The Aquila Report Archives - Page 28 of 942

Spiritual Inventory for Pastoral Visits

By Jim Elliff — 5 months ago

Shepherd the flock! Remember that these difficulties are not interruptions in your pastoral work but are the pastoral work itself. One final concern: Be sure to keep what you hear to yourself alone and any notes or files secure. Do not use the stories you hear as illustrations in your messages or as gossip.

“Warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all men.” 1 Thess. 5:14

“Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion but willingly, not for dishonest gain but eagerly, nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.” 1 Peter 5:2-4
The Apostolic example: “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.” Acts 20:28-31 “But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.” 1 Thess. 2:7-8
Questions
These questions are for the purpose of affording pastors the best possible opportunity to counsel and love their people. Please don’t just listen–help them to grow! We suggest that you visit your people regularly, by appointment. In order to secure the most honest responses, consideration should be given to whether or not some or all of the questions should be answered individually or with the entire family present.
Read More

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 54

Gospel Norm

By Maria Williams — 5 months ago

The gospel shouldn’t be a rarity; it should be a normality, and when shared frequently with and to others, good news can become normal—in the best sense. While Christ alone does the work in human hearts, he wants them to hear the message from our mouths.

Bravery began for me in the depths of Detroit, where there are gas stations, funeral homes, and my high school all within a mile radius. Though the layout and events were abnormal, this was my norm. It was my norm for friends from middle and high school to pass away and for daily shootings and theft to occur.
When this is your norm, you yearn for good news.
I was at the tender age of seventeen when I became a Christian, and I felt compelled to tell everyone what Jesus did. My presentation wasn’t perfect, but my heart longed to point people to Jesus—sometimes through prayer, buying them a meal, or verbally sharing the gospel.
Detroit, on the daily, has its fair share of bad news; even if you turn the TV off you can’t channel out the bad news and brokenness that seems to be around the corner. People turned to robberies and raids because they did not have enough money to make ends meet. I remember the countless times of gathering families together in a circular style, hand in hand as we prayed for them as they lost a son to a shootout. My goal became to meet the brokenness with the beauty of the gospel. At seventeen, I didn’t have silver or gold to offer—even if I wanted to—yet I had Jesus, and he’s better than all the fool’s gold of this world.
I decided that whoever walked by, I would talk to them about Jesus. I’m aware that this is an introvert’s nightmare. This meant I crossed paths with many different types of people, more than I can remember. Some mumbled as they kept moving, and some cursed at me and cursed God. I heard the arguments from every party: atheist, agnostic, spiritualist, and so forth.
One young girl stands out to me. She lived on the opposite corner of my childhood home. I took the relational approach of complimenting her and making jokes before getting deeper.
As I asked her about her walk with God, her eye contact disconnected, and she began to tell me she was pregnant and hadn’t finished high school. After getting it off of her chest about the baby that was in her belly, she looked me in the eyes for a religious reaction—you know that one where your eyebrows raise into your hairline and your mouth goes so sideways it almost reaches your ear.
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 39

Life in the Valley

By Bruce A. Little — 5 months ago

Written by Bruce A. Little |
Saturday, September 28, 2024
Like many young people I did not make the most of what was offered, but that was my fault. At that that time, nobody told me I should be ashamed of my whiteness or if I wanted to become a girl I could. We believed good and evil were objective categories. No one suggested that I deserved anything I had not worked for—well except for my birthday and Christmas, which were such special times. I was not told that my country was evil, and I learned that my happiness was not the first virtue in life.

The memories of my childhood in Nobleboro, Maine (mid coast) are a source of immeasurable delight. Life was not perfect, but it was good. My parents were part of what Tom Brokaw celebrated as “The Greatest Generation.” After World War II (my father fought in the Pacific), my parents settled in “the valley” when I was three years old and eventually started a small dairy farm where we worked alongside adults in the fields and in the barn. That provided the context for the next 15 years of my life. It was a wonderful life which I shared with my brother, who was three years my elder (a hero in the Vietnam war). When we were working on the farm, we spent hours playing outside using our imagination to make up worlds that allowed us to pretend to be adults. Spring and early summer evenings would find us playing baseball with neighborhood children until it was so dark you couldn’t see the ball. In the winter, wonderful hours were spent with the same children sliding down Reed hill where road conditions (early on it was a dirt road) and traffic volume were different in those days, so I do not suggest anyone try it today. It was a simple or should I say an uncomplicated life. Life was ordered according to the rhythms of nature where each season brought something different and enjoyable. Although I never liked weeding the garden, when the harvest was gathered in the fall it gave a wonderful sense of security. We were prepared for the winter. It is true we did not have all the electronic gadgets of today but as time has proven, all of that would not have made us better or happier.
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 50

