Greater Work Ahead

(Isaiah 54:2 KJV) Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;

As we head closer to 2013, it is a perfect time for a saint of God to look into their relationship with Jesus Christ. Isaiah 54:2 embodies what every born again believer should be striving towards.

Four words jump out at me as things I must work on in my walk with God.

1st) The area around my tent must enlarge! I gotta get more Kingdom-minded so God can use me in a bigger and greater way. Souls need us with God's truth.

2nd) When stretching something you pull it beyond the normal. I dare say, we become too ho-hum in our daily activities. Stretching into new areas of ministry may be challenging, but the effort will be a blessing.

3rd) To lengthen my walk may require more of my time. Many times the joy might be right beyond where we stop. As you lengthen your spiritual values, the world will grow a little shorter and dimmer. Lengthen the cords to the Master and His ways.

4th) Strength comes from above. When we daily season our lives in the Will of the Lord, our stakes gain strength for all situations. Any storm, any trial, any temptation we can overcome because we are that tree planted by the water; rooted and grounded in truth.

Enlarging, stretching, lengthening and strengthening will only come by our desire to get closer to Jesus. As 2013 rolls in and all it has to offer, let me be used for the work of the Lord more than ever.

"Spare not, dear Lord, but let me have more of you so I can help a soul see you!"

Look Up

Luke 21:28 (NIV)

"When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Most mornings my eyes open once my wife has awakened the boys for school. The sound of their early morning chatter always makes me smile. I don’t get up just yet, though. I usually reach for my phone to catch up on the news from overnight. This past Friday morning was no different.

I grabbed my cell and quickly glanced at my twitter feed. Immediately I noticed a tweet from @BreakingNews. It spoke of an overnight earthquake off the coast of California. My interest was piqued only for a moment. After all, earthquakes have become a normal occurrence, and since I didn’t read of any major damage, I moved on down my timeline.

It didn’t take long to notice the next tweet from @BreakingNews. It was an update that told of the US sending 400 American Troops into Turkey. Alerted? Yes; but only for few moments. After all, we’ve been nation at war for most of my kid’s life. It’s become almost commonplace. It’s somewhat expected and didn’t seem to be cause for alarm.

But Friday continued. We said goodbye and sent our boys off to catch the bus and began our day, just as every other day. I had several things on the agenda and was anxiously looking forward to attacking my to-do list.

The day continued and it was time for lunch, so I decided to check out my timeline again. @BreakingNews this time told of police responding to a shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut. Are you kidding me?

With each timeline update, more reports came in and more questions accumulated. This one had my attention. This one had America’s attention. I couldn’t shrug it off. I had kids in an elementary school.

It was then that my mind reverted back to the previous news items from earlier that morning, and I felt my spirit alerting me. Jesus is coming!

The disciples had questions concerning His second coming and the end of the age (Matthew 24). Among other things, Jesus spoke of rumors of wars, earthquakes, kingdoms rising against kingdoms. He spoke of afflictions, offenses, betrayal, and hatred. He spoke of iniquity multiplying and love growing cold.

 

I have heard the message preached my entire life—Jesus is soon to come. I believed it then. But because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t weaken my faith in His coming one bit. I have more faith in His appearing today than I’ve ever had. How can’t you? When you compare the Scripture to the daily events in our newspapers, it only builds my faith that what He said would happen is happening—daily.

 

Paul wrote to young Timothy concerning the last days. Take a look and see if what he mentioned seems familiar:

 

2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NIV)

 

1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

 

Without a doubt, we are living in that day. This isn’t the time for us to be half-hearted. This isn’t the day for us to be inconsistent or unfaithful. This isn’t the hour for hypocrisy. Now is the time for us to lean on the Lord, and upon the strength of brothers and sisters in the faith. Now is the time for the church to stand true and stand strong. Now is the time for those who have grown cold and turned away to return to the Father’s house.

It’s not time to put your head down in fear. It’s not time to look to the left or right for compromise. It’s not time to look back to the past in regret. Now, folks is the time to look up! Look up! For our redemption is near!

What Are You Waiting For?

