the punishment doesn’t stop with the person that commits it but is passed onto the children for three and four generations.

Arminianism is serving a ‘god’ that isn’t the God of the Bible. It’s idolatry. It’s worshipping a ‘god’ that doesn’t exisit. And it’s being taught to people in a repetitious cycle that is passed from parent to child.

Does that sound like a god that loves his people or does it sound like the wrath of a God that is punishing not only the parents but the children too?

As I write this post I find myself thinking of what I wrote toward the beginning. The god of Arminianism was created in the mind of a man, he was taught to others through deceit and lies, through sneaking. He crept into the minds of young people that were deceived by lies. That ‘god’ is now considered to be the living ‘God’ of ‘Christianity.’ He lives in the hearts and minds of people that claim to put their faith in Christ. He is taught from their pulpits, in their movies, in their books, in their songs, and in their Bibles.

Stop and think about that for a brief moment. The Arminian ‘God’ was created in the mind of a man.

That ‘God’ must be happy about that.

The Arminian ‘God’ has taken over the God of the Bible as the ‘God’ of ‘Christianity’.

Their ‘God’ must be happy about that.

The Arminian ‘God’ lives in the hearts and minds of people that claim to seek God.

Their ‘God’ must be happy about that.

The Arminian ‘God’ is taught from their pulpits and in their entertainment.

Their ‘God’ must be happy about that.

Now I ask you…Does their ‘God’ sound like God…or does it sound like lies that have been fed to people. Does it sound like God or does it sound like a warped version of God? Does it sound like God or…

Satan?