A voice was heard on
the desolate heights,
weeping and
supplications of the children of Israel.
For they have
perverted their way; they have
forgotten the LORD
their God.
Return, you
backsliding children.
And I will heal your
backslidings.
Indeed we do come to
You.
For You are the LORD
our God.
Truly, in vain is
salvation hoped for
from the hills, and
from the multitude of mountains;
truly, in the LORD
our God is the salvation of Israel.
Jeremiah 3:21–23
In answer
to any objection that the above Scripture is only to be applied to the
Israelites and not to Christians I must remind Christians that we are the sons
of Abraham and of the seed of Isaac: "But
it is not that the Word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all
children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, "In Isaac your seed
shall be called." That is, those
who are the children of the flesh these are not the children of God; but the
children of the promise are counted as seed (Romans 9: 6 -- 8). Paul continues and quotes from Hosea: "As He said also in Hosea: "I
will call them My people, who are not My people, and her beloved, who was not
beloved." "And it shall come
to pass in the place where it was said to them, "you are not My people, there
they shall be called sons of the living God" (Romans 9: 25 -- 26). Therefore, we must take heed to what
Jeremiah wrote to the nation of Israel and how what he wrote applies to God's
children today. The nation of Israel had
perverted their way and had forgotten the LORD their God. This very same thing began to occur at the
very founding of the Christian Church for many had fallen prey to the major
philosophies found in Gnosticism and in the Oriental philosophies, and began to
synchronize those philosophies with the Christian faith and by doing so have perverted many children of God. This is occurring
right before our very eyes by those churches who demand and teach another
gospel that is not to be found in Scripture.
They misuse scripture to promote and to enhance their teachings as
though it is scriptural; but it is not!
Many people are being misled and think that their salvation can come
from the hills, those perverted teachings from the multitude of the mountains,
which is nothing more than heresy which teaches another way to salvation other
than by means of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They hope for salvation in vain!
Augustine in his book The City of
God, book 2, chapter 7, makes this statement: "... Still the teachings
of the philosophers are not the commandments of the gods, but the discoveries
of men, who, at the prompting of their own speculative of validity, made
efforts to discover the hidden laws of nature and the right and wrong in
ethics, and in dialectic which was consequent according to the rules of logic
and what was in consequent and erroneous" (italics mine). Many men and some women have set themselves
up as being a god and this they do as the philosophers have done and are doing; they are teaching the commandments of a god when in actuality they are
only teaching their assumptions and heretical views.
God in his providence used this very
heretical synchronizing of the Christian faith with false philosophies to
advance His Church. Men such as
Marcion, who developed a Canon from their own philosophical and ideological
thinking, made cause to examine all the writings by the apostles, by Luke, and
by Mark, and by the writer of Hebrews, by Clement of Rome, and Hermes, and
others to determine whether or not they were inspired by God and are authoritative
writings from God for the children of God.
The Church had to do this in self defense against heresies that were
bombarding the Church. There needed to
be an authoritative, and canonical doctrine to be able to examine what was from
God and what was simply from man. God
had promised to preserve his word every jot and tittle (Matthew 5: 18). That preservation of His word has come down
to us today for we have thousands of manuscripts, complete and in part by which
we can examine them by critical text examination to find what has been
preserved from the original autographs and that which is only a corruption of
Scripture by means of influence of such things as Gnosticism. I will discuss the various translations in future
blogs and for now we must come to understand that God has preserved his word
and this he did through his prominence by using men who would carefully
examine the manuscript that are extant.
God uses men and the circumstances of life to fulfill his promises and
to carry out his providence and unless we fully understand God's providence we
will not have any clear understanding of God.
I say this in regard to those who would cavil and object that we do not
have the original autographs therefore we cannot put our full faith in Gods
word as it is now formed into the Bible. To not believe that God preserves His word is to say that God is not in control and that in itself is
heretical. This type of thinking that
the Bible is not inerrant and infallible as the Word of God preserved by him
leading to many false teachers who claim to be "Christian," and teach
a doctrine that is not to be found in God's Word. What is at stake?
Salvation is at stake and by this I mean that God's children must come
to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved and then to live by the
commandments of God through his Son Jesus Christ so that they enter into heaven
standing before the Great White Throne and hear the Savior say, "well
done." Let us not be a person who
enters into heaven with the, "smell of smoke on our clothes."
What ever I tell
you in the dark,
speech in the light; and
what you hear in
the ear, preach
on the housetops. And do not
fear of those who
kill the body but cannot
kill the soul. But rather fear Him
who is able to
destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew
10: 27 -- 28
Call on the name of
the LORD and be saved.
Richard L. Crumb
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