If we ever needed to understand that
Christ Jesus is all we need, in everything, then we need to understand
NOW!
The Images temptations coming at us due to the Latter Day apostasies are
temptings to replace
Christ Jesus with something else.
Replace Him ...
BUT He is All in All, and we are in Him and He in us - if we are truly born-again.with righteous works of your own; with some fabulously famous preacher; with a religious system which promises salvation/sanctification; with ear-splitting music and weird experiences; with the Old Testament laws and Judaism; with a superior program for "evangelism"- replace Christ Jesus with anything and everything.
A wonderful hymn by Oswald Smith puts it like this:
"Into the heart of Jesus, deeper and deeper I go,
Seeking to know the reason why He should love me so-
Why He should stoop to lift me up from the miry clay,
Saving my soul, making me whole, tho I had wandered away.
Into the will of Jesus deeper and deeper I go
Praying for grace to follow, seeking His way to know;
Bowing in full surrender low at His blessed feet,
Bidding Him take, break me and make, till I am molded and meet.
Into the Cross of Jesus, deeper and deeper I go,
Following thru the garden, facing the dreadful foe;
Drinking the cup of sorrow - sobbing with broken heart,
O Saviour, help! dear Saviour, help! Grace for my weakness impart.
Into the joy of Jesus deeper and deeper I go,
Rising with soul enraptured, far from the world below;
Joy in the place of sorrow, peace in the midst of pain,
Jesus will give, Jesus will give - He will uphold and sustain.
Into the love of Jesus deeper and deeper I go,
Praising the One who brought me out of my sin and woe;
And thru eternal ages gratefully I shall sing,
O how He loved! O how He loved! Jesus, my Lord and my King!
There are those who would tell us that we need to go deeper into our
Hebrew Roots, or extra-biblical teachings
from old Jewish books. No, Jesus Christ has come, and He is revealed
in all His glory right through the
entire Scriptures. We need rather to see Jesus Christ on every page
of Scripture, to relate every Old
Testament doctrine and revelation to Jesus Christ our Lord. Deeper
into Jesus.
There are others who will insist that we need the "prophetic" ravings
of some preacher who has had
extra-biblical visions.
No, Jesus Christ is ours and we are His, we need to go deeper into Him,
and He is always with even
the most humble of believers. Our Beloved Lord is revealed in God's
glorious Holy Word. Can anyone ever
tire of His loveliness, surely not, God forbid.
Alpha with its fake conversions is stressing the "holy spirit" so much
that the "Spirit" has replaced Christ Jesus.
The "converts" in Alpha actually receive the "holy spirit" in a "Baptism
of the Holy Spirit" and this has replaced
putting trust in Christ Jesus, objectively, as the One Who shed His
Blood for our sin. This twist has subtle and
horrifying implications, beyond even how we are saved.
The devilish doctrine which has arisen is that Jesus indwells us by
becoming an indwelling spirit, and He is NOT
now in resurrected bodily form at the right hand of God. He has
changed, apostate preachers say, INTO the
Holy Spirit.
The Plumbline, March, 1999 has these shocking comments on this replacement of Christ Jesus:
"We must oppose this view. Jesus Christ has not become the Holy Spirit
who indwells the believer. The
Resurrected Jesus is at the Father's right hand and in His glorified
resurrected body He will return bodily to
earth. Obviously an indwelling spirit would not need to return from
heaven. It is on this basis that some
Dominion teachers assert that Jesus can be an on-going incarnation
of God in His body (church) upon the
earth. Consequently scriptures pertaining to Christ's ruling on earth
are often seen as referring to the Church
rather than Jesus. This church is viewed as a kind of virgin Mary who
must give birth to Jesus the indwelling
spirit."
Some make out that we have not lived until we have experienced some
delight in the spurious "holy spirit", a
"revival" with its altered consciousness and bodily manifestations.
But the joy of simply living with my Jesus
Christ makes their claims appear like slush on pure snow! Who can compare
with Him? Who can improve on a
Perfect One, and He is mine and I am His.
The voices which insist that more than Jesus Christ is needed are getting
stronger in our day.
"Hey! here is the only way you can present the gospel, they say,
use this method and sign up with us and you will win souls."
When all the time the Living Reality of the Anointed One is ever with
even the newest convert - open
your mouth and He will fill it with the Good News. Somehow it is clearer
(and easier) for many of us to
present our faith when we are new in Christ than as we grow older in
Him. Maybe we come from the
reality of the new birth "trailing clouds of glory" and we see then,
in the early days, nothing but the
Saviour - and simply tell people about Him. May God lead us all back
to the Simplicity that is in Christ
Jesus.
"For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience,
that in simplicity and godly sincerity,
not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God,
we have had our conversation in the world,
and more abundantly to you-ward." (II Corinthians 1:12).
"But I fear lest by any means,
as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety,
so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."
(II Corinthians 11:3).
W. B. Howard ...Editor of Despatch
.
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