Can you believe greater things than what you were taught?

If we put the four gospels at the head of our beliefs and do not sway from it with any doctrine, we can't go wrong. We all feel the Lord wants us to live with Him forever and we can't do that without Christ.

But the gospels teach that to have eternal life we must be perfect, so following Christ to repent of our sins and try to be perfect seems at the heart of the gospels and that perfection is impossible for us. That Christ wiped out the rules is what the church tells us Paul said. Paul tells us we must take on the spirit of Christ, not just follow rules.

The gospels, again, give us the answer . "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26.

We can attain eternal life only through Christ, it is the perfection of Christ that we accept in ourselves that gives us this life. That is the heart of scripture, all else is extra blessings.

When we have thoughts about scripture they often come from the Holy Spirit, but there are times they come from somewhere else. Historically, our church councils and popes ascribed their thoughts to the Holy Spirit when that is not where they came from. We can know that if they added or took away from scripture. The Holy Spirit is the lord and it never speaks anything contrary to scripture that comes from the Lord. We must check our thoughts with scripture.

If we put the four gospels at the head of our beliefs and do not sway from it with any doctrine, we can't go wrong. We all feel the Lord wants us to live with Him forever and we can't do that without Christ.

But the gospels teach that to have eternal life we must be perfect, so following Christ to repent of our sins and try to be perfect seems at the heart of the gospels and that perfection is impossible for us. That Christ wiped out the rules is what the church tells us Paul said. Paul tells us we must take on the spirit of Christ, not just follow rules.

The gospels, again, give us the answer . "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26.

We can attain eternal life only through Christ, it is the perfection of Christ that we accept in ourselves that gives us this life. That is the heart of scripture, all else is extra blessings.

Agreed, except for your interpretation of what Paul's view of how God's law works in us, in sanctification day by day, under the new covenant, in righteous free will of our hearts and minds, and not being yoked as slaves to God's law anymore as God's covenant people, as it was under the old covenant:


Hebrews 8 (ESV)

10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.


2 Peter 3 (ESV)

15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, 16 as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. 17 You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.


Matthew 7 (ESV)

22 On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' 23 And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

God's law is God's will. Will there be sin in heaven one day? Will there be a place for unrepentant sinners in heaven one day? We walk a road of sanctification, where Jesus / Yeshua came to bring our will in harmony with God's will, so that God's will is no longer a yoke for us the bear, but he made it our righteous will to obey our Maker, with whom we will be reunited in heaven, they who have received his gift of our new righteous will to obey him.

I am sorry, I don't understand your post. You say "yoked as a slave to God's law". Do you mean that you believe God took His law back so we don't have law any more?

I feel I am all alone in believing that all scripture is from an eternal God who does not change so the old covenant is eternal, is from God. We are told there are some things in that OT covenant that are of no use any more, they are obsolete, but I haven't found anything that says God changes so God cancels something He has said. Certainly the law as stated in a set of rules is obsolete, now the Holy Spirit gives us this law in the spirit of Christ. It is the same law.

Some people get right down angry over my saying this and start calling me names, becoming an enemy to me. Calling me a fool, as Christ spoke of, would be mild.

I feel I am all alone

I am sorry, I don't understand your post. You say "yoked as a slave to God's law". Do you mean that you believe God took His law back so we don't have law any more?

I feel I am all alone in believing that all scripture is from an eternal God who does not change so the old covenant is eternal, is from God. We are told there are some things in that OT covenant that are of no use any more, they are obsolete, but I haven't found anything that says God changes so God cancels something He has said. Certainly the law as stated in a set of rules is obsolete, now the Holy Spirit gives us this law in the spirit of Christ. It is the same law.

Some people get right down angry over my saying this and start calling me names, becoming an enemy to me. Calling me a fool, as Christ spoke of, would be mild.

Hi Nehemiah,
Good to see you posting.

Notice I didn't ask "Will you trust God OR your pastor/teacher/priest?" which would go against God's appointment of those offices. I'm not suggesting that.

Instead what I asked was"Will you ONLY trust your pastor/teacher/priest?" which would elevate a pastor/teacher/priest to a status he is not intended to hold in the hearts of God's people. God himself desires to be our primary source of understanding. That happens in our prayer closets and as we spend time in the word. Listening to a pastor/teacher/priest is no substitution for speaking to, and hearing from, God.

Love in Jesus,
Kelby

I agree that all people should study Scriptures, but they should not discount those servants anointed by God to preach/teach His Truth.

