Post by bondslavenchrist on Jan 19, 2008 12:22:23 GMT -5
CORRECTNESS 1/19/2008
Brothers and Sisters,
Many years ago, shortly after I was first saved, I became aware of certain things in my life and my relationship with the Lord. It did not take me too long before I “knew” I was right about many things. I would teach, I would correct, I would do many things and would listen to no one because I knew the Truth.
Well, God being Who He is, allowed me to fall on my face so that I would then begin to trust in Him in the manner HE desired. So, after about 15 years, I began to understand that I had to be right about what I believed. I just knew that whatever it was that I believed truly had to be correct. So I set out to make sure that I was RIGHT!
I studied and read and studied some more. I prayed and asked God to show me His truth and then read other authors and writings. I knew so many of the differing theologies and doctrines. I could keep up with the best of the Theologians, using their language and terms. My kids hated me, my wife would say, “I am so tired of you analyzing everything TO DEATH.”, people avoided me, I was hard, unbending, and I KNEW I was right.
How wrong I was.
So, after several more years I came to a place where I found out I was NOT right; that I was absolutely wrong, even though many of the doctrines I held may have been scripturally correct in man’s sight. But just because I thought those ideas were correct, did not make them so!
I found I was relying on myself and not on the Lord. I was using man’s ideas to explain how God operates instead of just believing God and trusting in Him.
Today, He has completely changed my life. I understand that I am not right. ONLY JESUS is correct. Now He will indeed make us right, but ONLY as we submit to Him. If we attempt to get correct doctrine by studying, reading authors, scrutinizing various theologies, investigating commentaries and all other such things, we are NOT relying on the Lord but rather we are relying on ourselves and what we can accomplish.
This is not how we are to live as Christians. We are to implicitly TRUST the Lord in every way and in every circumstance. HE will lead us into His truth, we cannot find it out in our strength. Only the Lord KNOWS the truth, mankind does not. No doctrine of man, no religion, no ideology, no theology, nothing that man has designed is true and good.
Brothers and Sisters, this does not mean that some of these doctrines, theologies, ideas, etc do not contain some truth. But just because there is some truth in them DOES NOT MAKE THEM TRUE in God’s sight. We can go to many of the worlds religions and find some scriptural truth in them. Confucianism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Muslim, and there are so many more that all have some true things in what they teach, yet that does not make those religions TRUE!
But man will be man. He wants to be in control. Let us look to the beginning and see what God did not want us to have when He created Adam and Eve.
Gen 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
WHY?
Gen 3:5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil and blessing and calamity.
Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good (suitable, pleasant) for food and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate.
Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves apronlike girdles.
Even though Satan is the one who speaks through the serpent regarding what eating from the tree will do for mankind, it is the truth as we see in Genesis 2 when God says the same thing. Satan just did not add the part about dying and being separated from God.
(And for all of those who believe in this Open Theism idea and cannot understand how God can say something and not mean it like they think, please explain Gen 2:17 for Adam and Eve did NOT die on the day they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and Blessing and Calamity. Did God lie? Perhaps you do not understand as clearly as you think you do.)
Now look at God’s response.
Gen 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of Us [the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], to know [how to distinguish between] good and evil and blessing and calamity; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever--
Gen 3:23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
Gen 3:24 So [God] drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep and guard the way to the tree of life. [Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19.]
So one thing we can see clearly here is that God does say that mankind received the power to determine for himself how to distinguish between good and evil and blessing and calamity. God had to fix this so that man would cease to rely on himself for this determination and that was part of why Jesus Christ came, so that we could return to this time where we came to God to determine everything that was good and evil and blessing and calamity. God did not want mankind to possess this, though He always knew mankind would indeed choose this way if they were created as free moral agents. But then only free moral agents will ever be able to choose to LOVE GOD with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength. If they were not free, they would be robots and God would KNOW He made them that way and they had NO CHOICE in the matter; He would KNOW that mankind HAD to “love” Himself because He would have hardwired it into them. God being a loving God could not force someone to LOVE HIM! That is not true love. That is only coercion.
So, one of the things that we as Christians must come to is a place where we no longer choose for ourselves what is good and evil and blessing and calamity. Instead, we must have our minds fixed, changed, renewed back to this time prior to Adam and Eve’s sin so that we no longer determined for ourselves what is good and evil and blessing and calamity, but go to the Lord in ALL cases to find out from HIM these things. We are commanded NOT to rely on our own understanding, what we can figure out. But that is almost always what man does.
