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| ESTER WROTE: Question-Comment: Someone just gave me this URL for your
site...and I wanted to check it out.
I just barely looked at the first page..it is after 3:30 am now so am tired....but intend on exploring it...more.... I got saved at the age of 11 and have grown up in church all my life. Praise God He had a plan for my mother and siblings. I grew up with an alcoholic father who finally got saved late in his life. I prayed from the time I was 11 for him and never gave up.... I praise God for all of it ! I did have a question for you if I might ? What church/denomination are you associated with ? (not that a denomination can save you and not that all of them preach the whole of the Word) but just curious. I guess you could say I am cautious about Christian sites if I know nothing about them. but I do believe the Holy Spirit guides us in our every day lives. Also, do you believe in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues? Again--just curious! Thank You and keep up the good work for Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. "The Harvest is all ready, but the laborers are few" I Truly believe Jesus is Coming Soon! that is not a prophecy just an observation of our times. THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU, IN HIS SERVICE, -------------- DON WROTE: Thanks for taking time to Wrap with us.You say that someone sent you our URL address. We thank the Lord for this. It has been our prayer from the beginning of our site that God would put it in the hearts of men and women to visit our pages. We believe word-of-mouth to be the very best method of promotion; and if you are blessed by what the Lord has given us, please pass it on. _________________________ You don't tell us your age, but from your WRAP it would seem that you are still young. (Not many of us oldsters are up at 3:30 in the morning studying the Word of God.) If you will continue in the Word, you can be assured that God will prepare you and make you a blessing to others. _________________________ As to any affiliation with a denomination, you might want to check out our WRAP with Mr. Stark in our October, 2002 WRAP AROUNDs. _________________________ As to your caution when surfing the web, you are being obedient to the Word which warns us not to put our confidence in man, but to put our trust in the Lord. I, too, wrestled with this matter of whom to listen to when I first began my walk with the Lord. This really became a matter of concern for my family and I when we first began singing / ministering in different churches of the many differing denominations and beliefs. It wasn't unusual for us to find ourselves sitting under various teachers and preachers who all thought themselves to be a light for the Lord, yet, who taught contradicting concepts and even opposed one another from their pulpits. Lest my children become confused and disillusioned, I prayed for help; and the Lord Jesus introduced me to the gift of discernment and dropped it into our spirits.
Since that time we have learned to rely upon the Holy Spirit whenever we listen to or read the teachings of another. Because we ministered in so many different kinds of churches, we soon learned that most all of them had elements of truth that the Holy Spirit could anoint. In fact, after services, we would often find ourselves commenting on how that certain things that had been taught became real to us while other things sort of fell by the wayside. To anyone who surfs the web looking for some spiritual food, I would recommend that you seek this gift of discernment and learn to rely upon it. It will save a lot of time and eliminate a lot of confusion. ___________________________ As to the "baptism of the Holy Ghost with evidence of speaking in tongues," to answer you requires some Bible research. We won't do a thorough study, but we'll do enough to show problems with the doctrine. (You might want to finish the study by searching out all Scripture dealing with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For what it's worth, when I began study the Bible by topic, which is what we'll be doing, I found that I could glean more if I would write out the Scriptures in question. I like to speed read, and writing the Scriptues out would slow me down so that the Lord could drop more into my spirit.) Let's begin our research by putting the word "evidence" into one of the on-line search Bibles on our site and we'll see that the term is not in the New Testament except in Hebrews 11:1 where it has nothing to do with tongues, but faith!
Also, if we'll go to the Book of Acts (the history of the formation of the NT Church) and study out all of the conversions recorded there, we'll find a variation of conversions--and we can rest assured that God had a purpose in mind for each example that He had recorded for us. Let's go to that book and consider some of the chapters having to do with conversions.
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| YOU WROTE: Question-Comment: can you show me a picture of a jacinth? DON WROTE: We are asked this question quite often. If you will go to our WRAP with Kathleen on our September #2, 2002 WRAPs, you will see that we have include a link to a site showing the jacinth which we're told is also a zircon.
