Apostate traitors and Spies 2 - Church Planters' Workshop

This article on Apostate traitors is continued from Apostate spies and traitors 1

(3) Use and abuse of doctrine.

One of the things about this experience is that I immediately identified this couple as having some serious doctrinal problems. I went the extra mile in both talking with them, and checking their doctrine. When Mary went out witnessing, I paired up with her for the first few dozen times, and she did explain the gospel as I understood it. She was very eager to argue though.

I insist on a theorem or axiom in my thinking…

Good doctrine causes correct conduct, and visa versa, i.e. bad doctrine causes incorrect conduct.

The outworking of this axiom is that when a person’s conduct is incorrect and unbiblical, then their doctrinal understanding is also corrupt. Therefore building on that axiom, when a member cannot get along with another member, and this is repeated no matter how many different pairing you make, and even so wrong as to not get along with the church, that person’s basic understanding is just wrong. This leads one to even question their salvation.

Technical Note: An apostate is somebody who knows the gospel and doctrine of Christ, and even knowing it, turns from it to some other doctrine and gospel. In this case, I told Mary this, and said that I have heard her give the gospel to others, and now she was returning to the JWs, she was denying the deity of Jesus. She went bonkers on that, and said first that she was still believing that Jesus is the Savior, and that she is saved, and that I was trying to pressure her. When I insisted that she was an apostate, and that she could not attend and support a JWs kingdom hall if she was truly saved, she got up crying and left (but nonetheless they went back to the JWs).

Meditating on this experience formed another axiom.

Salvation makes a person reasonable, and being reasonable, they be open to exhortation, rebuke, and correction.

I have had a lot of experience in the last few years with people who are hard to get along with. In every case, I have come to ultimately question their salvation. The fact that they don’t agree with me is a minor one. The issue is that they refuse to be reasonable. If I give in to them in order to accomodate them into our fellowship, and even so, they still cannot get along, then something is wrong. We have had people who simply cannot be in the same “space” (auditorium) as some other Christian. What this reveals to me is an unreasonableness that implies an unconverted heart.

If we are saved by grace, we will not be rough to our fellow Christians. In Mat 18:22.35 Christ gave the parable of the unforgiving servant. If Christ forgave us our sins, then there is no offence that we should not forgive in our brethren. Stubbornness on this point indicates an unconverted heart.

The unconverted have a weird inability to understand and practice this. If pressured excessively, they will give in on a single count and return to being unforgiving as a general rule of life.

Why are these people “apostate traitors”?

The issue is hard to see for some people, but we have a life-bond in Christ. This life bond is that God is love, and therefore anybody that is saved, partakes of that love life-bond, and actually lives in it. Although we are to love Christ (God), we are to practice “love” in loving our brethren in Christ. Anything that would “unplug” that love activity for the brethren is a betrayal of God in us.

They betray Christ and us because they abandon and refuse to submit to the moral pattern of Christ. Doing this, they become enemies of the cross.

More Posts on Error-Abuse Issues

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Easter

Brown The Devil's Mission of Amusement 7 page article from 1889. Hollywood in the church and her ministries. Brown was a student of C.H Spurgeon.
Excerpts:
Different days demand their own special testimony. The watchman who would be faithful to his Lord and to the city of his God needs to carefully note the signs of the times and to emphasize his witness accordingly. Concerning the testimony needed now, there can be little if any doubt. An evil is in the professed camp of the Lord, that is so gross, so brazen in its impudence, that the most shortsighted of spiritual men can hardly fail to notice it.... Amusement for the people is the leading article advertised by each... until the hideous fact has been proved up to the hilt, that "amusement" is ousting "the preaching of the Gospel" as the great attraction... The Concert is fast becoming as much a recognized part of church life as the Prayer Meeting; and it is already, in most places, far better attended.

"Providing recreation for the people" will soon be looked upon as a necessary part of Christian work, and as binding upon the Church of God, as though it were a Divine command, unless some strong voices are raised which will make themselves heard.
Read the 7-page article: Brown, The Devil's Mission of Amusement.

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Buy me a Cup of Coffee! To make an old Christian work into a PDF, a module for theWord, MySword, or eSword takes time. These works are scans from old books, and as such, I have to go through the text some dozen times looking for places where the OCR is incorrect, blurred, or just skipped something.

