Religion or Relationship

[Godsdrummer]

1/20/2013

Religion or Relationship

The question has been ask, “what would constitute good or bad fruit coming out of a seemingly blessed ministry? The church where I attend seems to be growing but it seems mostly based on "social works" and I don't hear "deep studies" on the Word and prayer. The leadership seems to care about people and has different outreach programs but are programs enough to help get people saved from their sins and ready for the rapture?”.

We must stop looking at things from a religious point of view, religion teaches that we must earn salvation. As if salvation is something achieved after this life, and that we earn eternal life by the works in this life. This is the teaching of the religious leaders of Christ day. They searched scripture looking for eternal life, trying their best of obey the law of God in this life to the point of being hypocrites.

I must stop a moment and explain, that I will not put many scripture text in this letter. While I will quote much scripture, it may not seem that way. As I will quote in context rather than pulling one verse here or there to prove my point. To the read bible scholar, one that has read the word and studied from an expository view this will be clear. To others, that have been indoctrinated by traditions vain deceit, and mans philosophy this will not be as clear.
Just as we must look salvation from a different point of view, we must study the word of God from a proper point of view.

That being said, let me move on. To understand the fruits of a false prophet, first we should understand what are the fruits of a true prophet. Jesus taught “by this shall all men know you are my disciples, that you love one another”. Paul taught the fruit of the spirit is “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance.” What is love? Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.

The next thing we must understand is that a NT prophet is not the same as a OT prophet. First and foremost a prophet is not a foreteller of future events. A prophet is a inspired speaker of God. Again Paul teaches that a prophet speaks to the church to “edification, exhortation, and comfort”. Think on that a minute. There was only one prophet that spoke of future events that would come to pass. That was Christ. All other prophets spoke of the coming of the messiah, that was the only future event that was prophesied, that must and would come to pass. All other spoken warnings were just that warning of what would come should they not change their ways. The fact that they did come to pass, is simple proof that the people did not change their ways. Argue this all you want the fact is every promise and warning of God was conditional, with the exception of the coming redeemer. Another fact that should be understood, is all the OT were types and shadows of our present covenant with God. That means all the promises had a spiritual fulfillment in the kingdom of God which is spiritual. Just as Jesus told the religious leaders of the day, they search the scriptures thinking they had found the solution to eternal life, but those scriptures only spoke of him and the work he came to do.

Therefor a true Prophet/preacher is one that speaks unto “edification, exhortation, and comfort” all others are false prophets. A prophet/preacher that teaches a works based salvation in this life is a false prophet. Salvation is not of works but faith, Christ fulfilled our salvation on the cross, we accept this by faith, this is called grace. By grace are we saved not of works lest any should boast. By grace we are brought back into communion with our creator in this life, that we can have relationship with God in this life, not the life to come. Eternal life is the by product of relationship with God in this life. To understand this we must understand one last thing.

God is love, how can love be expressed unless there are adversities, trials, tribulations, hardships? In this life and only in this life can we experience those things. Before you go and blame God for those things, let me clarify one thing, we bring these things into our life God does not, but God is the answer to those things.