Our New Home

Excitement!

We have just about completed moving to our new site. We still have some fine-tuning to do, but you can visit now by following the link below (make sure to add the site to your bookmarks/favorites).

The Ezekius Network

Please, drop by and visit the newly designed site (we think/hope you'll like it) and check out the rich, new content available. The blogs aren't yet completely implemented, but they should be ready for regular updating by October 27 (Thursday). We look forward to your visiting and linking to us on your site/blog if you have one and spreading the word about the Word of God being promoted and presented to the world. Pray for us, really, and God bless YOU!

We're Moving!

In the very near future, the "PreacherBlog" weblog will be moving. Those of you who might have found something of value in these writings will be able to follow us to our new address. The new address will be posted here within the next couple days or so, so watch this space!

Why Are We Moving?
That's a complicated question. While the Blogger service is nice (and free), there are some things that are not quite to our liking, not the least of which is the fact that we just get lost in a sea of weird blogs, many of which are just advertisements for some business endeavor. Also, for whatever reason, we aren't getting the traffic we were getting when we were using paid blog hosting. And we are also wanting to integrate the current three Blogger blogs (the other two are BibleFire! and The fire In My Bones!) into one so that we aren't so stretched trying to keep them all updated regularly.

We hope you have really gotten something, or at least found this blog interesting, enough to not only follow us once we are in our new "home", but that you will also help us to drive as many people as humanly possible to the blog. It's not about the traffic, it's about getting God's Word to as many people as we can.

God bless!

Faith In The Truth

People believe what they want to believe until they are faced with an undeniable truth. Belief is always a choice until actual proof is manifested. People with no proof whatsoever believe that there is no God. The Bible calls them fools. People also believe there is a God with no proof. Are they fools also? Not necessarily. We begin the search for the truth of God based on choosing to believe (in fact we must begin this way). But we cannot have an ongoing reletionship with God without FAITH. And faith is not (as some unbelievers claim) just blind belief. Faith is knowing. In fact, the Bible says that faith is evidence! God says that if we belileve (and act on that belief), then He will manifest Himself, thus turning "blind" belief into knowing faith.

Imagine a 5-year-old boy who believes that grass is green, but has never seen grass himself. Someone tells him that grass is purple. He says, no, it's green. The person says again that it's purple and proceeds to convince the boy of this. If that person's words are convincing enough, the boy will believe that grass is purple. But there are two questions: Does he believe the truth? (No, he believe the words of the person). Does what he believes happen to be the truth? (No, grass is not purple).

Five years later, someone new tells the now ten-year-old boy that grass is orange. He says no, it's purple. If this person has more convincing words than the other person, then the young man now believes that grass is orange; otherwise he continues believing it's purple. The same two questions aply: Does he believe the truth (No, he still believes someone's words) and does what he believes happen to be true? (No, grass is not orange).

Five more years pass and yet another person tells the fifteen-year-old that grass is green. He disagrees, saying it's either orange or purple, depending on which of the first two persons had the more convincing words. If this person convinces him to believe that grass is green, how would that affect the two questions? Well, does what he believes happen to be the truth? (Yes, grass is green). But, does he believe the truth? (No, he still believes someone's words). If you think it makes no difference, you are wrong. Why? Because all it will take is for yet another person to come along with more convincing words and the young man will then believe that grass is some other color.

If, however, the last person shows the young man where he can go to actually find grass and see it for himself, then the young man will be face to face with the undeniable truth that grass is green. He will believe the truth, and he will believe it because it's true, not because he was talked into believing. And from that moment, nothing anyone ever tells him will change his belief, because he has perceived the reality for himself. This is what faith is like.

So it is with faith in God. Many people today say they believe in God, but they only believe what they have been told by someone else; they have not actually experienced God's reality for themselves. Therefore, their faith is weak, because Jesus is not the author and finisher of it; the author of their faith is whomever they chose to believe. We cannot live lives that are pleasing to God with this kind of carnal faith, which is really nothing more than belief, blind belief at that, because the person hardly knows enough about God to fully trust the idea that he can completely put his or her life into God's hands!

The Bible promises that if we seek God with all our heart, diligently, and if we act on the simplicity of belief and find out what God wants of us, and if we commit to give it to Him, He will make Himself absolutely real to us. This is not the promise of Christianity, nor the promise of the Church; it is the promise of God Himself. No Saint has any reason to have to try to build a life of holiness on blind faith; it can (and should) be built upon a substantial, evidential faith as defined in Hebrews 11:1.

