God is NOT dead, He still heals and answers prayer! (Else why pray?)

Found at “Reasonable Faith” from Twitter:

http://tinyurl.com/nr7ze7h

The panelist on the video had said that the purpose of the miracles during the time of Christ was to establish his divinity, but one member of the audience asked why that reasoning does not apply today.  The panelists replies that people today do not need such miracles because there is enough evidence already.

He said God could write across the sky that this is all his, worship him, or some equivalent, it would “compel” belief, but anyone sincerely open to the truth has enough evidence available. He even quoted Pascal to that effect.

But consider the same reasoning they use for today applies to the time of Christ as well, and vice versa. All of it. Science today offers more evidence for the Bible than ever before available to mankind, save those who witnessed direct miracles.

And consider that Jesus Christ was also rejected by the rulers and the peers of his own generation, and that was the generation that witnessed those same miracles.

Believers can see that scientific knowledge available today means that more evidence of the Bible is available to us who are alive today than ever in history, but that the high priests of Scientism claim the opposite is true.

The damnable idea that God does not act according to his promises, according to the doctrine of dispensations, is a lie that results in Christians telling others that only the Devil does miracles today.

In fact, dispensationalists are confused and confusing. If you say God says something in the Old Testament that does not apply in the new, then it is a logical self-contradiction to say something applies after. There is no clear indication in any scripture that God would do this.

For example, in the scriptures Paul used to explain how there is no salvation at all in the works of the Laws of Moses, he used examples from the Old Testament to demonstrate it logically. Salvation by works saved nobody in the Old Testament, and the “just shall live by FAITH” was one scripture from the Tanukh to help show this. Hebrews 11 should be enough to destroy this switch-up in doctrines of works and grace, but no, somebody like Charles Darby and Cyrus Scofield wrote copious notes that alter the meaning of scripture, wresting them to their own destruction.

“In the times of this ignorance God winked at”, says Paul, then speaking about the Greeks and all their false gods and idols, but now he calls us to “study the scriptures to see if these things be so”.

Not for nothing the translations based on Alexandrian manuscripts leave out the last half of the last chapter of Mark. But that leaves the gospel on a very strange note, with Jesus Christ still in the grave. What kind of gospel –“good news”– is that??*!!? Paul said that would mean our faith is in vain:

1 Corinthians 15:17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.

And what does it say in the ending of Mark?

Mark 16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

It doesn’t say “them that believe in this generation”, it says “them that believe”.

Something else. Nothing contradicts the word of God, and every part of scripture is the word of God:

Isaiah 8:20 And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? 

20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Christ gave the lesson of the faith of a mustard seed being enough to move mountains as a principle of faith, NOT of his divinity, and he placed no conditions or disclaimers in the passage.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” – James 1:7

Get that? NO variableness, NO changing in God’s gifts.

“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

 

Evangelicals are not trying to bring on Armageddon, just protect Israel

This is in reaction to the article written by one Dr. Manion, just a comment about your reference to dispensationalists. In general I agree with his criticism of the warmongers among Christians, but have one small “correction” on one point in the interest of understanding them:
http://www.fgfbooks.com/Manion/2013/Manion130901.html

I’ve been irritated by the crazy dispensationalist doctrines since I became a Christian again as an adult. Some of my blogs about it, in case you have interest in such things:
https://truebook.wordpress.com/tag/dispensationalism/

You wrote this:

During the Bush years, Thomas served as a critical intellectual intermediary between the president and American Evangelicals, especially the Dispensationalists. This curious group supported war not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East.

Why? Because Dispensationalists thought that war would bring on Armageddon, and thus the Second Coming, in their lifetimes — allowing them to rule over all the Earth with Jesus Christ for a thousand years in the Millennium.

But this is not the case, in my opinion, and many people misunderstand them, just like your statement about misunderstanding the MIddle East when people say they “hate us for our freedom”.

But it is also a mistake to say Muslims do suicide bombings just because they want those 72 virgins!

Along the same lines, evangelicals are not just interested in hastening Armageddon, although you might think so from some literature if you don’t try to understand them. I’m a Christian, but such labels do not fit me, I was against the Vietnam War in the 1960s as the young Communist I was, but ever since I came back to Christ in 1971, I have been against every single war the US has engaged in to date.

Most evangelicals in the pews are more motivated by thinking they are supposed to be friends to Israel, help protect Israel against the world. This is indeed due more to the dispensationalist influence than anything else, and “dispensationalists” will agree with this, but most people in their pews in church do not understand this well.

It’s all about helping Israel right up to the pre-Tribulation moment (another false doctrine) when they are raptured out of the Earth, and the world is left behind for the Antichrist to take over.

The main historical devil responsible for “dispensations” getting a false interpretation is Cyrus Scofield, and then there’s his own mentor, Charles Darby in England. Scofield’s notes gave special twists and turns to scripture, made many of them seem backwards from what they were. In other words, he hated the Bible but knew that Americans would not be so easily fooled as to new false “translations” like Darby’s, so he just wrote copious notes that did the job.

Gullible Christians;

Luke 16:8 And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

I wrote more about Scofield here:
https://truebook.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/208/

Thanks for listening

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