Subject: Your studies Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 08:16:57 -0700 To: Jesus-is-Lord.com --- It's a great blessing to read your studies, and to see the wondrous work the LORD continues in you. Though I have not been good at quickly corresponding with you, I wanted to know how encouraging your words are. I grew up in a Christian family. My dad who was an elder of my church would constantly seek to correct the pastor and the church when they got off focus from the word into music wars, or into speaking lightly of sin. My grandparents, who lived next door to me, were constantly in the word. We would read chapters of it every time we were together, and they encouraged us to memorize chapters of it constantly as well. Since the time I graduated from high school eight years ago, I have seen more and more evidence of the great falling away. I only had a bike in college, and couldn't find a good church within biking distance. I had to create my own children's curriculum to teach a word-oriented sunday school class to the kids rather than the self-esteem hogwash the church provided. I had to write the pastor a few times to ask him to even mention the gospel! I ended up leaving the church when they rejected a 30 years missionary who stood up for the word of GOD as elder, labeling him as "contentious". I found a good church coming out of college, teaching Rom 6 in truth - clearly exposing that Christians do not live in sin. Unfortunately, the baby church did not go on to serve the LORD, so they are now dead. The pastor now teaches that there are a class of people called the barely saved who show no evidence or fruits of salvation, that Christians willfully sin every day, and that watching movies with fornication, murder and adultery is ok as long as you don't participate in it yourselves. I came against his teaching with several letters and conversations, gently exposing where he was in error. His response was to ask me to leave the church because I was not in alignment with their requirement that everbody at the church give offerings (I stopped when they stopped teaching the truth). I didn't see him asking anybody to leave who was not in alignment with their requirement that every member of the church read the Bible every day. (Only one other person at the church besides me was following that requirement). The same time as this pastor was falling from the faith, my parents and grandparents, and relatives have also all been rejecting the truths they once espoused. My grandparents forsook the KJV they'd been reading for 50 years for a New Living translation that was "easier to understand". They forsook the fear of the LORD being the beginning of wisdom for the love of the LORD being the beginning of wisdom. My parents also rejected the truth they once held to. 15 years ago, my dad wrote an excellent study on mortification - that Christians die to self, to sin, and to this present evil world to walk in righteousness, holiness, and goodness through the power of GOD. Now they have been constantly standing against me because I say that "Christians" who go on living in unrepentant sin are hellbound, that CHRIST keeps HIS children free from habitual sinfulness, and that we must fear, keeping our whole body under subjection, lest we lose the promise that's been left us of entering into HIS rest. I'm now three weeks away from my parents bringing me before a pastor I've never met before to try to convict me of walking contrary to the word of GOD. They say I dishonor them by warning them to turn from the deception they're into to serve the living GOD. They say I'm ungentle because I have boldly beseeched them to follow GOD. They say I am not in subjection to any spiritual leaders (though I attend numerous bible studies that are actually teaching the truth each week, and subject myself to any exhortations from the word of GOD given to me by anyone). [Our note: I perceive that this person's relatives were watching television and they finally broke down under its evil influence. www.Jesus-is-Lord.com/whats.htm A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. We have to learn how to let the dead bury their dead as we go on and follow the Lord. The enemy can use them to weigh us down for years on end. www.Jesus-is-Lord.com/decept68.htm] I know GOD will raise up and defend HIS word; yet it grieves me to see all these who were in the truth now being deceived. I appreciate your warnings against this deception. I appreciate your warnings which speak of the need to be in the word of GOD to have the power of the HOLY GHOST in us (since we are born again by the word of GOD - 1Pet 1:23). I appreciate your exhortations to keep lifting up the name AND doctrine of JESUS CHRIST. I appreciate your exhortation to be overcomers, not through our own strength, but through the strength and the power of the HOLY GHOST to make us holy. I appreciate your warnings that if we don't stay in the word, and get established in it, we will be deceived. I appreciate your warnings against remaining in the darkness of any sin, which would open the door for total ensnaring by the devil. I appreciate your warnings against the appearance of the antichrist as a likable man, who will be worshipped. I really enjoyed your comments on the love of CHRIST being unrelated to feelings and related to actions - to the keeping of the commandments of GOD. I appre- ciated your comments against the lies regarding the secret pretrib rapture of the church. And I greatly appreciate your exhortations against those who hold on to positional righteousness as their ticket in. I've seen and had to stand against all these deceptions as well. And it is my constant prayer that the LORD will continue to give me the strength to overcome, to keep my whole body into subjection, that after I've preached these things to others, I myself would not be a castaway. Keep on your exhortations in HIS truth, Love and blessings in HIM, - gail