Let’s talk about the inspiration of scripture.  Consider this sentence:

There is simply no statement in the Bible telling me to expect a perfect set of sixty-six books in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.

Gotcha!  The Bible doesn’t have anything to say about that!  Of course, it does say, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God,” but is that the same thing as saying, “There was a perfect set of sixty-six books in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts”?

People who do believe what scripture says about inspiration do, you know, jump to the application of a perfect set of sixty-six books in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.  They are willing to make that application even from something as simple as “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”  2 Timothy 3:16-17 and 2 Peter 1:20-21 just don’t make those exact types of statements, and yet believers through church history have taken assurance from them that there was a perfect set of sixty-six books in the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.

We have a record of a faithful willingness to apply the Bible to its own inspiration.  The saints have been able to break down the minimal passages on this doctrine and come to perfect originals.  Every word was perfect, all sixty six books.  No verse says exactly those words, but the saints of God still believed that truth.

The original manuscripts are convenient for making, shall we say, tough applications of scripture.  No one has them, those papyrus, parchments, or tablets. Since we don’t have them, it’s easy to say they’re perfect.  No one can say we’re wrong.  No one can prove we’re wrong.  That’s not all though.

Without inspiration, all of the doctrines we take from scripture, all the Bible teachings, can fall like a house of cards (an overused metaphor that I lazily borrow).  Many people like justification by faith, for instance, and heaven that’s at the end of that, purpose in life and all that.  They’d like doctrines like those to stay intact.  Inspiration of the original manuscripts, all the words of the sixty-six books being perfect, that sustains all the teachings for theologians from which they make a living.  And that application of the inspiration passages is easy to grab on to, even though we don’t have “scientific proof” of it.

Then we get to the preservation of scripture.  Consider this statement:

There simply is no statement in the Bible telling me to expect a perfect set of Hebrew or Greek biblical manuscripts.

As much as scripture says, “all scripture is given by inspiration of God,” it says a lot more about its own preservation.  It’s much easier, if what we’re depending upon for our doctrine is scripture, to expect perfect preservation of scripture, that is, to expect God’s perfect words in our hands.  That sounds like it could be a book title:  God’s Perfect Words In Our Hands.

The last above quote is verbatim from Mark Ward in a recent post he wrote, entitled:  “Answering a Question I Get All the Time: The Places to Start in Studying New Testament Textual Criticism”.  In that post, he wrote this paragraph:

I have indeed purposefully avoided the textual debate on my YouTube channel and in direct conversation with my KJV-Only brothers. I’ve done this because the Bible (it seems to me) is far clearer on the principle that “edification requires intelligibility” (1 Cor 14) than it is on the textual debate (I lay out portions of that case here). I want to lay importance on what the Bible says rather than speculating about matters I’ve (sic) convinced it doesn’t address. There simply is no statement in the Bible telling me to expect a perfect set of Hebrew or Greek biblical manuscripts.

I can appreciate Ward saying that he wants to lay importance on what the Bible says, since it says nothing about textual criticism, the subject of his post.  The one thing he will say that the Bible says is “edification requires intelligibility” (1 Cor 14), because that works for his argument against the King James Version of the Bible — straight line between 1 Corinthians 14 and rejection of the King James Version for him.  Ward is willing to make that application.  It’s apparently all he’s got from the Bible to apply to this issue.  I’m not going to call that faithful, even if that’s “pugilistic.” 

Mark Ward has his just one biblical point.  I don’t think it is a legitimate application of the Bible.  People really didn’t know a foreign language in 1 Corinthians 14, so tongues, unknown languages or mere gibberish, were legitimately unintelligible.  His application isn’t a historical one, like inspiration and preservation.  I’ve written before that I think he’s just making it up.  English speaking people know the King James.  The vast number of English speakers, who use the KJV, find it intelligible, not like a foreign language or gibberish.

