Thoughts From A Christian

I am a Christian. I have surrendered my life to Christ and have accepted Him as my personal Savior.

Having said that, I am not one to use my faith (note that I did not say "religion") as a hammer to try and enforce anyone's behavior to act or believe what I do. I believe that I can live a Christian lifestyle and set a Christian example and that will suffice.

I am posting this because I see a lot of blogs and opinions attacking Christianity on a number of different levels and I find it unfortunate. I say that because people are exhibiting their disillusionment with the "religion" called Christianity and I think it is unfortunate that they do not fully understand the true heart of my faith.

People in this nation are free to believe what they want to believe and if they can persuade one to believe with them using the basic historical and theologically tenets, fewer attacks as I've seen will occur.

You see, my decision to give my life over to Christ came after fully comparing all of the alternatives and I found that the chronicle of Christ's coming and His subsequent death with its eternal meaning to be the one that suits me best.

However, I can see why people would get upset with what they see in the mainstream about Christianity. When you have prosperity ministers and Word of Faith preachers totally misrepresenting Christ and His purpose, and people are expecting all of these grandiose outcomes without understanding what Salvation means, then, yeah...it deserves to be questioned.

Many of the most popular ministers that are on television today are crafting a religion that flies in the face of Biblical principles and many of their followers are becoming disappointed when the "name it and claim it" doctrine doesn't produce the riches they expect.

Joel Osteen preaches something called "Positive Confession" where your words when spoken and believed will deliver you into prosperity and good health. Well, heck, why need God at all if you can just do it yourself.

I've written before that God is NOT an ATM machine just pouring out blessings and riches to people who are not following His tenets. Sadly, many of these preachers are preaching along racial lines which again is anti-Christianity.

For a wonderful essay on the Ten Reasons to Reject Word of Faith teachings, go here. I think you may be quite surprised by the actual words of people like Frederick K. C. Price, or Benny Hinn, or T.D. Jakes, et al. You will see that they reduce God to a mere companion to be commanded to do their will rather than follow His will ("Thy will be done...").

So, when I read passionate writings by people who reject God and Christ and Salvation, or deny the Trinity, I can see why! Further, when you are so disgruntled by what you see being done in His name, why not? Ironically, you are seeing through the fog that these preachers are placing around you through your cynicism.  When these people reduce the one who created EVERYTHING and who has perfect will and justice down to some entity that can be ordered around occult like, then why respect what He is at all?

Read for yourself from their own words:

Words of Faith

Robert Tilton: Do not say "Lord if it be thy will". (Success in Life, recorded 12/14/91)

Kenneth Copeland: "God used the principle of the inner image to create the earth...God first had a desired result (an inner idea or image of what he wanted to create) and then He said "light be!". But Brother Copeland, you say, that was GOD. Surely you don't expect me to try to act like God! I most certainly do....If all things were made by Him and the Word is God, then I believe we have license to say that all things were made by the Word...God's words are packed with faith; faith is the energy that is in the Word that gives it the power to bring itself to pass...once you have an inner image, nothing can stop you from receiving from God." ("The Image of God in You" KCP Puclications 1987)

Kenneth Hagin: "I'm tired of hearing that religious jargon that we're tired and lonely; we're the meekest and the lowliest...Believe in God! Believe in yourself! There never was a person who succeeded in life who didn't believe he could do it. You may argue, "But I don't want to be egotistical..." That's a lie the devil concocted to cause people not to succeed. Somebody's always talking about being humble. There are some people who are so humble they are proud of their humility! Religious people will tell you "Don't every get conceited..." but the devil tried to rob people through false modesty too...God can't do anything on this earth without a man or woman who will do it for Him...it's God's plan of action; therefore we need to begin to believe in ourselves." ("How to Make the Dream God gave you Come True" Faith Library Publications:1981)

Ken Copeland: Faith is a Force. (Spirit, Soul and Body, #01-0601, Tape #1)

Ken Copeland: God did not create the world out of nothing, He used the Force of His Faith. (Spirit, Soul and Body, #01-0601, Tape #1)

Fred Price: "If you keep talking death, that is what you are going to have. If you keep talking sickness and disease, that is what you are going to have, because you are going to create the reality of them with your own mouth. That is a divine law." (Fred Price, Realm, 29).

