PTL. God is not Dead He is Surely Alive!! Each person knows that Truth in his heart. PTL.
PTL. God is not Dead He is Surely Alive!! Each person knows that Truth in his heart. PTL.
The way the Church is the book of Acts showed the pagans around them that God was alive was the preaching of the Gospel was accompanied by signs and wonders. When Philip healed the sick and cast out demons, showing the power of God to them, it was then they gave attention to his teaching. Most churches are trying to teach that God is alive, but they cannot prove it just by quoting the Bible and merely saying that God is alive. Most sensible people would challenge them by saying, "prove that your God is alive!" In most cases, they try to prove the existence of God through apologetics and other intellectual arguments. But this is not how the Early Church proved the existence of a God who is alive and that His Son Jesus actually rose from the dead. They showed it by miraculous healings, and casting out of demons. The pagans who witnessed these signs and wonders had to acknowledge that Jesus Christ was alive and that the preaching of the Gospel was the truth. That's why they came to Christ in their thousands wherever the gospel was preached in this way.
We live in a neo-pagan society that will not accept mere religious words. This is why most traditional churches are declining. This is why in my country the prime minister declared that we "are not a Christian country." All our churches have these days are religious words and are failing to convince non-Christian people that the gospel is the answer for them.
So, how are we going to prove to the world that God and Jesus are actually alive if all we have a religious words, that will have no better effect than Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist religious words?
I saw a prominent comedian on Youtube declare that he is an athiest. The interviewer tried to reason with him about it but got nowhere. How could the Church convince an athiest like him that God is alive and real unless it could use more than mere religious words?
One healing evangelist came to the Wellington town hall and found only 50 people turning up for his first meeting. Some expressed concern, but he said, "Get a few people healed and then they will come." After some very authentic miraculous healings in that meeting, the next night the town hall was packed with hundreds outside who couldn't get in. So, when a person is healed of a sickness or disease that is incurable through the preaching of the Gospel then that is the powerful proof that God is really alive and involved in the lives of people.
It wasn't miracles it was how they lived.
The inspired(God breathed) eternal living Word of God is all eternal truth while
religious words of Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist religious words are just that="religious words"
There is nothing magic about the words in the Bible. On the words level those words are just the same as the other religions. The members of the Early Church had to show that their gospel had more weight and power than the Roman and Greek philosophers. They showed it through signs, wonders, and miracles. Christian words without miraculous proof are just religious words as well. There are thousands of churches preaching the Bible and using Scripture to back up the points, but very few are getting converted to Christ and these church still remain as Christian "clubs".
The devil can quote Scripture accurately, so if the words have some magical effect, then those quotes should have the power to convert souls to Christ as well. The fact that they don't proves that the words alone are just words and nothing else.
God's Words are very "special" with very special power as God's Word is living eternal truth . God with just His Words brought all creation and life into being!!
John 1==In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2The same was in the beginning with God.
3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
Although I said that the words of the Bible have no magical qualities, for the believer, the hearing (and reading) of the Word generates faith. This is because the indwelling of the Holy Spirit makes the Word alive in the believer. This is because the believer's spirit has been made alive through conversion to Christ, therefore the Holy Spirit can interract with the believer's spirit. This is the way God communicates with us. He does not communicate through our senses. It is a Spirit to spirit communication, and our mind interprets what has come into our spirit. This is why when we read a passage in the Bible and it comes alive to us.
But the unbeliever's spirit is dead. The Holy Spirit cannot communicate in the same way. That is why an unbeliever can read or hear the Bible and it means nothing to him. There are many unbeliever Bible scholars who give interpretations of the Bible that are inconsistent with the Gospel and what Jesus and Paul actually taught. It is because they are blinded to the truth that is contained in the Bible. They see the Bible only with their senses and not through the Spirit. It is only when an unbeliever becomes converted to Christ that the Bible comes alive to them.
But how does the Holy Spirit present the gospel in a way that brings unbelievers to Christ? I believe that it is through signs, wonders and miracles. That is why the devil goes to so much effort to try and convince believers that they are not necessary, or that the Church does not need them today. He sends lying spirits to tell people that the gospel can be preached without the miracles. He knows that it is the miracles with the preaching of the gospel that is powerful for bringing conviction of sin and showing that Jesus is risen from the dead and is alive today.
The devil knew that he could not stop the Early Church from forming and becoming a powerful force in the pagan world. So he sent heretics and false prophets to confuse the believers. He succeeded after the 5th Century to get church leaders to present God as a stern unforgiving judge instead of a loving, merciful God who sent Jesus to save sinners. Through that, the devil succeeded in wiping the miracles out of the Church. For 1500 years, the Church was no threat to him and he was able to do his evil work without hindrance. Every time a movement started that might have threatened him, he got his demon leaders in the established Church to snuff it out and kill God's true prophets.
All you have to see through the vicious persecution of the early Pentecostal church because of its signs, wonders and miracles, that the devil was threatened by that revival. He has caused every revival to come to a premature end, and changed the revived churches, such as the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian into many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches into "respectable" religious "synagogues" devoid of anything supernatural, and maintained them in that way by installing lying spirits to remind them that signs, wonders, and miracles are not needed for today. That's how the devil works to keep unbelievers from being converted to Christ - maintaining the churches as religious "clubs" for Christians that have little or no influence on the communities around them.
We need to use the weapons of our warfare to defeat these lying spirits and promote more revivals so that more unbelievers can be converted to Christ.