Blog Reason

     I got to thinking. I may be going too fast in this series that I am posting at the moment.
     In my philosphy class I took I was told to define teams. I guess it was section on metaphysics-- the philosphy covering things beyond the physical. Christian Doctrines seems to be in that camp.
    So you must be asking-Why do I need to know doctrine? And just what is doctrine?
    Good question. Doctrine is a branch of knowledge or a system of beliefs. As I use the term it means the system based on and drawn from God's special revelation as found in the Bible. As such I mean to be posting on the subjects of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit. I will cover salvation and the reason for this need for salvation-Sin. In doing so I will also touch on Angels, Elect and Fallen.
     Since there is a need for instruction  I will handle the doctrine of the church, What it is, where it came from, why we need to gather together as a group. That will aslo call for a discussion on the offices and what I call departments of said church.
      I will cover the Chrustian disciplines such as prayer, witnessing, useage of gifts.
     Of course, some of our Christian Doctrines are limited because the Bible is not exhaustive. God has not revealed everything in detail. For example, what we know about creation is such. Because that is true man has tended to lean to the explanation of evolutionary theory. Or that God started the whole thing and then stepped back to watch.
       Well, that is just some explantion. Hold on and keep reading.

The Way You See It

  Today let us step back and consider a subject that involves us all; you, me, the whole world. And that is the simple subject of world view. We all have one. It is the way we see things.
  You pick this world view up from those around you and especially from your schooling. Yes, your education.
    First of all your world view does effect the way you see other people. Is that other person just a chance accident? Or is he a special creature, a creation of a Superior Being.? Yes, I am talking about God, a Creator.
    In school you may have been taught man evolved from a lower form to what he is today. There was no proof given. You accepted it because an adult told you that and they no doubt knew more than you.
   Yes, I understand your view that creation is not proven either. If by proof you mean is it repeatable? Only if you can create something out of nothing. That is how God did it. Out of nothing. He spoke and it was.
    Their view is not repeatable either. You don't see it because it is not feasible. And it takes more faith to hold to that view than to the view that man is a special creation.
    Your world view will also affect how you treat people. If you see that other person as inferior to you than you will treat him poorly, because he has less worth than you. This is the basis of the civil rights issue. This is the basis of the feminine issue. They feel inferior to a man and therefore must try harder.
     They don't realize that in the beginning God created them with no distinctions as to superior/inferior. All are seen from the viewpoint of God as equal.
      I will let you chew on this for a while. I will get back to this issue as time goes on
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The place of rest

  It is a place of instruction. It is not a social organization, although it is a place where fellow seekers come to receive what they seek.
  I am talking about the church. It is a place where people come to worship the Living God. They come to deepen their relationship to God.
  Every believer should belong to a local church. Church membership does not save and is not a means of salvation. But it is a place where each member should have the freedom to discover and develop and use the gift that they have received when they became a Christian. The Word of God, the Scriptures, do say that each one of us is given a gift for the development of the body which is the church. We are, I believe, all needed. We can be seen as a body part  No part is more important than another and each part is needed.
   We go to church to pray, confess, hear the word of God as spoken through the leader or pastor of the congregation. Also to use our gift in the body, as I have said above. And by the way, there is no gift known as pew warmer.
    Tell me your experience in a church group. Is there anyway I can be of help? 

Holy Spirit, God in the world

  I decided to talk today about the third person in the Godhead. He is often overlooked because He could be viewed as the backup. He teaches, to those who study the Scriptures, what the  Scriptures mean. For the world His job basicly is to convict of sin and unrighteousness. He works in conjunction with the Father to draw people to Jesus, the savior.
   In the Jewish Scriptures He hovered and entered some men to enable them to write Scripture according to their personality. Therefore David can sound different from Moses. Moses can sound different from Jeremiah, and so on. But always overshadowing in such a way that He made sure what was recorded was what God wanted recorded.
   He gives power to witness to Christians. He indwells them so as to make them tabernacles. He teaches the Christian what he needs to know. Hopefully the Christian has a Bible Study plan to be in the Word so that the Holy Spirit can inside the believer say, "pay attention to that".
   Also He helps in memorization. As the believer hides the word in his heart the Holy Spirit is able to use it.. bringing it back to memory when needed. This is meditation.
    The trinity is neat. All one in essence. All having a job to do. All needed.
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Prayer--God's Weapon

