Anti-Anti's Modern Prosperendum

The World has taken God's gems and mechanized them into aphorisms.  They say, we are wise, because we know that giving is the best way to get and harsh words disturb peace.  But the Church has the richer and original version of these where giving is not for the purpose of getting, but for the purpose of love, which gives.  Sometimes harsh sounding words are loving and peace doesn't exist in the heart of the oiled tongue. Christ's Church doesn't need these aphorisms, because we have God's Word, but we sometimes fall into their use, because we've heard them more than the Bible.  Getting God's Holy Word into us is useful food. Change and Evolution, death and rebirth, are not only concepts in Hinduism as God's enemy, Death, is worshiped as the goddess Kali, but the pure version is, of course, well-known to be gotten at salvation, as we die to our corruption and are reborn a new creation by God's Holy Spirit.  Again, we see the rip-off of what God had alw...

Discipleship Lessons, Tom Nelson, Denton Bible Church, Denton, TX 1) http://www.dbcmedia.org/sermons/what-is-a-disciple-2/ 2) http://www.dbcmedia.org/sermons/who-can-disciple/ 3) http://www.dbcmedia.org/sermons/the-lost-art-of-disciplemaking/ 4) http://www.dbcmedia.org/sermons/implementing-discipleship-in-the-local-church-churches-on-the-cutting-edge/

[Portions adapted from Tom Nelson, Denton Bible Church, Denton, TX, "954-070101-2 Peter 2"] Because we have Jesus through justification by faith, we look for His face with zeal in all we do everyday.  Because we have seen His love, we search for it to apply to each part of our lives. 2 Peter 1:5-7 1) Moral Excellence (The fear of YHWH is the beginning of knowledge - Proverbs 1:7) 2) Knowledge 3) Self-control in obedience (temperance; continence) (over a long period of time) 4) Patience 5) Godliness (delight in God; respect and reverence and piety towards God) (Love God first, then self and others) 6) Filao - Brotherly Kindness - Love of the Siblings in Christ - social manners - seeks mutual solace 7) Agape - highest love - God's love toward us, which He puts into us, with which we love Him - love not due to the lovliness of the object of that love, but due to the agent; this love is due to the character of the lover instead of, as with other types of love, due to the char...

---Gnostic Heresy in a Nutshell Philosophy mixed with Christianity Reject the Deity of Christ Reject the sufficiency of the cross Reject the sufficiency of the Bible Reject Apostolic authority Morality excluded from Religion (eg. higher knowledge from angels) God's Judgement is a myth Christ's Second Coming is a myth Jesus is not God, but He is an angel --- Gnostics reject authority.  We give honor to each other, all according to the gift God has given each, without jealousy and without envy. Gnostics teach against moral purity.  God develops moral purity in those He has saved.  We might overcompensate with this Gnostic error, and must remember that we don't need moral purity to receive salvation; on the contrary, we must know we are sinners and need Jesus Christ to save us, seeing He has done the only salvific work whereby we must be saved.  Since we begin by trusting Him in His death for our sins and prove our trust by calling on His name as we have been told, by v...

Here's a list of heresies that have been perpetrated on us.  Even if they come from people who seem (by what they say and look like) to be born-again Christians, listen to the meanings of what they say very closely, and compare it with Scripture! They say: -We command angels to give us money (Kenneth Hagin). -Jesus was immunized with all of our sins so that His blood would be sufficient to redeem us (Rod Parsley). -Jesus would have sinned if The Holy Spirit hadn't been with Him, because He was totally a man like us (Benny Hinn). -Hebrews 9:14 does not deal with the cross, but it says Jesus offered Himself before He ever came to Earth (Benny Hinn). -Abraham cut the covenant, so Jesus didn't really have to redo it (Benny Hinn). -Jesus burned in Hell (several; example, Jan Crouch, Benny Hinn). -Jesus *destroyed* Satan in Hell; furthermore, He did it with Adamic authority and without the power of The Holy Spirit (Benny Hinn). -Jesus was not divine on Earth, but got it back when...

Do you teach disciples of our same Master Jesus Christ by something that comes from Rick Warren's adaptation of another gospel?  Rick has dabbled in the end-times temptation of Church-World integration outside CR.  Make disciples of Christ instead of Rick. Ah! But these things exist, even when we don't know them.  Gain knowledge of Christ, and don't despise knowledge of Satan's devices, which Paul said he knew (2 Corinthians 2:11), and we know Satan's devices for the express purpose that he doesn't gain an advantage over us.  That knowledge, when applied, is kindness toward the Church. Rick Warren has done the things that I've been talking to you about, and it follows that he would make a 12-step program.  Be aware that the very concept of the twelve steps is an adulterated version of what the Bible definitely teaches, but it's changed, and also, Rick Warren loves integrating - spiritually - with the World.  He's done it over and over. These things a...

 1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only f...

There's a hidden similarity that causes confusion between the Christian admonition to accept those who are different and the worldly admonition for the Church to accept the World as equals and to intermix soulishly and spiritually with their ideas.  If we did mix, the World can't in any good way take on the things of the Church, so the Church would always take on the things of the World in order to mix our ideas together on equal footing. There is a similar confusion:  Differences between people - even personal moral rules that don't violate or speak to revealed truth - should not keep Christians apart.  Violations of revealed truth, however, should.  Both these rules are revealed truth (1 Corinthians).  Unity is better than uniformity. Jesus put up with people different from Himself - us; Christians.  He did not put up with the World.  Christ ate with people who wanted to know God and who knew they were sinners; He did not become party friends with th...