America’s Marriage Deserts

By Shane Morris — 5 months ago

Marriage is good and good for us, the design of a Creator who actually has our best interests at heart. The decline of marriage in modern America is a tragedy because we weren’t made to live in a marriage-arid society, and that means improving what Wilcox calls “the state of our unions.” Thankfully, if these researchers and organizations are correct, the main thing many wandering in “marriage deserts” need in order to say “I do” is someone to tell and show them, “you can.”

For years, the term “food desert” was a way experts described areas of the country where fresh, unprocessed groceries are difficult to find. The key insight captured by this term is that obesity and other diet-related health problems aren’t solely a matter of individual choice, especially for children. They are at least partly determined by access—or lack thereof—to quality food where people live.
What if a similar pattern applies to marriage? What if there are sections of the country best characterized as “marriage deserts,” where lasting unions aren’t just rare but virtually non-existent? That’s the argument sociologist Brad Wilcox and writer Chris Bullivant made recently in Deseret News.
They suggested that “marriage deserts” are found across demographics, from inner-city minority neighborhoods to poor, rural white towns. In such places, stable marriages have essentially disappeared, and along with them, households that model what such unions look like.
This is a relatively recent development. Wilcox and Bullivant explained that in the late 1960s, marriage was the norm across classes. Just 13% of American children lived with an unmarried parent. But fast-forward fifty years, and that number has climbed to a staggering third of all children—mostly comprising the lowest income brackets.
It’s almost like a cultural bomb went off. Such high rates of single or cohabiting parenthood results in blocks on end with no married role models. And this makes the very thought of marriage seem implausible, unrealistic, or just silly for millions of American youths. Just ask them.
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 37

What Does God Listen For?

By Seth Lewis — 5 months ago

Out of all the innumerable sounds in heaven and earth, God pays special attention to the voice of his people. Psalm 34 is not simply a theological statement of this fact—it is the personal testimony of David, when he was a fugitive running for his life. He celebrates his own experience of God hearing his cry for help.

Have you ever considered all the things you hear in the course of one day? This morning, I heard birds singing outside, and the voices of my family. I heard the coffee machine and the clink of plates and cutlery at breakfast. Right now, I’m hearing the noise of construction above the ever-present sounds of traffic and the occasional gust of wind. I haven’t even had lunch yet. There will be plenty more to fill my ears before this day is finished.
Have you ever considered all the things that God hears? The creator of sound waves hears the unceasing worship of angels before his throne. He hears the swirling wind of Jupiter and the ice that melts on Mars. He hears beyond what is audible to us—the ultrasonic songs of katydids and the footsteps of aphids. He hears beyond the limits of location—
Read More

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Post Views: 56

Bound Together

By Steve Bostrom — 5 months ago

God promises: “Even a woman may forget her nursing child, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49: 15,16) Among those who first heard these words, who could have anticipated the Greatest Cost, Christ’s engraved/cross-scarred hands, seven hundred years later?

