Saturday, September 08, 2018

 
Tips for Bivocational Pastors

 

Bivocational ministry is often a necessity for pastors in today’s economy.

However, some are choosing bivocational ministry as a means to better know their communities and live on mission in the marketplace.

Whatever the reason, many bivocational pastors are finding unexpected blessings for themselves and their churches while navigating the unique challenges of bivocational ministry.

Here’s some advice from well-seasoned bivocational ministers for those considering a similar path.


Put your family first.
One of the biggest strains of being a bivocational pastor is the stress it creates on your family. James DeBoe, a longtime bivocational pastor and doctor, served 28 years as pastor of a Brethren in Christ church in rural Virginia while running his medical practice.

One of the best decisions in his career was setting a regular lunch date with his wife. The two had been at odds. He was spending too much time at work, causing a strain on their marriage.

In the middle of a medical exam, he says, he felt God tell him he needed to take his wife to lunch. The feeling was so intense he walked out of the exam room—leaving a patient on the table—and called his wife to invite her to lunch.

"After repeating this lunch date a few times, she was much happier," he says.

Finny Kuruvilla, a bivocational pastor in Boston, takes Fridays off to spend time with family. In the winter, that often means ice-skating or other activities. He teaches science to his kids, who are homeschooled, and once a week, he takes one of the kids to a local Mexican restaurant, where they snack and chat.

"We sit for an hour, eat chips and salsa—it costs me $2," he says.

"Guard the hearts of your spouse and children," says Philip Nation, teaching pastor at The Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee, and director of content development at LifeWay. "Don’t let them be ministerial widows and orphans. Love them well and you will lead better in the church."


Find a second job you like.
Andrew Weaver, pastor of United Lutheran Church in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, has an unusual job for a bivocational pastor. He is a balloon artist, specializing in giant art installations such as a 70-foot-long balloon river—complete with kayakers—he did for a local art fair.

Weaver says having a second job is good for a pastor’s mental health.

"If all the pastor does is serve the church and lives within the church walls, that can be very isolating," he says. "Getting beyond the church walls is important for every pastor."


Remember the mission, even when money is tight.
Most bivocational pastors will hit a rough spot, says Jorge Garcia, pastor of Gracia y Paz Covenant Church in Chula Vista, California. Sometimes money is tight. Sometimes there is too much to do and not enough time.

Don’t give up, says Garcia, who works as a sales engineer during the day. Just do what needs to be done and press on.

"You have the opportunity to serve God as a pastor for a particular flock of people," he says. "If you need to sell pizzas, you sell pizzas."


Learn to say no.
Randy Singer, a lawyer, writer, and pastor of Trinity Church in Virginia Beach, tracks every hour he spends on each job. Those hours add up quickly, and there is usually still work to be done even after he reaches 60 or 70 hours.

Singer has learned to do only the things that matter most. He even pauses before answering an email, knowing he can easily be caught up in a time-consuming conversation. He skips social media and limits meetings.

Sometimes, he says, you have to leave things undone. "You can work yourself to death trying to do both jobs."


Make developing leaders a priority.
Bivocational pastors can’t do it all, says Brian Dye of Legacy Christian Fellowship in Chicago. Dye, who pastors a church plant on the city’s West Side, stresses the importance of sharing responsibility with the congregation and developing leaders for the church.

It involves some risk. Lay people will need time and space to grow into a leadership role, and they won’t always get it right the first time. Having faith that God is at work in everyone at church helps, says Dye.

"Trust that God will raise up leaders to fill the need," he says.

Delegate as much as you can, says Singer. "Find and develop leaders who can run ministries at the church—and let them do their jobs."


Show up.
Ministry always requires the power of presence, whether a pastor is fully supported or bivocational.

Gary Mitchell, a longtime bivocational pastor and consultant in Louisiana, recalls serving at a small church in the 1980s. A couple in the church asked Mitchell to visit their estranged son, who was dying of AIDS.

Mitchell was afraid. This was early in the AIDS epidemic, when no one understood how the disease worked. The young man, thin and covered in sores, was in an isolation ward.

Mitchell eventually was able to talk and pray with the young man. That made all the difference in the world to the young man and to his parents.

Mitchell believes some pastors forget that caring for people is an essential part of ministry.


Love your work in the "real world."
Or, at the least, learn from it. Many of your church members struggle to even like the job they have. According to Gallup’s 2015 State of the American Workplace report, 68 percent of American workers are "not engaged" or are "actively disengaged" from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.

"It’s a good thing to admit we sometimes struggle like everyone else," says Nation. "It’s a better thing to show how faith intersects our work and guides us through the struggles. In your full-time work, learn how God is shaping your character and leading you to ministry opportunities that would not happen otherwise."


Don’t be too busy for God.
Sometimes even a pastor with two jobs has to slow down and listen.

That’s a lesson John Pippin, who stepped down last year after 30 years as a bivocational pastor at Corinth Church of Christ in Sparta, Tennessee, says he sometimes forgot.

Pippin says he’s thankful for the time he spent in bivocational ministry, but he’s glad for a break. At times, he felt as if he were on a treadmill—always preparing for the next sermon but not growing spiritually.

One of his professors warned him early on that Sunday comes every seven days, and he had to have a sermon ready—or, in his case, two sermons a week, along with pastoral care and visitation.

The deadlines were unrelenting.

Looking back, Pippin says he developed some bad habits. He was spending a great deal of time studying the Bible, but he was always preparing for the next sermon.

"That doesn’t help you grow," he says.

Pippin’s advice for other pastors: Don’t always be in a rush to write the next sermon. Instead, listen to what the Scriptures are teaching you.

"Slow down and give it time to stick," he says. "That’s the part I think I missed."

  

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 8 Reasons Some Full-Time Pastors Should Go Bi-Vocational Tom Rainer

Some of you reading this post may need to get a new job. At least you may need to get an additional job.

Without a doubt, many churches will always need full-time vocational pastors and church staff. I am not suggesting all of you, even the majority of you, should go bi-vocational. But I do believe more of you should consider this path. Allow me to offer eight reasons why:

1. A secular or marketplace job will put you in the middle of culture on a regular basis. Opportunities to develop relationships with non-believers will be greater. Opportunities to minister to people who would not set foot in a church will be greater as well.

 

2. Full-time pastors and church staff often get missionally stale in their "holy huddles." Perhaps the best way to break out of that Christian-only huddle is to be employed in a secular position.

3. Smaller churches are increasingly unable to afford full-time pastors or staff. I have written on this site a few times about the flow of people from smaller churches to larger churches. As resources depart from the smaller churches, so does their ability to pay a pastor or staff person full time. But these churches still need pastors.