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| Gregory Wrote: Do you know anything about the person Mary Stewart Relfe and her book "When Your Money Fails"? Someone gave me a copy years ago that I read twice. It corroborated with some science I'm familiar with. Since end-times is such a hot subject and can cause much division I've avoided it (or at least debating it) since slewfoot likes to divide and conquer. My sense is that the church is asleep and Jesus Christ is about to administer a wake-up call. Recently, there has been much talk about the rapture and that believers will not have to go through persecution. This seems like a satanic trick to allow believers to live by an "Oh, wretched man that I am." mentality and be content and complacent about the command of Jesus Christ to share His Good News, except in the most convienient ways. Recent internet searches on the book above show far more negative than positive. After reading the negatives and who it is coming from and the inability to find or contact the author lots of questions come to mind. Even if she is not credible the lack of clear reasoning indicates a very sensitive nerve has been touched. It seems to me that the best witness we have to the world around us is our love for each other. That hits their brain hard because they can't explain it in terms they are familiar with. And it puts us in a better position to handle adversity. There does not seem to be enough of this love that Jesus Christ told us to have in the body of believers. If we don't do it willingly He may put us in adversity to wake us up. My Weekly Bible class is on the subject of Daniel's 70 weeks. Some years ago I was shown a story about China prior to the communist takeover. It said China had been hearing the Gospel for many years, that there were many churches, and they had become complacent. As fears of communist takeover spread the pastors taught nobody should worry because there would be a rapture and so they would escape. Then the communists went into the churches and slaughtered believers. China overnight went from Christian to godless as upset people abandoned the churches. The article I described seemed credible and it would be great if I could find accurate information to support or discount it. Would any of you know about this? Mountains of blessings. H. Gregory B______, Don Wrote:The first I’ve heard of the lady is your WRAP. I, too, went to the Internet; and from the critiques I encountered, her book had some problems, Scripturally speaking. For example, she tried to put a name to the "beast" of Revelation, even though the Bible says that he will not be revealed until after the Church goes up in the Rapture. This would suggest that she is not proficient with the Word, or that she wrote the book for reasons other than to bless the Church. However, your inquiry brings an observation to mind. There has been much written and published in the past two or three decades concerning Biblical prophecy that is questionable. This includes a multitude of web sites. Some of these works seem to want to pass on ideas while others, especially some of the more popular, seem written for entertainment, but most all of them take liberties with the Scriptures. Upon reflection, I feel that all of this as a whole is not all bad in that it is but one of the signs that could be predicted for a generation destined to live through the things prophesied for the end of our age. For the Church, it is a wake-up call to come to the Bible on an individual basis and "study to show ourselves approved unto God." As to your comments on China, only God knows how many of the reported persecutions of the Church in China actually took place. However, China is not the only place were believers are being persecuted for their faith in Christ. If you will check our DECEMBER #3-2002-WRAP AROUNDS, you will read where people are being killed today for their faith. Over all, much has taken place in the name of the Church since the inception of the Church for reasons other than building the Church and magnifying the name of the Lord Jesus. People have built armies, nations, cults, organizations, etc., in the name of Christianity in ignorance or for their own personal interest. However, we shouldn’t find this to be depressing, for the Bible forewarned us that this would all take place. But we should also remember that Jesus said, "…upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Mat. 16:18). (By the way, your hesitancy to accept things at face value is wise—especially in the day that we live when rewriting history is a tool often used by those who want to change social mores and norms.) Let me finish my response to your comments by quoting from them. You wrote:
I couldn’t say it better myself. Maranatha, B'Ann Wrote:B’Ann Wrote: Even if we live in the "end-time", we must remember that it is a time of God’s Wrath and not ours. We are to continue to witness and hopefully birth souls into the kingdom. This is how the Church "endures to the end" / keeps its watch. The "slothful servant" in the New Testament Church is simply one that stops witnessing the message of John 3:16. This is the power of the New Testament. We must not stop the Grace Age dispensation / message / call just because we think God is going to usher in another age. The Great Commission will apply to "our age" until the very moment that God makes the change in administration. Being very human, mankind often tries to hurry God and force His Hand before the appointed time. We see many impatient ministers that sound like a "hung record" because they cry "end-time, end-time, end-time." We are not allowed to participate in God’s Wrath!!! It is His alone!!! He did not even let Jesus know the time or the hour. We are only allowed to operate in the Gifts and Fruits of the Spirit. To yell "end-time" and not remind people that the "fields are white unto harvest" is a cruel thing to do because it takes their mind off the "go ye into all the world and witness" command of God. If people saw a vicious storm approaching, they would gather their crops as fast as possible before the crop was totally ruined. This is what God wants the end-time Christian to be doing. The Scriptures that admonish that no man can know the time of season is an explicit warning.
Perhaps God did not reveal a specific end-time moment because He wanted to give ample time for men to change. Who knows, if enough people would repent, God might stay His Hand just as He did at Nineveh. All things are possible!!! After all, our age is called the "Age of Grace/Unmerited Favor." God can extend it or shorten it. In this sense, the time of the end of our age may very well be in the hands of man. Nevertheless, we do have a clue that perhaps mankind will not repent so that "Grace" can be extended. To our Cyber-visitors: Any of you that know anything about the book by Mary Relfe or the history of the Church in China, let us know and we'll put it up with this WRAP AROUND for Gregory and anyone else who might be interested. |
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