Friends, pastor/poet Holy George Herbert (1593 -1633) shone like a lodestar for my college English Lit. professor, Dr. Ed Ericson. Ericson told us: “When Herbert crossed from his home to pray in the church at regularly scheduled hours, men working in the fields stopped working, knelt in prayer, joining their parson in spirit. He became known throughout England as Holy Mr. Herbert.”
That 364-year-old story planted a lively seed in my liberated soul.
Paul wrote: “You belong to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God.” (Romans 7:4) “Valley of Vision” heralds: “Resurrected Jesus strides forth as Victor, Conqueror of death, hell and all opposing might, trampling the powers of darkness, the devil’s scepter shivered, his wrongful throne leveled.”
Really? Yes.
Despite having only a mustard-seed faith, for me, college meant new worlds opening, including Herbert’s “soul-full” poetry.
For “soul,” some pursue “psychology” – literally, “soul” (“psyche”) “study” (“logy”). But, much “psychology” grasps neither our souls nor God. Understand Solzhenitsyn: “The meaning of earthly existence lies not in material prospering but in soul development.”
Here, to develop “soul,” we’ll be grounded by Scripture: a Hebrew word, ‘qashar’ and Isaiah. Eventually, we’ll return to Herbert.
The Bible is refreshingly soul-full. Consider, Benjamin’s father, Jacob. Jacob’s “‘soul’ is ‘bound up’ ‘in’” (‘with’/’attached to’/‘dependent upon’/‘joined to’/‘trussed to’) Benjamin’s “‘soul.’” And: “Jonathan’s ‘soul’ was “knit” to the ‘soul’ of David. Jonathan loved him as his own ‘soul.’” (Genesis 44:30, 1 Samuel 18:1)
Note the connection of “qashar,” “bound up”/“knit,” with “soul.” Healthy/holy souls deepen relationships.
Likewise, when a co-laborer first held his adopted baby, my friend felt his heart enlarge with new rivers of love. Tender filigrees of love in the soul may become strong cords binding soul and soul.
Sadly, forces, like death, attempt to rupture those bonds. “We said a heartbreaking goodbye to my Uncle Nat Belz, a great and kind friend. We already miss his brilliant sense of humor and his unwavering faith in God.” (Stephen Lutz, 4/1/23)
Accordingly, the Great Soul asks: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no ‘compassion’ on the son of her womb?” (Isaiah 49:15) “Compassion” is from “racham,” “womb,” often a place of bonded love.
Could a mother “forget” her nursing child? Yes, the Fall made us self-absorbed, oblivious “fools.”
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 47

Lose the Gospel, Return to Childishness

By Carl R. Trueman — 5 months ago

Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Friday, September 27, 2024
The church must bear witness to a grown-up faith. That means that we need a renewed sense of the holy, the sacred, and the transcendent. And that must start at the top, where it is too often most absent. The X feeds of many of the loudest Christian pastors today indicate little difference from the categories, attitudes, and preoccupations of secular leaders. This is a sad dereliction of duty; of all people, pastors should point heavenward, to where Christ sits and intercedes for his people.

In Milan Kundera’s 1975 novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Czechoslovakian president Gustav Husak—the “President of Forgetting”—declares, “Children! You are the future!” Kundera goes on to say that this is true “not because they will one day be adults but because humanity is becoming more and more a child, because childhood is the image of the future.”
Douglas Murray’s recent Spectator article on the Church of England confirms the Czech writer’s prophetic insight. Canterbury Cathedral’s “silent disco” in February and Peterborough Cathedral’s upcoming November “rave” certainly speak of a childish age. These buildings were built for the serious and sacred purpose of worship; that was why generations invested many decades and resources in their construction. To use them now for events that could easily be held in a makeshift tent says much about the sacred nature of the trivial hedonism of our age.
It also says much about a church that has long since lost any confidence in the gospel codified in her Thirty-Nine Articles, Book of Common Prayer, and Book of Homilies. Recent reports reveal that she is increasingly abandoning the word “church” in favor of other descriptions, such as “community.” And anyone gazing on The Queen’s Window in Westminster Abbey is more likely to recall scenes from SpongeBob than be awed by thoughts of the transcendent creator and redeemer of mankind. Lose the gospel, return to childishness; this seems to be the order of the day.
Indeed, this childishness is the inevitable outcome of the kind of theological liberalism that has dominated so many churches for several generations. Ironically, theological liberalism has often been the product of some of the finest minds. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the notional father of Protestant liberalism, was one of the dazzling intellects of his day. The Tübingen School, which did huge damage to orthodox belief, boasted an array of stellar scholars. And in the Anglophone world, figures such as C. H. Dodd and John A. T. Robinson were men of true academic substance.
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 53

Thoughts about Imminency

By Grover Gunn — 5 months ago

We should pray for the quick coming of things agreeable to God’s will because we strongly desire them. At the same time, we should patiently submit to the wisdom of God’s timing in answering our prayers. We should sincerely pray for the Lord Jesus to come quickly even if we have reason to believe that His coming will not occur in our lifetime. We have many reasons to desire the second coming because our redemption will not be fully applied until that time.

