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Post by Jesse Morrell on Aug 22, 2007 21:02:50 GMT -5
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Post by runner4jesus on Aug 22, 2007 22:53:50 GMT -5
Good to hear you preach Jesse. Not many preachers would preach in a place like that. God will honour his word you delivered. He'll see to it that ears & hearts were open. It looked like some were very interested.
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doug
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by doug on Aug 14, 2008 2:08:32 GMT -5
Hi Jesse, 2 LDS missionaries boldly confronted my wife and I on the street the other day. (today we saw 4 downtown, so I guess a conference was on and they are on another campaign to blitz our city). Anyway, I told the two that I was familiar with LDS, their book and had had chats with missionaries before. The leader asked me what I thought about their 'gospel'. I told him that mormonism is built on the premise of an apostasy and that I disagree with it. I affirmed what Athanasius wrote to Serapion that the true faith consists in what Jesus revealed, the apostles preached and the fathers preserved. When he plied me further, I explained that the pattern is a three-fold chain of transmission and that all restoration-style groups attack the links of transmission. For the first time I told them that the true Church, in whatever its visible expression may be, affirms that the full truth was both preached by the apostles and preserved by the early apostolic fathers. ( many often affirm that Jesus manifested the truth and the apostles preached it, but they claim a full apostacy occurred when the apostles died.) I had to repeat it about three times when he kept trying to attack it and he started to squirm, divert and got angry. The second missionary apologized to me when the first one stormed off in a huff. Afterwards, I realized that most people think apostacy means that truth has been lost and that 'the times of restitution' refer to an end-times restoration of TRUTH to the visible church. I have come to reject those definitions (held by most cults and by many sincere professing christians) and the 'elder's' almost violent reaction confirmed my research. (I only disagreed with him and compared our views, without trying to prove much to him.) Moral government theology has been foundational for me, and to this has been added the understanding regarding the Jewish context for Christianity. The last several years I have been looking at Jewish beliefs in the second temple period and this understanding has helped me understand various moral government concepts in a larger world view which I am confident was held by the early christians. The Jews in general would have understood 'times of restitution' as referring to the World to Come (olam haba) which proceed from the time Messiah comes on the clouds. A proper understanding of 'apostacy' and 'restoration' is sadly needed in the visible church today. This will heal many rifts in the visible expressions of the one true orthodox, apostolic and catholic church. When either mormons or others query me about all the 'divisions' and different 'churches' I SUCCESSFULLY reply that there are many diverse local expression of the one true catholic Church. Without offending members of the Church of Rome I point out that almost everyone (except the early fathers) tend to confuse catholic teaching with whatever is taught by the church of Rome. We have to re-educate people almost a person at a time. What surprises me is that people are actually starting to listen, who have had almost no interest before. I find that I can witness intelligently without having to dummy it down to merely quoting 'salvation' texts, although they are useful IN THEIR PLACE. I'm starting to rant or preach. God's grace and peace with you in power brother, Doug
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Post by Jesse Morrell on Aug 14, 2008 9:29:06 GMT -5
Doug,
That sounds fantastic! I praise God that you were able to witness to these Mormons about apostolic truth. Many react to false teaching with more false teaching. What I mean by that is, I know groups who teach lawlessness and easy-believism in reaction to Mormonism's doctrine of repentance and obedience. So they react to false teaching by falling into false teaching themselves. But instead of reacting to cults in that manner, we simply need to get back to apostolic truths.
I am very glad that Moral government theology has been foundational for you! Moral government provides an outlook or a frame work by which we can view the works of God. I find that sinners see the reasonableness of God and His ways when they understand Him in the context of a King with a Kingdom. When that is understood, issues like sin, repentance, punishment, atonement, all make perfect sense.
Keep up the great work!
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