The Only Way in Christ

Mormons Claim Most People are Saved and
Most People Will Do Temple Works to be Saved

Enduring to the end does not mean if you don't endure to the end you won't be saved. Rather, it means you will lose the reward of returning with Christ to reign during the millennial kingdom on earth in Revelation 20. It is the time of recompense. After the millennial kingdom rewards are done away with. You can't work your way to higher or lower heavens as Mormons teach. That would not be grace. Grace is not after all you can do, but in spite of all you try to do.

Also, the Mormon said if there are no works you go to Hell. Whereas Christians and the Bible teach if you are save and do no works you still go to Heaven. No Christian goes to Hell. All Christians go to Heaven. All Mormons go to Hell.

A person who is has never heard of Christ if he accepted the God of the mountains and stars surely he would accept Christ and be saved. This is common grace leading to special grace of the gospel. Muslims and Mormons and Roman Catholics and Buddhists and Atheists already reject Jesus, because they already accept their false gods and beliefs. Common grace has already come upon them that they reject. Someone on a remote island who accepts the God of the mountains and stars surely would be saved because He would accept Christ. If you accept the Father surely you would accept the Son. No other name under heaven by which one can be saved.

Gehenna is Hell. Outer darkness is not Hell. Outer darkness is that place outside the light of reward of reigning with Christ during the millennium. It's like being in a dark forest but the cabin is like the millennial reign. When they come out of the cabin then those in the forest can come out to go to the New City and New Earth. Or it is light painting a house but getting paint all over yourself because you are sloppy. Washing the paint off with gasoline stings; this is like outer darkness before you can enter the shower and marriage feast. If you were careful outer darkness would not be needed.

Baptism doesn't save anyone. It is merely a symbol dying to the world after getting saved going down into the water, and coming up symbolizing resurrection, and coming out of the world. It is the sense we no longer belong to the world as we come up out of the water with newness of life. It is a sense within oneself this is their experience and can be acted out through water baptism and ...

Before and After Regeneration

THE MIND OF MAN is his organ of thought. Through it he is equipped to know, think, imagine, remember, and understand. Man’s intellect, reasoning, wisdom and cleverness all pertain to the mind. Broadly speaking the mind is the brain. Mind is a psychological term whereas brain is a physiological term. The mind of psychology is the brain of physiology. Man’s mind occupies a large place in his life because his thought easily influences his action.

Before Regeneration

According to the Bible the mind of man is unusual in that it constitutes a battlefield where Satan and his evil spirits contend against the truth and hence against the believer. We may illustrate as follows. Man’s will and spirit are like a citadel which the evil spirits crave to capture. The open field where the battle is waged for the seizure of the citadel is man’s mind. Note how Paul the Apostle describes it: “though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10.3-5). He initially tells us of a battle—then where the battle is fought—and finally for what objective. This struggle pertains exclusively to man’s mind. The Apostle likens man’s arguments or reasonings to an enemy’s strongholds. He pictures the mind as held by the enemy; it must therefore be broken into by waging war. He concludes that many rebellious thoughts are housed in these strongholds and need to be taken captive to the obedience of Christ. All this plainly shows us that the mind of man is the scene of battle where the evil spirits clash with God.

Scripture explains that before regeneration “the god of this world (had) blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God” (2 Cor. 4.4). This verse concurs in what the other verse just quoted said by declaring here that Satan holds on to man’s mind by making it blind. Some people perhaps may consider themselves extremely wise in their ability to advance many arguments against the gospel; others may take for granted that unbelief is due to dullness of understanding; but the truth in both cases is that the eyes of man’s mind have been covered by Satan. When firmly ...