Ward’s other biblical point, albeit what he says is absent  from the Bible, is that last sentence, the one I quoted above.  He won’t say that the Bible doesn’t promise its own preservation.  He won’t say that the Bible doesn’t promise perfect preservation.  He doesn’t say that the Bible doesn’t preserve every word perfectly.  What he says is a straw man.

Mark Ward writes:  “There is simply no statement in the Bible telling me to expect a perfect set of Hebrew or Greek manuscripts.”  This is an unfaithful unwillingness to apply the Bible to its own preservation.  It’s a dodge.  It’s a kind of Jesuit casuistry.  Someone calls me and asks if my dad is home.  I say, “He isn’t here,” and I point at my table.  My dad isn’t on the table.  It’s true he isn’t here.  I didn’t lie.  I’m telling the “truth.”

Let’s break the statement down.  The Bible doesn’t tell Mark Ward personally anything (“me”).  The Bible doesn’t tell someone to “expect” something.  The Bible doesn’t talk about a “set” of something.  The Bible doesn’t mention Hebrew and Greek.  The Bible doesn’t use the word “manuscripts.”  Of course the Bible doesn’t tell us those things.  To get the doctrine of scripture, we’ve got to apply scripture.  Men have, and through history men have declared, the doctrine of the perfect preservation of scripture.

The Bible teaches its own preservation.  God inspired every Word.  God preserved every Word to be available for every believer in every generation since its inspiration.  That’s what preservation is:  preservation.  Preservation isn’t partial spoilage.  You get the doctrine of preservation by a faithful, willing application of the Bible to its own preservation.  You take the combined multitude of verses about its own preservation and apply them to have a doctrine of preservation.  Mark Ward among many others now is unwilling to do that.

Those who support drinking alcohol, including professing Christians, might point out apparent benefits of moderate drinking, both compared either to drunkenness or teetotaling.  Recent “studies” have debunked some of those in a significant way.  It should make sense to someone.

The simple answer is alcohol gets into the blood stream, goes to the brain, and it kills brain cells.  Aaah, but that isn’t exactly what happens.  No.  It’s more technical.  Alcohol damages some of your neurons, which send electrical and chemical messages within the brain and between it and other parts of the body.  There, that’s all.  To get even more technical, alcohol inhibits the communication between dendrites, or branching connections at the ends of neurons that send and receive information between neurons, in the cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in motor coordination.  This means that alcohol, like most know already, is mind-altering.

If you were to try to justify doing what I wrote about in the second paragraph, a good way to do it is to say that a lot of people destroy or harm or hurt their bodies in a lot of different ways, including the brain, so to be consistent, it is permissible to do it with alcohol too.  I’m not going to go further with it, but scientific studies have been done recently that show that even moderate drinking of alcohol damages the brain, results in obesity, and affects your immune system in a bad way.  The latter isn’t good news for future possible coronavirus exposure.

What I have for you below is a bit of a one stop shop with recent articles and studies for the affects of moderate drinking of alcohol for those who believe moderate drinking is acceptable and even helpful.  Of course, I believe the Bible prohibits the drinking of any alcohol.  No one has to do it.  No one should do it.

Physicians Weekly

European Association for the Study of Obesity

Alcohol and the Brain

This Is Your Brain On Alcohol

5 Scary Ways Alcohol Damages the Brain

Moderate alcohol use is associated with decreased brain volume in early middle age in both sexes

Consumption of alcohol even in small amounts can result in obesity and metabolic syndrome, suggests study

Moderate Drinking May Shrink Your Brain by a Percent. Is It Worth It?

How Alcohol Can Affect Your Immune System

 As of about a week ago, the Democrat party started admitting riots had occurred as what seemed to be only for the purpose of deniability.  Vice President Biden said a few days ago in a speech in Pittsburgh:

Rioting is not protesting.  Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change. It will only bring destruction. It’s wrong in every way. It divides instead of unites, destroys businesses, only hurts the working families that serve the community. It makes things worse across the board, not better.