Man must analyze everything; figure it out; determine for himself how something works; how it functions; even how God operates. Man does not want to rely on God. As long as man is determining what he thinks is good and evil, then man is the one who is in control, NOT GOD! This is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When we study the Bible, study commentaries, writings, authors, listen to sermons, etc, and look at them to see if they are in agreement with the Bible, we are the ones who are determining what is good and evil.
We must remove this whole attitude from our lives. We can no longer rely on what we think is right, what is good, evil, blessing, or calamity. We cannot determine correct doctrine, we cannot determine the truth, what is right, what is wrong. When we are doing this, we are not listening to God but rather we are filtering whatever we read, listen to, study, or whatever, through our preconceived notions and ideas and our own understandings.
How will we know we are living in this manner? What do we quote? What do we go to in order to prove what we believe? How did we come about our current belief? Did we receive it from God or did we study to gain the understanding?
When I say did we receive it from God, I mean just that. Did God speak to us and tell us His truth OR did we read it in the Bible, or study it from some commentary, figure it out from some lexicon, some doctrine that is described by man in a book, article, sermon, etc?
So many people read some author and agree with something the author says and thinks in their hearts, “This person writes the Truth.” There you go, you have made THE mistake! You determined for yourself what was Good. People do this all the time when they have not ceased from their own labors and study thinking they know what is right and good. It is from this type of study, this type of thinking that we have over 30,000 denominations.
My friends, the only reliable information comes directly from the Lord. Even our study of the Bible will do us no good at all if we are the ones determining what is right and wrong, if we are looking up all the Hebrew and Greek words to try to figure out for ourselves what it is that the Bible is telling us. Man has come up with so many different doctrines and ideas and they almost all have their origin in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; studying like we did in school in order to figure out what we should believe. This is what the seminaries do; teach from man’s experience, man’s ideas of what the Bible says and then expect us all to agree. As long as we rely on this type of study, on this type of determining the truth, we will only perpetuate the same denominational error that has occurred since the First century after Christ.
From my own history and from what I have seen in the life of men since my youth, I have seen this same desire for being correct as a driving force in people and especially in men. But I did not recognize these things until the Lord apprehended me and opened my eyes to HIS truth. Until this time, NO ONE could debate with me and win, for I was always right. I made sure of it. I had all of my doctrines down pat. I had all of the scriptural proofs ready to stand up and be counted in all situations. Even prior to my salvation I had studied the Bible and was able to confound a Church of Christ pastor and back him into a corner where he either had to admit his doctrine as false or reject the truth; he rejected the truth!
This is what happens when we rely on ourselves, our studying and understanding. We become intrinsically invested in what we proclaim to such an extent that we refuse to be corrected even in the face of biblical truth! The Bible says directly that we will not be gathered to Jesus Christ until after the end of the tribulation, and some will refuse to see it because it makes their doctrine false! We would rather be false with man than be rejected with God.
Because of these things, man has come up with some very wild ideas about the Bible and God. Some have suggested that God is limited; others say God is a blessing machine who sits on a throne to make us happy; others say God ALWAYS wants us to be rich; some say all people will be saved (some even say satan will be saved); and it goes on and on. We do not want to admit we are wrong, that all of our study has been for naught. We are unwilling to believe that we can study and pour over the scriptures, compare various translations, even look to the original languages and come up with something that is false.
We do not want to admit that man is so corrupt and will never be any good. We do not want to admit that even with Jesus that we must totally rely on the Lord to lead and guide us in all our ways ALL the time and not once rely on ourselves. We do not want to believe we are that evil, that we are that foreign to God and His ways. We want to believe the best of ourselves and often, the worst of our fellows. We think that we get better as we “grow” up in Christ, never realizing that until we are dead and we truly receive the very nature of Jesus Christ in our hearts so that sin is foreign in our spirit, soul, and body, there is no way we can ever even BEGIN to grow in Christ Jesus.
