CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH

Greetings in the Name of Jesus.  Please prayerfully read through this letter, asking God for wisdom and discernment, as the enemy of our souls will surely try to distort my intentions.

Jude 3 says, “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”

To contend means to struggle in opposition.  We need to contend earnestly for the integrity and purity of God’s Name and Jesus Christ His Son, and also contend earnestly for the integrity and purity of God’s Word.  II Peter 1:20, 21; 2:1-3 says, “knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.  But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.  And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.  By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber.”

Today there is a Trojan horse that is invading the Church.  This invasion has actually been going on for many years, and I believe is being promulgated by the spirit of antichrist.  Part of that diabolical scheme is to usurp the authority of Christ in His own Church!  I am watching in horror and grief as thousands, even millions, of evangelicals are drinking in this poison of the false gospel of self.

Before me now I have an article from the March 2005 issue of Ladies Home Journal.  It is entitled, “Learn to Love Yourself.”  There are five main points to the message:  1.  Accept yourself.  2.  Love yourself.  3.  Be true to yourself.  4. Forgive yourself.  5.  Believe in yourself.  God is mentioned in the article, but not Jesus, the Name above all Names– and no Bible references.  The author of this article is the one whose book has been #1 on the NY Times Bestseller list for many months.  It was written by Rick Warren.  The gospel of self is a false gospel that is a Trojan horse being welcomed and embraced by what we call the Church today.

Hear what the much respected and faithful servant of the Lord, Oswald Chambers, author of My Utmost for His Highest, has to say:  “Self-realization is anti-Christian.  All this is vigorous paganism.  It is not Christianity.  Jesus Christ’s attitude is always that of anti-self-realization.  His purpose is not the development of man at all.  His purpose is to make man exactly like Himself, and the characteristic of the Son of God is not self-realization but self-expenditure.”

Read these Scriptures for yourself:

Phil. 3:3 “For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.”

Luke 9:23 “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me’.”

John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.”

Ro. 7:18 “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.”

Gal 5:17, 19-21, & 24 “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”  “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are:  adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”  “And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

Is 64:6  “But we are all like an unclean thing.  And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

Our acceptance with God is not based upon Him looking down and seeing our self worth.  It is based on God looking down and seeing “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  (Col. 1:27)  We are accepted “in the beloved” by His grace. (Eph. 1:6)  There is nothing in us that is commendable to God — NOTHING!  See Is. 64:6 once again and Ro. 7:18.

Some of you might be thinking, “Aren’t we made in the image of God?”  Recently at Easter time, PBS broadcast a modernist preaching his gospel of secular humanism, quoting from Gen. 1 that Man is made in God’s image and that God said “It is good.”  What he didn’t talk about is that MAN fell from God’s grace, and the cause of the FALL was SIN!  Robert Schuller has said in his book, No Place for Truth, “Sin is not what shatters our relationship to God, but that we do not esteem ourselves enough.  In the Crystal Cathedral, therefore, let the word ‘sin’ be banished.  Christ was not drawing a profound moral compass in the Sermon on the Mount.  He was just giving us a set of Be (Happy) Attitudes.”  Based on that statement, the Apostle Paul could never preach in the Crystal Cathedral, because Paul preached about sin everywhere he went.  All the disciples – Jesus Christ Himself – preached against sin!  John the Baptist lost his head because he preached against sin!  (Today some would say that he really lacked tact and wisdom, but that’s not what Jesus said about him!)

The Lord Jesus said, in one of His last commands, Luke 24:47, “repentance and remission of sins” (the forbidden word with the modern gurus) “should be preached in His name to all nations.”  The modern thought is to not offend anyone with the preaching of the Word, but to make people feel comfortable.  I Cor. 1:18 says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  I heard Mr. Warren, in a CBS News magazine, state that homosexuality and abortion were not moral issues but political ones that he would not take a stand on.  How do you think one of the prophets of old, like Elijah or John the Baptist, would have responded to such a statement?  Schuller stated, “Rick Warren is the one all of us should listen to and learn from.”  Some of the modern teachers will use the word sin, but just in passing.  In all of my readings of the old timers (some of our great cloud of witnesses), like Moody, Torrey, Spurgeon, Whitfield, Tozer, Wesley, Ravenhill, Murray, Chambers — sin was always preached against.  Just read your Bibles!  Sin was never glazed over in the Holy Scriptures by the true and faithful servants of God.  If sin wasn’t so horrific-why did Jesus have to die?  Why did His blood have to be spilled?  Ask God by the Holy Spirit to give you a deeper revelation of the Cross.  Matt 1:21, “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins.”

Dear friends, in this ministry, I realize I am just a little fish in a big pond, but the Church is straying further and further away into this great apostasy.  I have been warning people for over 25 years, and my heart is grieved because I see people I genuinely care about being led astray.  I wrestled with whether or not to mention people’s names in this letter, for I certainly take no pleasure in doing so.  However, if I saw someone telling my children something was OK which wasn’t, and minimizing something that was very deadly, I would warn others to watch out for that person.  Wouldn’t you do the same?  Read the heart of the preacher – actually the heart of our Father God — in 3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

We know there are many good thoughts that are in these modern books, but if you look at the ingredients of D-con, you’ll see that the poison is a very minute part, but enough to kill.  D-con kills rats.  Rats are undesirables.  Satan finds Christians as undesirables, and has skillfully, by urging ministers to grow their churches with compromised methods, poisoned the lives of millions.  This ministry exists to call the Church to repent, to encourage God’s people that they’re not alone and to stand on God’s Word, His promises, and heed His warnings.  Stand faithful, dear friends!  With so many hundreds of outstanding works out there to read, I urge you to steer clear of the modern philosophies that will kill!

Please hear Oswald Chambers again as he sounded the alarm in the early 1900’s.  This piece is in his book, Bringing Sons unto Glory.  “We must never compromise with the kingdoms of this world; the temptation the Devil presents is that we should compromise.  We recognize his temptation in the teaching that proclaims there is no such being as the Devil and no such place as hell; much that is called sin is a mere defect; men and women are like poor babes lost in the wood, just be kind and gentle with them, talk about the fatherhood of God, about universalism and brotherhood, the kindness of Providence and the nobility of man.  Our Lord’s temptations reveal where the onslaught will come.  Today, through an overabundance of Christian activities, Jesus Christ is being dethroned in hearts, and Christian wits and wisdom are taking His place; consequently, when trials and difficulties come, most of us are at our wits’ end because we have succumbed to one or another of these temptations.”

Dear friends, we need to guard our hearts lest an ungodly spirit of self-righteousness and/or bitterness captures us.  We need to pray for these men who are teaching false doctrines, that their eyes would be opened.  While I hate the destructive power of what they’re doing, I still care about these as individuals.  Please keep up the good fight of faith – all of you!  Keep strong in the Word, and stay on your knees.

In all my studies of revivals, the Church and society seemed to be in a hopeless state, just like today.  But when God pours out His Spirit, as He has done many times in the past, He can literally undo the entrenched works of the devil overnight.  I am going to pick up on this thought in the next prayer letter.  Please keep us in your prayers.  Know that if you are reading this letter, we have you on our prayer list also.  May God richly bless you in your walk of faith after Him!

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘the just shall live by faith’.”  (Romans 1:16 & 17)

Your brother in Christ Jesus,

Jim