The Judaizers

I know thy tribulation, and thy poverty (but thou art rich), and the blasphemy of them that say they are Jews, and they are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. (Rev. 2.9)

Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan, of them that say they are Jews, and they are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. (Rev. 3.9)

In both the letter to the church at Smyrna and the letter to the church at Philadelphia, our Lord shows us how the Jews disturbed both churches. How seriously has Christianity been tampered with by Judaism. A slight carelessness will bring in Judaism. The priests of the Old Testament become our pastors today. Law regulates our behavior. Festivals are made mandatory of us. All this began at Smyrna and was practiced in Philadelphia. In the nineteenth century a group of people in the Church rose up and overcame the Judaizers. But up to the present, there yet remain the works of the Judaizers in the Church. The Protestant Church succeeded the Roman Church, but neither have their communicants been freed from the bondage of Judaism either. Let us therefore spend time to show new believers how to deal with this influence. In this message today we will deal with the Judaizers in the Church from the perspective of their attitude towards the law.

Of the Ten Commandments, the fourth one concerns the Sabbath day, which is Saturday. It is a mistake, say certain Judaizers, to observe it on the Lord’s Day. Let us see if this notion is in accordance with the teaching of the Scriptures, as is claimed by its adherents.

First of all, what do the Scriptures teach about the law? God never gave it to the Gentiles. He gave it to the nation of Israel: “He showeth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his ordinances unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for his ordinances, they have not known them. Praise ye Jehovah” (Ps. 147.19-20). It is the explicit teaching of the Bible that the Gentiles do not have the law: “When Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves” (Rom. 2.14).

(1) How about the Gentiles after they are saved? Acts 15.5 reads: “there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying, It is needful to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses.” Nevertheless, ...

The Spiritual Man, CFP, Vol. 3, Part 10 THE BODY, Ch. 3, by Watchman Nee

WE NOTED earlier how our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. What arrests our attention is the special emphasis the Apostle Paul gives to the body. The common concept is that the life of Christ is for our spirit, not for our body. Few realize that the salvation of God reaches to the second after He gives life to the first. Had God desired that His Spirit live solely in our spirit so that only it might be benefited, the Apostle would simply need to have said that “your spirit is the temple of God” and not mention the body at all. By now, however, we should understand that the meaning of our body as the temple of the Holy Spirit is more than its being the recipient of a special privilege. It likewise means being a channel for effective power. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit strengthens our inner man, enlightens the eyes of our heart and, makes our body healthy.

We have also noted how the Holy Spirit makes alive this mortal frame of ours. To wait until we die before He raises us up is not necessary, for even now He gives life to our mortal body. In the future He will raise from the dead this corruptible body, but today He quickens the mortal body. The power of His life permeates every cell of our being so that we may experience His power and life in the body.

No more need we look upon our outer shell as a miserable prison, for we can see in it the life of God being expressed. We now can experience in a deeper way that word which declares that “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” Christ has presently become the source of life to us. He lives in us today as He once lived in the flesh. We can thus apprehend more fully the implication of His pronouncement: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10.10). This more abundant life suffices additionally for every requirement of our body. Paul exhorts Timothy to “take hold of the eternal life” (1 Tim. 6. 12); surely Timothy is not here in need of eternal life that he may be saved. Is not this life that which Paul subsequently describes in the same chapter as “the life which is life indeed” (v.19) ? Is he not urging Timothy to experience eternal life today in overcoming every phenomenon of death?

We would hasten to inform our readers that we have not lost sight of the fact that our body is indeed a mortal one; even so, we ...

Prayer and Warfare

The Spiritual Man, Vol. 2, Part 4 THE SPIRIT, Ch. 4, by Watchman Nee

ALL PRAYER OUGHT TO BE SPIRITUAL. Unspiritual prayers are not genuine and can produce no positive result. What abundant spiritual success there would be were every prayer offered by believers on earth in fact spiritual! But sad to say, fleshly prayers are far too numerous. Self-will found therein deprives them of spiritual fruitfulness. Nowadays Christians appear to treat prayer as a means to accomplish their aims and ideas. If they possessed just a little deeper understanding, they would recognize that prayer is but man uttering to God what is God’s will. The flesh, no matter where displayed, must be crucified; it is not permitted even in prayer. No mixing of man’s will in God’s work is possible, for He rejects the best of human intentions and man’s most profitable prospects. God does not will He should follow what man has initiated. Other than following God’s direction, we have no right to direct Him. We have no ability to offer save to obey God’s guidance. God will do no work which originates with man, no matter how much man may pray. He condemns such praying as fleshly.

