Posted on 05/17/2016 11:34:00 AM PDT by amessenger4god
Your assignment for today is to read and comprehend 2 Cor 11:4
quote-YES, inductive study reaps dividends!! Interesting in light of the tribulation and end times 1260 days the two witnesses.
Inductive study- I like the way you put that!
all for His Glory!
Mat 22:36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Mat 22:38 This is the first and great commandment.
Mat 22:39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Mat 22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
You can continue to pay your indulgence fee if you like, mine has been paid in full and for all time.
You cite Matthew 25:32-46 and assert, "The righteous aren't righteous because of what they claimed to believe. They were judged to be righteous because of their works."
So let's look at the scripture passage for context and clarification ...
Matthew 25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels are with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be assembled in front of him, and he will cull them out, one from another, like a shepherd separates sheep from goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right but the goats on his left.
In order to rightly divide the Word of God the reader must apply certain tools of understanding, one of which is dispensations of periods in which God deals with humanity differently from other dispensations.
In the Church Age --the Age of the Ekklesia, or body of believers based upon what Jesus stated in John 6 believing in the One Whom God has sent, we are not under the law but under Grace of God in Christ, so that any who believe in Whom God has sent are the born from above as taught by Jesus in John 3:14 where Jesus told Nicodemus the means to deliverance is foreshadowed by the incident in the desert found in Numbers 21:4-9 ... and iterated specifically in John 6 when someone asked Him to tell them what works God requires for salvation and Jesus replied ONLY believe on Him Whom God has sent for deliverance.
A non-Christian religion will usually accept that teaching and add 'but these other passages teach ...' as if Jesus left something out that we must do. GOD does not trick folks or leave important points out when He answers directly, as in John 6. The key to understanding why Jesus added no other requirements is found in comprehending what it means to be born from above, thus a newborn in God's family.
GOD's Promise to believers is that HE will put a new heart in you, He will raise you up in the way that you should go. He does that by placing the earnest of your inheritance in your spirit, the spark of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the 'still small voice within', but we illustrate our saving faith by listening and seeking to obey that voice, in order to grow in Grace and knowledge, showing the works illustrating our belief in His deliverance from our sin nature.
Just as an infant must be cared for by the parent(s) so God has instructed us that we will be --not might be, or should be, but WILL BE-- raising BELIEVERS up in the way that we should go as members of His family. But God does not impose that upon us, He gentle allows us to come to the understanding that without His life in us directing us we cannot do the works of righteousness needed to raise us up in the way that we should go. THEN our works reflect of Whose family we are members, as James was teaching those with ears to hear.
I have not quoted the entire Matthew passage from 36 to the end of the chapter because the key to understanding what is seen in the passage is all you need to comprehend the meaning of the passage entirely: the scene is after all the testing of the earth dwellers (Tommy Ice's phrase) and the final seven years of dealing with sin in Israel, such that those who continue to disbelieve in Jesus as Their Messiah are destroyed and the believing remnant are saved through to populate the millennium kingdom over which we His bride will reign with Him.
If you will but open your heart for a moment, to see the dispensational reality God illustrates, you will gain a key to understanding Scripture of a very powerful nature. Trying to apply the dispensational way God deals with the dead who are not The Church, not the Bride of Christ, and not Israel is error in rightly dividing the Word of God. It causes one to not get the timing correct, not correctly identify to whom the passage is speaking of, and what God's judgment is dealing with. Under His Grace, the ekklesia, the body of believers no matter the religion or denomination, they are all judged in the Cross of Christ, not their subsequent works. BUT we have a responsibility as members of His family by His Grace to us to listen to the guiding voice of His indwelling Spirit ... fro if we refuse to do that, we are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life by our own rejection of being raised up in the way that we should go. We are in the dispensation of Grace, not the dispensation of The Law, or the previous dispensation reaching back to Noah.
One last point: all the dispensations of God dealing with humanity are gathered under The Cross of Christ providing deliverance from the sin nature. Abraham believed God and it was counted for him righteousness. I believed God's Promise in Jesus and it has been accounted to me ... try it, you'll like it!
Should read: "Just as an infant must be cared for by the parent(s) so God has instructed us that we will be .. raised up in the way that we should go as members of His family."
Works matter, just not to Salvation. You have to ignore an awful lot of Scripture to be able to put the Bonds of Works on yourself and your fellow members.
It is the nature of cults ... like Mormonism.
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