RULE OF FAITH

What is Holy Scripture?  Which parts of the Bible are not Scripture and which parts are?  There are people who say that the events within the experience are “extra biblical”.  This needs to be addressed.

In the days when Jesus walked this earth in the literature of the Jewish nation,  a group of writings called “The Scriptures” now called the Old Testament, the people generally believed as having come from God.   The Old Testament “Canon” literally meaning,  “cane” or “measuring rod” came to be used as the name of a list of books which were accepted as the originally inspired, authoritative Word of God –  “The Rule of Faith.” 21.

Early in history when God determined that He would have (in His Divine purposes)  a people who were to be provided with an opportunity to be brought back to Him,  He began,  by revelation of himself to man,  the Ten Commandments and Moses’ Laws.  Then Joshua and Samuel wrote their books and Ezra and the Prophets and these were all read in the Synagogues.  Jesus himself repeatedly referred to these as “the Word of God.”22.

There is evidence in the New Testament Paul claimed his teaching to be the Word of God (1 Corinthians 2:7-13: 14: 37) and (Thessalonians 2: 13.)  John did also in Revelation 1: 2.).

Paul intended that the Scriptures should be read and remain in the churches following his departure. (11 Peter 1: 15; 3; 1-2.)   Peter puts Paul’s Epistles with “other Scriptures” (11 Peter 3: 15-16) and the Apostles wrote many letters which provided for the needs of the churches in the immediate.

The New Testament books first appeared throughout Palestine, Asia Minor, Greece, Crete and Rome and there would have been little opportunity for Christians to come together and compare notes on their writings due to the difficulties and dangers of  travel and communication.  Ideas could travel no faster than people could travel and churches which had no written records were overrun by false teachers. 23.   Printing was then unknown and the making of copies was a task done laboriously by hand.   In an age embroiled with the terrors of persecution this must surely stand as concrete proof that God protected their existence down through the ages.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until a re-make of the Holy Spirit in the form of the Toronto Blessing I swallowed the “Slaying in the Spirit” stuff.     Foolishly I trusted what the Pastor said.   “At Pentecost everybody was so drunk in the Spirit they fell all over the  place,”  said the Pastors who headed up Christian Outreach Centre and  Apostolic Life and all their visiting preachers.  I trusted and believed them.  I was too busy working to support my family at that time to attend to really studying the Bible.   I read my Bible almost everyday and from one Sunday to the next I prepared myself to receive some more church abuse, in one form or another.  I would spend hours on my knees weeping before the Lord for all the cruel and unkind things they said,  asking Him to help me forgive them.

If  I questioned the Pastor about something that did not seem quite right then I was the one who had the problem.  I wore make up,  I had a spirit of Jezebel,  a man hater and therefore a feminist because I needed to have answers to preaching that seemed “not right”.  Rather than provide me with satisfactory answers they insulted me.

I attended a prayer meeting enjoying my time with other Christians, completely unaware of anything I could possibly have done to attract comment from a senior Pastor  who led  this congregation:  “How has your husband put up with you for the last 22 years,” this sheep herd questioned.

Was this what Pastors were supposed to say?  Was this supposed to be God’s humbling process in me?  At the time I believed him when he said we were all like pebbles rubbing together.  For the purposes of sanctification I supposed?   He was God’s man –  so God must have intended him to say this to me I thought,  and went home and cried buckets before God.

Week after week I attended church, longing to be accepted just as I was.  My career provided me with endorsement of my worth and value.  I was very good at my chosen profession and worldly men respected and liked me.  My worldly women friends were supportive, loving, efficient , fun and they did not gossip.   In our profession, client’s confidentiality was sacrosanct.  They all knew I was a Christian and I always faithfully proclaimed the gospel, a gospel which seemed missing from the churches I attended.  They must believe in (1 Corinthians 15: 1-4) to be  saved by faith in that gospel plus nothing.

Without exception, all Pastors I ever met with seemed to have additional agendas and owned an unlimited capacity to be incredibly rude.  They all appeared to have a desperate need to exercise control to accord with their own religious views. These teachings, according to my Bible were not written.  Since the only comparisons I had were between them and the intelligent men with whom I shared my working environment –  they all fell far short.

The Toronto Blessing and all it brought with it was just too much.  A man from the leadership of  this particular Church, came to my home at 10.20 at night not to share with me but to scream at me to “shut up!”  Yet another came, Bible in hand to  “bring me under their authority”.  I was grateful my dear friend was with me that day and threw him out.  This same man declared at his prayer group I attended that “some women enjoy being raped”.

