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LOVING THE BRETHREN?In the book of John, we read the following:
It is pretty clear: those whom have been redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and have been justified by faith in Him as personal Savior from sin, are to love one another in the same way in which Christ loved us. I will admit that sometimes that can be quite a challenge. There are believers who make it very difficult at best to love them. Still, to be obedient and in fellowship with our Lord and Savior, we are to love them. In the book of Ephesians, we read:
This too, is abundantly clear: what comes forth out of a believer's mouth is to minister grace to all who are in listening range. Or reading! Of late we are witnessing a barrage of attacks unlike at any other time in church history. Some of that may be due to the fact of technology and the speed upon which access to information occurs. It is only normal for the world and false religions to attack, criticize, poke fun at, dismiss, and seek to limit born again believers. We are considered fair game to be on the receiving end of discrimination, hate speech, or persecution, and the hunting season is open always. Calling evil good and good evil happens all the time, but now with greater frequency, and from broader sources. Take for example, the strange case of Southern Baptist pastor, Rick Warren. A pastor of a mega church in California and author of a best-selling book, as well as conducting successful seminars, Pastor Warren made some pointedly hateful, unloving, caustic, and judgmental statements concerning me. Oh, not me personally, but what and whom I identify with. Listen carefully: he likened fundamental Christians (brethren) with Islamic terrorism, secular atheism, and called us the greatest danger and threat of the day in the world. Documentation is available upon request. The Word of God is my authority and standard. It is absolute truth and perfect in far more than faith and practice. I do not idolize the Bible, but I believe what it says to be so, and try diligently to live out its commands, exhortations, and purposes. I wish that I have been 100% successful, but sorrowfully cannot say that. As an independent fundamental Baptist pastor, I have not and do not legislate what people can or cannot do, nor do I advocate or suggest that someone meet my standards to be saved (the original meaning of a legalist before the revisionist pseudo-scholars got a hold of it). I am not, nor are the fundamental people that I know, 5 point fundamentalists. There are many more than five. The name fundamentalist came from the book called, The Fundamentals . It was a collection of writings by men of many different theological persuasions, all maintaining the same position as to the Word of God and against the attacks by the Modernists and Infidels of their day. The book is also valid against Post-Modernism and Neo-Evangelical drifting into apostasy. It is still in print and I highly recommend reading it. I offered it to any of our church people who promised that they would read it, and personally bought the books for them. Anyone who reads the book cannot make the statements and allegations that Pastor Warren has 'purposefully' made. On the basis of the Word of God, Pastor Warren is either 1) a believer with unconfessed sin in his life over these statements about the brethren: There is the absence of kindness and love of any degree in those remarks. The statements do not edify the brethren, but rather, divide. His later clarification and an earlier statement show a tremendous inaccuracy concerning fundamentalism, as well as a divisive, judgmental disdain for the brethren of fundamental persuasion, enhancing the scripture's charge of sin in his life for not loving the brethren; or, 2) Pastor Warren is a wolf pretending to be a sheep. You may think that there are more choices than this, but then we must go outside God's Word, and if we do, then we might as well not go back to a book one believes to be incomplete and insufficient. Brethren, we must be careful in how we say what we say. Love is based on truth, and we are to speak the truth in love at all times, whether we want to or not. We are to have no agenda but God's agenda, and we are to do God's work in God's way. His Word tells us how. Furthermore, we who are brethren in Christ should all pray for Pastor Warren that the Holy Spirit would convict him to make things right with the Lord and the brethren he judged, and that the Lord would then bless his church ministry. Or, that he might be saved before it is too late.
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“And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them: for with their mouth they shew much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness.” - Ezekiel 33:31 There is much in all of life that is not what it appears to be. On the surface, one could conclude it to be so. But, going deeper reveals something else altogether: sometimes sinister, sometimes deadly, or sometimes perverted– but always deceptive. James 1:22, says, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own souls.” It is incredible how much effort we put into being deceived by others when ultimately the deception comes from within ourselves. Let’s cite some examples, though these are not the sum total of all that goes on in life. We are interested in buying or renting a house. We drive up and look at it from the outside, and check it over a second time. It is to our liking by what we see. Then we go inside and inspect the rooms, the flooring, the appliances, the a/c and heat. Our entire time of inspecting however, is on the basis of the outside only. We go ahead and get the house, and slowly and surely discover major and expensive problems that were there had we checked. The house was not what it appeared to be. The same is true with things, or groups, or churches, or people. We can, and should try to check out as much as we can about those we become involved with, but even then we do not know the extent of everything. There is an element of trust involved, yet we must always remember Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The LORD knows the hearts of all people, but we do not know the extent of what our hearts are capable of. The examples of this are so numerous, we could take years citing them all, and by then, there would be a whole new list. May this serve as a warning to each of us: things and people may not be what or who they appear to be. Impulsive action on our part, based on primarily the external, can injure or cause us to compromise or worse, destroy our testimonies for Christ. |
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