     I know that some people might not believe in themselves, but I believe God has birthed a great calling and purpose in every believer.  John 14:12 states "...He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do;..."  There is so much possibility in each of us, but most of us are waiting for ideal conditions to get started. 
     I am aware that we all have the best of intentions in the midst of all of this.  Yet hopes and visions only go so far without actions.  King Solomon reflected on a similar situation years ago.  In Ecclesiastes 11:4 (NLT) we read, "Farmers who wait for pefect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest." So, if you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.  There are certain ways to get to the point that God is calling us to.  Let's all agree to get back to the old paths that the elders started years ago.  They lived and breathed this doctrine.  Let's make Jesus the center of our life and church; along with devoting more time to praying, reading our Bible, and fasting.  We need to make ourselves available now for what God is calling each of us to do.  
     I can't help but wonder how much impact we could have in the world today if we stopped waiting and finally start doing what God has called us to do.  I challenge each of you to step up and fill the shoes of the elders and make your own foot print upon the world. 

We Must Remember

At this time of year, the three words on most of our minds are Christmas is coming. Christmas is a wonderful time if we have the right reason on our mind. That is, everyone thinking of Jesus' birth. But we must not think only of His first coming. We must remember that He is coming back and I believe it is soon!
Between the rapture in  I Thessalonians 4:17 (Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.) and the Marriage of the Lamb in Revelation 19:7 (Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.) we will all have to stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ in II Corinthians 5:10 (For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.)
In Revelation 19:7 we need to remember that they were not getting ready, but they had made themselves ready. My prayer is that you will search the scriptures and see that these things are true and do what you need to do.

Company is Coming

This is my very first blog.....I pray this will be a blessing and an encouragement to all who reads it! The Lord dropped this thought in my spirit so here we go........... Here we are at the start of the holiday seasons. Everyone is hustling and bustling along; busy trying to make everything perfect. We start making plans; you know families getting together and such. Then we start looking at the house we live in and start noticing things that aren’t as "clean" as they should be. We have gotten so busy with our own lives and neglected some basic things. So here we go in a mad rush to get things in order and cleaned up for our expected company. It is the same way with our spiritual life. We get busy with our carnal life then we get stirred up by the news or a great church service and then we start looking around "our" spiritual house and see that it is not as "clean" as it should be. We have let things creep in and have neglected some basic things with our walk with Christ, you know like prayer, reading, going to church and such; after all company is coming. The bible lets us know about our expected company coming:

 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 KJV

(16)  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

(17)  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

The thing is, we do not know exactly when:

Matthew 24:36 KJV

(36)  But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

 
But he gives us hints when he will be here:
 
Matthew 24:37-38 KJV

(37)  But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

(38)  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

Matthew 24:6-7 KJV

(6)  And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

(7)  For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

So we need to get our spiritual brooms and swifter’s out and get our house back in order for our expected company. We all know what we must do to clean our own house. So I want to encourage you to do what you know to do, to slow down and not get caught up in all the hype, and to remember what it is all about. The first Black Friday has set things in motion for our expected company. Jesus is coming!! So don't get ready but be ready!

Matthew 24:44 KJV

 (44)  Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

May your company find you waiting and watching for his soon coming!

Amen

The Reflections of Light

     Through the centuries the people of God have met in various places and under various circumstances. It all began in the Old Testament with the people of Israel encamping about a tent --- the portable Tabernacle  in the wilderness. Over the years, the people built various Temples as places of worship, for they wanted to build a house for God. In the early Apostolic church the people even met in personal homes for the purposes of worship and fellowship.
     Today, however, we still study the church in the broad sense; it is not a matter of building and properties. The church consists of born-again believers in Christ who have answered the eternal call of God. With the presence of God in His church, it is truly becoming a "living Temple" not made with hands. That living organization – – the church – –has answered the divine call of God and is busy reaching out to the lost of this world.
THE CHURCH CALLED --- out of darkness,
1 John 1:5-7 KJV
(5) This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
(6) If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
(7) But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
      All religions make use of the analogy of light and darkness. This, of course, springs from the nature of God. There is something in the character and makeup of God that abhors darkness.  The first creative act of God was to dispel the darkness that "was upon the face of the deep:" (Genesis 1:2)
     God is light. His holy, pure nature is the wellspring of light. Darkness is the opposite of God. When man fell in the Garden of Eden spiritual darkness was introduced into the world. But just as in the beginning, so again God had to banish the darkness – – girst was His law, and then with his Son.  He called to those who would follow from the kingdom of darkness "into his marvelous light." (I Peter 2:9)
     The call to the Christians is to take Jesus Christ, the light of the world, to those who are in darkness. We, then, are reflections of God's light.