We do not have life unless we have Christ, and Jesus Christ must be given the credit for the accomplishments of faith in God and knowledge of His presence, which cannot be achieved without Christ no matter what pseudo-Christ pretends.  Soulish accomplishment is not spiritual life.  Knowledge of God's existence, as has been widespread in our ancient past, is not enough to be reconciled to God, because our sin blocks us.  It may seem refreshing to admit God's existence, but it still doesn't solve our deepest problem.  Openly wicked people feel happy in their wickedness, and so moral excellence is also not salvation; the problem of sin persists to block relationship with the actual God who created the Universe.  Only by believing particular things and calling on Master Jesus due to those particular beliefs do we gain rebirth and the spiritual action of becoming a new creature happens to us, and we are put under the mastery of Jesus Christ and follow the Law of the ...

Doing right out of a dedication to He Who has saved you, Master Jesus Christ, is right.  But doing right in order to save yourself in the sight of God is as disgusting to God as when ancient Israel offered many sacrifices but disregarded Him. We must know that Christ's death, in accordance with the Scriptures, was for our sin, and we cannot do anything for our sin, ourselves.  Then He was buried, and God resurrected Him on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and then He was seen by many witnesses.  Believing this, we call on His name to save us by confessing with the mouth Master Jesus. After we are saved, it is His Spirit Who prompts us to do right, and we grow in righteousness due to our belief in His Resurrection by that same Holy Spirit of God.  No other righteousness is acceptable to God but the righteousness that comes from Him.  Human righteousness cannot save, and it is shameful to put righteousness forth as a means to one's own salvation. T...

What is "a dirty look"?  We do it so naturally that it's been superfluously driven out of normal behavior by those who immediately recognize its meaning, though maybe not consciously.  A dirty look is an expression of confused surprise that is used to communicate an inquiry as to why or why not the opposite of what was just seen in a person was not done.  It's a subtle accusation - as soft as one can be - and it's been raged against to the point of giving it a dirty name in order to promote its disuse.  It's easy to imagine in past generations Christians thinking it a polite way to communicate that the action in question is beyond one of mere displeasure, but on the order of obscenity, and we can imagine those Christians thinking that it's a nicety to presuppose for the perpetrator that the action is also surprising, and that this is the least possible admonishment that could be made about it.  Well, the World didn't like it, and, indeed, the Bible doe...

It's like getting rid of bedbugs.  You can get rid of almost everything you own, including the box springs and bed rails to give them fewer places to hide, and you can clean your sheets every day and check the mattress half a dozen times a day, killing them off with bloody passion whenever you see them.  But, excepting with God's miracle, you eventually have to clear the room and give it over to the obliterating heat that finds all the hiding places.  Sometimes, killing through heat is the only answer, and God's answer of Hell is exemplified and known in this, especially with those who have dealt with the problem, though it's understandable even to those who haven't gone through the painful mess.

Since the origin of rights is not the government, the government both 1) can only promise to not create law that disobeys them, and 2) cannot exercise wrath against those who disobey them, seeing it does not have that authority. The application of this basic reality is that civil rights are really either civil privileges or outside the purview of government.  If they are privileges, they can be lost or gained by law, but they will also be seen to be just that, and we will not have the kind of fundamental equality sought by what has so far been known as civil rights.  If they are outside the purview of government, then other laws that concern violence and fair treatment must not be based in these rights but must take their bases from government fiat - and be seen to do so. I expect the outcome of this will be a disruption of strange plans to abuse the concept of rights, and it should take away the authority to manipulate any right, none of which the government does or can contr...

When I was a boy, I worried that, due to psychological profiling, truths I spoke would be taken to be lies, and so I also thought that my worry made me look like I was lying when I told the truth. Police who profile should learn to get physical evidence instead. Since neighbors can know when something is going on in a neighboring house, the police can just stand there and know it to, and they will gain more hard evidence by doing this than they can get by falsely accusing everyone they interview. That part of Miranda that the police know so well has not stopped them from subverting the law down in the very architecture of their buildings with interrogation rooms.  If I have a right - not even a privilege! - to remain silent, why does the law attempt to crack that right as a matter of course in police business?  There's a better way. Cameras, legwork and simple observation, especially in trouble spots of both violent and white-shirt crime types, can gain hard evidence without t...

Preaching doesn't need to be specially protected speech.  Preaching is speech, and speech is a right - even the law is protected from attempting to cross it! Speaking of that man, Jesus, and what He did is no strange thing.  Preaching Christ, crucified and risen, is history, and it is good news to those who desire the good God, Who created us.  If you don't desire Him, then I can understand why you'd want to make us shut up about salvation, but God told us to repeat the account for those who do want to know, and we'd be totally insane to listen to you instead of Him!!!

Twitter says it will use a strike system about Covid misinformation.  This online action is a testbed - just as recent radical legislation is a testbed, and just as Covid itself is a testbed - to see how much the American people are willing to put up with.  Those against what Twitter is doing should quickly make an online game that gets points for being marked with their "misinformation" stamp, but only if it's plausibly true information and not just garbage.  That way, there will be an indirect reason to keep creating accounts and flying in the face of Twitter's draconian action.  I want them to explain how they can know enough to decide what's misinformation in situations where all the information is not available and in this World, where Truth is said not to exist!  It seems like the left is pivoting from relative truth to their own absolute truth, or, even more twistedly, including them alongside each other!