4. The digital world is offering more opportunities for flexible secular jobs than ever. I recently spoke to an IT professional who is also a pastor of a church. He spends about 25 hours a week in his IT job. He has declined good full-time opportunities in secular jobs because he wants to remain a tent-maker. I spoke to another staff person of a church who is an entrepreneur in the digital world. Those kinds of opportunities are growing every day.

5. More churches are moving toward multiple teaching/preaching pastors. What was once common in large churches is now becoming increasingly common in medium and small churches. Many of these teaching pastors are in churches that cannot afford a second full-time pastor.

6. More churches would like to expand staff, but don't have the resources to do so. This issue is similar to #5 above, but here it refers to bi-vocational positions other than a lead pastor or teaching pastor. By the way, this approach allows church leaders to "raise up" people within their own churches—people they know and trust.

7. A bi-vocational pastor or church staff can have greater freedom than a person in a full-time role. One of the secrets of church life is that many pastors and church staff are hindered from leading because their jobs would be in jeopardy. That is an unpleasant but clear and present reality. If a pastor or staff person has a job with other income, he or she may feel the freedom to move forward without succumbing to such pressure.

8. A bi-vocational pastor or staff person has transferable skills. A number of full-time church leaders have never worked outside of vocational ministry. They don't understand the business and secular world. Bi-vocational ministers have secular skills they can use in their churches. They also have skills to support themselves if they find themselves no longer employed with their churches.

Bi-vocational ministry is a clear and definitive trend in church life. Some of the reasons for its growth are not that healthy. But many are. It is a great opportunity to make a greater difference in this culture in which we live. It is really a great opportunity to be a missionary on the field.

What do you of think of this issue? What are you seeing in your church and others?

Thom S. Rainer is the president of LifeWay Christian Resources. For the original article, visit thomrainer.com.


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Bivocational Pastor


 
By Ray Gilder
Should any pastor be bivocational? It’s a question that has been around for a long time. In order to give an informed answer, it would help to understand what we mean by "bivocational."
The basic understanding of the term is a person who has two vocations. When used in regard to a pastor, it indicates the pastor has another source of income beyond the church.
The term "part-time" is not an accurate way to describe a bivocational pastor. He may be receiving a partial salary, but he is still a full-time pastor. The best way to define a pastor who receives all of his income from a church is fully funded, not full-time.
Here are just a few of the myths about bivocational pastors and churches:
If a bivocational pastor had enough faith, he would just quit his job and trust God to meet his needs.
If a bivocational pastor were a good enough preacher, he could get a bigger church.
A small congregation doesn’t deserve to be called a church.
A church is not a real church if it does not have a full menu of activities.
So, should any pastor be bivocational? The answer is "yes" if any of the following conditions apply:
1. If he is inspired by the example of the Apostle Paul. Paul supported himself by making tents (Acts 18:3) while he focused on preaching the Gospel and starting churches. He refused to be a burden to others (2 Thessalonians 3:7-9).
2. If he is willing to work so a small church can have a pastor.
3. If he does not view this church as a stepping stone to a bigger and "better" church.
4. If he is willing to invest his life in a small church setting which may never be able to pay him a full-time salary.
5. If he is interested in taking the light of Christ into the marketplace of the world.
6. If he would like to see his church invest more of its money in ministry and missions.
7. If he is committed to planting a church in a community where there is little or no Gospel witness.
8. If he feels led to be an intentional bivocational pastor, perhaps because he has a business or career that God had provided and is using to provide for his family. Many of these experience a call to ministry later in life. http://pastors.com/8-reasons-to-be-a-bivocational-pastor/



A Look At the Doctrine of Election

Calvinism recognizes these great truths.

 

1. All are lost.

2. Not all will be saved.

3. It is God who saves.

 
When God created the world, He knew at that time that all mankind would be lost through Adam’s sin. God knew those whom he would save and those whom He would not save. God had already decided – even before Adam sinned – to send Christ to the cross and thereby provide the means by which He would save people. It is God who determined – choose – those whom he would save, those whom He would impart His wisdom, those whom He would build as His church. God did not choose to save all and people thereby complain that God is a bigot and prejudiced. Yet, God is sovereign – we can all testify with Nebuchadnezzar, "I praised the Most High; I honoured and glorified him who lives for ever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No-one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’"


Most of the misunderstandings of Scripture come from a lack of discernment about the nature of fallen man and the freedom of a sovereign God.

What do the Scriptures tell us?
1. God created the world.
2. Satan could not enter the garden unless God stood aside and let him enter.
3. God decreed that Satan tempt Adam/Eve and had already planned that Christ die for the sin that Adam/Eve would commit.
4. God is, and must be, intimately involved with sinners giving them the ability to accept His salvation.
5. Not all will be saved.
6. God knew all of history from the moment of creation to the judgment and He knew it when He created the world and history is playing out according to God’s omniscience.

There has never been a time when God did not know who would be saved and who would be lost – no one ever denies this (except for the Open Theists), and no one says that the Calvinists are wrong when they come to this conclusion.

How can it be that "God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4) and is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9)" when God has always known that all people would not be be saved and He created the world knowing that many would perish and He knew each one by name? Are the Calvinists wrong to conclude that many have misunderstood these verses in light of God’s omniscience?
It seems you have just made "foreknowledge" and "predestination" synonymous. That is something that divides the Calvinist from those of us who reject Calvinism.
 
That which God predestines (or decides) then becomes part of His knowledge (His omniscience). Paul says that "God predestined us (His elect) to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ,…" As God made this decision before He created the world, we say that God foreknew that which He would bring about in the course of time. That you think I have made "foreknowledge" and "predestination" synonymous likely reflects personal bias on your part – they cannot be synonymous as they are two unique concepts.
 
The Calvinist does not worry about who is elect and who is not – "the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the hea
rt." Calvinists let the Scriptures sort out one from the other.
 
This is shockingly ignorant; so Spurgeon didn’t care about the lost? Spurgeon didn’t preach the gospel? William Carey didn’t care about missions? How can you explain that it took a Calvinist (D James Kennedy) to create the most effective evangelism method of the 20th Century–which was completely plagiarized by the SBC’s Continuous Witness Training? How can you explain the humility of John Newton? This article is not simply shocking in its error – it is slanderous and assaults the heart of sound theology on multiple points. What a travesty.
 
Don't be so condescension it is off putting.
Calvinism is a perspective of soteriology that answers questions from specific presuppositions that other views fall short.
 