Kenneth Hagin: "Jesus used the fig tree to demonstrate that He had that God-kind of faith, then He said to the disciples--and to us--'You have that kind of faith.'...Jesus said He had the God-kind of faith; He encouraged His disciples to exercise that kind of faith; and He said that 'whosoever' could do it. . . . That is why Jesus said, 'whosoever shall say . . . and shall not doubt IN HIS HEART.' " (Having Faith in Your Faith [Tulsa, OK: Kenneth Hagin Ministries, 1988], 3, emphasis in original.)

Kenneth Copeland: "The force of faith is released by words. Faith-filled words put the law of the Spirit of life into operation. (The Force of Faith, Kenneth Copeland, Ft. Worth: Kenneth Copeland Publications, 1983).

Charles Capps: "God filled His words with faith to cause the things He said to come into manifestation. There was an image inside Him. He expressed it in words." (The Substance of Things [Tulsa, OK: Harrison House, 1990], 19.)

Kenneth Copeland: "What you are saying is exactly what you are getting now. If you are living in poverty and lack and want, change what you are saying.... The powerful force of the spiritual world that creates the circumstances around us is controlled by the words of the mouth." (The Laws of Prosperity, Kenneth Copeland, Ft. Worth: Kenneth Copeland Publications, 1974).

John Kilpatrick: "You need to understand friends, your words are like containers. When they come up out of the innermost part of your belly, out of the heart, the mouth speaketh. As these things come out of your heart, they are spirits, by the time the come out of your mouth, that spirit is encapsulated in some little package and when you begin to speak this stuff out whether it is good or evil, it comes out in the way of little containers in your home and it goes out in your home and it begins to burst. As they burst life is either released or death is released. Blessings are released or cursings are released." (Glory on Your House, John Kilpatrick)

Kenneth Copeland: "Faith is a power force. It is a tangible force. It is a conductive force." (The Force of Faith [Fort Worth, TX: KCP Publications, 1989], 10.)

Charles Capps: "Faith is the substance, the raw material....Faith is the substance that God used to create the universe, and He transported that Faith with His words....Faith is the substance of things, but you can't see faith. Faith is a spiritual force." (Changing the Seen & Shaping the Unseen [Tulsa, OK: Harrison House, 1980], 14-15.)

Charles Capps: "He framed the world with His words. You can't build without substance. He took words--faith-filled words were God's substance. Here, essentially, is what God did. God filled His words with faith. He used His words as containers to hold His faith and contain that spiritual force and transport it out there into the vast darkness by saying 'Light be!' That's the way God transported His faith causing creation and transformation." (Dynamics of Faith & Confession [Tulsa, OK: Harrison House, 1987], 28-29, emphasis in original.)

Kenneth Copeland: "He [Lucifer or Satan] tried to use the power of words against God. . . .At that point, their words clashed and God's Word--the Word of a free Spirit, a Spirit with authority--reigned in victory over the word of an angelic power." (The Power of the Tongue [Fort Worth, TX: KCP Publications, 1980], 6-7.)

Kenneth Copeland: "So before Jesus came to the earth, God spoke His Word and then spoke His Word again. How many times did He say the Messiah was coming? It was prophesied over hundreds, even thousands, of years. He kept saying, 'He is coming. He is coming.' The circumstances in the earth made it look as if there was no way He could accomplish it; but He just kept saying it. He would not be moved by what He saw. . . .God would not relent." (Ibid., 9-10.)

Kenneth Copeland: "The angels spoke the words of the covenant to her [Mary). She pondered them in her heart, and those words became the seed. And the Spirit of God hovered over her and generated that seed, which was the Word that the angel spoke to her. And there was conceived in her, the Bible says, a holy thing. The Word literally became flesh." ("The Abrahamic Covenant" [Fort Worth, TX: Kenneth Copeland Ministries, 1985], audiotape #01-4405, side 2.)

Benny Hinn: "The Bible says the prophets spoke the Word not knowing what they were saying. But 4000 years passed when the Word became a human being and walked and talked and moved. The spoken Word became a human being. The spoken Word became flesh. The spoken Word got legs on, arms, eyes, hair, a body. And He was no longer saying, 'Thus sayeth the Lord.' He was saying, 'I say unto you.' The Word that was spoken through the lip [sic] of prophets was now walking on the seashore of Galilee. ("Benny Hinn" program on TBN [15 December 1990, emphasis in original]. This message, titled "The Person of Jesus" [delivered during Orlando Christian Center's Sunday morning service on 2 December 1991], comprises Part Four of Hinn's six-part series on "The Revelation of Jesus" [Orlando Christian Center, 1991], videotape #TV-292.)