"Specialist" Demons

Have you ever heard a person with an alcohol problem be referred to as having an "alcohol demon"? Or a person with a problem with sexual lust being said to have a "lust demon"? Do you know that the idea that there are certain, specific demons that "specialize" in certain types of sin is not an idea that can be supported by Scripture?

There is a sense in which it isn't really wrong to say things like this. If we want to say that a person has an envy demon, we probably know what we mean to say, and those we speak to may understand on some level what we mean, that the person has something in him or her that ought not to be in a Saint of the Most High God. But there is also a sense in which this kind of thing can be dangerous. First of all, we should consider that nothing is either true (spiritually) or essential if it cannot be solidly backed up with Scripture, or if it at least can be reliably shown to be edifying to a person or to the Body of Christ in general. Second, we have to realize that Jesus has established that sin results from a condition of the heart. Actually, Jesus did not establish this; it was established by God Himself in Genesis 6:5, when He saw that the imaginations of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. He did not blame this on a demon, but on the growing wickedness of men because of their own sinful nature. James also said in the first chapter of his letter that sin is the result of temptation, and temptation arises from being drawn away and enticed by our own lusts, not from being under the control of any demon. This is not to say that demons are not real, for certainly they are. The point is that the Bible does not support the notion that there are "specialist" demons. There are demons that are responsible for some physical conditions, such as the "dumb spirit" that Jesus cast out of the young man in the 9th chapter of Mark, but demons being directly responsible for men's acts of sin is not Biblical. Another danger of this thinking is that it tends to minimize the responsibility we take for our sin; we may not repent of something we ought to repent of because we have been convinced that the fault lies with the demon that specializes in the sin we can't stop committing.

There is an internal battle going on within the Saint; the flesh warring against the spirit, the law of sin battling the law of righteousness, creating a situation in which we desire earnestly to always do that which is good and right, but are unable to find a way to do it. Paul expressed his personal frustration with this very thing in the 7th chapter of Romans, but in the 8th chapter, he describes how to be victorious! Jesus said that sin is a heart condition, not the work of specialized demons, James said temptation sprang from our own lusts, and Paul said that there is a battle between the fleshly nature and the spiritual nature that brings us into captivity to sin. None of these Biblical concepts in any way indicate that demons are selectively used to make certain people vulnerable to certain sins. Demons are just unclean and ungodly spirits, the Bible does not define them as any more than that, and whatever evil is in our hearts, they will attempt to magnify and influence us to follow.

We can say (figuratively) that there is a "spirit" in certain things, such as drugs. There is, in fact, a spirit in drugs, in the sense that our flesh and our minds can be enslaved by them. There are other activities as well, such as gambling, that have the ability to entrap a person and resist that person's ability to control the doing of them, and in this sense we might say that there is a "spirit" in these things. What we mean is that the devil will use these things to weaken and bind a person and keep him in captivity to sin. But God is greater and is just as able to deliver from something like this as He is able to give us power over demons in general.

Saints must rely completely on the Bible for understanding all things, and seek God through the Holy Ghost for rightly dividing the Word, in other words applying it properly to the various situations and circumstances we face in life. Christianity, in spite of what some might say, is not a superstitious set of beliefs, it is a lifestyle of seeking and obeying the true and living God, and living within His will so that we might be justified in the Day of Judgment. If we hold to supertitious beliefs, we might not only deprive ourselves of the fullness of the reality of God, but we may also allow our faith to be lumped in with other belief systems that are superstitious, like numerology and astrology, and even other false religions. God has commanded, through Jesus, that we do not give that which is holy to dogs, or cast our pearls before swine. We are to hold our beliefs, and the truths of Scripture, in the highest regard. To allow them to become banal by adding unnecessary and unsupported superstitious ideas harms that high regard and may even belittle the name of God.

The Preacher's Job

What is the Preacher's (or Minister's) Job? Interesting question. Here are three lists that might shine some light on the answer.