Calvinism’s gospel is that expressed by Paul, "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve." When Spurgeon said that Calvinism is the gospel, he meant that Calvinism accurately expresses that which the Scriptures tell us. If it did not, it could not be described as the gospel.
 
We all share the same technical definition of the gospel.
 
"Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,…"
 
In context, Paul says "Christ died for our sins," as 1 John 2, "Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." Paul does not say that Christ died for "us" meaning each and every person, In Romans, Paul, writing to God’s elect in Rome says, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us [His elect]." John 3:16 says, God so loved the world that He gave His son that those believing [those God knew from the foundation of the world] would have eternal life. God did not give His son for those not believing – for the reprobate [also known form the foundation of the world].
 
Would you be offended if I were to say that Calvinism was a deficient doctrine?
 
The extreme deterministic view of Calvinism is evident from the following quotes:
"Even sin – the fall of the devil from heaven, the fall of Adam, and every evil thought, word, and deed in all of history, including the worst sin of all, Judas’ betrayal of Christ – is included in the eternal decree of our holy God." – Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism
 
"Even the fall of Adam, and through him the fall of the race, was not by chance or accident, but was so ordained in the secret counsels of God." "And unless the fall was in the plan of God, what becomes of our redemption through Christ? Was that only a makeshift arrangement which God resorted to in order to offset the rebellion of man?" – Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination
 
Hinduism believes in the compatibility of both free-will and determinism; similarly, does Islam believe in a kind of fatalism and personal responsibility. However, the Bible strictly talks of human responsibility. Nowhere is the sin of Adam or the sin of any human regarded as being predetermined by God.
 
Why do you call it "extreme"? Let’s take the case of "the fall of Adam."
 
Does not God protect Adam even as He protected Job so that Satan cannot enter the garden except God decree that he should and then stand out of the way? Is not God present, watching every detail, as Satan tempts Eve and then gives fruit to Adam to eat? Could not God have stepped in at any point and prevented Adam from eating the fruit? That God did not do so tells us that God had decided that Satan should tempt Eve and that Adam freely decide whether to join Eve in eating the fruit. God decided all this before He created the world having perfect knowledge of all that would come to pass. That which God decided was His decree – thereby God decreed the fall of Adam. There is nothing extreme in this; God is sovereign and necessarily decrees all things and did so decree all things before He created the world.

 

Galatians chapter 5. This is just a wonderful chapter. There’s not a lot of mystery about it. It’s straightforward; it’s clear; it’s preeminently practical. It, at the same time, is very convicting; it’s clear enough to be convicting. It’s also eminently encouraging. So I want to read it for you, starting in Galatians 5:16, and reading down to verse 25.
"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you’re led by the Spirit, you’re not under the law. Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit."

Now we’re dealing with the very essence of sanctification, the very, very heart of Christian living, the Christian life.
And our responsibility in the Christian life is summed up in verse 16: "Walk by the Spirit. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh."

Now there’s some very foundational reasons why this is critical, and I just want to remind you of them. We face a great challenge,
because even though we have been justified,
even though we have been regenerated,
and even though we’re a new creation and we have a new life and new affections and new longings and new desires, the flesh is still there.
We haven’t yet reached our glorification; not until then will we be free from the sinful impulses that remain in our fallen humanity.
So as believers in Jesus Christ, we need to very clearly understand the dynamics of what’s going on in our lives.
to give you an honest diagnosis of yourself, trying to do a little spiritual pathology to give you a look at what’s really going on in your life as a believer.
And what we came to understand is that there is a standard that has been set for us by God as to how we are to live as believers; and at the same time, we fight against our remaining humanness to even come close to that standard.


Now I want to remind you of the standard that God has set.

Matthew 5 our Lord put it this way: "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."
Of course, God cannot set a standard lower than perfection. God who is absolutely holy, holy, holy will always affirm the absolute holy standard as His only acceptable standard. That is why we have to receive full righteousness from someone else, because we can’t be justified by our own righteousness, the standard is too high.
And even in the matter of sanctification, living our Christian lives, the standard doesn’t drop.

Now that you’re a Christian God is not making suggestions, He’s still making commands. The standard hasn’t dropped.
There is grace for us, there is mercy for us. We go to the throne of mercy to find that mercy, to find that grace in time of need. But the standard does not change; God’s standard is still absolute holiness.

1 Peter 1:13. And here is Peter calling the believers to whom he writes to the standard that is the same for us and all believers.
"Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit," – be sober-minded, means understand the divine priorities, have your divine priorities right – "fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
Live according to divine priorities, and look for the day when we leave this world and enter into the presence of Christ.
Verse 14, in the meantime, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’" And that is taken from a number of places in the book of Leviticus. "Be holy, for I am holy." God cannot set a standard lower than His own holiness.
Verse 17 to say, "If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth." We are to live in the fear of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We are to pursue holiness at the very divine level.
verse 22 we read, "Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart."
Now these two things sum up the command for the Christian
perfect love and
perfect holiness.
We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, and we are to be obedient to the law of God perfectly. That standard cannot be lowered.

1 Peter 2:9, we find very similar exhortation: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you have not received mercy, now you have received mercy.
"Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles," – or the nations – "so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation."
Again the standard is the same. You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people that belong to God, and you are to proclaim by what you say and what you live, the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. This is a high standard.

Now on our own, we cannot attain to that standard. We know that, because in our flesh we have only the hope of disobedience and death. And yet this standard is established as the standard by which we are to live.
It is defined in another way that I think is very helpful and leaves no doubt what the Lord means.
Listen to 1 John 2:6, "The one who says he abides in Him" – you say you belong to Christ, you abide in Christ, you’re one with Christ – "ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked."
There it is. You’re to live like Christ; that is the divine standard. You are called to holiness, to pure love, and to Christlike obedience; that is the standard.
And because of that standard being so high and because of the weakness of our flesh, our only hope for coming anywhere near that standard is to walk by the Spirit – and that’s what we’re finding in Galatians.




Romans 8:3: "What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh."


The reason the law can’t save anybody is because the law depends on human obedience, human potential, human ability. The law offers no help. The law does not empower anyone, it is weak.
In order to overcome that God sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin, and condemns sin in the flesh. "God came, and in the form of Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin, so that" – verse 4 – "the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
he’s not talking about the fact that the righteousness of God, the law perfectly kept, was imputed to us, accredited to our account – although that is true.
He’s not talking about our standing or our position, but rather he’s saying the requirement of the law can now be fulfilled as we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
There’s the bottom line. The only way you can live the Christian life is in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And I know that is sanctification 101, but it needs to be clearly understood.

