About Discerning Righteous Congregations

~~~ YouTube Comment

I attended one church that left me feeling off. They had a very active and alive worship before the message. When they delivered the message the congregation was left in the dark. They kept the stage lit up like worship. There was windows but they were covered up with blackout curtains. Matthew 5:15 kept echoing in my head throughout that Sunday morning. "Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house."

A bit more extreme is how I find it off putting when more established churches lack bibles for people. There's something about lacking God's word for people to have or borrow. How can we create strong faith in new Christians if they are kept in the dark and lack a Bible to hold.

~~~ RESPONSE

That's a very surface way of looking. It's not what the Bible was talking about and sounds like excuses to me. Here's how to tell: Did the sermon preached in the dark contain light, or was it against Scripture? Learn God's Word by comparing what the preacher says against the Bible after church. Go home, get on blueletterbible and be diligent. The main thing, as always, though, is to make sure you don't listen to any preacher who doesn't affirm justification doctrine - 1 Cor 15:-18 and Rom 10:9-14a lays out what we must believe and do to be saved. The language there is all-inclusive and emphatic! So if they say what's in there and then add things (like repenting of sin or loving your neighbor) AS A NECESsary basis of SalVatiON (justification, not sanctification), then RUN! But understand first, be humble, and make sure you know what and why they are saying what they're saying; your mind isn't enough; read the Bible and pray to know God's mind.

~~~ BLOG ADDENDUM

I just reread this, and it seems like I overlooked the deeper heart of the original message. It's hard to tell where a person is coming from, sometimes. Perhaps that Christian will understand and - more importantly - gain some good thing from my response. I have some hope, too, and a basis for it, that you will gain and not be too put off by my assumptions here. The Lord keeps all His own, you know. And we know how to help each other by knowing the true smallness of the other by our own experience of humility.

If you hear me speak, check the Bible for whether my words are light or darkness; accept the light, spit out the darkness, and help me, too. Will you? Except for a con artist, nobody has ever written to me on this blog. Think about it! 

Popular Posts

What the Church Should Know and Do

If only we could get salvation doctrine correct among ourselves and then move on to separation - treating Worldlings circumspectly with gentleness and wisdom and treating Christians with teaching, rebukes, exhortations, encouragements, reproofs, shunning (not as enemies, but as siblings in Christ), then we would not be confused about who is a Christian and what we should do. Love the siblings in everything and do loving action to your enemies, but know who your enemies are, according to the Scriptures, and don't be their friends, which is enmity with God (according to what God told us by that Special Book He wrote to us). God is knowable by His Special Spirit and by His Holy Book, but the World obfuscates Him, His words, His desires and His actions with pseudochrist look-alikes.  Don't believe them, believe Him, comparing preaching with Scripture like the noble Bereans did. Believing 1 Corinthians 15:3b-8 results in doing Romans 10:9a, 10b, 13 for salvation and Romans 10:9b, 10...
Keep reading »

The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil James 1:13-14 "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." Therefore, God is not the author of evil. If God hardened Pharaoh, myself or Peter to cause us to be unbelieving, then God would still be perfectly good, because He is the Source of all knowledge of any goodness (even the superlative thoughts of a humble child), so that we don’t know how to imagine anything more good than He is. That's the bigger issue with all this. If a single person, after being called by Christ, calls back to Him, that means that evil human beings can be saved by calling on Christ, which takes away any thought that God made Lucifer become Satan due to the way God made him or that God makes humans not go to Him due to our sinful state. Christ's lack of call on some is based on His Father's foreknowing. The reason...
Keep reading »

Notes on Paw Creek Video about Heresy in TBN

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...
Keep reading »

Analysis for a Baby Christian - On Women Pastors

 In her article, "6 reasons 1 Timothy 2:12 is not as clear as it seems" (https://margmowczko.com/1-timothy-212-not-as-clear/), Marg Mowczko lists 6 reasons to bring in a non-traditional interpretation to that passage.  I will go over them here.  Here's the verse for reference: "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet." (1 Timothy 2:12) 1) She says the word for "allow" is specific and not a command.  Her reasoning muddles between specific permission given for a specific instance and commands told to Timothy to tell others.  Since the command type of word wasn't used in this verse, she argues that there is no command!  I think that this is a very weak argument. First, her declaration that the word in question is always used for a single or specific instance is simply wrong.  In Matthew 19:8 we see the word used in reference to Moses' allowance for the men to divorce their wives (because of their h...
