Our growth begins with the milk of the Word that we are to earnestly desire. The thing is that that desire needs tending, and without support the seed may be lost. I went to Bogota to study their church growth, how G10 (for all its faults) began with 8 people and in a few years filled a football stadium twice over for two Sunday services. They saw one of the biggest problems for church growth was the back door was open as well as the front door so they had a very good follow up program for every new convert teaching them what happened and the basic doctrines of the faith. Unfortunately too much Word of Faith thrown in, but the idea of nurturing new believers with daily friendship contact, nudging them in the right direction and then weekly Bible study was like Jesus after He said, Follow Me.
In the days of Spurgeon, preachers often taught truth alongside error in the same sermon so the church new the real deal from the deception. Before that, Wesley was famed for putting sound doctrine into popular song melodies as many couldn't read and they learned doctrine from hymns. Today, most Christian songs are me centered or focus on one tiny aspect of God, but don't educate the believer into the wonders of God and His salvation and instead tend to dumb us down.
Today we have endless resources, and commentaries play an important part, not just in supporting what we may have thought was true but challenging our wrong thinking too. I probably spend as much time studying studying theological papers that oppose my views as with those that I agree with.
I need to make sure my logic stands up to rigor and critical thought. For example, I thought I understood post-trib doctrine. Only in debate did I discover how figurative it is when it gets into problem areas. When we examine the wrath of God beginning with the emotions of the Father, post-trib ends up confusing God for the devil and giving him glory.
Commentaries are good and have their place as a resource, but no one person is equipped to give a commentary on the whole Bible with equal depth to every chapter. The Bible is just too deep, so papers on the deeper aspects of theology that debate the subject matter can yield gold.
But what is the end goal? So we are smarter? To a point yes, for we are to study to show ourselves approved by God. The end goal must be to know and understand God as our friend, and if I don't understand my friend's emotions as well as values, then I don't really know my friend that well. That is where we begin.
As David Regan wrote in the article 1LoverofGod posted...
"Despite the Bible’s clear teaching that our Creator is a God of both love and wrath, I never cease to be amazed at the number of pastors I run across who argue that the God of wrath is the Old Testament God and not the God of the New Testament. In the process they ignore another clear teaching of the Bible that is found in
Malachi 3:6 where God, speaking of Himself, says,
“I, the LORD do not change…”"
Now going back to the milk of the Word, one of the basic doctrines is that God is immutable - He does not change. We don't teach doctrine and without doctrine we can't understand God, and if we don't understand God we can't become His friend...
Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. Jn.15:15
It took about 65 years to complete the NT, for we are slow learners and I consider myself the slowest and dumbest and have made endless mistakes, but they just chip away at the things I need to be rid of as the Architect and perfecter of our faith works on me and all of us.
Virtually all the posts I see in debates on the rapture attempt to define God and His nature by His acts. By such reverse engineering we end up with a God that on one hand wants to rescue His church out of the earth before His wrath but on the other hand a God who wants to perfect His church by putting us through a literal hell on earth.
This is why I want to begin with the character of God, then the provocations against God, then how God feels and this is one point I disagree with David Regan on... Abandonment Wrath. Abandonment is judgment in anger, whereas wrath is extreme fury. After abandonment judgment comes the removal of the restrainer in preparation for wrath.
We shall dig into all of this and also question what is this thing called sin?
The most important question the world must be told to ask and get an answer to after the gospel is, what is God's feeling about the provocations we see in the world today? We shout our abortions to fill His ears with our murderous rebellion. We parade half naked on the streets hijacking His rainbow and announcing out pride in strange flesh, upending His order for man and woman. We teach our kids God did not create Adam, He created many Adam's and many died so Genesis is a kids story book like a fairy story, and many in the church buy into it because they were never taught doctrine and how evolution is anti-Jesus, for by one man DEATH came into the world JUST AS by one Man GRACE came into the world..
The Euphrates is drying up! This is not just another phase in the evolution of life, these are the days of abandonment judgment that precedes fury and wrath, and yet many pastors don't even know that God is angry, and that His anger is about to explode into wrath that ends up with men being rarer than the gold of Ophir.
The WEF boasts that it has 190 leaders ready to take over the governments of the world and many are now in place. Of those not already leading the nations, there are 5,000 is training vying for positions and by their own admission, infiltrating governments. They boast against God, Jesus and the Bible and want a new AI Bible and AI God. They are preparing the technology to serve the beast, and we need to ask the world, How do you think God feels?
Displeasure = correction and we all receive that.
Anger = judgments
Fury = wrath
The world is like lemmings marching to the tune of the Pied Piper towards the cliff edge of wrath. The post tribbers are all mixed up about the 6th and 7th seal. The pre-wrather's are not much better. The pre-tribbers accidentally get it right but can't defend their case. The traditional churches are sound asleep and Origen and Augustine made sure of that.
But how does God feel when He hands the scroll to Jesus? (CLUE: He already told us.)
Rant over!
)
PaidinFull