As believers enter the true realm of the spirit, immediately they shall see how empty they themselves are, for absolutely nothing in them can impart life to others or work havoc upon the enemy. Instinctively they will therefore reckon on God. Prayer then becomes imperative. True prayer uncovers the emptiness in the petitioner but the fullness in the Petitioned. Unless the flesh has been reduced to a “vacuum” by the cross, what use is prayer and what can it possibly signify?

Spiritual prayer does not proceed from the flesh nor the thought, desire, or decision of the believer; rather does it follow purely from that which is offered according to the will of God. It is prayed in the spirit, that is to say, spiritual prayer is made after one has discerned the will of God in his intuition. The command insisted upon in the Bible is to “pray at all times in the spirit” (Eph. 6.18). If that is not the way we are praying we must be praying in the flesh. We should not open our mouths too hastily upon approaching God. On the contrary, we first must ask God to show us what and how to pray before we make our request known to Him. Have we not consumed a great deal of time in the past asking for what we wanted? Why not now ask for what God wants? ...

There are no contemporary sources for Jesus outside of the gospels. How necessary is it for history to be written during their lifetime? If history is written after Jesus' life does that mean we have to reject it as untrustworthy? Was the NT written intentionally to make it appear as though Jesus rose for the dead? Does a person's biography have to be written while they are alive?

Not even in the modern world let alone in the first century. In the first century, just prior or after, most of the major works were not written contemporary of a person. Earliest sources for Alexander were written 350 years after his death. The two best known sources for Alexander (Plutarch and Arian) are +425 to +450. John Dominic Crossan and Bart Ehrman when they are responding to whether we know if Jesus is a historical figure, both of them say Josephus and Tacitus are probably our very best non-Christian sources. Bart Ehrman lists a dozen independent sources for the crucifixion of Jesus. 4 of them are non-New Testament, two of them are historians. Josephus is approximately 60 years after Jesus died. And Tacitus is as much as 80 years after the cross. Two critical sources consider these fine sources. Crossan says these two sources alone would cause me to think Jesus really lived and those holding the Jesus myth are wrong. They don't have an issue with 60 or 80 years after Jesus.

Does it pose a problem if the 4 gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?

Not in the slightest. Whomever they were written by and the input given to them by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is not important. What is important is they are our earliest sources within a decade after Jesus died on the cross. Historians highly value earliest sources. Even if you place these sources in the second half of the first century, they still make up sources that are closer to their events than for any writings in antiquity, thus, holding to the highest of standards.

Early creedal texts such as in 1 Cor. 15 that take us back to what Christians reported in the early 30s AD makes so much sense compared to what Tacitus may have said.

Tribulation from Feast of Trumpets 2023 to the Last 3 Feasts 2030

This prophecy is based on the need for 2300 days for the Temple to be cleansed (Dan. 8.14). It must be completed by Passover after which there are 2300 days from Passover to Tisha B'Av. It takes at leas 4 years to build. Construction on the 3rd Temple must, therefore, begin by 2020 so it is completed by Passover 2024. There are exactly 2300 days from Passover April 23, 2024 to Aug. 8, 2030 Tisha B'Av. The Jubilee is 2015-16 running from Feast of Trumpets 2015 to Elul 29 2016. 2016-17 is the first year of 7 years of plenty to 2022-23. What follows are 7 years of famine (the Tribulation) from 2023-24 to 2029-30. From Feast of Trumpets Sept. 16, 2023 there are 2,520 days (7 x 360) to Tisha B'Av Aug. 8, 2030. 30 days more to the 1290th day (Dan. 12.11) Jesus judges the nations. To the 1335th day (Dan. 12.12), a few days after Simchat Torah Oct. 20, 2030, He sets up Israel as the center of all nations.

This agrees with the "sign of the Son of Man" (Matt. 24.30) asteroid Apophis April 13, 2029 near the end of the Tribulation. "If therefore thou shalt not watch...thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee" (Rev. 3.3). If we are not watchful we won't know when Jesus returns.