lily rose – I appreciate your willingness and hunger to dig deeper like the Bereans, ”to see if these things be so.” It seems any that are willing to question the teaching of Christian cult leaders are branded as heretics and shunned, even when there are obvious discrepancies with the teachings of Jesus. For most, it’s not worth the hassle and they just check out, assuming its all garbage. We often have to wade through the false to get to the prize. The casual seeker doesn’t find the pearl of great price hidden at the bottom of the manure pile.
TLWF has very little value to me now from a doctrinal standpoint (the people of course are wonderful) except to illustrate what not to do. If you secretly want to rule over others, it will feed that evil in you – just like the prosperity gospel does with the greedy. 60+ years is plenty enough time to examine the fruit as Jesus taught. Those that claim to be ruling and reigning with Christ can barely run their own lives, much less the world. They only spend so much time nit picking the lives of others, under the guise of discipleship, so that others will be distracted from the train wreck of their own lives. It’s been my contention from the beginning that those that want to take the place of God should have to submit to each other – at least it would take them out of the loop while they fight over who is the greatest so that they wouldn’t damage so many people’s lives. There are so many groups out there that think they are the greatest and none want to serve the least. They may want to kill Jesus if they actually met him - like their forefathers in religion did.
Jesus taught that unless we were born again, we could not even see the kingdom of God. I think what causes confusion over salvation is that we look at what Jesus taught through the lens of his disciples and then what his disciples taught through the lens of present-day teachers. The greater the number of layers, the easier it is to distort what Jesus said. We should be using what Jesus said to evaluate others, since he is the way, the truth, and the life, instead of following others to try and understand Jesus. His teaching really doesn't need much interpretation to follow - you just have to be born again or it's impossible.
My personal turning point was to discover that my life was in ashes after sincerely following others - and I had done so my whole life. I was finally desperate enough to go back and read the directions for myself. Everything Jesus taught works right now. The Sermon on the Mount gives us the plumb line to discover which things in us are from a new nature and which things are from an old nature. The thieves teach that your life should line up with their twisted scriptures, rather than what Jesus taught – and it produces twisted fruit. If there is no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, we are headed in the wrong direction. A quick self check is: do we love our enemies? If we do not, its not God's love in us but something else. Food for thought the next time we are calling down fire on those we do not see eye to eye with - which one of the fruits of the Spirit are we about to manifest?
TLWF has very little value to me now from a doctrinal standpoint (the people of course are wonderful) except to illustrate what not to do. If you secretly want to rule over others, it will feed that evil in you – just like the prosperity gospel does with the greedy. 60+ years is plenty enough time to examine the fruit as Jesus taught. Those that claim to be ruling and reigning with Christ can barely run their own lives, much less the world. They only spend so much time nit picking the lives of others, under the guise of discipleship, so that others will be distracted from the train wreck of their own lives. It’s been my contention from the beginning that those that want to take the place of God should have to submit to each other – at least it would take them out of the loop while they fight over who is the greatest so that they wouldn’t damage so many people’s lives. There are so many groups out there that think they are the greatest and none want to serve the least. They may want to kill Jesus if they actually met him - like their forefathers in religion did.
Jesus taught that unless we were born again, we could not even see the kingdom of God. I think what causes confusion over salvation is that we look at what Jesus taught through the lens of his disciples and then what his disciples taught through the lens of present-day teachers. The greater the number of layers, the easier it is to distort what Jesus said. We should be using what Jesus said to evaluate others, since he is the way, the truth, and the life, instead of following others to try and understand Jesus. His teaching really doesn't need much interpretation to follow - you just have to be born again or it's impossible.
My personal turning point was to discover that my life was in ashes after sincerely following others - and I had done so my whole life. I was finally desperate enough to go back and read the directions for myself. Everything Jesus taught works right now. The Sermon on the Mount gives us the plumb line to discover which things in us are from a new nature and which things are from an old nature. The thieves teach that your life should line up with their twisted scriptures, rather than what Jesus taught – and it produces twisted fruit. If there is no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit, we are headed in the wrong direction. A quick self check is: do we love our enemies? If we do not, its not God's love in us but something else. Food for thought the next time we are calling down fire on those we do not see eye to eye with - which one of the fruits of the Spirit are we about to manifest?