Modern-day Apostles?

Modern-day Apostles?

There is much confusion in the contemporary sphere on the subject of apostles. This is mainly due to the climate of deep disagreement and resentment over some Christian leaders who are acknowledged by many to be modern-day apostles.
Communities Fearful to Love

Communities Fearful to Love

Community life and engagement can have a positive influence on mental health and emotional wellbeing. Community participation provides a sense of belonging and social connectedness. It can also offer extra meaning and purpose to everyday life.

Biblical Covenants

Ever since the Garden of Eden, men have been in sin. Therefore, the New Covenant is designed to prepare the seed for the possession of the promises. It is the Covenant that relates to the forgiveness of sin. When the Lord Jesus Christ came, He inaugurated the New Covenant. At the Last Supper, Jesus took the bread and wine and said, “This is my body which is given for you, and this cup is the New Covenant in my blood, which is shed for you”. In other words, the Lord’s Supper is a symbol of His death.

Lost the Plot

True Christians need to strip the idols from what should be Christ-centred Christianity. I believe that much incorrect understanding and thinking about the God of the Bible will result in wrongful worship. We need to bring people back to the fundamental truths—out of the serious misrepresentation of Christianity—in order to introduce them to true Christianity, which has the power to transform broken lives. I do not claim to be perfect or complete, for God knows that I’m anything but.

Law & Grace – Works of Jesus Christ

The world searches for peace by making agreements with kings, presidents, armies, and countries. However, it never lingers as a solution. Here is the solution: Christ died for all mankind's sin and thereby made a way to have peace with our Maker. This is a better sacrifice than any man has made in a war, no matter how valiant, yet it is ignored. It is scoffed at, just as during the day in which it happened. Consider the humiliation that comes along with being accused of a crime that you did not commit.

Reformation Views of Man

Calvin and Luther, both agreed that man was created in the image of God. Luther believed that man lost the image completely in his fall, and Calvin said no, that man did not lose the image of God completely. However, what Calvin believed to remain is a frightful deformity; he believed that man was mutilated and disease ridden. In addition, he further agreed with Luther, believing that it was the Word of God through the saving work of Christ to restore man to the image of God in sanctification.

The Goodness of God

The varieties of the divine goodness are expressed in other terms, which are very familiar to us (e.g. the love of God).

Holy Spirit in Scriptures

The reason we affirm this is because the Bible is the product of the Holy Spirit; the principle passages that deal with this are in 2 Timothy and 2 Peter.

Biblical View of Man

The Bible states that man is the unique and special creation of God. He is not the product of evolutionary progresses. Man was placed in the Garden of Eden, in covenant relations to God. Man was told that he was able to do this, but not able to do that. It is said in Genesis 2:16-17, “forth the part of that pact”. He was made Lord of the creation, like the Psalmist mentioned in Psalms 8:1-9.

Try whatever you like – “Word” isn’t relevant!

The thing our churches are most interested in today is attendance at meetings. Another gospel has replaced the Gospel. It is one that pretends to meet the needs of someone, but in effect, does not meet any of their needs at all. The only thing it accomplishes is the massaging of the audience members’ respective egos.

Love of God

The Bible says that this love is not traceable to their works or their faith; He just loves. His love is eternal like His love for the Son.

What is Man?

The Bible tells us that man was created in the image of God. Therefore, it should be obvious to us that one of the ways we learn of ourselves is to learn of God. So, the answer to the question as to what is man, is related to the question, who is God?

Holy Spirit as the Teacher

In the School of Christian education, the Bible is our text, the Spirit of God is our teacher, and we are progressively led by Him into all truths.

Holy Spirit in Creation

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:12-14)

Importance of the Holy Spirit

In today’s churches, we witness believers maintaining their own views and understandings of the Holy Spirit. Some would refer to Him as a “dove” or “fire”. However, the greatest misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit can be found in the choruses we sing on a Sunday. The most notorious is, “Come, Holy Spirit”. It is an implicit recognition or failure to recognise the most fundamental fact of the Holy Spirit—that He has already come. These songs we sing speak of the Holy Spirit as if He is absent.

Modern Views of Man

Today, there are many who believe that men do not respond to the gospel in the 21st Century because they have intellectual problems with the facts of Christianity. To set the record straight, no man responds to any Gospel message if the Holy Spirit does not prepare his heart for the reception. One can set forth the gospel in the most beautiful logic, the most beautiful system. Men are just as blind and dead to it as it is possible for a person to be. The only reason men do not respond to the gospel is because the gospel comes to them with the proclamation that they are dead in sin and they regard it as totally irrelevant.

The Pre-Reformation Views of Man

man was to be understood chiefly from the stand point of his rational faculties—his mind. They thought that man’s mind was the immortal principle of man, and thus it was largely a divine principle. Man, then was a rational being and because he possessed reason, he was immortal. Man’s body is the material or the substance in which evil inheres. Therefore, to the ancient man, the body was sinful by definition, and the soul was immortal.