I approached the leader of  the Fellowship with my problem.  I was told to make a study to discover the accuracy of all I was being taught and present it to the leader of the prayer group.  A research of case studies from the United Kingdom and Australia failed to prove this information to be correct and later I was told my findings were put through the shredder.

Not one Pastor who put my abusers into leadership positions disciplined them for their abuse of me. I could only conclude they were in agreement with such behaviour.   No one ever repented (changed their minds) and they continued to abuse me with disparaging comments and soul-destroying shared glances at one another. The arrogance and incredible rudeness of these people left me with the impression that they could never ever attain to anything much outside the church.   They all seemed to be of the same stamp, pushing and shoving for leadership positions – this being the major subject of discussion in Pentecostal circles.  I decided that holding some “position” must provide a sense of worthiness.  Sadly such people were the most horrendous control  freaks and their objective – to make me submissive.   It was also quite apparent that they had no real understanding of Scripture and the words  “honesty and integrity” were not in their value system at all.  I therefore concluded they were blind guides leading the blind.

Now the Pastors claimed I was blaspheming the Holy Spirit.   I quaked within.   Deep within my heart I knew it wasn’t true yet at that point I did not have a proper understanding of its correct meaning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that the use of Scripture plucked out aphoristically to condemn or control someone must surely be religious witchcraft.

The more positive result of all this abuse towards me made me all the more resolute in my determination to prove the activities which had entered into the church as error  To prove, for my own sanity, that these controllers who sought to hold this sinful dominion over me to be totally wrong.  All this they justified under the banner of “church covering’ and “submission to leadership”.  Yet another popular control mechanism was to declare that we “must not touch the Lord’s anointed”.

I must confess I so longed to find a Pastor I could trust with myself, so longed for acceptance and truth that I tried everywhere.  The best excuse I could find was the ever-perennial one of  “when you find a good church don’t join it because you’ll spoil it”.  How could I argue with that for I always felt so sin-riddled anyway, quite the opposite against all these self-proclaiming and approved to be worthy saints.  Notwithstanding all of this I still could not help but read when I turned to my Bible for verification that truth was not preached.

So I began my studies in earnest . The Lord ensured this could be achieved because He grounded me.  All my long hours at work from 7.30 in the morning often until 8.30pm  over a period of 30 years burned me out and on top of that I had ever recurring memories of horrendous child abuse by the “darling Daddy” I had loved so much and also my husband was diagnosed with Parkinsons with Lewy Body Dementia.  I was a full blown case of PTSD.

I had declared my firm belief that God’s Word works and now I really did have an opportunity to prove it.  I never did resort to drugs and not once did I resort to man’s psychology.  Instead, I entered into putting long hours into prayer and study of the Word.

My recovery through confession, prayer and study took 12 years and I knew the key was perseverance.

I considered the major errors which led to “being off the plumbline” was a clear lack of understanding as to Spirit Baptism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once studied,  the Doctrine of the Ministries of the Holy Spirit by Dr Arnold G Fruchtenbaum  Ariel.org,  cleared up errors which had been impressed upon me within Pentecostal circles.

Born again in 1981 spiritual abuse has been my lot until this day.  It is all the more evil where people hide behind a badge of “authority” and use the names of Jesus and God to bring people into line with their way of thinking.  Pastors such as they feel intimidated if someone with some theological knowledge and reasonable understanding of the Word challenges their biblical errors.  To admit (after two years of training under Replacement theology whether it be Covenant Amillennialism,  Postmillennialism or Covenant Premillennialism) that the instruction they received at some theological college was inadequate and failed to teach Scripture correctly requires a great deal of humility.

I have now come to believe the only sensible answer is through Dispensationalism.  The principles of Dispensationalism,  in the way it divides the Word,  places Israel in its correct place in Scripture.   That is –  Israel is the wife of Jehovah and the church is the Bride of Christ.   I have discovered that unless Israel is put in its proper place in systematic theology then there are clear inadequacies within the teachings of Covenant theology that simply does not get other things right.

 (Hosea 2:19-20)  And I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving kindness and in mercies.  I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness and tho shalt know Jehovah.”  

It is reprehensible to twist Scripture to endorse the rite of infant baptism and justify this as biblical truth.  It is also wrong to claim the church is spiritual Israel and the 144,000 of Revelation are symbolic. These are but a few examples of Replacement Theology.  Those who teach this stuff say to me that Dispensational theology is based on only one Scripture that is – Revelation 20.  They do not appreciate that the Revelation of Jesus Christ to His servant John provides clear direction to the prophetic Scriptures which provide further and better descriptions of the end times.   Demons play a significant  part in stopping Scriptural truth from being revealed.