He assigned no blame to those who actually did it, which again allows for deniability.  “I never said it was BLM or antifa.”  Using the fire metaphor, actually lit by his own supporters, the former Vice President said that President Trump had fanned the flames.  Will people believe that President Trump is the cause of BLM, antifa, and other revolutionaries occupying and destroying American inner cities?  In the same speech, he said:

The common threat, the incumbent president who makes things worse, not better, an incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order. . . .  Trump has sought to remake this nation in his image. Selfish, angry, dark, and divisive. This is not who we are.

In answer to his speech, which you could read the transcript here, President Trump tweeted:

Just watched what Biden had to say. To me, he’s blaming the Police far more than he’s blaming the Rioters, Anarchists, Agitators, and Looters, which he could never blame or he would lose the Radical Left Bernie supports!

The situation of blaming the fires on President Trump reminds me of how Adolph Hitler came into power in Germany, when he set fire the Reichstag and then successfully blamed it on the Communists.  That was a different era, and one wouldn’t think that the same strategy could work today.  However, I would like to explore the ideas of division, chaos, agitation, and their relationship to one another.  Two sides often point at one another and claim that the other is the one causing division.  Trump is causing division.

In more recent history of American Republican presidents, they have attempted to get along with the other side through compromise.  It’s worth asking:  how did that go?  The left has a philosophy of Hegelian dialectics that takes a thesis and antithesis to form a synthesis.  The synthesis becomes the new thesis, which is left of the former thesis.  Their antithesis keeps moving leftward, not based upon absolute truth, but on postmodern deconstruction of all Western values.  Every new synthesis is left of what it was until everything loses meaning and nothing is sacred anymore.  It is an attack on absolute truth, where fornication or same sex is love, neither man or woman is man or woman, murder is choice, no property is private, and God doesn’t exist.  This is all at the bottom of wokeness.

To combat the so-called progress, from the above described dialectic, division must occur.  It can’t be a weak divide.  It must throw down a strong, impenetrable barrier of truth across which nothing can pass.  This is more important than getting along.  Without some kind of stand at this point, we’ve reached a juncture, if we haven’t already, of no return.  We’ve got to stand now, or we will for sure be at a place of never coming back, even if we haven’t already reached that. 

The chaos could be said to be caused by the one who will not just put up with the opposition.  Someone tries to give a speech and he can’t keep talking because people are screaming, shouting him down.  A young person tries to lead in the state university and bring in a speaker who isn’t deconstructing but declaring the original meaning of the words of a founding document.  He is threatened.  He continues along his path and chaos occurs.  The more people refuse to be canceled, the more strife, division, and chaos occurs.  The call to end chaos is the call to capitulation, to give up, to cede position and even territory, to relinquish freedom.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, more demonic activity was seen than at any point in history.  I said, “seen.”  Demonic activity is always occurring, but with Jesus there in person, the demons were flushed out into the open and defeated at record pace.  An outward observer might say that Jesus caused more demonic activity.  If he wasn’t around, the demons would not have been seen.  Everyone could have gone along their sweet way without this kind of agitation.

In recent days at multiple homes, I’ve watched extreme revolts of children against parents, screaming and yelling and opposing.  The parents relent.  Everything becomes a negotiation.  To get a handle on this kind of chaos, really solve it, authority must be used, punishment must be meted out.  Pain will be involved.  This will be criticized.  This will be fought.  It will be messy.  Most are too afraid or unwilling to face this anymore.  It doesn’t look like unity.  It looks like division, chaos, and agitation.  All of that is a necessity, and you reader know this.

If we will not prepare ourselves for division, like Jesus did, we are giving up in a fight.  This is the fight for God, for truth, and for good.  We will be called divisive.  Understand that.  Chaos will ensue, somewhat like you might read in The Red Badge of Courage.  War is ugly.  People have called it hell.  Hell isn’t the right word, but it isn’t easy. Henry Fleming fled from the field of battle in Stephen Crane’s classic novel. Anyone would understand someone doing this.  It’s scary.  We need those who will stay in the fight and not give in.  We can’t be afraid.  So much is at stake.