Thursday, August 09, 2018

THE ORDER OF SALVATION AS WE BELIEVE AS BAPTIST
 

DOCTRINE OF BIBLICAL SALVATION
predestination
election
calling
regeneration (conversion)
faith
repentance
justification
adoption
sanctification
perseverance
glorification

the so call five points of calvinism are:
TOTAL DEPRAVITY:- As a result of Adam’s fall, the entire human race is affected; all humanity is dead in trespasses and sins. Man is unable to save himself (Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; Romans 3:10-18).

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION- Because man is dead in sin, he is unable to initiate a response to God; therefore, in eternity past God elected certain people to salvation. Election and predestination are unconditional; they are not based on man’s response (Romans 8:29-30;9:11; Ephesians 1:4-6, 11-12) because man is unable to respond, nor does he want to.

LIMITED ATONEMENT- Because God determined that certain ones should be saved as a result of God’s unconditional election, He determined that Christ should die for the elect alone. All whom God has elected and for whom Christ died will be saved (Matthew 1:21; John 10:11; 17:9; Acts 20:28; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 5:25).

IRRESISTBLE GRACE- Those whom God elected He draws to Himself through irresistible grace. God makes man willing to come to Him. When God calls, man responds (John 6:37, 44; 10:16).

PERSEVERANCE OF THE SANTINS - The precise ones God has elected and drawn to Himself through the Holy Spirit will persevere in faith. None whom God has elected will be lost; they are eternally secure (John 10:27-29; Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:3-14).

Sola (by) scriptura, sola (by) fide, Sola gratia, Solus (alone) christus, and Soli De gloria



Here is what this Calvinist believes about the process of salvation



charles e whisnant
Yes, God does the saving of a lost sinner. A sinner could not be saved without the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the sinner. And the sinner could not be saved without hearing the Gospel presented to him by someone. The sinner needs to know what it means to be lost, what it means to be a sinner, and why he is a sinner and needs to be forgiven.

I believe the person needs to know that he can cannot save himself from the wrath of God, there is nothing he can do that would justify God saving him.

I believe the sinner needs to hear the preaching or teaching of the Gospel maybe a number of times to know what it is that he is to believe. Yet he is not able to believe it because at this point he is unable to respond in his spirit to this idea of being lost and the need to be saved from the wrath of God.

I believe the scripture teaches that only when God opens his spirit to believe will he believe what he has heard about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Since God does not just zap a person saved without some knowledge of what he is to believe, the gospel must first be preached. But the sinner could not believe the gospel until God opens his heart to believe.

I believe the scripture teaches that when God reveals Himself to a sinner, and opens his mind to the truth, he will believe.

Therefore, a sinner believes because God opened his mind to believe. And whom ever God opens their mind will be saved. Because a man could not believe without the work of the Holy Spirit in him.

I believe the scripture teaches that all those whom God calls will be saved. I do not believe Scripture teaches that a person can reject the inner call of God to be saved. Because God brings about salvation first and then that person is able to believe.

Yes a sinner can reject the presentation of the Gospel, and does. He is unable to receive the truth about himself because he is blinded to the truth. He is unable to believe because he is a sinner.

I believe that the Scripture teaches a person does not have to believe first and then God saves him. He believes because God saves him.

Belief is an inner process. If he has previously rejected in his spirit the gospel of salvation, how could he now believe what he has heard many times? He can not have faith, or trust, or even confidence in someone when he is spiritually dead to the gospel. As hard as he might desire to believe and take faith in, he is unable until the Holy Spirit brings in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the Lord brings about His saving grace in many ways. God leads others to show what being saved is like. God leads a person to a place where they will hear the Gospel. God uses divine Providence to intervene into the life of a sinner to bring him to salvation.

But what I do not believe Scripture teaches is that a man must first come to a belief of the gospel before God will save him. And I do not think Scripture teaches that man can reject the inner call of God. But that is not to say that he comes to a full understanding of what is happening in his life.

It is possible that God will bring about salvation in one's life and then it may be over a period of time before that person is able to grasp the impact of this new found salvation. Salvation is a process that does take a while to grasp and understand and to obey. And it takes others in their life to bring to reality what God has done for them.

 

T -Thus we believe that scripture teaches that man cannot on his own bring himself to believe with truth and faith and confidence in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

U - And that God before the foundation of the world has chosen those whom He will bring to salvation. Man does not on his own choose to be saved without the work of the Holy Spirit in him to believe.

L - When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He actually provided the means whereby those whom God elected would be saved. Christ's death on the cross was not in vain, Jesus did not die for the whole world, if He had all would be saved.

I - When the Holy Spirt comes into the mind of a sinner, and awakens him from this unbelief he receives it, he does not reject the inner call of God.

P - And God will preserve those whom He has choosen and those whom Jesus died on the cross for.

T.U.L.I.P

 

 

 




Tuesday, August 07, 2018

Charles Town Display

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Abandon Railroad Bridges

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McDermott Ohio

Abandon Railroads Bridges

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Everette T. Whisnant, Johnny Jones

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50 years in preaching and teaching

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2 Peter 1 12

the revelation of salvation  2 peter 1:12-21
At the International Christian Education Association the celebration of Sunday school, which was begun in 1780 by Robert Raikes in England.
He went up and down the street and gathered a lot of little London waifs together and started teaching the Bible.


He only had two requirements for them to come to Sunday school, one was that they washed their face, the other was that they cleaned their clothes. 

Didn't care what kind of clothes or what kind of face, as long as they were clean, and began to teach them the things of Christ. And from there, Sunday school has become kind of a major thing in our society today.
exactly what we've been built on for the last 200 years
.And that the key for us is to remember that the things that the Lord has given us in His Word never change.
 And that our job as teachers and ministers is to cause people to remember the great truths of the Word of God.
The Lord doesn't want us to be so creative or so innovative. In fact, if somebody comes up with something new, it's probably not true because it's the old things that are in the Book that the Lord has always used to build His church.
that it's not for us to move ahead, it's for us really to remember the past.
a guy rode down the center aisle on a horse, \
which doesn't always happen when I'm speaking. And he was...it was a lot of people, I don't know, thousands of people in the Cobo Hall auditorium.
And this guy came down on a horse and all of a sudden we all realized that he was dressed as John Wesley. And he jumped off the horse and had his saddle bag over his shoulder and pulled out a Bible and he did about a 40-minute dramatization as if he were John Wesley.
And I had no knowledge of that. And he showed how important it was that his very conversion had occurred when he had understood the truths of 2 Peter, particularly where it says that God has given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, and so forth.
And so he went on dramatizing his own life and how God brought him to himself through this text. And as the Lord would have it, then I got up and preached on that very same chapter. So the Lord was very gracious.
And the whole emphasis that came together in that one service was the fact that when we're teaching Sunday school or sharing with someone else or confronting a person with the claims of Jesus Christ, the issue is to make sure that we go back and remember the things that are taught to us in the Word of God.
 And as you've known from the last three months as I've shared with you, this is the dimension that I sense God has put into my own heart for our ministry together in the future, that it's a ministry of remembrance. .
Remembering and forgetting are important words in the Bible.

