These are wells without water, clouds that
are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist
of darkness is reserved for ever. For when
they speak of vanity, they allure through
the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness,
those that were clean escaped from them who
live in error. While they promide them liberty,
they themselves are the servants of corruption:
for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is
he brought in bondage. for if after they have
escaped the pollutions of the world through
the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the
latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
For it had been better for them not to have known
the way of righteousness, than, after they have
known it, to turn from the holy commandment
delivered unto them. But it is happened
unto them according to the true proverb,
The dog is truned to his own vomit again;
and the sow that was washed to her
wallowing in the mire.
2Peter 2:17-22
Yesterday I spend the whole day seeing doctors and other appointments. It did give me time to think about what I am writing, the why, the reason to speak as sucinctly as I can and the answer is in this Scripture. The world, and especially the United States is under attack and if we do not wake up and see what is occurring we will lose the freedoms that we have and are founded upon Scripture, by men who were converted to Jesus Christ. Christianity is under a swell of lies and attack by those who would eliminate Christianity even as it has and attempts to eliminate Christians. How is this happening? It is because Christians have gone asleep. Many Churches have fallen prey to the culture of this world and allow that which Scripture speaks against or for to be or not to be in their Church and even in some denominations. Not all Christians are asleep, they are just the minority. The Presbyterian U.S.A. Church allow homosexuals to be part of the leadership, and some Churches allow abortion and use a twited semantic to make their actions to be of the Bible. This going back to the world was happening in the day of Peter so he under the power of the Holy Spirit addressed this problem, and the words of God apply to us today. The writer of Hebrews wrote well these words: "For if we sin willfully after that we have received the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:26). When was the last time you heard this Scripture from the pulpit? Jude, which we will study after the letters of John wrote: "For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodlymen, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 4).
Billy Graham declared: "We have confused liberty with license--and we are paying the awful price. We are a society poised on the brink of self-destruction." Thsoe men and women who came to the United States looking for a place to be able to freely worship God put much emphasis on liberty. They knew and we also know, that is, if one critically thinks about this, that liberty is not the same as licentiousness or a license to do whatever your bodily passions want. Today the cry is for liberty, not the liberty that our founding fathers knew and preached and put into our Constitution, by the cry today is for liberty to do whatever one wants to do, this is not true liberty. Following this line of thinking, if one can do whatever he or she wants then we cannot condemn Hitler, or Mao Tse Sung, or North Korea, or other people who have done atrocities: i.e., the killing of those in Orlando, Florida. If liberty is to be free as being taught and understood by those of today's culture then we have no right to say whatever is being done is wrong. Today it is taught and believed by many that there is no absolute, that there is only absolute relativity. That is not freedom, that is not liberty, for who is to decide that something as the liberty of relativity. The founding faithers did not teach this world's liberty for they have changed the meaning of liberty to fit their licentious lifestye, a semantical change: i.e., as "gay" being now defining homosexuality instead of what the word has always meant, to be happy. Are homosexuals "happy?" Yes, to some extent, but they do have the highest occurrence of sexual transmitted diseases. Hmmm.....!
Author Charles Hummel, fromer head of Barrington College wrote: "real liberty can only be conceived in terms of the purpose for which we were made...." Freedom and liberty cannot be properly defined without consider purpose: that for which something was made. Teh example given by Hummel is a good one: "Consider a modern diesel locomotive flashing accross the country at high speed on shiny rails. Is that trin most free when it is speeding across the countryside on the rails, or when it leaps the tracks and thunders by, smashing barns and houses ans scattering cars and people? Obviously, it is most free when it is where it was meant to be. (Charles Hummel, Becoming Free (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1973), 10.A booklet.
Freedom, liberty, is not a license to do whatever makes a person feel good, or gives him a purpose. Freedom and liberty is to do that for which a person was meant to be and do and that purpose is given to man in Scripture. Changing words, or semantics, is not freedom, it is a liberty to do whatever a person thinks is right or wants to happen and we must avoid any changing of words, whether it be from this world, as in "gay," or from a denomination that adds to their worship that which does not have warrant for it is not the purpose of the Church. Men have crept into the Church with fables, lies, and present Scripture in such a way as to either gain profit, or to just change minds to their way of thinking. Some Christians after hearing the truth go back to their old ways, or they now adhere to a teaching, a doctrine that is not found in Scripture. Furthermore, many have brought into the Church hersies, and allow that which God has plainly and clearly told us that it is wrong.
Yes, we are under attack by Islam, they want to rule you, to rule the world, and some have fallen prey to their rhetoric and teachings because they are those who have returned to their "vomit" or once again are "wallowing" in the mud they had left, or just have never accepted and converted to Jesus Christ, they were nominal Christians at best. As Peter wrote: "the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. for it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness" (2Peter 2:20b, 21a).
We are to examine ourselves and ensure by Scripture that we are following the truth of Scripture and not some man's theology. Yes, you will be affected by your choice and understanding and exercise of faith, but not you only, your children, your grandchildren, and friends, and others you may not even know see you as you really are, therefore, we need to change from the inside/out and fully, completely convert to Jesus Christ at any cost and then to do whatever you can to ensure that those who would destroy Christians and Christianity do not do so. If it is to be done it is up to you and me. Will you do it?
If you will return, O Israel,
return to men," declares the LORD.
If you put your destestable idols out
of my sight and no longer go astray,
and if in a truthful, just and reigheous way
your swear, as surely as the LORD lives,
then the nations will be blessed by Him
and in Him they will glory.
Jeremiah 4:1-2
Seek the liberty found in God
Richard L. Crumb
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