What The Preacher's Job IS:

• To feed the flocks of God (the Saints)
• To provide sound, spirit-led counsel to the Saints
• To rightly divide the Word of God, and present it to the Saints in a clear, rightly divided manner that can be applied directly to their lives
• To be examples to the Saints of holiness, gravity and spirituality
• To maintain prayerful contact with God in order to receive the wisdom to deal wisely and in a godly manner with all things pertaining to salvation
• To admonish and rebuke the Saints, when led to do so by the Spirit
• To preach the Word of God that saves, delivers and empowers victorious living
• To discern and warn the Saints against any evil that tries to harm the Body of Christ
• To be firmly rooted and grounded in the Word of God, through the Holy Ghost
• To Promote Jesus Christ as the Savior, Lord and the only way any man can have eternal life and a relationship with the true and living God

The Preacher's Job is NOT:

• To preach that Saints cannot live victoriously over sin
• To assume a position of lordship or ownership of God's people
• To teach Saints what the Bible says; all Saints should study the Bible for themselves. The preacher helps is rightly dividing and applying the Word in practical ways.
• To collect money based on having a title. The laborer is worthy of his hire, but if a preacher not laboring to edify the Body, then every cent of every offering or tithe he accepts is stealng
• To entice any member of the Body of Christ to sin in any manner whatsoever
• To save or condemn any person. Only God saves, and only God's Word condemns. The preacher must, however make all men aware of salvation, condemnation and what they mean to each person
• To judge the righteousness or service of another Saint. While all Saints are to reprove sin, this doesn't mean that we judge others, nor can we determine if a person's sincere service (in the absence of sin) is acceptable to God or not.

You Should Not Sit Under Any Preacher Who:

• Does not preach that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, who was sent by God and is the only way to eternal life
  
• Tells you that you cannot be victorious over sin
• Mocks other Saints, or rejects other Sants without sound Biblical basis
• Is a known womanizer, drunkard, homosexual or who engages in other outward sins that would cause his name to be belittled among unbelievers
• Does not promote holiness as necessary to see God in peace. If he can't even explain what holiness is, run!
• Always tries to come up with clever ways to get money out of you, or who constantly harps about money
• Has ideas or teaches doctrines that represent interpreting the Bible in accordance with the modern morality of the world
• Does not preach love, purity and righteousness, with the bible as the foundation of all beliefs
• Does not strongly encourage all Saints to study the Bible for themselves and to seek an intimate, personal relationship with God.

There are other things, but these are just a few of the basics. You should study the Bible to see that all these things are based on it (there are too many to go into Scripture reference for each one). If you can't find one of them, just comment on it and we will respond with the Biblcal reference.

...And You Don't Even Tremble...

There was a commercial for a smoking cessation product some years ago, and at the beginning, a man looked into the camera and asked, "Are you still smoking?" Now the tone of the question indicated that it should have been obvious that no one should still be smoking, so the answer should have been "no". In the same manner, the question is asked of those who call themselves "devout" Christians:

Are you still sinning?

Do you love God? Or do you say you love God because you know (or think) that somewhere in the Bible it says that you're supposed to love Him? Do you know that, if you read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you will find only one thing by which God measures our love for Him? It's not praise, nor thankfulness nor gratitude nor singing nor being happy nor going to church nor giving generous offerings nor preaching nor teaching Sunday School. It's obedience. If we love God, we will obey Him, and if we don't love God then we won't. It really is that simple, and that vital. No matter what anyone else may have told you, the Bible teaches that obedience to God is the only way God determines if we love Him. In fact, in 1 John, we are told that if we say we even so much as know Him, but we don't keep His commandments, then we are lying and the truth is not in us. (1 John 2:4) Surely we cannot presume to call God a liar and be justified!

People who follow the ritual and protocol of the Church, no matter how faithfully, but have not repented of sin and turned to obedience to God, are no better off than the Pharisees of Jesus' day, and Jesus said that unless our righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, we would in no wise enter into God's Kingdom (Matthew 5:20). People who boast about how much they know and love God, yet continue to willingly walk in those things God has called unrighteous are fooling themselves, but they are not fooling God. People who sit piously in church services week after week, but who carry on extended adulterous relationships, have meanness and hatred in their lives, regard envy and pride in their hearts, preach and teach lies to the people of God, worship other gods, obtain filthy lucre, and any other evil work are hypocrites and will not see God in peace, because God will not have people with such hearts with Him in His eternal Kingdom.