Deuteronomy 8 is a restatement and an amplification, an explanation of the law of God.
As the children of Israel were anticipating entering into the Promised Land, being established by God as an entity, as a nation, being a theocracy over which God would rule in a divine way, being the nation supremely and superbly blessed by God, the Lord had given them some basic standards by which they were to live.
And, of course, the Lord expresses the fear that they would forget those standards, that in the prosperity and the comfort and the joy that was theirs in the land, they would soon forget where it all came from.
And so in Deuteronomy 8 there is a refreshing of the standard given to them. In verse 1, all the commandments the Lord says which I command thee this day shall you observe to do
I want you to just be reminded to do them all. And there will be a consequence, in order that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give unto your fathers.
Now if you know the history of these people, you know that they had disobeyed God, hadn't they, all through the wilderness.
And now was a new generation ready to go into the land and in effect he's saying don't you forget the things your forefathers forgot.
Verse 2, "And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years." Don't ever forget the commands of God and don't ever forget the work of God in your life.
Down in verse 11, "Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes." Verse 14: "Often when your heart is lifted up, you forget the Lord your God." And that is so true, become proud, self-centered.
verse 17, saying in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth." I'm where I am because of me. "But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is He who giveth thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore unto thy fathers as it is this day. It shall be if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God and walk after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish." Very important to remember.
One other text, Jeremiah 3, . Let me give you a little of the history.
The people went into the land and they seemed to do all right for a while, under the judges and those good and godly men that led them. Then they decided they wanted a king. And they got a king, Saul, a poor excuse for a king. Then there was David. And then there was David's wise son Solomon. But after Solomon, a disaster occurred and the kingdom split. And from then on there were two kingdoms: The kingdom of Israel in the north, and the kingdom of Judah in the south. Ten tribes went north. Only two remained in the south, Judah and Benjamin.
And the north went sweeping immediately into idolatry and immorality and by the year 722 B.C., the northern kingdom was taken away into captivity from which it never returned, never. And the only reason we ever had a duly constituted Israel with all twelve tribes was because some of those ten tribes filtered back down into the southern kingdom of Judah and Judah became all the Israel that there was left after 722 B.C.
And Jeremiah refers to that frequently in his prophecy, for while Jeremiah is prophesying, Israel has already gone into captivity. They're already in dissolution as an entity. They had so abandoned themselves to the plan of God that they were long gone.
At least Judah still had Jerusalem and Jerusalem still had a temple and because of that there was kind of the pervasive presence of the truth of God in their midst which acted as a little more of a preservation. And Judah at least had a few good kings. From the divided kingdom on there wasn't one righteous king ever in the history of the northern kingdom Israel, not one. And so they were long gone.
And they should have acted as an object lesson to Judah. It should have become apparent to the people in Judah that you don't go into idolatry without a very severe penalty.
When God took Israel away in the north, God was giving a very graphic object lesson to Judah in the south, which object lesson they never bothered to heed.
And so they find themselves basically at the very same point in history that Israel was just prior to their captivity.
They are disobedient.
They are rebellious.
They are indifferent.
 They're hypocritical.
 They're immoral.
They're idolatrous. You name it.
 And they are right now on the knife- edge of the Babylonian captivity. And God sends along this remarkable man, Jeremiah, whose job it is to warn them that they're going to go the same way the northern kingdom went.
And later on after they did go into captivity, He sent along another prophet named Ezekiel to tell them that that's just the way they did go.
Jeremiah, 3:6 you have a graphic illustration of the problem of the nation of Judah. They were just evil in every possible way. And so God begins to speak,
6, very interesting. "The Lord said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, ‘Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?’"
Now I want you to notice this. God has a message for His people Judah, but God speaks only to Jeremiah.
And God, I believe, is using the third person because He is emphasizing the severing of the relationship between Himself and Judah. He does not speak directly to the people. He speaks to the prophet to speak to the people
The emphasis of this text is judgment, a broken relationship. He says, "Jeremiah, have you seen that which backsliding Israel has done?” Did you see what happened to Israel? It was manifest. It was open. It was obvious. They didn't hide anything.
"She has gone up," it says, "upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there has played the harlot."
Now the Canaanites basically worshiped Baal. And there were vestiges of the Canaanitish religion because the Jews had not done what God told them to do and that was to obliterate the Canaanites.
They had tolerated them. They had tried to coexist with them. And so they had allowed their religion to continue.
 And the Canaanitish religion was this:
They would ascend into the high mountains because they believed that the higher up the mountain you went, the closer you got to the deities. So they carried on their religious activities on a mountain. And they would find the shade of a green tree to avoid the heat. And there they would carry on their worship of Baal. The worship was really an orgy. It was a sexually perverted, prostitution oriented, kind of worship. And that's why its harlotry is not only spiritual, but is also physical. They were carrying on immorality in worship of the Canaanitish gods, most particularly the god Baal. And they had turned every high mountain and under every green tree into this kind of a place.
"And I said," verse 7, "after she had done all these things, ‘Turn thou unto Me.’"
See how gracious God is and how forgiving? After she had done this, I said turn unto Me. "But she returned not." The patience and the love and the grace and the mercy of God and Israel said no. And then He says in verse 7, "And her treacherous sister Judah saw it."
In other words, Judah knew this and saw the sin and saw the judgment.
 "And I saw when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committeth adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not but went and played the harlot also."
I mean, the consequence, God says, was I divorced Israel. And you want to know what God thinks of divorce? Read Hosea, "I hate divorce."
