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Showing posts from July, 2012

How Does Authentic Faith Differ From Superficial Faith?

In contrast to this modern age's "easy believism" gospel, however I have decided to really show the difference between superficial belief vs. to that of authentic faith.  In contrast to what some may think that Paul and James are contradictory to each other, they are not.  Now here's a little bit of quotation from the book "The Jesus You Can't Ignore" by Pastor John Macarthur taken from page 54: Here is a practical lesson from this account: a positive response to Jesus should never be taken as proof of authentic trust in Him.  There is a shallow, fickle brand of "belief" that is not saving faith at all.  From the first public miracle He performed until this very day there have been always people who "accept Christ" without truly loving Him, without submitting to His authority and without abandoning their self confidence and trust in their own good works .  That is precisely what John describes at the end of John 2, and that

A Huge and Painful Lesson from the Sons of Eli

Friends, well I just thought that perhaps it is time for another lengthy reading and I would like to focus on the sons of Eli.  So here's a little bit of a background of Eli and his sons: Eli was the high priest during the time of the judges when no king yet ruled Israel.  As a priest, he had to come from the lineage of Levi and that of Aaron.  He can be last seen in 1 Samuel 1-2 having dealings with Hannah before his inevitable death in 1 Samuel 4. The sons of Eli were Hophni and Phinehas.  These two were coined as "sons of Belial" in 1 Samuel 2:12 which meant they were unsaved and degenerate. Now let's begin the whole story shall we?  Now we have the issue of that Eli was a good public servant for 40 years yet why did he have two unsaved sons?  It was perhaps he paid little attention to them which is said in 1 Samuel 3:13 saying, "For I have told him that I will judge his house for ever for the iniquity which he knoweth because his sons made themselves

Pleading for Mercy and Offering Gifts For the Pleasure to Sin Again?! God Forbid!

Proverbs 15:8- " The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright is His delight." Well there's the reality of emerging Antinomianism among the false Christians in these days.  One thing is for sure, no true Christian safe and secure in Christ, as backslid as they can get could ever think of ever using God's grace as a license to sin, rather they ask for God's grace they may not sin again and there is that huge difference.  But quite different is the one who begs for mercy in order for the pleasure of sinning again- God's grace is absent in that for the grace of God, in itself is not to allow sin to prosper but it was devised that man may sin no more (Ephesians 2:8-10, Titus 2:11-15).  Jesus didn't say "sin some more" but said "sin no more" to the woman caught in adultery (John 8:11).  Why?  Obviously the new nature in Christ desires not to sin and cannot sin, though the Christian will s

Thinking of Rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ? This COULD Be Your Last Chance!!!

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What is pretty sad is this- people think they have all the time in the world to the point they are rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Despite some good examples of dead people like John Lennon's claim of being better than Jesus led to his tragic untimely death, to how some people claim not even God can impeach them died while in office, to how the late Marilyn Monroe two weeks before she died at the young age of 36 said she didn't need Jesus Christ, or to how the Titanic sank after the engineers said that not even God could sink it (How foolish can they get?) still, many people choose to reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ considering every event that is listed to be just "mere coincidence" to these tragic premature deaths.  However God allows things to happen for a reason especially when some wicked are allowed to live longer or are allowed to be cut short, it is God's decision to do so (Ecclesiastes 5:17-19). These unsaved heathens have nobody to blame b

The Religious Crowd is a Problem in Soulwinning

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I n the area of soulwinning, one has to face the real problem of the religious crowd's members.  Why is that?  Well Jesus did face the problem of the Pharisees in His earthly ministry.  Throughout Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the Pharisees suffered from one HUGE problem called self-righteousness.  They thought they were all well and better off than everyone.  In fact, the Pharisees while they were openly righteous, they had the huge issue  of running a religious system that was far more dangerous than the Roman occupation that was already bad enough for Israel.  In some situations, they criticize Jesus accepting lost sinners who were repentant and humbled, coming just as they, fed up with sin and that He would embrace people like Matthew and Zacchaeus.  In fact, I believe they were appalled at the idea that the chief of sinners can become a righteous man, a changed man in Christ.  Was the issue new?  Not at all because in Jeremiah 5:31 it was mentioned that the people were lovi

The Need for Gospel Revival in MOST Filipino-Chinese Evangelical, Presbyterian and Baptist Churches and Schools!