When the world talks about “the science,” they are distinguishing that from faith, and true faith doesn’t contrast with science.  I pastored in the San Francisco Bay Area, and this was a regular type of person I encountered, that was, you know, more of a scientist, as a reason not to listen to scripture.  If you dig not very deep, you find that these scientists don’t want to be challenged.  They don’t have science.  We have obvious points on this.

When Darwin looked at a cell, it was at the most a blob to him.  He didn’t see what was in a cell.  If he could see that, he would have seen irreducible complexity.   For one cell to survive, all the necessary parts of it needed to exist at one time.  The cell could not have evolved.  Then since Darwin, we know about DNA in a cell, that exceedingly complicated evidence of design exists there in that strings of characters need to be arranged in a very precise way in order to perform a function.  The amount of information is so vast that an accurate sequence could not have happened by chance.

There is no evidence that man evolved.  So called scientists point to microevolution, a bacteria adapting and changing to survive, which in the end is still bacteria.  Then they dishonestly project that occurrence to macroevolution without either seeing it or finding it in the fossil record.  There would be bounteous presence of transitional forms of evolution between such as invertebrates and the vertebrates.  We don’t see these links.  They are missing links.

Furthermore, science says life begins before birth in the mother’s womb.  Science shows no evidence of the “gay gene.”  Science shows distinct differences between men and women.  They are not equal.  Science shows someone has incentive to work harder for something he wants that he knows he is allowed to keep.  All of these are also biblical.

What about “the science” of climate change?  With all the other science denial of the scientists, it’s hard to trust their science without obvious proof and without context.  The Bible is science and it provides a different future and ending than the climate scientists give.

I turn to “the history.”  The story of Jesus is just as well attested as Julius Caesar.  The difference would be that there are many more ancient copies accounting for Jesus and sources close to when he lived than there is for Caesar.  In other words, Jesus is more greatly witnessed and even by more people than Julius Caesar.  I’m not doubting the existence of Caesar.

The problem with the story of Jesus for historians is not the amount of evidence, but the nature of what it says.  A bias exists against the history of Jesus because of the supernatural.  That is the same with creation origin in science.  They suppress the truth in unrighteousness.  Where is the science?  Where is the history?

Schools can’t teach science or history.  The news media doesn’t report science or history.  They leave out everything that is in the Bible that is science and history.  They replace it with much that is not science or history.  As a result, it’s all a big lie.

Wrong ideas, falsehoods, are held up by lies.  What people call the science and the history are not true.  The same people who tell these lies are also the main sources for news today.  They are the people that require churches not to meet or sing and shut down places of business and schools.  They tell us that the police are brutal and uniquely so to racial minorities.  They say that looters, rioters, and vandals are mere protesters.

When the federal government moves to stop the crime, the liars call for states rights.  As the criminals wreak havoc, the same liars complain about no federal intervention.  The liars are silent during record employment.  The liars are loud in declaring record loss of jobs especially from their own state shelter-in-place and economic shut downs.  A small percentage of the death toll represents those who died only from the virus.  What of any death tolls kept in any place in the world are accurate in telling the true story?  I don’t know of any.

I suggest to anyone reading this — get back to the Word of God.  God’s Word is truth.  It is true science in a world of speculation and lies.

The New Testament uses “the Spirit,” “the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit of God,” and “the Spirit of Christ.”  I want to focus mainly on “the Spirit of Christ.”  Is “the Spirit of Christ” Jesus Christ Himself?  What do you think?

Romans 8:9, But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

1 Peter 1:11, Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

I confess that he is called the “Spirit of Christ” because he was promised by him, sent by him, and that was to make effectual and accomplish his work towards the church. But he could not be this, unless he had antecedently been the Spirit of the Son by his proceeding from him also: for the order of the dispensation of the divine persons towards us, arises from the order of their own subsistence in the same divine essence. . . . It will be said, perhaps, that he is called the “Spirit of Christ” because he is promised, given, and poured out by him. . . . On this supposition, I will grant as before, that he may consequently be called the “Spirit of Christ,” because he was promised and sent by Christ, doing Christ’s work, and communicating Christ’s grace, image, and likeness to the elect.