Of course, many people will hide behind the false doctrine that says, "God knows my heart". But we cannot trust our hearts in place of the Bible. The Bible tells us, in Proverbs 28:26, that a person who trusts his heart is a fool. The heart of man was called evil as far back as Genesis 6:5. Our own heart cannot be trusted to assure us that we are righteous, only God's Word can do that, and if we are not righteous according to that Word, then what our hearts may convince us to believe is a lie. How can we know God and not live holy and separated from sin? How can we walk in sin, without guilt, and say we know God? How can we believe in the power of God, yet not access the power that delivers us from sin? James said that just saying we believe means nothing; because even devils believe. But the devils at least have sense enough to tremble at the knowledge of God; many Christians today sin willfully and repeatedly and frequently and yet do not tremble before God, who is holy. They laugh and relax and revel in their iniquity and give their whole hearts to enjoying their sin and have convinced themselves that because they have "good hearts", they can go to church and have their filth washed from them over and over again. But God is not mocked; He is not going to be the fool here. If we do not retain God in our knowledge, He will turn us over to a reprobate mind (a reprobate mind is a mind turned away from God, by God). He will give us over to the things we refuse to let go of, and we will perish.

If we give deep, sincere, careful consideration to what the Bible says about God, and what it says about how God feels about sin and hypocrisy, perhaps He will be merciful and open our eyes enough that we will tremble before Him in recognition of His great holiness, and in recognition of our weak use of His delivering power. If not, then we may already have been turned over. Every word of God is true. One of the saddest phrases in the Bible is in 2 Corinthians 4:3~4 (But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not; lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, which is the image of God, should shine unto them) This simply means that if we cannot see the truth of the Gospel, it's because we have been blinded by Satan and we are already lost. But there is still hope if we will repent and turn to God.

Righteousness Exalts A Nation

Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. So says the Bible in (Proverbs 14:34). But, rightly dividing the Scripture requires an understanding that this righteousness is not our own righteousnesses, which are as filthy rags before God; this righteousness refers to the righteousness of God, which none can hope to obtain without the newness of life of being born again of the Spirit of God, and being filled with (and following the leading of) the Holy Ghost.

It has become a favorite (and filthily lucrative) passtime of many preachers today to organize protests in the streets over some new law or ordinance or incident. These preachers are willingly ignorant of the fact that such action is largely pointless. Why? Because getting laws changed, or expressing outrage over some community ill is not going to bring anyone into the righteousness of God, but bringing others into God's righteousness will bring about newness of life without law. Righteousness cannot come by an act of congress, it comes by an act of God!

In a midwestern city, the local authorities recently passed a law permitting the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Now, I don't think any Saint of God needs to be drinking at all, and certainly the Bible makes drunkeness and revelry a sin. Still, a local preacher, more famous for his protests than for the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, organized a "civil action" outside a local liquor store to protest this new ordinance. His rationale was that this is contributing to the crime and other evils in that area. Probably he was right, but what's the point? People who drink are used to simply waiting until Monday to buy liquor, or stocking up on Saturday. We need not agree to having liquor sold on Sunday (or any other day), but protesting it isn't going to do anything of any lasting value; all it's going to do is garner this preacher a little more notoriety and influence. Why not protest on the other days? Because the truth is, drinkers are not going to stop drinking, the ordinance is not going to be rescinded, and more importantly, no one will likely be saved because the protesting of such an ordinance is NOT the Gospel! So nothing eternal or edifying to the Body of Christ will take place.

If preachers are going to do anything in the streets, why don't they just preach the Gospel? Paul said he wasn't ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation. The Bible tells us that it is by the foolishness of preaching that God will save them that believe. Righteousness cannot be legislated by the laws of men; it can only come through the saving, heart-changing power of God. It is the Gospel that brings this power. Preachers who substitute social issues for the Gospel or who seek recognition from news media through demonstrations packing around poorly-written signs and candles instead of just preaching the Gospel are blind.

You give a drug addict the saving power of God and he won't need a rehab center nor a protest against the local drug dealer or against police who are powerless to stop that dealer. Give prostitues the power of the Gospel and there will be no need to protest in front of adult entertainment establishments. Introduce a homeless person to Christ's saving glory and you won't have to worry about him tapping on your car window begging for change. All these worldly activities, for what good they might have done in the past, are now ineffective and too little attention ios paid to them to be as effective as say, when M. L. King was doing them. Many preachers today are just profiting from what King did. The Gospel never gets old, it never loses it's power; it just needs to be brought out of the closet and preached with the conviction of those who have really experienced it's power for themselves, and not just have been taught about it in Seminary School.

If we long for righteousness, let us put the Gospel to work and watch the nation become exalted by the righteousness of God.