I believe that if one trusts in the Holy Spirit, He will show them when a false teacher confronts them. The Spirit has a way of making one feel uncomfortable when they hear/read something that is not Truth. That feeling that says "Hey, heads up, this does not sound right..." I know I have had this feeling more than once, and when I turn to Scripture, I find that the Spirit was correct in warning me.

What was being said, or what I read was NOT in agreement with Scripture.

To further add on what you have said

Another issue is relying on the teachings of only one church.

As an ex-serial church hopper, I have released that different churches specialize in understanding of certain parts of scripture and tend to misinterpret the rest.
The Lutheran church understands righteousness by faith very well, but they do not have a good understanding of sanctification.
The Methodist church understands sanctification very well, but does have a good understanding of baptism.
The Baptist church understands baptism very well but do not have a good understanding of the end times. And I could go on.

So every church has a bit of truth and a bit of misinterpretation. Another problem that I have also identified is that churches tend to focus on certain parts of the bible and never address the rest. They also tend to focus on certain bible verses on a subject and ignore the rest resulting in them having a one sided view about a certain subject and do not look at the full picture.

Proverbs 11:14 says that “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety”. Therefore I do not think that it is always a good idea to only look at the interpretations of one pastor or one church since they tend to have a one-sided view of scripture. It is better to listen to interpretations of different churches to get a more balanced view and then ask God to give you wisdom to decide for yourself which one is the correct interpretation (James 1:5).

I personally do not like to accuse any church of being a false church or say that certain churches have false teachings. I believe that the bible is not an easy book to understand and churches misinterpret certain parts of it. Bible misinterpretation is a problem of every church and every Christian.

I am especially opposed to demonizing churches and calling them cults, like calling the Seventh Day Adventist church a satanic cult. I have personally spoken to SDA Christians about their beliefs and they we were able to provide bible verses for what they believed, so we cannot accuse them of being false or satanic. We can only accuse them of misinterpretation if we disagree with them. They having a bible verse/s for some of their strange beliefs made it hard to convince them that they were wrong, so the only issue was interpretation.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a bible that has a lot of missing bible verses, so we will never agree with them on a lot of things, but does this qualify for them to be called a cult? Deceived maybe, but calling them a cult is an exaggeration. The problem is that they are not always straight-forward in saying what they believe.

Being Teachable

Overall, God is the best teacher because man and churches are fallible.
But whether we rely on only God or both man and God, we must have a teachable spirit.

A person is teachable when they have the following characteristics:

• He/she has a mindset that they do not know everything and that they could be wrong about a lot of things.
• He/she is ready and willing to change his/her beliefs after getting additional clarification about certain parts of scripture even if he/she has believed a certain interpretation for 10, 20 or even 30 years.
• He/she does not look at who the messenger is, but focuses on the message and accepts the message if it is biblical.
• He/she is willing to accept beliefs that are 100% biblical, even if most people do not believe in them. Even if they are the only one that believes in them. This is the most difficult principle to implement because people tend to ostracize and criticize those who do not agree with mainstream Christianity.
• We have a lot of examples of this in history like Martin Luther. He believed in justification by faith and was called heretic by the Papacy because his belief was not what the Church of Rome or any church taught at that time. He stood up against the Papacy by himself, while others refused to stand along with him. There are plenty more like him such as John Wesley, John Huss, and William Tyndale etc.
• Therefore you have to be someone like the Protestant Reformers who realized that the majority do not decide what truth is. The bible says what truth is even if it not agreeable to everyone.

I'm only on here for a few minutes and don't think i have the strength (before getting some rest) for even reading the 5 pages of new comments on another thread, but your post is quite interesting, because you bring up the idea of differences in churches when there are a lot to choose from...and the mention of the word "cult".

On the topic of different churches and teaching styles and focuses within them.... There were a lot of churches and sects of churches in Jesus' days... How did he advise his disciples on the matter? To which church did he point them?

Secondly, on the topic of cults... I don't use the modernly promoted definition of "cult". I use the first one I found, probably in some old dictionary. It said a cult is "any religious group that has dogma and traditions without an entity supporting them" (or something to that effect). So, whether it be some tribe in Africa or some denominational group in the USA, I may listen to their doctrines and see their traditions but what I'm really looking for is their "god". If you can find the teachings and traditions but not God...it's a cult by the definition I use, no matter how popular or publicly accepted it is.

Love in Jesus,
Kelby

Hello KelbyofGod

In my post, I was just adding to what you were saying. I was not criticizing your post.

I was not accusing you specifically of calling certain churches cult. The post was a general comment that some Christians bad mouth churches when they do not understand their interpretations of the bible.