The word “fear” occurs 400 times in the Bible in 385 verses.  It’s obviously a significant subject, it is mentioned so many times.  It’s used in a good way and a bad way.  In a good way, it’s very good, even to the extent that it could be put in a sentence that gives the very purpose of mankind (Ecclesiastes 12:13):

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; 15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.

Here the LORD commands Abraham, “Fear not.”  “Fear not” is a common expression coming from God, which especially make sense if fear is an instrument of Satan toward the bad.

I’m writing on fear because it is the true underlying subject of a lot of what we’ve been discussing here in recent days.  Many different fears of Covid-19 influence people in a wrong way.  We heard from the beginning that Covid-19 was a deadly threat and people are afraid of death.  The word “deadly” is used for coronavirus a lot.  Fear of death makes people slaves and this society may be more afraid of death than any previous one in the history of our country.

The fear of death in a very indulgent culture is greater to the extent that it becomes very compliant to what it is told to preserve its life.  The fear of death is an underlying uncertainty that leads someone to stock pile toilet paper.  It arises from fear of mortality leading to acts of self-preservation. Hebrews 2 says Jesus died to deliver us from that fear.  His death is the solution to that fear.

Satan is in charge of the world system and he knows how to use fear to control and influence people toward how he wants them to think, believe, and behave.  They become willing to pour everything into this life because of uncertainty about the next.  This life is as sure as it gets to them.  They live for it.  Nothing is more than this life because it’s all they’ve got.  Churches aren’t helping with it, because they are also making it about this life, knowing that’s what this generation also thinks.  In other words, churches aren’t bringing deliverance from the actual fear of death, as seen in their adherents’ preoccupations.

We live in a world of fear that is controlling us.  Some leaders and the media are taking advantage of it.  For the most part, it’s just very natural.  Many of the leaders and the media might be fearful too.  It’s hard to interpret where there is purposeful manipulation of the situation and where there isn’t.  However, believers shouldn’t function according to fear of death and should help the rest of the world to do that too — through the gospel.

 I challenge you to find the one time in scripture that says the two words in the following order, “local church.”  Where did the idea of “local church” come from?  In material written and statements made about the church, that language is everywhere today, as if it were in the Bible, and yet it isn’t.  God never says, “local church.”  Why do people use this terminology not found in God’s Word?

Saying “local church” assumes there is some other kind of church than “local.”  The word translated “church,” a term found only in the New Testament, is the Greek ekklesia.  Ekklesia means “assembly.”  That’s how Tyndale translated ekklesia in his first printed New Testament in English.  One would not say, “local assembly.”

Okay, you might read, “local assembly,” used like the following.  John was a “local assembly member.”  The speaker is referring to a political institution that is local and not regional, state, federal, or just somewhere else than in his present locality.  There are other assemblies in other places than just in this town, so this is a “local assembly.”

Here’s another one.  John worked at a “local assembly plant.”  In that case, a factory in town assembles things.  Something is being assembled, but it isn’t people in this case, but a product being assembled, that is, put together.  All the pieces will be in one place after they are assembled, however.

Despite the aforesaid mentions of “local assembly,” there is no such thing as a “universal assembly,” even though those words might be used too.  Here’s how.  This grease was a “universal assembly lubricator.”  In other words, it was a grease that would work for all manner of assembly of metal parts into whole products anywhere in the world.  But I digress.

Something universal can’t assemble.  It wouldn’t be universal anymore.  It would be local.  The terms “universal” and “assembly” are mutually exclusive.  Since a church, ekklesia, is an assembly, it can’t be universal.  It must be local if it is an assembly.  For that reason, someone shouldn’t say, “local church.”

“Local church” isn’t in the Bible, because the church is only local.  Every church is local.  It wouldn’t be a church if it wasn’t local.  This is what I call “local only ecclesiology.”  When I googled those words, “local only ecclesiology,” the first four finds were written by me, the fifth by James Bronsveld, and the sixth by Thomas Ross.  There are only at this date 521 usages on the world wide web.  I would say I may have invented the terminology to refer to a position, and I found that it had spread to a few other people, who don’t even take the position, but are referring to the biblical position.

