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The Bible Apostolic Logo features the
golden sun rising
from a
deep blue
morning sky. The Bible as the one foundation upon which we build and
are
establishes is marked open by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Great
Creator who so loved us that He became flesh and dwelt among us, then
bled
and died to pay the debt for our sins. Then the golden sun arc doubles
to represent the open tomb from which He arose triumphant. The
descending
dove represents the coming of the Holy Spirit to us and the flame
represents
the fire and power of the Holy Spirit in the life of every true
believer.
When asked if we are Fundamentalist, we are more Fundamental than they.
Are we Evangelistic? Very!
Are we Baptist? We place a higher value on
Biblical
water baptism than the Baptists.
Are we Pentecostal? We definitely
believe
in the entire of the Acts 2 experience including that the promise of
2:38
and 39 is to all that the Lord our God shall call.
Are we Apostolic?
Our
desire and goal is to preach, teach and practice that exact same Gospel
that Jesus Christ and His Original Apostles taught and would still be
teaching
if here in person, as we prayerfully try to be their faithful
representatives.
—
Samuel
M. Smith,
Presiding Elder
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Deceiving the Very Elect
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_____________________________________________________________________________________
Volume 13
No. 07
July 30, 2008 |
This message
was first written by Samuel M. Smith in 2008.
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The Serious DANGER of
A Contented Life
When Almighty God Jehovah created mankind, He created him in HIS
likeness and image to walk with Him and Talk with Him.
The Serious DANGER of a Contented Life — We quickly tire of the
contented life and become discontented. We have no more time for our
first and greatest love because everything is going smoothly. It takes
a sudden CATASTROPHE to awaken us to our real need for our Lord and
Savior and Greatest Provider and Healer.
But mankind tends to get bored. From small childhood throughout humasn
life here on earth, we want thrills, excitement, activity. Only when we
are genuinely in love with our future spouse, are we content to just
walk and talk with the one we love. but once we are joined in Holy
Matrimony, we begin to get busy with activities and the time to walk
and talk together gradually fades. The job - the necessary earning of a
living can become a barrier to our loving communication and the list
could go on and on of all the different things that begin to arise to
keep us apart even though we truly love and care for each other.
Now let’s look at our relationship with God. Most of us were not raised
by parents who really put the Lordship of Almighty God through Jesus
Christ really FIRST in their lives. Consequently, we only entered into
that sweet relationship of lovers of God through hearing the Word of
God, BELIEVING the Word we heard and through that belief, feeling the
conviction of the Holy Spirit. The feeling of conviction pricked our
heart and we asked what we must do. The preacher or teacher, whether in
a church or your own home or by radio or TV, told you what every true
believer has been told since the Day of Pentecost: Repent....
At first, we often prayed until we prayed beyond ourselves and in
that heavenly language we never learned “with groanings which cannot be
uttered.” We felt a sweet communion with the Almighty and realized His
personal love, care and mercy toward us in that Romans 5:8. Whatever
came our way, we felt a perfect confidence toward God . But then we
began to enjoy that contentment and our moment by moment, hour by hour
and day by day communication with our Lord and He sees our love
drifting away from Him.
The cares of this world, the earning of a living and all the things
like mortgages and college funds for our children or even our own
employment advancement, just as Jesus said in Matthew 6:25-35 gradually
cut in on our time to commune with our new greatest love, our Lord
Jesus Christ, until we actually stop praying and reading our Bibles
entirely. We become like the Laodicean Church.
Boom! BOOM, BOOM!!, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!!! Trouble strikes. Your beloved
spouse is diagnosed with terminal cancer or is seriously injured or
killed in an accident. O, God! Please forgive me and help me. And
He either heals the cancer or the serious injuries and things go back
to normal including the gradual forgetting to pray and read your Bible.
Now let’s look at our relationship with God. Most of us were not raised
by parents who really put the Lordship of Almighty God through Jesus
Christ really FIRST in their lives. Consequently, we only entered into
that sweet relationship of lovers of God through hearing the Word of
God, BELIEVING the Word we heard and through that belief, feeling the
conviction of the Holy Spirit. The feeling of conviction pricked our
heart and we asked what we must do. The preacher or teacher, whether in
a church or your own home or by radio or TV, told you what every true
believer has been told since the Day of Pentecost: Repent....