Text Editing.Then there are the old Bible references like John iii. 16. Many young Christians and even preachers do not know the Latin system for books of the Bible. I convert Roman numerals in these books to Arabic (iii. to 3).

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Take a look at a few of our tracts:
salv76 suffering should seek his Savior - explains how we should react to problems and sufferings, we should seek the Savior.
pc15 How to fight against depression - we treat the problem of depression. Depression is not a physical disease, it is an emotional and spiritual disease that "bleeds over" and causes aggravation and physical consequences if not attended to at the spiritual-social-emotional level.
ch15 Congregating because we Love - a tract about why we attend church. Our relationship with our brethren in Christ is highly integrated with our salvation and our sanctification.
SSTeen1-01 Existence of God - Does God really exist? This is not a tract but a teen Sunday School Class that I wrote answering this important question.
fam48 Men are God's Agents - Men are God’s Agents to accomplish His Will, looks at man as God wants him to be. Manhood and the husband-wife relationship.
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More Good Posts

evc06 The Young Age of the Earth We explain why scientific evidence supports a young earth against evolutions long time spans. Evolutionists insist on extremely long time spans in earth's past and formation, because evolution "is not seen", i.e., there is no present evidence of the evolutionary theory process today. So they insert time such that no scientist can study it nor observe it. This tract clears this point up from a creationist's point of view. God formed the earth instantly, not over long time spans.
Topics: The Salinity of the Oceans | Time is important | The Long Spans of Time | Bayes Law | First law of Thermodynamics | Second law of Thermodynamics | The Error of Presuming that everything continues Today as It Happened in the Past | Topsoil Testimony | The Accumulation of Space Dust on Meteors | The Sun, the Meteors, and the Moon | The Magnetic Field | The Deterioration in the Rotation of the Earth | Helium in the Atmosphere | The Process to Discern Age by Carbon 14.
Read the Tract: evc06 The Young Age of the Earth.

Tracts Group 2

fam42 The Foolish Child explains what the Bible teaches on fools and foolishness, and also a parent's solution to a foolish child.
Excerpts: Ecclesiastes 4:13 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished. A fool is a person who rejects advice.
We can define the concept of foolishness as the lack of values and vision toward eternity, toward spiritual things. In other words, this person lives focusing on things that the person wants, and he does not pay attention to what God says as being important, or how God says we should live.
Proverbs 18:2 A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.
The basis of being wise is that you do not limit yourself, to just what you think you know. A wise person opens his thinking to the wisdom and advice of others, and weighs others’ opinions to see if they are right or not. The foolish only considers what he himself thinks, or what other fools like him think.
View tract: fam42 The Foolish Child

News

Are we a country of Laws? Are we a country of Laws? Is an examination of the question of we are a country of laws, and nobody is above the law, and what is really happening in our country. This is an opinion piece written in light of the news of the day. Topics: The Greatness of the United States of America | "Nobody is above the Law" | Comparisons | Defund the Police | No one is above the law | What one would ask for...

Excerpts from the article...
I say "for a person to have a right walk before God" meaning that what you personally do is acceptable in a level of being fair and just both what you do to others, and in the context of what others do to you. You only have a claim of somebody doing something "wrong" in a moral context, and this moral context has to begin with God's existence and God's laws over us before you get to what happens in a court of law in a country, state, county, or city.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

This verse fully backs up this concept. To "please God" who is the Judge... The concept of "rewarder" is somebody that looks at actions and gives a reward or a punishment. This is ultimately God's task, and earthly judges must also answer to God, as those in their courts have to answer to that earthly judge. We posit God "must believe that he is" means they must accept the authority and controls (of blessing or curse, of reward or punishment) from the Judge. He exists. He has a forceful interaction with our lives.

The system that is built on this is a system where one person doesn't get anything different from another. Are there abuses? Yea, but life is full of injustices. But taking something from one person to give to another person is not the answer here especially when the person you are taking away things from really hasn't done anything wrong. Black people (Asians, etc.) need to enter shoulder to shoulder with every other person on an equal ground, and they need to compete. That is life. If they of their own merit and effort get ahead, so be it. But nobody owes them a living. Reparations are the opposite of this.
Read the article: Are we a country of Laws?