People, who use the terminology “local church,” I submit, are making room for some other kind of church than a local one.  There is no other kind of church than a local one.  I contend that starting today, everyone that uses the terminology, “local church,” and believes in only the “local church,” should stop saying, “local church.”  Call “the church,” “the church.”  It is only local.

Some say, ‘it might be confusing to call the local church, “the church,” because many people will think of the universal church.’  There is no universal church.  The church is the church.  When I say, “the church through history,” I mean only a local one, because there is only a local one.  If I say, “the church is in a downward trajectory,” I mean only local church.  I’m using it in a generic fashion, like scripture sometimes does, but it is still local.

If I say, “the phone had modernized,” is that a universal phone?  No.  Everyone knows it’s local.  If I say, “the car has changed through the years,” is it a universal car?  No.  Everyone knows it’s local.  Let’s assume an assembly is local.  A church is an assembly.

I just read a man, Caleb Greggsen, who had written, an article for 9 Marks, entitled, “A Strict But Clear Definition of the Church Brings Freedom,” in which he wrote:

My church’s statement of faith defines a local church in this way:  [Local churches are] congregations of baptized believers covenanted together in faith and fellowship, marked by the right preaching of God’s word and right administration of the ordinances.

Greggsen isn’t being strict or clear.  He said it was a definition of “the church.”  So say in your definition, “the church is. . . ., ” not “local churches are.”  What’s ironic is someone saying, “local churches are congregations.”  That’s like saying, congregations are congregations, or like I once heard someone say, “pizza pie.”  Pizza is pie in Italian, so someone is saying, pie pie.

His definition is confusing, not clear.  Are the congregations covenanted together?  Or are the baptized believers covenanted together?  His desire to keep alive a “universal church” caused him to be unclear in his definition of a church.

What do you think?  Could we all today stop using the two terms, “local church”?  A local church is the church.  It is the only church.  It isn’t and never has been universal.  The two words, “local church,” are not found anywhere in the New Testament.  God doesn’t use those words, because the church is only local.

When God says, “the church at Corinth,” He doesn’t say, “the local church at Corinth.”  He doesn’t need to.  It is the church that is in Corinth, the only one.  It couldn’t be universal, unless every believer on earth was in Corinth, which we know isn’t true.  The exact wording is “the church of God which is at Corinth” (1 Corinthians 1:2).  It’s even using the definite article, “the” (yes, also in the Greek).   The church of God is at Corinth, not “a church of God.”  If there was another church than a local one, wouldn’t this be “a church” and not “the church”?  You know it would be, but it isn’t.  Why?  Because “the church” is a local one only.

Join me in not making room for another church than a local one by not using the word “local” to refer to “church.”  Church is only local.

This is probably our last Word of Truth (WOT) Conference.  It also will not be normal.  We are ordaining two men from Bethel Baptist Church to the office of the bishop.  They are both qualified.  You are still welcome to come, but it won’t be the same.  We will keep you updated about what will be occurring instead of the WOT Conference.  It might be something you’re still interested in.

I want to remind you that I am not in California now.  I am in Oregon, as a missionary and starting a church.  For a short transition period, I am still the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, while Pastor Sutton recuperates from his cerebral hemorrhage.  He is recovering, which is good, because that is only about a third of the people who have one of those.  He is in California and getting better, but we are not requiring anything of him until reevaluation in January.  We expect him to be ready to get started in January, and then he will become pastor of Bethel Baptist Church.

In the meantime, Jerad Stager is intern pastor of the church.  He will be ordained in November, but we think he is qualified already, just hasn’t had hands laid on him yet.  To do this, he has taken a leave of absence from a high paying job.  David Warner is principal of the school, Bethel Christian Academy.  He was going to train for a year under Pastor Sutton, but that plan was scrapped due to the information of paragraph two.  Both of these men, who are doing a great job, will be the two ordained.

