Christians Beware

Beware

“But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 
They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.”  
These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit. 
But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.  
Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. 
Be merciful to those who doubt;  snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
                                                                                                       Jude 1:17-23.
Throughout the New Testament there is a call to beware of those who divide the church. Those who to quote Jude, “follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.”
From my earliest days as a Christian I was taught to pray and read the Bible. To ask God to show me the truths there in.
I was taught by very good pastors to question what was being taught to make sure it was the truth.
There are many out there calling themselves Christians today who are not. They are following their own desires to either deliberately lead people the wrong way, to obtain wealth, or to gain power and prestige or all of the above.
The apostles warned about such men and women that is why we need to be cautious about who we support.
Jude tells us,
“But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit.  
Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life...”
The only way we can build ourselves up in the Holy Faith is to first pray, then study the world of God both on our own and with other believers.  We need to be around other Christians and discussing the word of God. This helps us grow and keep on track.
You can’t grow effectively if you are not around other believers. Watching a televangelist as good as the person may be shouldn’t keep us away from assembling with other believers.
The other thing Jude calls us to do is,
“Be merciful to those who doubt;  snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”
Put simply we are to help those who may have doubts about their faith. Additionally we are to reach out to the lost to save them from a Christless eternity.
Please think about it.

The Jesus Question

The Jesus Question

Here’s a question for those who do not believe Jesus is the Son of God, God incarnate.
Why would a man knowing claim to be the Son of God when he knew the penalty by law for saying such a thing meant death?
Jesus knew the law and still claimed to be the Son of God.
The Gospel of Matthew records,
“Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?”  
But Jesus remained silent. The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 
“Yes, it is as you say,”Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy.  
What do you think?” “He is worthy of death,” they answered.” 
                                                                     Matthew 26:62-66
The Gospel of John records,
“As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!” But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.” 
The Jews insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.” 
                               John 19:6,7.
Let’s face it, someone trying to start a new religious or a social movement of any kind would be a lunatic to say something that would get him put to death.
C. S. Lewis an Oxford University intellectual, initially an atheist studied the Bible and Jesus. He came to this conclusion about Jesus,
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him(Jesus): I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 
           C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Needless to say Lewis became a follower of Jesus.
To my mind Jesus is everything he said he was, the Son of God.
His call to each and every individual is to get rid of any preconceived ideas you might have or someone has place in your mind and read what the New Testament has to say about Jesus with an open mind. Make your own decision as to who he is.
It is my belief that if you do study the Bible with an open mind you will see Jesus for what He is the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind.
Think about it.