Pride is surely the greatest scourge of humanity.  It would be just wonderful if the good Reverends would bury their pride accept that Covenant theology fails to adequately provide satisfactory answers to divide truth from error.

Until the recent  “extra-biblical happenings”  Pentecostals believed that to argue Scriptural truth (which they thought they understood in a literal sense) was unacceptable.  There were many who said to me

“You should not be speaking like this for you will only find yourself fighting against God and you may find yourself in a very dangerous position.”

Once again they needed to read the whole of the Scripture which plucked out aphoristically.  It reads:-

(Acts 5:20) “Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail.  But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men: you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” 

The substance of what was happening here is that Peter and the other Apostles appeared before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest for preaching the Gospel.  A Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, and who was honoured by the people stood up in the Sanhedrin to bring a warning to all those who sought to persecute the Apostles.   “….you will not be able to stop these men; or you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” 

God commands every one of us “to be Bereans and search the Word of God for ourselves”.   And further Jude tells us that we have a duty to fight for God’s truth. 

Seminars were provided to understand the teachings of  Joseph Smith and other false prophets to enable us to witness to cults.   Pentecostals were also aware that the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church are extra- biblical but they did not know why.   This subject will be dealt with later.  So it has been, in their confusion, they also believed,  and still do,  they were  brothers and sisters in Christ.  They worshipped with those whose doctrines were out of Rome and from whom the Bible says we should “come out and be ye separate” and sought to be unified with them – ecumenism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Until the extravagances of the TB epidemic I really never sought to research Pentecostal teachings.  The  acceptance of continuous baptisms in the Spirit proved to be central to the accumulation of error within Pentecostal circles.  This originated at the 1906 Azuza Street Revivals with Charles Parham who was the father of Pentecostalism – the Assemblies of God Church.  (This will be dealt with more extensively later). It just did not make any sense to me to read in my Bible I was already baptised into the Body of Christ by His Holy Spirit and then to seek to obtain another baptism and another baptism. It was very clear to me I had already received a deposit of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing my inheritance into Christ’s Body  (Ephesians Chapter 1) and that this was the highest and most incredible blessing and honour that I could ever receive.

It is not so surprising that the apostate church today represents those groups who have embraced one another despite their varied theological errors.  Unity despite error  (Evangelicals and Catholics together ECT)  has been under-way now for some time.  Together they march down the road to Rome.

Satan’s strategy is to dismantle the power and effectiveness of the Bible.24.  People enter into phenomena and following their “experience” are then blinded to biblical truth.   Perhaps they prefer to ignore the clear precedents within Scripture of 11 Timothy 3:5 which relates to the character of the apostasy:-

“Holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof; from these also turn away” and also 1 Timothy 4:1-3 .

“But the Spirit says expressingly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own character as with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth”.

In verses 1-4, there is a description of the world during the last days of the Church Age.  Verse 5  describes men who display a form of godliness but deny its power and those who wear clerical garb and chase afetr church titles but deny the true power of godliness; and the third passage is 11 Peter 2:1-22.

‘But there arose false prophets also among the people, as among you also there shall be false teachers, who shall privately bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that brought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. AND many shall follow their lascivious doings; by whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.  AND in covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you; ……”

 If you read through this passage note Peter does not display any love or tolerance towards apostates. Their teachings are described as destructive heresies denying the Master who brought them –  Jesus the Messiah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are so many now who have sought a continuous diet of spiritual experience,  seeking after every new phenomena.  This stuff is made to fit to the Word in every which way,  rather than seek out, prove and then stand on Biblical truth.   If only they would observe the experience, then to make rational, analytical judgments based on the writings within God’s Guide Book in tandem with prayer,  seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus.

I  believe they know the truth BUT  they would feel robbed if they were not rolling around on the floor experiencing  “the power”.

In fact one Pastor declared shortly after we walked through the door – “if you are here without intending to experience the power you may as well go home”.

I have heard people say that the words contained in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not Scripture for they were recorded by man and not Spirit-breathed.  To take this line of argument further we can say that the words recorded by some Scribe provide only hearsay evidence and as such can be discounted.   Then we can say that as the man Paul wrote to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, Philemon and perhaps Hebrews,  the greater part of the New Testament is in question as to whether it is to be accepted as the Spirit-breathed word of God.   I know of a local Reverend, a most scholarly gentleman who teaches his congregation that much of the Bible is not relevant for today. He says,   “perhaps some of the words recorded as those Jesus spoke may be useful but the rest can be discounted.”

The entire Bible may as well be discarded.