Sometimes God has to do what He hates; He divorced His people. They so played the harlot, they so persisted in their adultery, they so persisted in their harlotry. They never would turn. They never would come back.
And He says, "And treacherous Judah, the southern sister, saw it and did the same thing."
And verse 9, "It came to pass through the lightness of her harlotry."
The word "lightness" means boisterous, the party spirit. It wasn't some sneaky kind of seduced harlotry, it was a wild, loud, orgiastic party. They were having a ball doing it. It was just flagrant and blatant and through that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees.
What does that mean? Committed adultery with gods that are made out of stone and wood, became idolatrous. "’Yet for all this, treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto Me with her whole heart (watch) but feignedly,’ saith the Lord."
In other words, to add to the sin of Israel, in Judah you can not only add idolatry and adultery, but you can add hypocrisy. In the northern kingdom of Israel, there really was no true religion left at all. In the south, they still carried on a ritual in the temple. There was just hypocrisy from beginning to end.
In verse 11, "The Lord said unto me, ‘The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.’"
 In some sense, Israel's better than Judah. Why? Because nothing is more disgusting to God than hypocrisy.
Now how did Judah ever get to this point? I mean, they ignored the lesson of the captivity of Israel. They ignored what God did in judgment.
How did they ever get to this point? How did it ever happen?
You have to go down to verse 20. "’Surely as a wife treacherously departs from her husband, so have you dealt treacherously with Me, oh house of Israel,’ saith the Lord.
And a voice was heard upon the high places weeping and supplications of the children of Israel."
 And there the Israel, I think, refers to the folks of Judah. Judah has now become the only true Israel that's left. And the term Israel becomes used for Judah, very frequently in the prophets.
 And so the children begin to cry and to weep, "For they have perverted their way and they have (what?) forgotten the Lord their God." That was the whole problem.
Now who is this on the mountain crying?
Well, I think it's a remnant. Some would say it's a picture of the future millennial time when Israel cries out unto God after they've looked on Him whom they have pierced. But I... It may have overtones to that. But I really see this as a...some remnant, just a small remnant in Jeremiah's time, for always God had a remnant. But the rest of the nation, they just went on.
And if you read down through the end of chapter 3 and into chapter 4, you'll find that the main part of the nation never bothered to respond to Jeremiah at all and ultimately were taken right into captivity
But the real crux of the thing I want you to see is at the end of verse 21, they forgot the Lord their God.
How can you possibly forget that? How can you for a moment forget the Lord your God? How can it be?
 Well, they had a little help. They really did. They had help coming from...coming from particularly one angle.
False shepherds came along and shoved them in the wrong direction.
And Jeremiah makes a major point out of these false shepherds who led them astray. And he talks about them repeatedly in his prophecy. And you add to that their sin. They listened to the wrong voices. They were getting the wrong input. And they were doing the wrong things.
And the truth about God began to fade and they forgot.
And God says in 22, "Return, you backsliding children, and I'll heal your backslidings. And the remnant says, Behold, we come unto Thee for Thou art the Lord our God."
Just the remnant came, the rest didn't come and they went into captivity. in the book of Daniel, don't you? Seventy years they stayed in that captivity.
The forgetting then becomes the theme of Jeremiah's book as he speaks of their sin.
Jeremiah 2:32, "Yet my people have forgotten me days without number." Don't try to follow me, just listen.
13:25, "Because thou hast forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood,” says God.
18:15, "Because My people have forgotten Me they have burned incense to vanity."
23:26, same thing, "How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? Yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart who think to cause my people to forget My name as their fathers have forgotten My name for the name of Baal."
Chapter 50, it's the same thing all the way through, "My people have become lost sheep. Their shepherds have caused them to go astray. They have turned them away on the mountains,” back, that is, to the mountains where they worshiped the false gods. “They have gone from mountain to hill. They have forgotten their proper resting place."
Ezekiel saw it. And when Ezekiel prophesied to the captives after they had already gone into captivity, he told them the same thing. He says the reason you're here is you forgot. You forgot. You didn't remember.
 22:12, it says, "Thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion and hast forgotten Me, says the Lord God."
In Hosea, the prophet Hosea comes along and essentially says the same thing.
 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to Me. Seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God I will also forget thy children."
Perhaps the greatest chapter in all the Bible on the Word of God itself is the 119th Psalm. Listen to what it says repeatedly in that Psalm, just listen.
 Psalm 119:16, "I will not forget Thy Word."
 Verse 83, "Yet do I not forget Thy statutes."
Verse 93, "I will never forget Thy precepts." Verse 109, "I do not forget Thy law."
141, "I do not forget Thy precepts."
153, "I do not forget Thy law." And the last verse, "I do not forget Thy commandments." The importance of remembering.
Now how do we remember?
I believe we remember by the constant repetition of the truth, the feeding into the heart.
We avoid the false teachers.
That's why in 2 Timothy 2 it says if you avoid these false teachers, you'll be a vessel fit for the Master's use. I believe we avoid the false and we let the true come in constantly. And I also believe we have to avoid sin. First laying aside all sin, then desire the pure milk of the Word that you may grow. So setting aside false teaching, setting aside sin, and absorbing the Word of God plants it in our memory, as we've seen, so that your mind is so full of biblical truth that your spiritual responses are almost involuntary.
Now let's look back at 2 Peter, chapter 1.  We are to remember, people. That's the issue. And exactly what we're to remember Peter speaks about in the chapter.
In verse 12 we have the key that unlocks the chapter.
"Wherefore, I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things."
What things? The things before this verse and the things after this verse; the whole chapter is a list of things that we are never to forget. The things that we have taught you the last several months.
Though we already know them and are already established in them, unless we continue to exercise our minds and exercise our wills in those things, they will slip from our grasp.
What are we to remember? Verse 12, "We are to remember these things." What things? The word "wherefore" is at the beginning. That takes us back, the things he's just mentioned.
First of all, the reality of salvation, verses 1 and 2, that we have obtained a like precious faith through the righteousness of God and the Savior the Lord Jesus Christ.