I remember being in a class decades ago listening to Dr. Charles Ryrie explain the difference between the words imminent, immanent and eminent. The word eminent means having a superior position, the word immanent contrasts with the word transcendent, and the word imminent means happening soon. A particular view of imminency was an important part of the dispensationalism that Dr. Ryrie was teaching. He didn’t want us to embarrass ourselves by getting these similar sounding words confused.
The doctrine of imminency states that Jesus is returning soon. Classical dispensationalism and the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine were devised in the early nineteenth century to be consistent with a particular view of imminency. At that time, the prevailing Protestant eschatology had a historicist understanding of prophecy fulfillment in the church age. The key to this was the identification of the Anti-Christ with the Roman papacy. At the time of the Reformation, Protestants tended to consider the fall of the Anti-Christ as then imminent. The power and reach of the papacy, however, rebounded through the Counter-Reformation and the religious wars. Protestant hope for the fall of the Anti-Christ was revived in 1798 when French troops under Napoleon occupied Rome and exiled the pope to France, where he died the next year. A new pope was elected in about six months, and he returned to Rome. Napoleon again invaded Rome in 1809, and the new pope was exiled to France. This pope was able to return to Rome after the defeat of Napoleon in the Battle of Paris in 1814.
After this roller coaster series of events regarding the papacy, some Protestants were ready for a view of prophecy that was not so closely tied to current events. The English Plymouth Brethren offered such a view in their newly devised pre-tribulation rapture doctrine based on a combination of innovations. One innovation was the separation of the rapture of the saints from the second coming. The rapture was no longer a part of the cluster of events that constitute the second coming. The rapture became an event preceding the second coming whose purpose was to remove all the Christians from earth so that the former Jewish age could resume. A second innovation was the assertion that the church age is an unforeseen parenthesis in a prophesied Jewish program. This parenthetical church age began at the Pentecost of Acts chapter two and will end with the rapture. The church age is placed between the sixty-ninth and seventieth of the seventy weeks prophesied in Daniel chapter nine. A third innovation was the claim that all unfulfilled prophecy must be fulfilled in a literal Jewish context after the rapture. No prophecy whatsoever is fulfilled during the parenthetical church age.
This new dispensational doctrine acknowledged that there are unfulfilled prophecies that need to be fulfilled before the second coming. Yet it placed the fulfillment of all these prophecies after the rapture. By associating imminency solely with the rapture as they had defined it, they were able to say with consistency that the rapture could happen at any moment. In their system, there is no event in the church age prophesied to occur before the rapture.
I discuss elsewhere the deficiencies of the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine. If that modern doctrine is in error, then one has to reconcile the doctrine of imminency with the existence of unfulfilled prophecies that will be fulfilled in the church age. As long as there are prophesied events in the church age that are yet to be fulfilled, the second coming must still be sometime in the future. Taking that into account, the second coming can still be defined as chronologically near because we are living in the last days.
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 61

Two Things Nearly Everyone Believes About the Universe

By J. Warner Wallace — 5 months ago

Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Friday, September 27, 2024
I hope God’s Crime Scene can help you answer this question by employing a number of very simple investigative tools detectives use every day. Criminal investigators recognize one important evidential truth: the identity of a suspect must account for all the evidence “in the room”. Whatever caused the origin of our universe must also account for all the other evidence we see “in the room” including the fine-tuning of the cosmos, the origin of life, the appearance of design in biology, our experience of consciousness and free agency, the existence of transcendent objective moral truths, and the enduring presence of evil and injustice.