Everything we have done up to this point is just a matter of controlled behavior, training our behavior no different than if we had trained a dog. But the dog, never changes its nature. Most Christians, never have their nature changed either! They remain as they were prior to their “salvation”. The inside is filthy still; they have a corrupt, carnal nature within and no amount of behavior modification will ever alter the inside in the least. This is man. HE wants to be right in his ways in his own sight! He does not want anyone to be able to disprove him or show him he is wrong. He will often cling to the death to some doctrine he has studied and proven to his own satisfaction, never once denying himself. Going to the cross to die and follow Jesus the whole way. He thinks if he alters his actions, his behavior that is sufficient. But in reality, he has done nothing different than the Pharisees did, thinking all of their doctrines correct, their teachings and ideology faultless, never realizing they were destroying themselves with all of their study and self control (which was in reality self righteousness)
It is the same today; especially in the Christian world. We have all of these higher institutions of learning, colleges, seminaries, bible schools, etc, and we think if we go there and get a degree we will become better Christians or be prepared to be pastors, evangelists, and missionaries. We tell our kids, the people in our churches to go to Christian schools to learn how to walk with Jesus, but all we are really doing is teaching them all to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what is blessing and calamity!
People study and read and find some teaching of man that they agree with. It may sound like it agrees with scripture, have many scriptural references and indeed may actually give some sense in the person’s heart and mind that they believe God has said these things. Then they go and find all the places in the Bible that agrees with their doctrine. They have NEVER gone to the scriptures and asked God what HE means. They did not lay down their preconceived notions and ideas and ask God what they should believe. NO! They read and figured it out for themselves. They decided they knew what was right and wrong, good and evil, blessing and calamity for themselves and believed that. They chose to ignore the warnings of scripture that tells us we are NOT to rely on ourselves, that we are NOT to rely on any personal interpretation of those scriptures but ONLY to obey the Holy Spirit, to be truly led by Him and Him alone, not by our thoughts, not by our ideas, not by our study, not by what we think is good and evil.
This is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil no different than Adam and Eve did. It results in the very same kind of life that Adam and Eve had AFTER the fall! Unless we repent of these things, unless we repent of being correct in ourselves, in what we think, in what we believe, we will continue in that life which is no life!
Anyone who reads these words may not like them, may find them difficult to accept, may not believe that the words could ever apply to them. But they apply to every single person who ever makes the decision to believe in anything except what comes to them directly from God. Who is the author and finisher of our faith?
Heb 12:1 THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
Heb 12:2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [Ps. 110:1.]
Heb 12:3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds.
Heb 12:4 You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood.
It is THIS JESUS CHRIST who is the source, NOT some doctrine, not the scriptures, not anything except Himself alone! Absolute obedience and submission to Him in all things INCLUDING in what is right and wrong, what is good and evil! Not determining for ourselves what we are to believe but only going to Him who is our SOURCE for everything in our lives in Christ Jesus. He is our faith, obedience, doctrine, godliness, holiness, righteousness, sanctification, and everything else that we will ever need. As long as we are determining what we are to believe by our own study, our own minds, our own understanding, we are NOT trusting Him in all things.
I know that there will be those who choose not to accept this. We will see them as those who promote men’s doctrines and ideas. They may use the Bible to “prove” their ideas, but they will not have gone to the Lord to find out what He says and believe that. They will always cite their men’s doctrines, and not the Lord Himself. All men’s doctrines are the attempts of man to explain God in human terms, understandings, and limitations. They are not God’s TRUTH revealed to the person by the Holy Spirit and then reconfirmed in scripture.
One who bases their life truly in God can let God teach others for He will always teach them the same things. One who bases their life in man’s doctrines and teachings will always point other to those doctrines and never allow the Lord to be their Teacher! The “proselyte” must have the special teachings that come only from those special men and women who have been shown God’s truth and those few who can understand it. True faith will always come from the Lord alone when WE as His children lay down ALL of our previous ideas, understandings, doctrines, teachings, etc and go to HIM to teach us by revelation from the Holy Spirit. He will indeed teach any person who comes to Him in this manner the very same things, FOR THEY ARE HIS TRUTH, and His Truth never changes!
Because most people refuse to lay down all of these things, is one of the reasons we have so many contradictory doctrines and denominations. They almost all have their source in man and his ideas, thinking he knows what is good and evil above or instead of God Himself.
We can choose to figure it out for ourselves or we can choose to utterly trust God. If you doubt the things I say, then in order to prove this wrong, lay down everything. I do mean everything and do so honestly. Do not trust yourself at all. Tell God something like,
“Father God, I have sinned before You. I have determined for myself what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. I have held onto my own understanding instead of relying on You for all things. Please forgive me and cleanse me from this sin. Now I ask You O Lord to teach my by Your Holy Spirit. Help me to truly hear Your voice, to know what it is that You are telling me and teaching me. I choose to trust that You will indeed teach and I choose to believe You even above what I think is right and good and evil and wrong. Even if You teach me things that contradict the things I have previously held dear, I decide to absolutely Trust You my Lord to lead and guide me ONLY into YOUR ABSOLUTE TRUTH! I have decided not to ever rely on my own understanding again but only what You tell me, only what the Holy Spirit teaches me. I know I have believed in lies in the past due to deciding for myself what was good and evil. Therefore, I ask You Father God to help me let go of absolutely everything that I currently hold onto that is not YOU ALONE! I thank You for all of these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ.”
Please excuse this simple rendition of a prayer that must be a heart cry within us where we cease to ever rely on ourselves in any way again. I know what God will do. I have seen what God will teach. No, I do not know everything. I am no authority. I am only a messenger who speaks the truth. If you refuse to be offended and so choose to trust the Lord exclusively, then I know you will understand. If you do not choose to do this, then you will never understand. Those who choose not to do this, COULD be among those that Jesus will come to at the last day and say,
Mat 7:21 Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name and driven out demons in Your name and done many mighty works in Your name?
Mat 7:23 And then I will say to them openly (publicly), I never knew you; depart from Me, you who act wickedly [disregarding My commands]. [Ps. 6:8.]
Only those who love the TRUTH so much that they are willing to be wrong about everything they currently believe actually do love the Truth. They KNOW they can absolutely trust the Lord to teach them ONLY HIS truth and they will begin to realize how often they have been wrong about so many things. Only Jesus is Right, and Good, and Correct. He will make us that way IF we cease from our own labors, our own studies, our own everything and absolutely, and entirely truly put all of our trust ONLY in our Lord Jesus Christ alone, and never even in our own abilities, understandings, intelligence, ideas, or anything else that is our own. Only Jesus is our ALL. Only Jesus will lead us in His Truth. Only Jesus will keep us in His truth. Only Jesus is reliable for all things spiritual.
A bondslave in Christ Jesus, Dirk
Brothers and Sisters,
Many years ago, shortly after I was first saved, I became aware of certain things in my life and my relationship with the Lord. It did not take me too long before I “knew” I was right about many things. I would teach, I would correct, I would do many things and would listen to no one because I knew the Truth.
Well, God being Who He is, allowed me to fall on my face so that I would then begin to trust in Him in the manner HE desired. So, after about 15 years, I began to understand that I had to be right about what I believed. I just knew that whatever it was that I believed truly had to be correct. So I set out to make sure that I was RIGHT!
I studied and read and studied some more. I prayed and asked God to show me His truth and then read other authors and writings. I knew so many of the differing theologies and doctrines. I could keep up with the best of the Theologians, using their language and terms. My kids hated me, my wife would say, “I am so tired of you analyzing everything TO DEATH.”, people avoided me, I was hard, unbending, and I KNEW I was right.
How wrong I was.
So, after several more years I came to a place where I found out I was NOT right; that I was absolutely wrong, even though many of the doctrines I held may have been scripturally correct in man’s sight. But just because I thought those ideas were correct, did not make them so!
I found I was relying on myself and not on the Lord. I was using man’s ideas to explain how God operates instead of just believing God and trusting in Him.
Today, He has completely changed my life. I understand that I am not right. ONLY JESUS is correct. Now He will indeed make us right, but ONLY as we submit to Him. If we attempt to get correct doctrine by studying, reading authors, scrutinizing various theologies, investigating commentaries and all other such things, we are NOT relying on the Lord but rather we are relying on ourselves and what we can accomplish.
This is not how we are to live as Christians. We are to implicitly TRUST the Lord in every way and in every circumstance. HE will lead us into His truth, we cannot find it out in our strength. Only the Lord KNOWS the truth, mankind does not. No doctrine of man, no religion, no ideology, no theology, nothing that man has designed is true and good.
Brothers and Sisters, this does not mean that some of these doctrines, theologies, ideas, etc do not contain some truth. But just because there is some truth in them DOES NOT MAKE THEM TRUE in God’s sight. We can go to many of the worlds religions and find some scriptural truth in them. Confucianism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Mormonism, Muslim, and there are so many more that all have some true things in what they teach, yet that does not make those religions TRUE!