Secondly, the riches of our salvation, that we have all things that pertain to life and godliness. That we have received the divine nature and escaped the corruption of the world.

Thirdly the responsibility of our salvation, that we are to add to our faith virtue and knowledge and self-control and patience and godliness and brotherly kindness and love.

Fourthly the fruit, or the result of our salvation, that we're not to be barren or unfruitful.

Fifthly  the rest of our salvation , verses 9 to 11.

So that we're not blind to the fact that we're saved, we must remember our salvation and what it requires and what God wants it to produce.
 And when we see the fruit, then we'll know we're redeemed. When we don't see the fruit, we won't know. We'll be blind.

Then Peter speaks, as we've seen in verses 12 to 15, about how important it is for him to remind us as long as he's in this tabernacle he says in verse 13, I'll stir you up putting you in remembrance because I know, verse 14, that I'm shortly going to die as the Lord showed me.  And He showed him in John 21.

And so then you come to verse 15. Now watch it. Let's begin there
"Moreover I will endeavor that you may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance
And then he goes on to two more things he wants you to remember. And really we just want to give you the interpretation of the text and then just see if we can't apply it to us.
Sixth:   I like to call verses 16 to 18 the revelation of our salvation, or better the revelations, plural, of our salvation.
But first let's see what Peter says in verse 16.
2 Peter 1:16 For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. (NASB: Lockman)
Amplified: For we were not following cleverly devised stories when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah), but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty (grandeur, authority of sovereign power).
KJV: For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
NLT: For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and his coming again. We have seen his majestic splendor with our own eyes.House)
Wuest: For we did not follow out to their termination cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and personal coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but became spectators of that One’s magnificence. (
Young's Literal: For, skilfully devised fables not having followed out, we did make known to you the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but eye-witnesses having become of his majesty--
I Corinthians 1:17, Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:19-22; I Peter 5:4; Matthew 17:1-5; Luke 2:12
Now this is a tremendous statement. The main issue among the people to whom Peter is writing is the Second Coming.
False teachers have come in and they've said there's no Second Coming, Christ won't return, it won't be the way you say, there never will be a Second Coming, there never will be a judgment of the earth.
3:3, "Scoffers walking after their own lust saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? All things continue as they were from the creation,’” nothing is ever going to change. There's no Second Coming. Why do you want to believe that?"
Peter then moves into his theme right here and he says, "When we have said unto you things concerning the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, we have not followed some philosophy, some humanly devised deceitful false story. We are telling you about the Second Coming because we have seen it with our own eyes." Now that's a pretty amazing statement.
You say, "Peter, frankly, I think you've gotten a little carried away. How could you see the Second Coming when it hasn't even happened? What in the world are you talking about?
The power and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been an eyewitness of His majesty in coming glory?" That's right.
I'm not telling you something second-handed, I'm telling you something that I myself have experienced as an eyewitness.
"Well, when did you ever see that?" Let's go back to Matthew 16 and find out. And we'll go back to when Peter walked with Jesus on the earth.
Matthew 16:24. Now Jesus is very urgent in what He says here to His disciples. He wants them to be committed to Him so He says,
"I want you to deny yourself, take up your cross, follow Me.” If you're going to try to just preserve your life, pad your own chair, make yourself comfortable in this world, you're going to lose it
But if you're willing to lose your life for My sake, you'll find it. If you just want to gain the whole world, you'll lose your soul. If you're willing to lose the world, you'll gain your soul forever. In other words, get your spiritual priorities in order.
Why? Verse 27: "Because the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels and then He shall reward every man according to his works." In other words, He says get your life in order because Jesus is going to come back and reward you. You better make sure you're ready to receive a reward rather than judgment.
So verse 27 introduces the Second Coming, now look at it. He's coming in the glory of His Father
What is that? John 1:14, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father."
What is that? The glory of the Father is the fullness of deity, that's all. God is God and God is God manifest in glory. And it's simply saying that Christ is the glory of God, which glory now in His humanness is veiled, right? But someday He will come in full blazing glory.
 Later on in Matthew 24 and 25 it tells us about this, how He comes in full blazing glory. There's coming a day when He pulls the veil of His flesh aside and no more humiliation but glorification. You say, "Boy, that's exciting to think about."
And then Jesus said a statement that must have just been so thrilling they couldn't have stood it. He said, "There are some standing here who shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Some of you aren't even going to die before you see Christ in Second Coming glory.
Now you say, "Wait a minute, they'd have to be 2,000 years old if He came now. How could they possibly live to see the Second Coming? Some of you standing here are going to see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom?
Wait a minute. How can it be?"
Well, you have to go to Matthew 17:27-28 , '; Six days later, and none of them had died in those six days, not all of them that were standing there, not all the disciples, but some of them, six days later. Which ones? Peter, James and John his brother, “Jesus took and brought them into an high mountain privately.”
James, why? The first to shed his blood for Christ. John and Peter, the key to the develop of the gospel in the first twelve chapters of Acts, the foundation of the Jerusalem church, key people, you're going to see.
Took them into a high mountain and what did they see?
Verse 2, "And Jesus was transfigured." He was metamorphosed, He was transformed, He was changed, He was altered before them, totally transformed. And how? “His face did shine like the sun.”
Now, folks, it's a very obvious point that you can't look at the sun, right? Well, can you imagine? There was Christ and all of a sudden His face was like the sun. And His raiment was as white as the light. Well, you say, what is this? Well, we know that behind the veil of His flesh there is the glory of God, right?

And all He did was pull open the veil of His flesh and blazing glory burst forth, for God when God is made visible is visible as blazing, incomprehensible light. And so they were seeing not the Son in humiliation but the Son in glorification. He pulls open the veil of His flesh and they saw Him in full blazing glory, the kind of glory that He will manifest at His Second Coming.
This is a preview, folks, and indeed the fulfillment of verse 28. They saw the Son of Man in the essential glory that He would have when He comes in His kingdom.
And, behold, verse 3, boy, what a fabulous thing that must have been. "And there appeared with Him Moses and Elijah having a conversation." And, of course, Peter spoke up, naturally, and said unto Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here.” This is terrific. You know what he was saying? Don't let it stop, don't let it end. Man, this is bliss. Moses and Elijah and here You are in blazing glory. Let's build some booths here.
Now those are more permanent than they sound. Let's quick build a building and we'll capture Moses in one and Elijah in one and You in one. Man, forget all that stuff down at the bottom of the hill, let's just... This is terrific.
verse 5 "And while he yet spoke,"  "behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them and behold a voice out of the cloud which said, ‘This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him.’ And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face and were very much afraid." All of a sudden Peter's joy turned to total fear when he heard the voice of God. I can't imagine what the voice of God must be like but I'm sure I'd have a similar reaction.
Verse 7, I love this, "Jesus came and touched them and said, ‘Arise, don't be afraid.’ When they had lifted up their eyes they saw no man except Jesus only." It was over, just as fast as it had begun. But Peter had seen with his own eyes, James had seen with his own eyes, John had seen with his own eyes the power and the glory of Jesus in His Second Coming manifestation. And it was like a mini-kingdom. Just look at the individual elements. Christ is in glory, not humiliation. Moses in glory represents the redeemed who died; Elijah in glory, the redeemed who were translated. Peter, James and John, unglorified represent Israel in the flesh during the kingdom, and the multitudes at the foot of the mountain, perhaps, could be in reference to the multitudes who will come in and out to see Christ in His glory in the kingdom. But it's a mini picture of the whole kingdom, a personal, dazzling preview of Second Coming glory.
Let me ask you a question. Do you think Peter ever forgot that? Not hardly. I really don't think he ever forgot that. \