The Conclusion of the Matter: Scripture vs Tradition

It is a most significant fact, often overlooked, that Jesus equates/links eternal life with knowledge of one true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (Jn 17:3). This refers to our acknowledgement of both the divinity and the humanity of Christ (Jn 8:24, 55, I Jn4:3). It is not as many believe a reference to two divine beings. The insistence on God’s absolute numerical oneness, as well as, his manifestation in the flesh for our salvation is the overarching theme of scripture. This alone should caution us against divorcing our beliefs from the biblical theology of God; Thus building for ourselves the image of another Jesus and thereby receiving a different gospel. We must not ignore his warning, “If you believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins… He that believeth on me believeth not on me, But on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him who sent me…He the rejecteth me and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: The word that I have spoken,  the same shall judge him in the last day(Jn 8:24; 12:44,45,48). This should lay rest to any question about the importance “doctrine.” For, “whosoever trangresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the father and the son.” (II Jn 9). Jesus’ own creed (Mark12:29), is central to all he said and did. But does our tradition faithfully reflect that “Jewish” creed? According to the Savior, it is not possible to believe him if we are not prepared to believe Moses (Jn 5:46, 47). Our failures to grasp the realities of our Hebrew heritage and what Moses, Isaiah, and others have said about the nature of God, will lead to disastrous results when it comes to the exercise of our faith.

A genuine relationship with Jesus can only be built on the foundation of a proper understanding of who He is. This understanding will only come by our acceptance of the teaching of scripture, even when that scripture violates our “sacred” traditions. Our ability to avoid conforming to the culture around us and achieve the separation demanded of us as God’s people will only come as we are transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may prove what is the will of God (Rom 12:1-2). It is only by the inspired word of God that this will ever take place, as the mind of the spirit is transferred to the believer and we come to have the mind of Christ. Could it be that we are breathing the contaminated atmosphere of Greek philosophy and Alexandrian theology and would experience dramatic improvements in spiritual health from the fresh air of the plain truth of God in its original Hebrew context?

Our success as believers depends upon our attention to Jesus’ admonition that… “Ye abide in me, and my words abide in you,” (Jn 15:7, II Jn 9, Jn 8:32). All false doctrine is dangerous, because it is built on a rejection of what Jesus said. How much greater in this case, being built on the rejection of who he is. No apology is necessary, therefore, for our desire to discover what, in fact, according to scripture, God has revealed about himself and his relationship to man. It matters very much what a Christian understands and believes for, as perhaps never before in her history the church today is asleep and in bondage. The current opinion (“fad”) that doctrine divides and should be avoided for the sake of unity, is simply unbiblical.  The very opposite is true:  doctrine based on the clear teaching of scripture and the true knowledge of God is the only hope for genuine unity in the midst of the chaos and division present in the church today.

The object of this work, therefore, has been to present a biblical challenge to contemporary trinitarianism, and to propose a way of understanding more accurately what God has revealed about himself, thus bringing our doctrine more in line with the truths of scripture. The recovery of belief in Jesus as the physical manifestation of the one true God will dispel the fog of confusion which has enveloped the church for generations. Loss of this clear understanding about who he is has resulted in our acceptance of “another Jesus” and “a different gospel” and has created an entrenched and dangerous theological misunderstanding regarding the true nature of salvation. The doctrine of the trinity is a tragic diversion which replaces the biblical focus on faith in the one true God with philosophical speculation and metaphysical arguments regarding the nature of the “Godhead.” In many cases the result is the false worship of a “divided God” on the part of people with divided hearts.

It is no longer sufficient simply to make the assertion that “Jesus = God” as if that is a legitimate reflection of New Testament truth. Since God in the bible never means “God in three persons,” intelligent and honest bible study must seek for a revised Christology which allows for the obvious and necessary conclusion that Jesus is the promised incarnation of the Father.

In his book, The Christian Doctrine of God, Emil Brunner makes the following pointed observation regarding the Trinity: “The History of Christian Theology and dogma teaches us to regard the dogma of the trinity as the distinctive element in the Christian idea of God… On the other hand we must honestly admit that the doctrine of the trinity did not form part of the early Christian New Testament…It was never the intent of the original witness to Christ in the New Testament to set before us the intellectual problem –that of three divine persons- and then to tell us silently to worship this mystery of three in one. This “mysterium logicum”, the fact that God is three yet one, lies wholly outside the message of the bible. It is a mystery which the church places before the faithful in her Theology, but which has no connection with the message of Jesus and the Apostles. No Apostle would have dreamt of thinking that here are three divine persons, whose mutual relations and paradoxical unity are beyond our understanding. The mystery of the Trinity is a pseudo-mystery which sprang out of an aberration in logical thought from the lines laid down in the bible and not from the biblical doctrine itself” (Brunner. 1950. 1; 205, 226, 238).

