Test All Spirits

The saying goes that “you can’t believe everything you hear” and “things aren’t always what they seem”. Those two phrases cannot be truer today. There's much deception in this world. Even worse, there's deception within the Church. With so many Christian denominations, which one is right? Granted, no single church congregation is perfect, for we are all human at the end of the day, but there are churches at least strive to do their very best to stand strong in the Lord.

As it says in 1 John 4:1, King James Version, Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. With the way the world is today, we cannot be so naïve, especially when it comes to spiritual matters. As aforementioned, within Christianity, there are so many denominations, which one is true? To avoid division, we cannot put the particular denomination that a believer associates with to be above all others. Jesus warned against this when one of His disciples told Him that they forbade someone who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name [Luke 9:49]. 

In Acts 17, while Paul was in ministry, he went to preach in a church of Berea and the congregants were wise in verifying his speech by searching the Scriptures (Old Testament).

As Jesus also did forewarn, that we have to be wise as serpents but harmless as doves [Matthew 10:16] because there are many false prophets out in the world. I’ve come to believe that it’s worse for someone’s heart to be turned away from God but in whatever that person is doing still believes that they’re serving God than for one to be turned away and convert to other religions all together. 

We even have to test what is preached in our own churches. We have to be aware of things like “prosperity gospel” and “replacement theory”. Prosperity gospel is teaching that one just has to believe and tithe a whole lot to “get rich quickly” in a sense, that all of one’s natural needs will be met through faith. The prosperity gospel’s underlining message is that one’s natural needs, namely money/wealth & health, are above worshiping God for who He is; putting natural/earthly blessings above spiritual blessings.

Sadly, I believe that all parties involved in prosperity gospel are victims: the congregation for tithing & offering in order to obtain blessing above having an intimate relationship with the Lord and the “pastors” that teach on this. The congregants are the obvious victims because they are being fed a false doctrine and believing that faith alone will get them rich. The pastors are victims in a spiritual sense. Jesus said that what comes out of a man defiles the man [Matthew 15:20; Mark 7:15] and therefore are defiling themselves and risking eternal damnation. Their preaching of “prosperity” ends up feeding their own and not their sheep. 

We’ll get to replacement theory in another blog.

Now, maybe you’re church isn’t preaching on this but sometimes what you hear in a Sunday morning sermon just doesn’t sit right with your spirit. Don’t be afraid to do some biblical research on it or even ask the preacher on it.

The Truth about Repentence

What is repentence? Repentence is asking to be forgiven of your sins; it's coming to terms with them and true repentence resutls in NEVER going back to that sin. People would often ask for forgiveness, and are forgivene, but then would fall again. That doesn't happen with true repentence, which results in newness of life (Acts 11:18). It's the goodness of God that leads us to that repentence (Romans 2:4), since He is just a God of love & mercy.

Though repentence is a New Testament doctrine, the best Old Testament expample us Psalm 51, where David repents for his ilicit relation with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his best generals, Those events can be read in 2 Samual 11.

Being Thankful

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving isn't about turkey, stuffing, or food coma. We should be grateful for the food we have, but that's not the focus. We should just be thankful for what we have, no matter how little it may be. Let's not only be thankful for our materials things, but also for the fact that we have life, that we have salvation through Jesus! Salvation through Jesus Christ alone is the most important thing to be grateful for.

When we pray to the LORD our God, we have to enter His presence with thanksgiving (Ps. 100:4). Praise Him in every situation as well (1 Thess. 5:18). And don't just be thankful at the end of Nov, but everyday be thankful for His grace & mercy, which is new every morning (Lam. 3:22-23). Take some time out everyday to thank Him for life, for love. It can be a simple prayer of thanks or it can be a song. The first song in the Bible was the Israelites praising YHWH for delivering them from the bondage of Egypt (Ex. 15). It was sung literally after the waters closed upon Pharaoh and his army. They simply couldn't help themselves after receiving this type of salvation. That was a foreshadowing of the salvation Christ would bring to the people of Israel. We were once oppressed and now we had been delivered from that oppression. What's not to be thankful for?

One WTC Opened for Business

Well, the Freedom Tower, aka “One World Trade Center” opened for business on Nov 3rd with its first tenants being publishing giant Condé Nast. A few days before its opening, I kept repeating in my mind “conde nast” or “conde nash”, never hearing that name before. A day or two after 1WTC’s opening, I realized why I was hearing “conde nast” over and over again.

It also reminded of something I heard from God, or what I believed to be the Lord, earlier this year when I was in downtown Manhattan, while I was looking at the tower, that it would fall again. This was one of the few times that I would gaze at it and not see a plane coming at it. It scared me at first because I wanted to be like Gideon and confirm what I heard. But, somehow, I knew deep down that something will bad will happen to that building and i would be around to see it ever since it was reported that 1WTC was opened for business.

