BACK TO BASICS, PART I

CALMING FEARS

Just recently, I spoke with a young lady who had several fears. She feared the year 2000. Someone, somewhere told her that the bible said Jesus would return on the "second day" and therefore the year 2000 was the second day. She also feared she would be left behind on the day of rapture. Yet, her most serious fear was that of salvation and eternal life. Was she good enough to be accepted by God? So I immediately asked her, "Do you believe in Christ as Savior?" She said, "Yes." And my reply was, "Well, that's it. You are going to heaven." "But what about my sins? What about if I do this or do that?" she asked. I reassured her that her sins, past, present, and future had been forgiven. Matter of factly, I told her she had been cleansed of all sin and that sin was no longer an issue towards salvation. And if she sinned today, tommorrow, or the next day, she need only confess that sin, accept God's forgiveness, and go forward. But like most non-believers, believers who have little knowledge of God's Word except by what their best friends or family tell them, can't believe salvation and forgiveness can be that "easy." There must be something "more" they insist.

This young lady is not unique. She like so many other men and women are ignorant of God's Word and believe erroneous and false doctrines espoused by the first person they come across with a kind face and polite manner. And there are so many kind faces out there, people who mean well but believe their bent on God's Word is the right one. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are our next door neighbors, our family and friends, and our favorite evangelist and preacher on TV. We somehow get so easily taken in by those who appeal to our greed and rattle our fears. The Apostle Paul has already addressed this problem in his letter to the Ephesians.

EPH 4:14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.

BEWARE OF SPIRITUAL CON MEN

Paul is addressing the importance of acquiring true knowledge as revealed by the Holy Spirit. Such knowledge gives us a standard by which to judge the nonsense so eagerly called wisdom by today's popular spiritual con men. We must learn to discern the "wolves in sheep's clothing" if we are to "grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ..." A red flag should immediately be raised in your mind if you are being led to believe that the spiritual life is acquired through good works, cants of positive confession s, tithing, and new age occultic practices laced with biblical scripture and principles. Oh, and of course, be doubly aware of those who know when the rapture is to take place. The point is, if you are taught that you will be a recipient of God's favor and grace by applying the above erroneous teachings, or the exact time and place of Christ's coming is at such and such a date, you've been had.

SPIRITUAL CRY BABIES

It is sad, that a nation such as America, whose roots are in the Christian faith, is still in such darkness. Americans have little idea of true faith and spiritual life. They know not who to worship or how. The Apostle Paul was often frustrated that the early believers were having such a hard time with faith and grace versus good works and self-righteousness as a means to eternal life. He found himself going back to the basics with his new converts. Out of disgust one day he referred to the Corinthian believers as babies and men of flesh. He recognized their lack of spirituality because of their reported jealousy and strife amongst themselves. He simply could not go forward with their spiritual development with the meatier doctrines of the mysteries of God, but had to continue to give them "milk" or the basics of who they were in Christ.

The writer of the book of Hebrews faced the same dilemma. His readers had become "dull of hearing." They were not advancing because they were not thinking with spiritual thoughts, but with carnal, worldly wisdom. They should have been advancing, but they were not. The Hebrew writer had this to say:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for some one to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

For every one who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

And so it is today. After centuries of commentaries, expositions and critical exegesis, we as a Church members are but mere babes...unaccustomed to biblical doctrine and its meatier substance...the mysteries of God. Yes, we as a whole do an excellent job with evangelism...the preaching of God's salvation to the unbeliever through Christ. However, we seem to stop there . In fact, those saved by the message of salvation continue to keep themselves under the tutelage of evangelists. But why repeat the first grade year after year? One must move forward and begin to learn the meatier, weightier things of God.

I am afraid the emotional high the new believer gets at his conversion becomes some sort of spiritual drug and is content to remain with it. So he moves from one preacher to another who can supply that "emotional fix' he so craves. And goodness knows, there are thousands of such preachers who have learned the craft of creating an emotional atmosphere by which to move a crowd here, there, and everywhere with firery rhetoric and thunderous, amen's, praise the lord's and halleluiah's. Therefore, he simply has no appetite or interest to quietly sit under a teacher of God's word, who demands focus, discipline, and humility. There can be no spiritual advancement for those who seek a "quick remedy" for whatever problem ails them.

BACK TO THE BASICS

I have no quick fixes either but believe it is important to go over the basics and elementary principles of the Christian experience with some spiritual milk of my own. For I am convinced that with the rise of evangelism and preaching of God's Word over the airwaves, that spirituality is being highly misrepresented by unscrupulous men and women mad for the dollar and personal glory. And without a foundation of knowledge of God's Word, too many individuals will continually be moved about by every whim and fancy of these men's imagination and be ruled by greed and feart. That is not God's will for you and I.

So we are going to go to the beginning and work our way up. We will begin with our birth into this cosmic system of Satan's, discover the awesome power and privilege of belief in Christ, discuss the power of confession, being spirit-filled, and how one advances in God's kingdom with the prospect s of eternal rank, rule and riches. Many of these biblical concepts seem to be foreign to so many believers today, and even the unbeliever has no idea, of course, of the depth of God's love, patience, and compassion. I hope in this series of articles to change that forever.