New
believers if they have been truly converted, have a hunger to feed on
the sweet nectar of the Bible and often, in their studies are
understanding what the Bible really teaches. Only when denominational
doctrine is introduced do they become confused. They read in Luke
1:26-35 and see that the angel, Gabriel, the messenger angel, has
pronounced the blessing upon the virgin, Mary, and told her that she
will be pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and He will be called the Son of
the Highest. Immediately, if there has not been to extensive a
preconditioning to believe so-called orthodox teachings, the usual
understanding is that the One Holy Spirit, the same one who created the
earth and stars and the rest of the universe has miraculously
impregnated Mary and she brings forth a baby whose Father is no less
than The Mighty God, Jehovah to English speakers, Yahweh to Jews and
some others. They come to understand, from directly studying the Bible
in context, that the Great Creator robed Himself in flesh and lived
among mankind as one of us so as to be tempted in every way that we
are, yet to arise above temptation and live a sinless life so that He
could be the perfect Lamb of God to be sacrificed to pay the price for
our sins.
Few have much, if any, problem understanding that even while He was
crying in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, let this cup pass from
Me...," He was praying to the great Holy SPIRIT that is Jehovah, and as
He had already stated, "A Spirit has not flesh and blood, as you see Me
have.1" So they do not think of
Jesus praying to a person, but the
supreme Spirit. There is no real mystery there. It is easily understood.
Many people like to make the Bible real mysterious and then to think
nobody can know or understand it unless they are particularly gifted in
understanding mysteries2.
However, the Bible itself speaks to the mystery of Jesus' identity in
several places and several ways. "And without controversy
great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world, received up into glory. 3" So WHO was manifest in the flesh? God.
And according to Jesus, who is God? A Spirit who is also supremely
holy, righteous and pure. So here we have a plain and simple answer to
who Jesus is and who God is.
In saying, "without controversy," the Apostle Paul acknowledges that
other people see a great controversy in identifying just exactly who
Jesus is. The Jehovah's Witnesses need to read this one4. As hard as the Watchtower
translators tried to bend the meaning to suit their theology that Jesus
was only the greatest man, the things described as solving the
"mystery," as the King James and many other translations describe it or
the "sacred secret, as the New World Translation describes it, point to
one person, the man Christ Jesus. WHO was manifest in the flesh? God, or
Jehovah or Yahweh. Again,
according to Jesus, who is God? God is a Spirit. But even the NWT
admits, "He was made manifest in the flesh, " So it HAS to be talking about Jesus.
He "was declared righteous in spirit," (NWT) when the Holy
Spirit descended upon Him in a form like a dove, as may seem
clearer in the RSV Greek-English New Testament5 where it says, "...vindicated
in the Spirit." Of course, in a sense, we are all seen by angels, but
Jesus, especially was in communication with the angels as their
commander. But who, but Jesus, has been preached among virtually all
the nations of the world, honestly or dishonestly6, He had been preached, as no
other religious leader - not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Confucius, not
Hari Krishna or any other religious leader, and as a result of that
preaching, He has been believed in and on as no other god or man. And
most assuredly, the fact of His being taken up into Glory was witnessed
and attested to by above 500 witnesses, the majority of whom were still
alive and could attest to His ascension at the time the Apostle Paul
wrote his Epistle
--
S.M.S.
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1 Luke
24:39 | 2Ephesians 3:4 , 1
Corinthians 13:2 | 3 1 Timothy 3:16 | 4Indeed,
the
sacred secret of this godly devotion is admittedly great: He was
made manifest in the flesh, was declared righteous in spirit, appeared
to angels, was preached about among nations, was believedupon in [the]
world, was received up onto glory." (1
Timothy
3:16 NWT). | 5©Samuel
Bagster & Sons Ltd., 1958 Third printing 1972. Printed by Zondervan
Publishing House. | 6 Churches that preach any
other Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible , the Jesus who was
divinely conceived by the Holy Spirit, who IS the same God who moved
upon the face of the deep in Genesis 1, are preaching another Jesus
deceitfully. 7 - 1 Corinthians 15:6
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