But man will be man. He wants to be in control. Let us look to the beginning and see what God did not want us to have when He created Adam and Eve.
Gen 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden;
Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
WHY?
Gen 3:5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil and blessing and calamity.
Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good (suitable, pleasant) for food and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate.
Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves apronlike girdles.
Even though Satan is the one who speaks through the serpent regarding what eating from the tree will do for mankind, it is the truth as we see in Genesis 2 when God says the same thing. Satan just did not add the part about dying and being separated from God.
(And for all of those who believe in this Open Theism idea and cannot understand how God can say something and not mean it like they think, please explain Gen 2:17 for Adam and Eve did NOT die on the day they ate the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and Blessing and Calamity. Did God lie? Perhaps you do not understand as clearly as you think you do.)
Now look at God’s response.
Gen 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of Us [the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], to know [how to distinguish between] good and evil and blessing and calamity; and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever--
Gen 3:23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
Gen 3:24 So [God] drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep and guard the way to the tree of life. [Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19.]
So one thing we can see clearly here is that God does say that mankind received the power to determine for himself how to distinguish between good and evil and blessing and calamity. God had to fix this so that man would cease to rely on himself for this determination and that was part of why Jesus Christ came, so that we could return to this time where we came to God to determine everything that was good and evil and blessing and calamity. God did not want mankind to possess this, though He always knew mankind would indeed choose this way if they were created as free moral agents. But then only free moral agents will ever be able to choose to LOVE GOD with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength. If they were not free, they would be robots and God would KNOW He made them that way and they had NO CHOICE in the matter; He would KNOW that mankind HAD to “love” Himself because He would have hardwired it into them. God being a loving God could not force someone to LOVE HIM! That is not true love. That is only coercion.
So, one of the things that we as Christians must come to is a place where we no longer choose for ourselves what is good and evil and blessing and calamity. Instead, we must have our minds fixed, changed, renewed back to this time prior to Adam and Eve’s sin so that we no longer determined for ourselves what is good and evil and blessing and calamity, but go to the Lord in ALL cases to find out from HIM these things. We are commanded NOT to rely on our own understanding, what we can figure out. But that is almost always what man does.
Man must analyze everything; figure it out; determine for himself how something works; how it functions; even how God operates. Man does not want to rely on God. As long as man is determining what he thinks is good and evil, then man is the one who is in control, NOT GOD! This is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When we study the Bible, study commentaries, writings, authors, listen to sermons, etc, and look at them to see if they are in agreement with the Bible, we are the ones who are determining what is good and evil.
We must remove this whole attitude from our lives. We can no longer rely on what we think is right, what is good, evil, blessing, or calamity. We cannot determine correct doctrine, we cannot determine the truth, what is right, what is wrong. When we are doing this, we are not listening to God but rather we are filtering whatever we read, listen to, study, or whatever, through our preconceived notions and ideas and our own understandings.
How will we know we are living in this manner? What do we quote? What do we go to in order to prove what we believe? How did we come about our current belief? Did we receive it from God or did we study to gain the understanding?
When I say did we receive it from God, I mean just that. Did God speak to us and tell us His truth OR did we read it in the Bible, or study it from some commentary, figure it out from some lexicon, some doctrine that is described by man in a book, article, sermon, etc?
So many people read some author and agree with something the author says and thinks in their hearts, “This person writes the Truth.” There you go, you have made THE mistake! You determined for yourself what was Good. People do this all the time when they have not ceased from their own labors and study thinking they know what is right and good. It is from this type of study, this type of thinking that we have over 30,000 denominations.
My friends, the only reliable information comes directly from the Lord. Even our study of the Bible will do us no good at all if we are the ones determining what is right and wrong, if we are looking up all the Hebrew and Greek words to try to figure out for ourselves what it is that the Bible is telling us. Man has come up with so many different doctrines and ideas and they almost all have their origin in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; studying like we did in school in order to figure out what we should believe. This is what the seminaries do; teach from man’s experience, man’s ideas of what the Bible says and then expect us all to agree. As long as we rely on this type of study, on this type of determining the truth, we will only perpetuate the same denominational error that has occurred since the First century after Christ.
