The Contender

 I am a horror movies fan and have been since I was a child and watched the old black and white movies of werewolves and mummies and vampires and the Frankenstein monster on late-night tv. Included among my favorites was the original The Body Snatchers (I even like the remake). Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and John Carradine and Christopher Lee and Lon Chaney, jr., were the goats of their day. The later "slasher movies" were ridiculous and an insult to the genre. But in this article, I will, as one can tell by the title, address reality, the reality of the hundreds of men and women whose bodies are possessed and occupied by the devil himself and who are even as we speak, snatching away millions of deceived souls who have fallen under their spell. Remember what happened to those people in the movies who fell asleep? That same end has befallen those who are asleep and blind as to the truth of the gospel. But, there is hope. Read this, written under the guidance of the Holy Spi...

 If you are hoping for a direct word from God on this post, you're in luck. The catch is there are no direct words from God outside the Bible. Any and every direct revelation from God has already been given and finished. The Canon of Scripture is closed. Sure, one can watch the hundreds of quacks and charlatans on social media sites where they sell their lies and deceptions to the gullible and biblically illiterate. And when I say "sell," that is just what they do; they peddle their heresies and twisted Scriptures to their dupes. All who say, "The Lord told me this," or "The Lord showed me this," are lying. And they know their followers well enough to know they can say anything, no matter how ridiculous and absurd, and their followers will increase, and so will their offerings received.     So, here is a direct revelation from Paul's letter to the saints in Rome. The following truths/facts come from the letter to the Romans. “To God be the glory.” ...

 I talk with people or read statements by others who are convinced that the words "the wall of separation between church and state" are found in the US Constitution. The end result of that misunderstanding is the ignorant protesting when a pastor or Christian teacher makes any reference to politics from behind his pulpit or some other platform. I have witnessed people leaving their congregation simply because the pastor waxed political during a sermon. Thomas Jefferson penned the words "a wall of separation" in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Danbury, Connecticut, as he gave them assurance that the newly formed United States government would not interfere with their right to worship freely. But as the average person is prone to do, that quote was and continues to be taken out of context and applied in such a way that the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment was in fact being made to say the very opposite of what it literally says. R...

 I once heard a young lady say that she had been taught how to speak in tongues but was embarrassed by the sound of her "tongues." Our small group leader asked her to speak her "new language," and she hesitatingly did. It was a one syllable sound repeated over and over again. It was "dadadadadadadada," said very quickly. The leader and others told her it was the gift of tongues. And everyone went home convinced that this young lady had the genuine gift of tongues. Dear reader, that was not the Biblical gift of tongues no matter how one might spin it. It was gibberish foisted upon a novice by deceived people who thought (sincerely) that everyone is supposed to speak in tongues. A cursory reading of 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 would have told them otherwise.  And that is an excellent segue into my next point, people caught up in the Charismatic Movement as well as those in the Pentecostal Movement and the Word of Faith Movement are given to taking Scripture out ...

 Do you claim to "speak in tongues?" Do you claim to be an apostle, you know, just like the apostles hand-picked by Jesus were who met the requirements of that office? (See Acts 1) Do you claim to be a prophet who regularly hears directly from God? Do you have the gift of healing? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you are in the company of millions.  The problem is you have more than likely been deceived into believing that you have any of those gifts or the others mentioned in the apostle Paul's letter to the saints in Corinth. However, the spiritual gifts listed in First Corinthians 12 are legitimate gifts. And, in spite of what many leading pastors of our day and many of our leading theologians might proffer, the Bible does not teach or even hint that the "sign gifts" have ceased. And in spite of the fact that you do not truly have the gifts you have been told you have, if you are born of the Spirit, you do in fact have one of the gifts (or ...

 Somewhere along the way, the faith once delivered to the saints, over 2000 years ago, has gotten so extremely perverted that is it has become difficult if not impossible to discern. The battle for the soul of the church and the truth of the gospel has been non-stop since day one. The apostles Paul and Peter and John and Jude, as well as the Lord Jesus Himself, engaged the enemies of the church and truth and all but one of them paid for it with their lives. These men of God found the hill to die on and it was and still is, the hill of the gospel. Jumping ahead to the 20th and the 21st centuries and skipping over the battles fought by the churches founding fathers who did battle with the heretics of their day, we find the true church, made up of those who solely by the grace of God, are born of the Spirit, born again, those who know their Scriptures, surrounded by an enemy that vastly outnumbers her. And the enemy is clever and creative and so acquainted with its deceived followers ...