That “freedom” tower is a ticking time bomb. To be honest, I wasn’t as traumatized by the events of 9/11, but I feel ever connected to it, like the other 8+ million New Yorkers who lived to remember it.

There’s more to the story of those events and I’m going to find out what, so stay tuned for more details.

And if you’re wondering why I called One World Trade Center a “ticking time bomb”, read pick up a copy of the book The Harbingers by Jonathan Cahn. On top of that, just about two weeks in operation, 1WTC already had some issues: two window washers were rescued from the 68th floor of the building after the scaffolding they were on malfunctioned. The two were each attached to a harness, attached to the platform, which would have killed them had it fallen, according to amNY. Firefighters were able to cut a door-sized hole on the 68th floor, which is still under construction, to bring the two men in, who were eventually treated for hypothermia.

Abide in the Father

1 John 1:6-10 KJV

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

2:15-17 KJV

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

I've seen a few times in social media that a Christian can't serve God while holding hands with ghr devil. I recently read the above passages and that's when I realized nothing can be further from ghr truth.

We can't say we love God while consciously living in sin. Let's put the phrase actions speak louder than words in this situation: if you're a Bible-believing christian, yet you're hitting up the clubs on Friday and Saturday, hooking up with a different person each time. What part do you have with God, living unrepentant? You're not walking in His truth when you're living for yourself.

You cant it both ways, as the righteous God, YHWH, the Light, mix with unrighteous darkness. Walk in the light, as we are children of the light.

Don't walk in your own righteousness, either. Don't think of yourself as above sin, like your sinless and/or have never sinned. Jesus is the only sinless person that has walked this earth, hence His qualification for being the perfect sacrificial lamb to redeem us from our sins. At ghr end of the day, we are imperfect human beings, prone to sin, saved or not. Christ is the only One who helps us overcome and avoid sin, as long as we walk in the Word (for He is the Word - read John 1).

I'll leave you with this note: 1 John 2:15-17 warns us to not love the world. Verse 16, in particular, describes the three types of sins:

1. lust of the flesh
2. lust of the eye
3. pride of life

Beware of sins as it'll come in either of these three forms. It was through these three sins that man fell in the garden.

Halloween for Christians: Yea or Nay?

God bless! I have a CBN profile and after looking at it again since two or three years ago, I found something I blogged that I also want to share with my Blogger audience :) 

As we are now in the month of October, you see department stores' seasonal sections filled with Halloween decorations, costumes, etc. Halloween is the second most celebrated holiday in the US (Christmas being the first). In a nation founded by Christians, how did this statstic come about? Why do so many parents allow their children to ring people's doorbells, after dark, and hold out small baskets or bags to get candy from strangers? Parents, especially Christian parents, I encourage you to NOT allow your children to trick-o-treat. Don't even dress them up. Halloween has a very pagan and demonic background, originating from the witches in England and pilgramming here, along with persecuted Christians. I have no children, nor am I married yet, but I know this is something I would not do with my children. Instead, I would like to teach them to pray on the 30th & 31st of Oct - praying for those children trick-o-treating, for their parents who may or may not be with them, and any youth who plan to reak havoc on their neighborhood.

I also encourage my brethren in Christ to 1) do research on the history of Halloween, because we cannot defeat an enemy we don't know much about, and 2) to gather with a few people in your church and pray for trick-o-treaters, children, parents, youth, belivers or not, that their eyes will be opened to celebrating this holiday of idolatry.

I did a little more research on Halloween, like does the Bible really condemn it. Well, within the Torah, it is forbidden to consult with mediums or those with "familiar spirits". That particular Scripture was pointed out to me while I was attending a Pentacostal church. I had stopped attending my original home church for a while and once I learned about Halloween, I looked at my original church much differently, knowing they hold alternative "harvest parties". I had also recently looked up Halloween on this site called gotquestions.org, which answers a lot of questions that seem to be often asked by baby & mature believers alike. So, when it comes to Halloween, we first have to understand its pagan origins and let the Spirit shows us what we should do.

How to win a Muslim for Christ

There's no specific way to win anyone for Christ. We just have to preach His word and display His love. But if you want to win someone of another religion, such as Islam, you would have to know a thing or two about it -- namely, it "holy" text, the Qur'an.

Our brother in Christ does a great job in proving to the Muslim who questioned this brother's preaching of Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the true Savior. The Christian brother quotes both the Bible & Qur'an by stating that only Jesus has the ability to atone for man's sins, being sinless, while Mohammad was sinner like everyone else.

Enjoy & God bless :)