Keep reading »

The Strange Meanness of Christians

 The Strange Meanness of Christians Some Christians have a certain callousness. We ignore people for years in our congregations, where Worldlings would find out who everybody is, so long as the group is small enough to feasably meet them all. Some Christians have a certain sensitivity. The World pushes forward a surface politeness as a first layer of protection in their evil environs, and are more straightforward with trusted company, which we all do, sometimes for good reason. But Christians often weigh the surface politeness far greater and demand it more often. Even the Worldling in a responsible career might relax such things after hours with mere acquaintances, but we Christians often hold out until we get with close friends and family, and then, probably, only because we cannot keep up the charade all the time. I think that we rely on politeness as though it were kindness as an excuse to cover our sin. But God's Word tells us to openly proclaim our sins to each other. That do...
Keep reading »

A Special Forces Demon Attack in a Dream

I had another dream driven by the influence of the special forces demon. I ignored the game at first.  It was a youngster's game - mainly frivolous.  But there was a package of materials involved.  I was asked to do a favor - no, it wasn't playing the game, but it would help them if it allowed the mostly-numb peeling of my finger with the knife-like instrument. Afterward, I went up into the treehouse, where the other person and a large (2 or 3 foot) squirrel was going to play the game, and I was told that I could be in there because I was trusted now that I had done the thing.  Suddenly, they were playing the game with me, peeling my finger with only a little discomfort with the implement even though I didn't want to actually "play the game", I was just willing to help the other outside of playing it.  But I was playing it the whole time. I ran away, and I was quickly chased!  I turned in my running, and I spoke against them in the name of Master Jesus Chri...
Keep reading »

Countering the Concept that the Bible Does Not Help with Everything in Modern Life

Have you ever heard someone say that the Bible is the instruction manual for life? Have you heard someone try to refute that by bringing up modern things that the Bible doesn't mention? This is a quite long discussion I had with ChatGPT about that. Remember that ChatGPT is only a language model. It has some limited degree of linguistic reasoning and is very good at transforming information into different expressions. Its main ideas are anchored in its training data, which is mostly secular. I had to lead it sometimes, and it accepted my logic in the end, but that's not a very tight case for my logic. Yet it does go some way to validating it. I have some hope that, if you have a lot of free time, perusing this might be valuable to you or give you some ideas of how to address the various areas of concern within this topic.   >>>User What are some major themes of the biblical Genesis which relate to the human experience? >>>ChatGPT The Book of Genesis, the first ...
Keep reading »

Track the Basis of Your Preaching Message, Dear Church - Psychology Based and Inverted Reading of Scripture

I've heard the concept that if we Christians merely talk about our problems, then we give them credence.  I've heard a message that David glorified God, so don't use your tongue to talk about your problems.  That message is psychologically based instead of biblically based.  When we talk about our problems with defeat, then we fall into the trap defined by that psychological description, but merely talking about it doesn't mean we are talking about it in defeat.  It's useful and right to talk about our problems in order to get power over them by seeing the truth about their real dimensions. Be careful not to call human psychology biblical, and be sure not to use Scripture to validate something based on what it doesn't say.  When David says he glorifies God and says positive things, well, that doesn't speak against mentioning negative things!  David glorifies God, so don't you turn it into a message on how God doesn't want us to use our tongues to men...
Keep reading »

The Semantic Trickery in the 'Bring the War Home' Book Blurb

__________________________________________ Blurb for "Bring the War Home" by Kathleen Belew The white power movement in America wants a revolution. It has declared all-out war against the federal government and its agents, and has carried out - with military precision - an escalating campaign of terror against the American public. Its soldiers are not lone wolves but are highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview of white supremacy, anticommunism, and apocalypse. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew gives us the first full history of the movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s around a potent sense of betrayal in the Vietnam War and made tragic headlines in the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. Returning to an America ripped apart by a war that, in their view, they were not allowed to win, a small but driven group of veterans, active-duty personnel, and civilian supporters concluded that waging war on their own ...
Keep reading »

Answers about Gender Dysphoria

 If any Christian has been deluded by gender dysphoria, they should be told good things about God's love of whom He created, in the way He created them. I wonder if that's the tack of Christian psychologists? Oh, pity the state of things, even in the Church! Making a place for the hurt to persist by a lying definition that there actually exists a truly natural disconnect between apparent and real biological identity is a mean thing to do. Maybe it's easy for us to do, because we've already allowed ourselves to lie to the Schizophrenic grandmother to artificially keep her comfortable, and we've become used to lying to children to keep their feelings after a great tragedy. We falsely excuse those lies. There's always an escape from harm without lying, because God doesn't give us trials without an escape in His righteousness. Oh, the strange, compromising Church! In all cases, inundating distressed Christians in prayer and in all truth is the powerful and heali...
Keep reading »