The Bold Witness

Scripture reference: Zechariah 8:11-17 The Old Testament prophets all proclaim of how God tells His people that he will bless them if they do what He wants them to do, and how He will punish them if they do what He tells them not to do. Blessings follow obedience, and punishment follows disobedience. It is God's way of assuring us that He will always keep his word, and is always just. In this passage God declares that He is going to pour out his blessings of peace and prosperity on His people as a way of displaying to the rest of the world that He is a great God. He tells His people not to be afraid or discouraged for any reason. And He instructs them to get on with the business of re-building the temple. God promises that if they do this He will bless them. Based on the idea given to us by Paul that we are the living temple of God, what does this message mean to us? It should have a physical, mental, and spiritual meaning. For, as a complete person, we are a sort of temple ...

According to the Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a loosing team. The number of new members has dropped again for the third year in a row. The number of new members, registered by the number of baptisms performed, was nearly 19,000 fewer in 2007 than in 2006. This in spite of the fact that they built 473 new churches. Apparently they were simply re-arranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Up until a month ago I was a member of a SBC church in San Antonio, TX. I left it because, quite frankly, it was a dead church. I think it had was dead when it was formed simply to give its members a place to worship that was closer to the new neighborhoods they had moved to. The majority of the membership was over fifty years old, and their ideas of church were even older. There was no understanding of anyone born after 1955, and no attempt to reach out to anyone younger than the youngest deacon. The youth department had fewer than twenty active members, despite the fa...

Scripture reference: 1 Corinthians 2:4-14 Paul always emphasized that what he preached was not taught to him by any man and did not come from himself. It is not man's wisdom, but a demonstration of the power of God that was revealed in Paul's teachings. And it was not with what the world considered wise and fancy words that Paul sought to persuade people to accept the gospel, but the power of the Holy Spirit that touched men's soul's and spoke to men's hearts. Paul tells us that it is the Holy Spirit that knows the secrets of the depths of God's spirit, and can reveal those secretes to the man who has accepted Jesus as Christ and has received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But the man who does not have the Spirit of God in him cannot understand the wisdom of God, because it is only the Holy Spirit that can reveal it to him, not some man using man's wisdom and man's eloquent speech. This is why Paul made sure that he spoke plainly to ordinary men. ...

If you carefully study the book of Acts, as well as study the early history of the Church and the last years of Jewish Jerusalem, you will discover that the greatest threat to followers of Jesus were orthodox Jews. Just as the Pharisees, Scribes, and members of the Priesthood clan opposed Jesus during his life, and then persecuted his disciples (to the point of death were Stephen and James the Just were concerned) after Christ's death within the scope of Israel, they then persecuted Paul and tried to destroy the young Church in Asia. The orthodox Jews saw the young Church of the gospel of Jesus Christ as a threat to their power and favored lifestyle. Its message of equality of all in the eyes of God, and its emphasis on humility and service, was in complete opposition to the view taught and tightly held by the Jewish ruling class. As a result, the orthodox Jews sought to assure the teachings of Jesus were completely excluded from Jewish life. If you closely study the society of...

Scripture references: Exodus 12:1-20, Mark 14:22-25 This is the week of Passover; the annual event during which the Jews remember and commemorate the night God performed the final miracle in Egypt which finally caused Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave. It was his final Passover meal that Jesus ate with his disciples in an upper room the night he was betrayed by Judas. It is this meal from which we Christians get our ordinance we call Communion or The Lord's Supper. The important element of the Passover meal, the one which is the symbol of the Christ, the Savior, is the first born lamb without blemish of any kind. It is to be sacrificed and consumed, while wearing traveling clothes. That last part is something that is never mentioned in Communion services, but it is very important; it is of great symbolic significance for the Christian. It is something Paul understood quite clearly. First, we are not to nibble at the teachings of Christ, like a little child playing with his m...

The scripture reference for this is rather long, but is really necessary. Read Judges 1:21-2:23. What God is saying here in His word is that he told the Israelites to get rid of something completely. He wanted this thing, the religion, world view and life style of the Canaanites, out of His land. He wanted the His people to have absolutely nothing to do with it. There was no single part of it that was acceptable to God. So He told His people to remove it from their lives, and have no part of it. Unfortunately for the children of Israel, they were not totally committed to and totally obedient to God. They removed some of the Canaanite contamination from the land, but let some of it remain. The Israelites had the idea that the Canaanites were not all bad. And, if they made them their slaves and controlled them it would be alright. In other words, they thought they knew better than God. Where as God had said that even having "a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." ...

The Greek word evangelion comes from the the two Greek words eu- for "good," and angelion for "message." So the word evangelism literally means telling the good message or good news. And what is the good news? It is also know as the Gospel. The gospel is good news because it witnesses a saving message about God from God. The message that He loves all mankind so much, and wants so badly to be reconciled to man, that He presented his only Son to be a substitutionary sacrifice to pay the debt of our sins. It is a message of a full pardon from condemnation and freedom from the sentence of death that accompanies that condemnation. It is a promise of life. And not just the existence of being in this world with all its ugliness and unhappiness; but abundant life filled with a deep abiding joy and an unexplainable peace. A life filled with the Holy Spirit now, and lived with God and His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for all eternity. It is a message that we do ...