Posted on 01/23/2018 2:39:01 PM PST by pastorbillrandles
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. ( I John 4:1-6)
The Saints of God are resisted in this World by an unholy Trinity. The Holy trinity is of course the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Ranged against them and especially against the saints, are The World, The Flesh, and The Devil, that Serpent of old.
The Flesh lusteth against the spirit, the Devil resisted the coming of the Son of God, and those who have succumbed to the love of this World, have none of the Love of the Father in their hearts.
We see here that the AntiChrist spirit is also called “the spirit of error”, which is obviously opposed to the Truth, revealed and propagated by the Holy Spirit.
What specifically does the Bible mean by the expression “The Truth”?
Is this a general or specific term when used in scripture. Are we talking about all truth, i.e. mathematics, science, physics, history , current events or simple veracity? Obviously , when Jesus proclaimed that his mission was to “bear witness to the Truth” before Pontius Pilate, he was not referring to Truth in General,
Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. (John 18:37)
The Bible is true and never wrong in anything it says about history, the natural world , physics etc, but “The Truth” is a more specific and even a Theo-technical term.
The Truth refers to the only sure depiction of the Spiritual reality; Who we are as humans, why we are here, what went wrong with the world, what sin is, who God is, How we can be reconciled to Him, What happens after death, and most important of all, the Truth is the Incarnation of God, in the person of Christ, who came to save us from our sins.
How would man know any of the answers to any of the above questions without a revelation from God himself? We can learn a lot of things about this created world by observation and experiment,(Science) and it is the province of man to search them out as being the (fallen) regent of creation.
But Only God can show me I am a sinner, that there is a heaven and a hell and that this is a moral universe, thus there is a final judgment for all of us. We would have to take his word for it, there is no way we could discover these things on our own.
The core of the Truth is the Incarnation, that God became a man, in the person of Jesus Christ. Heaven and earth cannot reveal this to us, but the Father in heaven testifies to it. The Incarnation of Jesus is the core of Divine revelation, it is the answer to the problem of sin and men’s alienation from God, God became a man, a real man!
The man hanging between heaven and earth on the cross of the curse, and wearing the crown of the very curse of God, was none less than the second person of the Godhead. How could God die? Only by becoming a man.
The Spirit of AntiChrist is keen to ‘spiritualize ” Jesus Christ. This is how the Devil attacks the faith of the church. He denies the incarnation in some way, He seeks to make Jesus into an abstract concept, a symbol, perhaps an exceptional human being but not God in the flesh!
What John literally says in the passage above is “Every Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come (And remains) in the flesh, is of God”. As I wrote in amy book “Mending The Nets”
The gospel accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection have a markedly physical emphasis. We are told that the cross is wooden, the dying Jesus is thirsty, when pronounced dead by the guards, his side is pierced with a spear, and blood and water flow out. The disciples have to pry Jesus’ dead body off the cross , spices are used to embalm Jesus’ body, and a stone is rolled over the mouth of the tomb.
On that first Easter morning, the disciples race to the tomb, and have to stoop to enter it. We are told that when they saw the embalming clothes, they believed. Jesus appeared to them and told them to handle him. When he ate fish with them, you couldn’t see the fish go down his esophagus because Jesus isn’t merely a spiritual entity, he is in the flesh!
False teachers who had arisen in the earliest stages of church history, called “Gnostic”, (“Knowing Ones”), redefined Christianity to conform to Greek Philosophy. In the Platonic cosmology, the physical realm is evil and salvation means release from all physical bounds.
Some Gnostics taught that Jesus didn’t really Incarnate, he only seemed to, (Docetism,”Seemed to”). There are Gnostic gospels which feature a Jesus who makes no foot[prints in the sand and is ethereal and even see through. He didn’t really “suffer, die and was buried”but only seemed to. John seems to be countering this heresy in his epistle.
He also counter another form of this heresy, called “Adoptionism”, which taught that Jesus was an ordinary human being, who was anointed at his baptism, (Christed) and this “anointing” only remained with him, until the crucifixion, where it lifted, and he went back to being a mere human being.
In other words, He was only “Christed” between the water and the blood. This is why John assures us through the Holy Spirit that Jesus , the Christ of God, “Came by water and by blood…”. In other words He came into the World as the Christ of God, and never ceased being the Christ of God, through his death, burial, resurrection and ascencion to heaven!
Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.( I John 5:5-6)
But AntiChrist seeks to deny this central revelation from God. Why?
If AntiChrist can “spiritualize Jesus”, than anything can represent “Jesus”, false prophets, false revivals, deluding spirits, deluded people who believe that they too are as anointed as Jesus was.
The Spiritualization of Christ and of christianity is a prime component of the coming demonic deception soon to be perpetrated by the AntiChrist and the coming army of deceivers, seducers and apostates.
When people spiritualize Christ, and let go of the reality that Jesus Christ is a real man who came n the flesh, they then spiritualize the rest of the Bible, and they produce “Spiritualized” Love and “Spiritualized” righteousness as well.
They do not end up truly loving individual people in deed and in truth, rather they “love everyone in the world” with an “unconditional love”. They do not live under the impetus of the Law of Christ which calls for real righteousness, true repentance of individual sins and lawlessness, rather their “righteousness” is merely spiritual, it is “Who they are ” in Christ and not in anyway dependent on a relationship of obedient trust.
Because of this over spiritualization of Christianity, Many are untroubled by obvious false prophets such as Todd Bentley, who left his wife and children for his secretary, but still goes about giving people words, and “healing them” in between his ridiculous “sermons” which really are nothing but empty anecdotes” of his experiences with Angels, Demons and even “Jesus”.
But their righteousness is only spiritual, as is their love, because their Jesus is also a mere spirituality, not a real, concrete person who came and remains in the flesh. He is a figure in dreams and imagination, but makes no moral demands, because in the gnostic scheme, Actual sin doesn’t hurt your relationship with God, all that matters is “Who you are” in Christ. They would do well to heed John the Apostle on this point, for they have departed from “The Truth”,
Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.( I John 3:7-8)
It reminds me of this.
Bethel Church Responds to 'Christian Tarot Cards' Controversy
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3621359/posts
The group that puts out these "Christian" tarot cards says this.....
"We practice a form of supernatural healing that flows from the universal presence of the Christ. We draw from the same divine energy of the Christ spirit, as ancient followers did and operate only out of the third heaven realm to gain insight and revelation," they say.
"the Christ spirit"??????
Not Jesus. "the Christ spirit".
False teaching right there. Spiritualizing Christ.
Wow, I am going to have to use that METMOM, thanks for the heads up!
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