   Before talking about other doctrines I feel I should discuss the one tool all Christians have and probably don't really understand. That is the tool of prayer.
    God speaks to us through the Scriptures. It is His communication if we believe it or not. It really doesn't make any sense until we become a child of His through a relationship with Him. It was that way when I became a Christian back in '68. The book suddenly seemed alive and meaningful. Before that time, if I ever read it, especially in religion classes, it was just words.
    When I became a Christian the Holy Spirit, the thrid person of the Godhead, came to dwell inside me. He no longer was outside me trying to convict me of sin and unrighteousness. I was getting enough of that from the Roman Catholic Church I used to belong to but by 1968 had given up on. There was no truth to be found in that group.
    Anyway, I was saying, now the Holy Spirit was within me and teaching me what the Scriptures said. God used preachers of good Bible believing, Bible teaching Churches to firm me up.
    But I now could talk to God and He would hear me and answer me. This is what prayer is. A communication between God and the believer..  There is a Father/child relationship set up. It takes time to learn. It is a process. You learn to pray by praying.
   There are many books out there on prayer. Andrew Murray In The School Of Prayer  is a good one. There are others. I am not doing this post to liist them.
   But the best book on prayer and how to do it is the Scriptures. All the characters in the Scriptures prayed. You can learn by sitting in and listening to them pray
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Sad but alas true

  I have just been looking at the Biola website http://www.biola.edu/ and come across this sad, but alas, true statement. "Biblical literacy is plummeting. Churches are exchanging doctrine for slogans."

   I find that sad because doctrine is the life blood of the church. That is why I have this blog and do postings on the subjects I do. I find doctrine to be very iimportant. If you have no doctrine to stand upon you are standing on air, or worst, vapor. You have no belief system. Or maybe you do. It just has not stood the test of time.
    The doctrine I write about here is orthodox. It has been here from the start. When there are diviations from orthodoxy I speak out about it. That is why I did a small series on Cults earlier. It may not have been pleasant to read but it is fighting against error. It needed to be done.
    And I may not post as systematically as you would like me to, but that is just the way it is.
    Read on. More doctrine is coming. Follow me and get all the postings. Comment and let's talk.
   

The Invisible God Explained

    "God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth"

Book used for Doctrinal subjects

     Yet God has also chosen to reveal Himself.
      A couple of posts ago I did an imaginary dialogue between the Godhead where the second person of the Godhead said that He would become flesh and dwell among us.
     The Holy Spirit overshadowed a virgin in a small town in Israel. Hr name was Mary. He placed within her a seed that would develop normally into a fetus and into a new born. And this new born would have the name of Jesus. He would live a normal childhood. He would learn his father's trade, a carpenter. At the age of thirty he would be baptized by John. The heavens would open and the Spirit like a dove would come down and rest upon Him. A voice from heaven would aknowledge Him as the Messiah. He would be tempted in the desert by Satan. He would gather disciples, twelve of them would be his Apostles. One of them would be his betrayer (He knew from the start which one it would be) He would do all the things that the Messiah was to do. Heal the sick, raise the dead, proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, to name a few. He would go to the cross and die for the sins of mankind. He would raise from the grave on the third day. He would ascend to the Father in heaven to present His blood to God and pour it on the altar in heaven.
       Yes, I am talking about Jesus, the Messiah.
        "He is the image of thre invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or prinicipalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him".--Colossains 1:15-16 NKJV)
       I shall talk about thrones, dominions, powers and principalities in a later post.

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