And so now you go back to 2 Peter and you get an idea of what he's talking about.
He says we have not followed cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
Well, when was that? I mean, when did you see that?
 "For He received from God the Father honor and glory when there came such a voice to Him from the excellent glory, ‘This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.’"
Well, when was that? Well, this voice came from heaven and we heard it “when we were with Him in the holy mount.” You see, Peter says that I had this personal experience. Peter can't ever forget because God manifested Himself in such an incredible way, he could never forget.
John had the same thing and John wrote in 1 John 1:1, "That which we have seen, looked upon, heard, and our hands have handled concerning the word of life declare we unto you." I'm not talking out of the second hand, I saw Christ. I touched Christ.
Paul says the same thing in Galatians. He says, I didn't get my gospel from any man, I didn't even get it from the people in Jerusalem. I got it from Jesus Christ Himself. In other words, Peter says, I remember, I remember the revelation of God to me in my own life.
Now how does that...or how can that apply to us?
I believe that God endeavors to help us to remember by revealing Himself so frequently in our lives that we really can't ever forget. You know, I look back in my life and I can remember a lot of things and I can remember so many things that God has done in my life that I would have to deliberately determine to forget in order to forget.
But as long as I deliberately determine to remember, I'm flooded with memories of what God has done. You see, praise is simply reciting the things that God has done, that's all, which involves His attributes and His works.

I can remember as a little boy, my father had preached a sermon. I don't know what it was that he preached. I
I don't know how it is in your life but I have so many evidences of God's revelation, I'm not having visions and that kind of thing, but I've seen the providential caring, loving, sustaining hand of God so many times. Why, I've seen people come to Christ so many times. I've seen that miracle over and over and over and over.

Peter says, I will remember the revelation of God in my life.
Hope you remember what He's done.
2 Peter 1:19 But there's something better than that that you must remember and that's the key in verse 19, the resource of our salvation. And this is the bottom line for all of it. This is what makes it all happen.

 You can't remember the reality of your salvation.
You can't remember the riches of it.
You can't remember the responsibility.
You can't remember the result.
 You can't remember the rest and
you can't even be sure of the revelation

unless you know what the resource is and the bottom line is in verse 19, "We have a more sure word,” more sure than experience and it is the Word of God.
 Verse 20, "It is the Scripture." Don't forget the Scripture, people. Don't forget the Word of God.
We have a more sure, more sure,listen, than a personal manifestation of God, more sure than a transfiguration on a mountain.

Why? Because you cannot always believe your senses. And you cannot always believe your experiences. And your experiences have to be qualified by biblical truth.
And if you want to know there is a Second Coming, it's fine if you've had a personal revelation of God in your life, but a better proof of it is that the Bible says so.
The Bible says so. We have a more sure word of prophecy, and here he's talking about the prophecy of the Second Coming.

There is a more sure word. Watch how this verse should be read, "Unto which you do well that you take heed," and then you jump to the end, "in your hearts." You take heed to the more sure word. You remember the more sure word. And the words in between, by the way, are a parenthesis. The statement, "as unto a light that shines in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise" is a parenthesis. Just put parentheses around that statement.
We have a more sure word of prophecy and we do very well to take heed to it in our hearts. Remember the Word, Peter says. The Bible is the issue. Don't listen to false prophets. Don't listen to these people who want to deny the truth. You go right to the Word of God. You know God is alive and at work because you've experienced Him; more than that you know it because His Word says it.
Verse 19 is a tremendous statement. The word "sure" there is the word for certain, the word for firm, the word for strong, the word that is used earlier in the chapter to refer to strong, firm roots. If you're going to defend the Second Coming, or any other truth, you'll defend it out of the Word of God. That's the best place. The Bible says it.
And then I love this parenthesis, you should listen to the Bible “as a light shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise." '
You know what the day dawn is? That's the Kingdom of Christ. You know who the day star is? That's Christ Himself. Revelation 22:16 tells us that. And so he's saying this: Until the day dawns, until the dawning of the millennial day, the day when Christ comes, you must look to the Word as a man in pitch blackness looks to a light.
There's... There’s darkness all around us and the only light is the Word. And so you do well to take heed as you would to a light shining in a pitch black place. And you will continue to take heed to the Word until the day dawns. And, beloved, when the millennial kingdom comes and the day star arises and we enter into the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ, we'll no longer need the Word of God because we will know as we are known. We'll have the fullness of knowledge.
Verse 20  And then I love this. He says you can take confidence in this more sure word,  when you know this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture — watch how I translate this — is of any private origination.
 That's how it's to be read. He's not talking about how you interpret the Scripture. He's talking about the source of it, so that epilusis is best seen as an origination. By the way, the word is not in the New Testament anywhere else in that form. So it's a unique word. And the context argues for the fact that he is talking about origination, not interpretation because in the next verse he speaks of how it originated. For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, or of a man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
Now watch how we sum this text up.

 Remember the Word of God, which is the most sure word. Run to it as you would to a light in the midst of darkness and have confidence because you know that it didn't come from any private origination, or initiation. It wasn't the invention of any man, “but holy men of God spoke as they were born along,” or carried along. It's a word used of sailing, like a wind in a sail. “They were born along by the Holy Spirit.” Why should you run to the Word? Because it's authored by God's Spirit. Beloved, don't forget the Word of God.
You know how to tell a false prophet?
They either deny parts of the Word of God, or they add something to it. You don't need either. So Peter is saying remember the Word. That's what Jesus said in John 15, remember the Word I said unto you. This is the greatest thing to remember. This is the source, the resource of everything. If you want to remember the reality of your salvation, you'll find it in the Word: The riches in the Word, the responsibility in the Word, the results in the Word, the rest in the Word. And your revelations and manifestations of God must be that which coincide with the Word.

You've got to remember the Word. That's the key to everything else. You want to know why we have ACTS electives and Bible studies and home Bible studies and books and tapes and LOGOS classes and seminary classes? It's because we will never, ever, ever change this emphasis. We are men in the dark who must run to the only light there is and the only light there is is that Scripture which came by God through His Holy Spirit. That's the primary issue. That's why our church emphasizes that.
Remember the Word, beloved, with a sense of urgency. When it's all summed up, Peter says, chapter 3 verse 18, "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to Him be glory both now and forever, amen." And where are we? Growing in knowledge. Where do you get it? Out of the Word of God, it is the resource for everything.
Beloved, I'm committed in the years ahead as in the years past to make you remember most of all the Word of God and out of remembering that will come all the other things you must never forget. Let's pray.

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