In the final analysis, the doctrine of the trinity is simply not a biblical doctrine but rather the product of theological reflection and philosophical speculation. It may be in reality, satans masterstroke of deception.

In contradistinction to trinititarinism, apostolic or oneness theology asserts the following:

1)      God is indivisibly and absolutely numerically one with no distinction of persons.

2)      The nature of the God head is not a mystery but of the clearest revelations of scripture.

3)      Jesus is the absolute fullness of the Godhead; He is one and at the same time- Elohim,  Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

4)      The Son of God was begotten after the flesh at a specific moment in time and did not exist from all Eternity. “Son” is a term which refers only and specifically to God’s incarnation.

5)      The logos (word) is not a separate person, but rather the mind, thought, plan, activity, or expression of the Father.

6)      Jesus is the redemptive name of God, revealed in the New Testament. It is the ultimate revelation of who God is, representing the Salvation, Healing, Delivering Power and Authority of God manifested to man.

7)      Water Baptism should be administered by the oral invocation of the Name of Jesus as part of the Christological baptismal formula.

8)       Believers will definitely see only one Divine Being in Heaven: Jesus Christ, The Lord of Glory.

The Oneness doctrine does not destroy or alter any doctrine or belief essential to biblical Christianity; it absolutely upholds the sole authority of scripture, the Deity of Christ, his substitutionary atonement and justification by faith. Additionally as part of Gods ongoing program of reformation and restoration, Apostolic Theology restores and upholds biblical Christianity in at least four specific ways.

A)    It restores biblical terminology and biblical patterns of thought on the subject of the God head, clearly establishing, New Testament Christianity as the heir of Old Testament Judaism.

B)       It proclaims the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ, revealing his true identity as the incarnation of the One True God.

C)    It restores apostolic authority and the biblical emphasis on The Name to the church, making the power of his Name available to every believer.

D)    It restores the basic and fundamental doctrine of the New Testament church which is the bible standard of full salvation. It is repentance, water baptism by immersion in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking with other tongues as the spirit gives the utterance.

Not only must the church know and believe these truths, but in view of their crucial significance, we must begin to propagate them everywhere. The church has the vital responsibility to teach this message from her pulpits, in her Sunday Schools, in home bible studies, and through every appropriate outlet. The fivefold ministry has been given to the church for the purpose of equipping the Saints for ministry. Every believer therefore, is a minister, anointed by God and entrusted with the grave responsibility of sharing these profound realities with others.

In short, the message of the Mighty God in Jesus Christ is absolutely essential to the restoration of biblical belief, apostolic authority and the return to New Testament patterns, principles, priorities, and power. It is the only hope for a dying world.  Our only means of success in what God has called us to do.

Dr. Larry Yates

Disguises

(Isaiah 30:1 KJV)
Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin:

As God's chosen people moved in the wilderness, God supplied a fire by night and a cloud covering by day. His protection. never left them.

In this Halloween time, folks are putting on a covering to become something different. It disguises and conceals their identity. The Word says we cover with a covering, but not of His spirit.

As we endeavor to become more like Jesus, let's don't get caught up in the coverings of this world. As Adam and Eve made fig leaves to cover their nakedness, we are not much different today. And when we try to present our lives daily to God with a covering of disguises that conceals our identity, the scripture says we add sin to sin.

As we step into the Fall season, let us all fall in love with Jesus all over again. Cover your life with His truth and mercy every day.

Reverend Jeff White

The Ground Rules

Greater Faith Apostoic Church in Ironton, Ohio will now be blogging on a weekly basis. Nine ministers within the church will be submitting articles that express their thoughts, aspirations, dreams, messages, and comments concerning the church, the Bible, God, The Godhead, etc. We want this to be a forum that expresses thought. We will not tolerate biligerant attitudes. That does not exemplify Christ. We do want conversation, from among our own ministers, ministers within our organization, ministers outside our organization, church members, etc.
There will be a new article each week but that still does not keep you from responding to earlier messages. Let's spread God's Word. Let's become Aquila and Pricilla's; expounding the gospel more clearly!
Rev. Charles Betts