*sigh*

Then, when you apply ethnicity to God who is a spirit and not corporeal in any sense, you reduce Him even further. So, people attribute racism to God when this is impossible. Only man, who thinks of himself as a god, can believe they can judge God's handiwork and fashion their life to create and inculcate superiority when, without God, we are literally nothing.I find it most interesting that people expect God to provide everything THEY want and do nothing that He commands. Are we so haughty to believe that we are indeed gods ourselves? We do NOT have that kind of power to speak things into existence!

To order God around:

Frederick K.C. Price: "God can't do anything in this earth realm     except what we, the body of Christ, allow Him to do. Now that statement is so--that's   so--that's so foreign and so contrary to tradition that, like I said, if they   could get their hands on me right now most evangelicals would burn me at the   stake and dismember me and feed me to the crocodiles, because they'll consider   that statement to be just heresy." ("Ever Increasing Faith" program   on TBN [1 May 1992], audiotape #PR11.) Cf. chapter 6, 85.

Frederick K.C. Price : "Adam, as I said, gave it [the earth] away to   the serpent, to the Devil. As a result of it, he got his behind kicked out   of the garden. He went out of Eden, out of the garden. He began to wander around,   and he has troubles from day one. Now God was out of the business. God   was out of the earth realm. God had no more stock in this earth realm. No more.   None at all. Nothing He could do. Not a thing in the world He could do. . .   .The only way God could get back into this earth realm, He had to have an invitation.   Ha-hah! He had to have an invitation. And so, God looked around--saw different   men, saw Noah, saw different ones. He gave them a few instructions. They did   what He said. So and so and so and so. But, finally, He got to a point where   He had His plan ready for operation. And He saw a man named Abraham." ("Ever   Increasing Faith" program on TBN [1 May 1992], audiotape #PR11.)

Sheesh...

If I believed half this stuff, I would be cynical about Christianity too!

This could go on and on and on...but, I admonish anyone to take a moment and view your distrust of Christianity this way. The MEN and WOMEN who have turned the RELIGION of Christianity into a cult-like environment where man has dominion over God is NOT representative of the true purpose for Christ's time on earth. Remember, through His shed blood at His atoning death on the Cross, we can then be reconciled with God who separated from us via Adam's original sin.

• Christ lived. It is a historical fact that was prophesied hundreds of years before the fact.
• Christ died. It is a historical fact. The Romans killed him via crucifixion. The records show this.
• Christ rose from the dead. He was seen by over 500 people for forty days after He rose. He showed that through Him, even death could be conquered.

It is a supernatural event that ONLY God could do. To be a Christian is to simply believe that. The rituals and rules as established by various denominations do not follow His simple method of living for the Father.

Christianity and Politics

As for politicians governing society as if it was a church, I am opposed to that because living for God is a personal choice; it is not legislated that we should follow Him or to even believe that He exists. Not even He commands us to believe. I can pray and pray that one see God for who He is, but until you do, it is only blind servitude and that will not keep you from the clutches of Satan.

I have no problem with anyone's faith who is in office and if they govern from a moral center, that's fine. But, this is not a blog that needs anyone to come in and tell me that I'm wrong or that I'm serving an ethnic religion or that I am giving my life to a "sleeping pill." You will NOT change my mind away from Christ nor am I attempting to change yours to Him if you believe in those things. I have seen too much and am firmly convinced to shun Him--ever.I'm not even going to drag out Bible verses to prove my case because one may feel the Bible to be less than credible in their own eyes.

Again, that's unfortunate but I am a believer with enough faith to believe that God has a perfect will...that He will take care of me if I just follow Him and his tenets.

In summary, I do want to just say that if anyone has a problem with Christianity, then place your problem with it where it belongs: on the institutions of Christianity and not blame Christ or even God for that matter for what you feel are its shortcomings.

There is enough out there to justify anything you want to say against Christianity, the religion, but unless and until one gets to the very heart of Christ's mission, it won't matter.

Anyone can claim that their position is "the truth."

I have always felt that if one REALLY wanted to know if Christ lived and died and rose again, just ask Him!In the meantime, I will pray for anyone to become Saved by their own free will. Trust me, the view is so much better from over here than it EVER was over there.

And, if I live a life that reflects Jesus's love for you and accord you courtesy and respect, you won't reject me, will you?:-)

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