Posted on 04/03/2010 10:55:16 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The cross is mounted on church steeples. We have overlaid it with gold to wear around our neck or on our lapel. In doing so, have we forgotten that the cross is an instrument of death! It was for Christ and it is for us - death to self. Are we bearing our cross daily?" ~ A.W. Tozer
'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.' (Luke 9:23)
All of Christianity begins and centers upon the person of Jesus and his work on the cross. It was Paul who said the cross was everything to him. He had a greater education, knowledge, and revelation than any other apostle, even of those who knew Jesus personally in the flesh, having been called before him. Yet all he wanted to know was summed up in one saying, "Jesus Christ and him crucified."
When Christ is displaced from His proper place, when He is no longer followed correctly the believer finds himself in a cross less walk...Today we can listen to most of the popular Christian TV teachers promise everything to a believer but neglect this essential ingredient to Christianity...This leads to illegitimate children, not true sons of God.
Picture our walk with the cross as carrying a crossbeam while people are walking by you at a faster speed. You trudge along slowly, carefully carrying this object on your shoulders. The people stare at you... They ask why would anyone carry such a thing?...A new person in Christ does not fit in society and its ways.
Are you nailed to your cross? Or do you pick it up occasionally and carry it as far as you want, until it is uncomfortable and then lay it down...
(Excerpt) Read more at moriel.org ...
Very true, and especially when it comes to the “Gospel” ... eh? :-)
“This guy does not understand the Gospel, nor does he represent the meaning of the cross. God did not tell him to do this because it is so contrary to sound teaching.”
Careful. Sometimes God gives a person a burden you wouldn’t think made sense:
“When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.” - Hosea 1
Amen..! good read ...that nailed it... Hollywood and the godless music industry love to wear the cross around their necks but hate Christ’s redemptive work done on it for the whole world..woe unto them Jude 1:7-10!
But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.....
Amen my Friend! what foolishness that verse is to the world... but wisdom unto us ! 1 Cor 1:30!!
“When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.” - Hosea 1"
Careful? Careful? Don't put this nut in the same league as the Prophet Hosea. Unless he is willing to say, "I am a Prophet like Isaiah." and is willing to say, "God said these words audibly to me as an order: Go drag around a wheely cross!", I am calling this presumption, blasphemy and foolishness. No whisper, whisper, no impression of the heart, no small voice in the dark. If he is not a Prophet, he needs to stop saying God told him anything. But, the guy is a false prophet and should admit his error. Shame on him.
Numbers are immaterial. No where in the epistles do any of the writers intimate that doing odd things in public in order to talk to people is a measure of godliness. This "Billy Graham" mentality is unbiblical and detracts from the true message of the Gospel. And rest assured there is not going to be one person in the entire history of the human race that was among the elect that is left out at the last day. John 6:44ff.
Numbers are immaterial. No where in the epistles do any of the writers intimate that doing odd things in public in order to talk to people is a measure of godliness.
Ummm... I don't know about that.. raising people from the dead is pretty odd to a lot of people these days. Getting out of jail without keys and then "evangelizing" your jailer in his home, talking to him and his family would be quite odd to many people today. Having a couple of members of your congregation fall over dead, right in front of you, because they told you a lie about how much you donated to your church would classify as very odd. Talking to a few thousand people who spoke different languages (that you didn't speak) and have them all hear you talking in their own language, would be quite an odd way to evangelize, I would say... LOL ...
I mean, I could come up with some more odd ways to evangelize, if you were interested... :-)
This "Billy Graham" mentality is unbiblical and detracts from the true message of the Gospel.
And I always thought that Billy Graham did a good job of telling people about the Gospel of Salvation. It always seemed to be "right on" to me...
Perhaps you're thinking about some "peculiar variation" of the Gospel of Salvation that is not in the Bible (like a lot of cult groups do) ... I don't know... I'm not saying that you are presenting the Gospel of Salvation, according to the Scriptures, in a wrong manner, but I'm just saying that Billy Graham always presented the Gospel of Salvation just like the Bible told it.
Soon, to please Islamic peoples all crosses will be banned from all churches, from jewelry, from posters etc... Many places have banned them now. We are in the tyranny of the minority—they few are more important than the many—if you doubt this look again at what happened with health care.
Okay, I'll grant you that. Remember though, that the Reformed in Revolutionary American relentlessly persecuted Baptists, Quakers, Catholics and anybody else that they didn't like. Didn't make them right then either. :)
I remember reading about this guy years ago. A wheeled cross. Yeah, sure. However, you keep going on about self created sacrifice. Jesus fasted and so did the Jews of the day. Monasticism came from the imitation of the self sacrifice of Christ. Privation, when pursued with holy aims, can be very beneficial. Have you ever fasted, by the way; can you relate to the practice?
St. Paul didn't start out Catholic either...
When folks do what this man has done (or worse, reenact the crucifixtion), the world infers from it that the man is doing to endear him to God. The sacrifice, the pain, the suffering he endures all seem to be understood by the viewing audience as something needed to appease God.
Negative. This is not an endearment. It is an embrace of the sacrifice that Jesus gave to us. An understanding. The Phillipines give us reenactment of the Crucifixion. Mel Gibson gave us a visual of the Crucifixion. It is a testimonial, and a reminder to us all of the impossibly brutal death that our Saviour suffered on our behalf. It is a method of thanking Him, of offering our greatest gratitude to Him, for doing something of the impossible magnitude that He did for us.
This is the great error. To pay for our sins, we would have to stay on the cross. There is no promise of us having the power to raise ourselves from the dead. And if I could some survive my death on the cross, how is that I could imbue myself with adequate righteousness to stand before the Judge? Death on the cross would pay the price for sin, but would not elevate me to acceptable to God...the problem is two fold.
The problem is that this is not the reason for it all. It is homage, and thanks, not substitution.
Very wise and true words ,dear brother in Christ!
Well, to put your mind at ease, there are no loaded weapons involved in my persecution. Nor fires. Nor drownings. And, it is a well known fact that Reformers routinely failed to recognize how to apply a biblical perspective to an unbelieving world OR how to treat those in theological disagreement civily. Shame on us.
That's okay. I think that I can hold my own in a firefight. :)
Have a blessed Easter, my friend.
Amen...very well put!
God bless you and yours as we celebrate our savior’s resurrection from the death of the cross so that we may dwell with him for eternity!
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