In my book, God’s Crime Scene, I examine the universe as a “crime scene” and investigate eight different pieces of evidence through the filter of a simple investigative question: “Can the evidence ‘in the room’ be explained by staying ‘in the room’? This question is key to determining whether a death scene is a crime scene, and I typically play a game I call “inside or outside the room” whenever I am trying to determine if a death is, in fact, a murder. If, for example, there is a victim in the room with a gunshot injury lying next to a handgun, but the doors are locked from the inside, all the DNA and fingerprints in the room come back to the victim, the gun is registered to the victim and there are no signs of an outside intruder, this is simply the scene of a suicide or accidental death. If, however, there exist fingerprints or DNA of an unknown suspect, the gun does not belong to the victim, and there are even bloody footprints leading outside the room, I’ve got to reconsider the cause of this death. When the evidence in the room cannot be explained by staying inside the room and is better explained by a cause outside the room, there’s a good chance I’ve got a murder. When this is the case, my investigation must shift direction. I must now begin to search for an external intruder. I think you’ll find this investigative approach applicable as you examine the case for God’s existence. If all the evidence “inside the room” of the universe can be explained by staying “inside the room”, there’s no need to invoke an ‘external’ cause. If, on the other hand, the best explanation for the evidence “inside the room” is a cause “outside the room”, we’ll need to shift our attention as we search for an “external” intruder.
There are eight distinct pieces of evidence (in four separate categories) that must be explained when examining the attributes of our universe. These divergent categories of evidence all point to the same reasonable inference. The first category involves cosmological evidence. One important attribute of the universe is simply its origin. This first piece of evidence is critical to understanding the very nature of the cosmos and has been examined deeply by atheists and theists alike. As it turns out, nearly everyone agrees on two evidential inferences related to the origin of our universe:
The Universe Came In To Existence From Nothing
The evidence for the beginning of our universe is cumulative, diverse and substantial. The “stuff” of the universe (all space, time, and matter) came into existence from nothing, and all the evidence scientists have examined so far points to this reasonable conclusion.
Read More
Related Posts:

Post Views: 66

On Many Paths to God

By Bill Muehlenberg — 5 months ago

Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks. He said this a week ago at an inter-religious gathering of young people in Singapore: “Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true? There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”

When the current Pope first made some worrying remarks about how all religions are basically taking us to the same God, I thought I would let others deal with it. And many have of course, both Catholics and non-Catholics. But given that he seems to want to keep pushing this, I suppose I should finally weigh in on it.
Pope Francis, once again, has landed himself in hot water by stating that there are many roads to God – not just Christianity. And it was not enough for him to state this once, but he doubled down on it again a few days after his first remarks.
He said this a week ago at an inter-religious gathering of young people in Singapore: “Every religion is a way to arrive at God. There are different languages to arrive at God, but God is God for all. And how is God God for all? We are all sons and daughters of God. But my god is more important than your god, is that true? There is only one God and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, they are different paths.”
And just the other day in a video message to an ecumenical youth gathering in Tirana, Albania, he reaffirmed this stance: “I invite you to learn together to discern the signs of the times. Contemplate the difference of your traditions like a richness, a richness God wants to be. Unity is not uniformity, and the diversity of your cultural and religious identities is a gift of God. Unity in diversity. Let mutual esteem grow among you, following the witness of your forefathers.”
Let me say a few things before some people get all bent out of shape about this. One, I have long made it clear that while I am an evangelical Protestant, it is not my purpose with this site to incessantly attack Catholics. I certainly have many major theological differences with them, but I count many of them as my friends, I speak at their meetings, and some of my fav authors are Catholics, and so on.
Two, some have said that we need to take his words in context, and that he does not really mean what he has said. Well, it seems pretty clear to me just what he was trying to say, especially in that first comment. It is very hard for anyone to weasel their way out of what was declared. He even specifically mentions Muslims, Hindus and so on as he makes his point.
Three, forget my views if you like. It is not just Protestants who have very real problems with all this. There are plenty of orthodox Roman Catholic groups which have also spoken out about his remarks. See here for just one of many such pieces: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-pope-francis-every-religion-is-a-way-to-arrive-at-god/
And I have plenty of Catholic associates, friends and acquaintances who are all equally disgusted with this and many other things the current Pope has done and said over the past 11 years. One gal who is as devout and gung-ho a Catholic as you will ever meet actually told me once: “Pope Francis is a heretic.” Plenty of folks within the Roman Catholic Church are quite concerned about these matters.
Is Jesus just one of many ways?
Not only does biblical Christianity unambiguously affirm that Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to the Father, but this is even basic Roman Catholic teaching. Always has been. And no one actually reading the New Testament can ever come up with any other ideas.
You will not find there any idea that Jesus thought of himself as just one of many great religious leaders and teachers, and that he was just one path among many that would take us to God. Indeed, simply consider some of the things he said about himself:
Matthew 11:27 All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
John 3:3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
Read More
Related Posts: