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by
Randy
Hill
This website has been created to benefit those of our readers who
hunger to follow a Christian walk in the spirit of our New Testament
fathers. We base our teachings on the Holy Bible. We are
non-denominational and realize that the very word "denomination" means
"division." Our teaching is stronger than most that you will hear in
today's mainstream denominations. We teach things that one will seldom
hear out of today's pulpits.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth was not a very popular man in many social
circles in his day. His teachings offended many people. We teach
the real Jesus, not one made up out of the minds of men who is "politically
correct." Our teaching is bold and it may offend some.
In Ephesians, we visualize the word of God as a
sword.
Ephesians
6:17 And take the helmet
of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of
God:…
The truth cuts like a sword,
and we intend to flail away at false teachings. We attempt to exclude
the traditions of man from our newsletters except for when it is the traditions
that we are teaching against!
The Master fulfilled scripture when in his healings, the people saw
and still did not believe on him:
John 12:40 He hath blinded
their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with
their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted,
and I should heal them.
Why is this scripture written in the Bible? The obvious answer
is that not all were not meant to understand the Master's Teachings.
This newsletter will, with the Lord's blessing, be a small platform for spreading
his word by opening the eyes of those who need it.
We are told by ministers to "accept Jesus." It matters not one
bit whether or not we "accept" Jesus. He does not need our
"acceptance." Read all of John the 15th chapter. He
said:
John 15:16 Ye have not
chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and
bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever
ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it
you.
Your choice to accept Him was foreordained, so realize that it is
time to wake up spiritually and follow Him.
The scriptures are pregnant. By this we mean that it is continually
burgeoning with wisdom ready to be tapped. With prayer and
intelligent study, we must make a habit of reading the scriptures
in order to accomplish an important end: that when we close the book we have
learned something. Wisdom from the Almighty does not derive
from a lucky rabbit's foot or a pet rock. It is attained through
study. You need good spiritual food from your teachers. If you
are not being fed where you are currently going to church, you are wasting
your time save for fellowshipping with other churchgoers. We simply
challenge churchgoers to examine their particular denomination or church
and test its fruit. Take a writing tablet to church the next time you
go. Write down the topic of the day and take notes as though you were
in a classroom. If the pastor has a tendency to jump around and not
really teach or say anything, you need to think about your reason for being
there in the first place. "But what he says makes me feel good."
Does it? If so, it is well and good, but where will you go to get your
true spiritual food? The best starting point is the Bible.
You must, at some point in your life, take it upon yourself to learn
God's Word. Some pastors have a tendency to perhaps quote a verse or
two, then spew forth what Aunt Sadie did last week for the next hour. With
discernment we must dig deeply into scripture:
2 Timothy 2:15 Study
to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.
Remember that you are not
a second class citizen because you believe on the Master. You are FIRST
CLASS. Remember also that you should not be required to leave your
brains at home when you attend a church service.
Suppose for a moment that your father had to go away for many, many
years and you would be unable to have two way communications with him for
that period of time. He leaves you a letter. You put the letter
on the shelf and never read it. How do you think that he would feel
about that? You get the picture.
Contrary to what people may say, the Bible
is understandable and is not open to ninety different
interpretations. It depends a great deal on individual desire to
learn. There are those who say that the book of Revelation for example,
is not meant to be understood. Nothing could be further from the
truth! The word "Revelation" in the original Greek
is
apokalupsis {
ap-ok-al'-oop-sis} which
means:
1) a laying bear, making naked
2) a disclosure of truth, instruction
2a) concerning things before unknown
2b) used of events by which things or states or persons hitherto withdrawn
from view are made visible to all
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manifestation, appearance
You can search the scriptures as well anyone. You need not have
any impressive academic credentials to do it either. You need a King
James Version and a Strong's Concordance for starters in order to effectively
break words back to their original forms. A Strong's Concordance is
an extremely valuable reference tool that you need to have in your
library. It consists of an exhaustive concordance of every word in
the Bible and a corresponding number which allows the reader to look up the
original Hebrew or Greek work in the respective dictionaries supplied in
the back of the book. Imagine having such a tool in your library.
You will be able to accurately look up each and every word in your Bible
in the original context in which it was used!
We also highly recommend that you acquire a Companion Bible.
The Companion Bible is not a commentary or a new translation, but a King
James Bible with a companion text parallel to the scripture to aid the English
reader. It helps in understanding figures of speech and idioms, the
original words in the text, scriptural references and much more. It
also contains 198 appendixes in the back of the book for in-depth study that
would take a lifetime to complete.
When speaking to the Corinthians in I Corinthians 3, Paul used the
analogy of milk and meat to convey levels of understanding in Christians.
Those that are new in Christ are babes. Salvation and Baptism are but
the first steps in the mission of the Christian. Those who have known
of salvation through repentance in the name and blood of Jesus and have not
acted on it by deeper study into his teachings have let slip a golden opportunity
for a closer walk with Him. Milquetoast Christianity for someone having
been saved for many, many years is a waste. People who use the old
cop-out "All I have to do is believe to be saved" are missing the mark.
Some read John 3:16 and say "OK, it's over now. All I have to do is
cruise into heaven." There is more to it than that. Once an
individual is saved, if they are able, they must attempt to get into the
meat of God's Word. This is accomplished by diligent study of the
Bible. It is a terrible waste to "get saved" every weekend at the local
church. There is far more to it than that.
The purpose of our articles is to bring Bible study to you.
We also hope that you will tune your friends into this Web site so that we
may help His Word
go into all the world, so that
the gospel will be preached to everyone as the Master instructed in Mark
16:15.
The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible *ISBN
0-8254-2203-5. This book may be found at most any Bible bookstore.
It also is at many larger bookstores.
The Companion Bible *ISBN 0-8407-6750. Published
by Kregal, this book is harder to come by but is well worth any trouble you
will have to go through to get it. If you have trouble finding it, you may
call Christian Books Distributors at 1-508-977-5040. (We are not affiliated
with CBD in any way.)
*ISBN: International Standard Book Number. It allows persons at your bookstore
to look up your book to check for availability. |
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