The History of the Doctrine of Man

The views that men have had concerning life in the soul are important. Origin believed that the soul was in existence before conception, becoming part of the foetus after conception.

Holiness of God

When theologians speak of God as the “Holy other”, they are speaking of Him in His holiness as one who is separated and, therefore, distinct from us.

Does God Need Us?

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. (Isaiah 46:10)

Sweet Packing the Gospel

This lack of personal development is just sheer laziness on the part of many, and as a result, the church is happy simply paying someone else to look after their Christianity. If you believe that scripture is not sufficient for your daily living, then I believe it is time to read your Bible.

Does Scripture Change to Culture?

It is sad to hear people say the Bible is no longer relevant for today’s living. The argument they present is that we live in a secular and scientific age where what was appropriate for John and Paul and the other people in the Bible is no longer applicable. This can be seen in the sociological schemes and church growth conferences that advise churches on how to be relevant. It appears that it is no longer enough just to study the Bible for what is being said; we apparently need a special technique to help us grow, in addition to the Word of God. We have churches today spending thousands on advertising and building their “empire” image, instead of investing in the harvest field.

Who is the God of the Bible?

Wrong thoughts about the nature of God invariably lead to wrong actions. I would go so far as to say that the presence of wrong thoughts about God is actually idolatry, for wrong thoughts about God are slanderous to His character. When you entertain wrong thoughts about God, you are attributing to the Lord something that is not true of Him. You are then making up a new god and are essentially creating an idol for yourself. Doing this turns God into something He is not.

The “unity” God!

Our God made us and carries us, and this is in stark contrast to idols that need to be made as well as carried. God looks after His children; idols need looking-after. A god that needs followers for maintenance is not a god but merely a waste of followers’ time and devotion. It is better for it to be thrown into the sea. The living God is He who will deliver and carry you

The Immensity and Omnipresence of God

The God of the Bible is no localised deity, but a universal God. If He possesses an infinite essence, then he has an infinite presence—He is anywhere and everywhere fully. The immensity and omnipresence of God have some very definite applications to believers as well as unbelievers.

The Wisdom of God

The wisdom of God is seen in His providence—the way He rules and governs His universe and accomplishes His purposes through it.

The Power of God

God can do all that He wills. But His will is determined by His nature. He is all-powerful and yet limited by His own inherent being.

The Will of God

“The will of God” has different meanings and we need to define them, for we will misunderstand what the Bible says concerning the will of God. Occasionally, the term “the will of God” refers to the whole moral nature of God.

The Knowledge of God

God’s knowledge is intuitive, not discursive; that is, it is not obtained by reflection or deduction. The Lord did not create this universe and then look out upon it and reason from His creation to the knowledge of it, or indeed of anything else. Intuition is knowledge that He possesses eternally as the Divine. He needs not reason conclusions because He knows all of the conclusions that there ever could be.

Immutability of God

So, why can God not change? When we think of change (e.g. from immaturity to maturity), we know that God does not vary in this way, because he always is. We do mature, although there seems to be no motive for this change to occur. Therefore, God need not change, because He already has everything that is necessary for His own being and does not need to mature into something else. He is completely self-sufficient.

The Eternity of God

Our state of existence will be determined by whether God’s life is inside or not. The location of someone’s eternal existence is what separates the saints from the unbelievers. Nevertheless, both shall live forever because all will have an endless existence. However, this is not eternity, because when we say that God has eternity, it means He has no beginning or ending as humans possess. So, eternity is a reference to the fact that God is an infinite being with respect to time. Psalm 102 gives us a beautiful description of the eternity of God.

Self-Existence of God

When Moses asked God His name, He responded by saying, “I AM THAT I AM”. There is no way in which God may define Himself other than from the standpoint of His essential and eternal being. If He were to define Himself from something that is part of our universe, that would limit Him to something humanly defined. So, all He can say is that He is the absolute being. There is also a relative name that is given in verse 15: “I am the Lord God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. Therefore, the absolute name of God is simply “I AM”.

The Perfections of the Divine Essence

There are two classes of attributes of God: communicable and incommunicable. The incommunicable attributes bear very little relation to human characteristics. For example, no human being is self-existing; no human receives life from himself and perpetuates his own existence.

The Simplicity of God

God’s attributes of self-existence—unity, simplicity, goodness, and so on—were not added to His essence, but they have always been part of who and what God is. He always has been, is, and will be what He is—a pure and simple being.

I am the I am

If God were a person who could die, He could not be immutable. He could not make us promises, for He could not be sure of keeping them. Consequently, we know that since God is immutable, we can count on his promises because He does not change. He does not change because inherent to His being is the fact that He is a self-existing God who draws life from Himself.

Conditions of Humanity

In Ephesians 2:1, Paul wrote, “and you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins”.So, Job said that we are filthy and Paul said that we are dead. I John 3:8 tells us that we belong to the devil:“He that committeth sin is of the devil”. We can see from this that man is in desperate need of help. He is filthy, dead, and has the devil. To be spiritually dead refers to separation from God; it does not mean to be physically dead