The conference this year will be, as usual, the second week of November (11-15), Wednesday to Sunday.  I will be there.  The first night, I and some other preacher will preach.  Thursday morning, David Warner will present his doctrinal statement and be examined.  Other men will be there to help with the examination and to witness this.  Thursday night first a charge will be made to David Warner by his father-in-law, Jerry Wilhite, followed by a sermon by David.  Friday morning, Jerad Stager will present his doctrinal statement and be examined.  Friday night first a charge will be made to Jerad Stager by his father-in-law, David Costantino, followed by a sermon by Jerad.

Saturday morning, the theme will return to that of the last two years of the WOT conference:  sanctification.  We are still preparing to publish a book on the gospel and then on sanctification.  A lot of work still needs to be done for both of these.   That morning, the 14th, Saturday, Thomas Ross and myself will cover two sessions on sanctification.

Sunday morning, for Sunday School and the morning service, the two above newly ordained men will finish presenting their doctrinal statements.  One of the visiting preachers will preach the afternoon or evening service afterwards.  That’s the conference for this year.  You can still come if you’d like, but it’s not in general the type of conference we’ve had, so we understand if you wouldn’t come this year.  We wanted you to know though.

Justification is by faith alone.  Scripture teaches that in many places.  Sanctification, however, is not by faith alone.  Sanctification comes also by works.  You’ve got to do something and keep doing things to be sanctified.  When you don’t do those things, that is not being sanctified.  This is biblical and historical teaching.  You can see this in the section on sanctification in the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689)  [see underlined portions]:

1. They who are united to Christ, effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, are also farther sanctified, really and personally, through the same virtue, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them; the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of all true holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. (Acts 20:32; Romans 6:5, 6; John 17:17; Ephesians 3:16-19; 1 Thessalonians 5:21-23; Romans 6:14; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 1:11; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Hebrews 12:14)

2. This sanctification is throughout the whole man, yet imperfect in this life; there abideth still some remnants of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Romans 7:18, 23; Galatians 5:17; 1 Peter 2:11)

3. In which war, although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail, yet through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome; and so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, pressing after an heavenly life, in evangelical obedience to all the commands which Christ as Head and King, in His Word hath prescribed them. (Romans 7:23; Romans 6:14; Ephesians 4:15, 16; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 2 Corinthians 7:1)

To some of you reading, what I’ve written so far might seem like a no-brainer.  However, churches are in a major way buying into an idea expressed by words such as these:  “sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification.”  Timothy Kauffman writes about this in Sanctification, Half Full: The Myopic Hermeneutic of the “Grace” Movement:

[T]he new view (occasionally called the “Grace movement”) appears to allege that justification completes our sanctification; that is, the holiness of sanctification is that same righteousness that was already secured for believers via Christ’s substitutionary atonement, and is obtained by the same instrumental means of faith alone.

The Bible nor the history of Christianity says sanctification is by faith alone, but by faith plus works.  Read Colossians 3:1-5:

1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. 5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.

The first half of verse one describes the reality of justification or salvation, if you will:  “ye then be risen with Christ.”  It is a first class condition, so it is a condition of reality.  If someone is really justified, he will do things.  He will do good works.  That is how he is sanctified.  And they are all commands:  Seek (v. 1), Set (v. 2), Mortify (v. 5).  People who are truly justified are commanded to do good works, not preach the gospel to themselves.

If someone truly saved were to preach the gospel to himself, he might do it in a few words, and I’m going to use my own name:  “You are risen with Christ, Kent.”  Alright done preaching the gospel to myself, and now I, me, am commanded to do these things.  Your affections are not just going to be set on things above.  You’ve got to set them.

Many, many professing Christians today are not seeking, not setting their affections on, and not mortifying.  They are not.  After reminding themselves that they are risen with Christ, they need to obey those commands.

A good question for anyone to answer is, Who is God?  Is that question easy to answer?  If it is, you answer it.  What would you say?