From my own history and from what I have seen in the life of men since my youth, I have seen this same desire for being correct as a driving force in people and especially in men. But I did not recognize these things until the Lord apprehended me and opened my eyes to HIS truth. Until this time, NO ONE could debate with me and win, for I was always right. I made sure of it. I had all of my doctrines down pat. I had all of the scriptural proofs ready to stand up and be counted in all situations. Even prior to my salvation I had studied the Bible and was able to confound a Church of Christ pastor and back him into a corner where he either had to admit his doctrine as false or reject the truth; he rejected the truth!
This is what happens when we rely on ourselves, our studying and understanding. We become intrinsically invested in what we proclaim to such an extent that we refuse to be corrected even in the face of biblical truth! The Bible says directly that we will not be gathered to Jesus Christ until after the end of the tribulation, and some will refuse to see it because it makes their doctrine false! We would rather be false with man than be rejected with God.
Because of these things, man has come up with some very wild ideas about the Bible and God. Some have suggested that God is limited; others say God is a blessing machine who sits on a throne to make us happy; others say God ALWAYS wants us to be rich; some say all people will be saved (some even say satan will be saved); and it goes on and on. We do not want to admit we are wrong, that all of our study has been for naught. We are unwilling to believe that we can study and pour over the scriptures, compare various translations, even look to the original languages and come up with something that is false.
We do not want to admit that man is so corrupt and will never be any good. We do not want to admit that even with Jesus that we must totally rely on the Lord to lead and guide us in all our ways ALL the time and not once rely on ourselves. We do not want to believe we are that evil, that we are that foreign to God and His ways. We want to believe the best of ourselves and often, the worst of our fellows. We think that we get better as we “grow” up in Christ, never realizing that until we are dead and we truly receive the very nature of Jesus Christ in our hearts so that sin is foreign in our spirit, soul, and body, there is no way we can ever even BEGIN to grow in Christ Jesus.
Everything we have done up to this point is just a matter of controlled behavior, training our behavior no different than if we had trained a dog. But the dog, never changes its nature. Most Christians, never have their nature changed either! They remain as they were prior to their “salvation”. The inside is filthy still; they have a corrupt, carnal nature within and no amount of behavior modification will ever alter the inside in the least. This is man. HE wants to be right in his ways in his own sight! He does not want anyone to be able to disprove him or show him he is wrong. He will often cling to the death to some doctrine he has studied and proven to his own satisfaction, never once denying himself. Going to the cross to die and follow Jesus the whole way. He thinks if he alters his actions, his behavior that is sufficient. But in reality, he has done nothing different than the Pharisees did, thinking all of their doctrines correct, their teachings and ideology faultless, never realizing they were destroying themselves with all of their study and self control (which was in reality self righteousness)
It is the same today; especially in the Christian world. We have all of these higher institutions of learning, colleges, seminaries, bible schools, etc, and we think if we go there and get a degree we will become better Christians or be prepared to be pastors, evangelists, and missionaries. We tell our kids, the people in our churches to go to Christian schools to learn how to walk with Jesus, but all we are really doing is teaching them all to decide for themselves what is right and wrong, what is good and evil, what is blessing and calamity!
People study and read and find some teaching of man that they agree with. It may sound like it agrees with scripture, have many scriptural references and indeed may actually give some sense in the person’s heart and mind that they believe God has said these things. Then they go and find all the places in the Bible that agrees with their doctrine. They have NEVER gone to the scriptures and asked God what HE means. They did not lay down their preconceived notions and ideas and ask God what they should believe. NO! They read and figured it out for themselves. They decided they knew what was right and wrong, good and evil, blessing and calamity for themselves and believed that. They chose to ignore the warnings of scripture that tells us we are NOT to rely on ourselves, that we are NOT to rely on any personal interpretation of those scriptures but ONLY to obey the Holy Spirit, to be truly led by Him and Him alone, not by our thoughts, not by our ideas, not by our study, not by what we think is good and evil.
This is eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil no different than Adam and Eve did. It results in the very same kind of life that Adam and Eve had AFTER the fall! Unless we repent of these things, unless we repent of being correct in ourselves, in what we think, in what we believe, we will continue in that life which is no life!
Anyone who reads these words may not like them, may find them difficult to accept, may not believe that the words could ever apply to them. But they apply to every single person who ever makes the decision to believe in anything except what comes to them directly from God. Who is the author and finisher of our faith?
Heb 12:1 THEREFORE THEN, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
Heb 12:2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. [Ps. 110:1.]
Heb 12:3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds.
Heb 12:4 You have not yet struggled and fought agonizingly against sin, nor have you yet resisted and withstood to the point of pouring out your [own] blood.