I was hit of one issue while I was reading Bro. Zigfred's blog on " What the Gospel is Truly About " and I really agree with this statement as a reality- people are getting pseudo-conversions where they just sign a dotted line, say a simple prayer and there was really no preaching.  I got to admit this is how many Filipino-Chinese churches are preaching today- a shallow Gospel.  I was consulting a few of Pastor John Macarthur's videos or perhaps that of my favorite dead preacher Pastor Estus Washington Pirkle on the dangers of watered down preaching.  That is exactly what is happening in the Filipino-Chinese Evangelical and Baptist assemblies.  In fact, I was pretty horrified to think how a Filipino-Chinese Baptist pastor could be so critical and harsh to condemn the preaching styles of militant Baptist preachers that they are "old fashioned', "too military" or even worse a "Communist" for not allowing the children to run around and shout

Run Samson Run!!!!

Well, there are secular songs called "Run Samson Sun" by Neil Sedaka and "Delilah" by Tom Jones both of who I assume are not believers. Okay, they aren't worship songs but they do carry a huge lyrics that do warn of the truth about flirting with danger. In Judges 16, I would like to point out the infamous tragedy of Samson and Delilah. Perhaps some of you heard the story in secular sources, I am now going to preach from the Bible on hand on the matter . I will be showing the reality of God's warning signals of Christians towards unbelievers of the opposite sex. In fact, how true the words those songs can carry and how painful it is if it happens. In fact, the temptation is in every part of society. A little bit of a background on Samson. He was a believer, a man of God, a judge of Israel from the Tribe of Dan. However, like most believers, he had his flaws and his weakness had to do with women which became his downfall. So okay, I do not believe he

Follow-up Evangelism!

I just thought I'd give a shot on what I'd call as follow up evangelism.  What would that be about?  I was thinking I was listening to Pastor Paul Washer's sermon "A Biblical Alternative to the Sinner's Prayer."  Listen, salvation is NOT as easy as getting a ticket from a train station or renewal of a government license because signing a dotted line, just reciting a few words of "repeat after me" type of evangelism is SLOPPY.  Yes, salvation is without works, man does not work for their salvation but there is the difficult part of it .  What's the difficult part of salvation if salvation is without works?  The problems are of course pride and the love for sin (John 3:18-20) which makes it incredibly hard to believe by human standards.  I was thinking of Ray Comfort's Youtube videos on "True and False Conversion"  and "Hell's Best Kept Secret" to which he and Kirk Cameron discuss the recent number of false convers

The Reality of Generational Curses

The Bible is clear that there is such a thing as a generational curse, it is no joke.  I just thought of it how it can be painful to have this kind of a lineage of wickedness.  I was thinking of the fact that God said in Exodus 20:5 concerning the second commandment which forbade the making of graven images that He will certainly visit the iniquities of idolatry which will pass from one generation to another from the first to the fourth generation.  In Exodus 34:7, we can read again that God confirms His generational curse warning.  Unfair?  I think not.  I just thought of the statement that children learn to be messy if their parents are messy.  How does that work?  Just think of this situation: the first generation of the family is a swindling businessman, a dabber of the occult and a staunch idolater.  Then it comes to the second generation of the family of womanizers, schemers and the like which goes from the third until the fourth generation.  But because of a repeated sin patte

We Gave You the Good News Already, It's Your Problem If You Reject It!

The responsibility of the Christian is not to get everybody saved but to tell everyone how to be saved.  That is, every Christian is a seed planter.  However the disappointment can come when somebody can say, "I preached and I preached and I have not gotten anybody to repent."  Truth is, every Christian who does their part in soulwinning in any way will face rejection.  In His earthly ministry, you cannot show me anywhere in the Bible that says that Jesus was well-accepted- He was NOT.  The Apostles were more persecuted than popular- they may have been popular among brethren but NEVER among the wicked.   Think about the instances of how Christianity was met with much hostility and rejection proving Christians cannot win everybody to the Lord even if they preach it right.  Jesus warned ahead in John 15:18-19 that the world will hate Christians because they are not of the world, they are of Christ.  Every friend of the world is in fact an enemy of God and Christians being fr