It is THIS JESUS CHRIST who is the source, NOT some doctrine, not the scriptures, not anything except Himself alone! Absolute obedience and submission to Him in all things INCLUDING in what is right and wrong, what is good and evil! Not determining for ourselves what we are to believe but only going to Him who is our SOURCE for everything in our lives in Christ Jesus. He is our faith, obedience, doctrine, godliness, holiness, righteousness, sanctification, and everything else that we will ever need. As long as we are determining what we are to believe by our own study, our own minds, our own understanding, we are NOT trusting Him in all things.
I know that there will be those who choose not to accept this. We will see them as those who promote men’s doctrines and ideas. They may use the Bible to “prove” their ideas, but they will not have gone to the Lord to find out what He says and believe that. They will always cite their men’s doctrines, and not the Lord Himself. All men’s doctrines are the attempts of man to explain God in human terms, understandings, and limitations. They are not God’s TRUTH revealed to the person by the Holy Spirit and then reconfirmed in scripture.
One who bases their life truly in God can let God teach others for He will always teach them the same things. One who bases their life in man’s doctrines and teachings will always point other to those doctrines and never allow the Lord to be their Teacher! The “proselyte” must have the special teachings that come only from those special men and women who have been shown God’s truth and those few who can understand it. True faith will always come from the Lord alone when WE as His children lay down ALL of our previous ideas, understandings, doctrines, teachings, etc and go to HIM to teach us by revelation from the Holy Spirit. He will indeed teach any person who comes to Him in this manner the very same things, FOR THEY ARE HIS TRUTH, and His Truth never changes!
Because most people refuse to lay down all of these things, is one of the reasons we have so many contradictory doctrines and denominations. They almost all have their source in man and his ideas, thinking he knows what is good and evil above or instead of God Himself.
We can choose to figure it out for ourselves or we can choose to utterly trust God. If you doubt the things I say, then in order to prove this wrong, lay down everything. I do mean everything and do so honestly. Do not trust yourself at all. Tell God something like,
“Father God, I have sinned before You. I have determined for myself what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. I have held onto my own understanding instead of relying on You for all things. Please forgive me and cleanse me from this sin. Now I ask You O Lord to teach my by Your Holy Spirit. Help me to truly hear Your voice, to know what it is that You are telling me and teaching me. I choose to trust that You will indeed teach and I choose to believe You even above what I think is right and good and evil and wrong. Even if You teach me things that contradict the things I have previously held dear, I decide to absolutely Trust You my Lord to lead and guide me ONLY into YOUR ABSOLUTE TRUTH! I have decided not to ever rely on my own understanding again but only what You tell me, only what the Holy Spirit teaches me. I know I have believed in lies in the past due to deciding for myself what was good and evil. Therefore, I ask You Father God to help me let go of absolutely everything that I currently hold onto that is not YOU ALONE! I thank You for all of these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ.”
Please excuse this simple rendition of a prayer that must be a heart cry within us where we cease to ever rely on ourselves in any way again. I know what God will do. I have seen what God will teach. No, I do not know everything. I am no authority. I am only a messenger who speaks the truth. If you refuse to be offended and so choose to trust the Lord exclusively, then I know you will understand. If you do not choose to do this, then you will never understand. Those who choose not to do this, COULD be among those that Jesus will come to at the last day and say,
Mat 7:21 Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven.
Mat 7:22 Many will say to Me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name and driven out demons in Your name and done many mighty works in Your name?
Mat 7:23 And then I will say to them openly (publicly), I never knew you; depart from Me, you who act wickedly [disregarding My commands]. [Ps. 6:8.]
Only those who love the TRUTH so much that they are willing to be wrong about everything they currently believe actually do love the Truth. They KNOW they can absolutely trust the Lord to teach them ONLY HIS truth and they will begin to realize how often they have been wrong about so many things. Only Jesus is Right, and Good, and Correct. He will make us that way IF we cease from our own labors, our own studies, our own everything and absolutely, and entirely truly put all of our trust ONLY in our Lord Jesus Christ alone, and never even in our own abilities, understandings, intelligence, ideas, or anything else that is our own. Only Jesus is our ALL. Only Jesus will lead us in His Truth. Only Jesus will keep us in His truth. Only Jesus is reliable for all things spiritual.
A bondslave in Christ Jesus, Dirk