The Curse of Marital Infidelity and Its Partners

I just thought of how today's society has gone into several wrong issues going on like "Money comes first." and "Men can treat women as badly as they can." Now here's the issue today, we have the issue of marital infidelity which has destroyed today's society. So here we have women who become mistresses for the sake of money . I could hardly understand why men themselves while their wives are proper with them would rather choose to go out with bad girls. I've heard of various stories from various people who told me of how the female paramours are most of the time- they hardly care about their boyfriends and all they want is the money. Again, 1 Timothy 6:10 says that the love of money is the ROOT of all evil. So why do these women waste their dignity and get themselves pregnant? Simple. The civil laws require that men are to treat their children well, legitimate or illegitimate . Of course while an illegitimate child has only 0.5x of the x of the le

The INTENSELY Personal Issue of Salvation

I would like to further discuss on the meaning of the narrow road and the wide road.  In Matthew 7:13-14, Jesus mentions this fact that wide is the road that leads to destruction and many enter therein while He mentions the dreadful truth that narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find.  In short, one must realize that this narrow gate means salvation is intensely personal, nobody gets saved because of their families as Christians nor does anybody get damned because of the unbelieving lifestyle of the wicked heathen they may have for relatives.  For one, I agree that Jesus does not always seek multitudes but rather He usually chooses to seek and saved only those who knows they are lost because in turn, they are the only ones who will truly receive Him, others will turn away when they realize that their personal sin must be dealt with.  No repentance means they will turn away from Jesus when sin is dealt with.  In fact, as much as people are preached to in groups B

The Husband's Adultery as a Form of Psychological Violence

As a reader of Baptist apologist Atty. Gerry Galacio's blog called Family Matters, I definitely want to think of how adultery laws can now define the husband's adultery as a form or act of psychological violence.  The entire problem of the matter is that regardless how many women the husband has already slept with, he cannot be filed for adultery.  However the law has fortunately provided the right of the wife to file her husband for adultery (even for just one incident) under the name of psychological violence.  This can be defined as: "Acts or omissions causing or likely to cause mental or emotional suffering of the victim such as but not limited to intimidation, harassment, stalking, damage to property, public ridicule or humiliation, repeated verbal abuse and marital infidelity . It includes causing or allowing the victim to witness the physical, sexual or psychological abuse of a member of the family to which the victim belongs, or to witness pornography in any fo

Despite God's Warnings, People CONTINUE IN THEIR SIN

The situation is that sadly, many sinners continue to remain hardhearted like the Pharaoh of the Exodus. From Exodus 7-12, we can read of the account of the Pharaoh who despite the signs and wonders God has shown, in hopes that he will let Israel go, continued to remain stubborn. Remember God allowed Pharaoh's heart to be hardened for a purpose- but Pharaoh hardened his heart at his own free will. When God said He will harden the heart of the Pharaoh, He did not mean He will really harden the heart of the Pharaoh but rather He will allow it so His glory is shown in Egypt. Listen, the Egyptians just like you and me are sinners in need of a Savior. God sent Joseph to demonstrate the reality of salvation was not only for the descendants of Jacob but also to everyone, including the wicked descendants of Ham, in the case of Egypt, they were born out of Mizraim, a son of Ham. What amazed me also is how he himself, the Pharaoh of the Exodus continued to remain stubborn to God's warn

Is Melchizedek Really the Lord Jesus Christ?

One of the greatest mysteries of Scripture is to who Melchizedek is.  One can argue that he was "only human" yet the Scriptures do suggest that this person, was no ordinary person.  In Genesis 14:18-20 we learn that Melchizedek had the attributes of being King of Salem which means "King of Peace" and the priest of the Most High God while his name means "King of Righteousness".  Hebrews 7:2 further verifies that Melchizedek was the "King of Peace".  Salem or peace, Jesus is in fact the Prince of Peace.  Again, while it seems contradictory but no human being can be called the King of Peace.  Apparently, Salem was no earthly kingdom but rather, a prefigurement of the millenial reign of Jesus.  Such titles could not go simply to basic human beings because it would be blasphemy.  The Bible declares that there is nobody righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10) to which the Apostle Paul quotes Psalm 14:2.  That is to state that Melchizedek cannot be just an