Where is your Blessed Hope?

by Mike Ratliff

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, 12 instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age, 13 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, 14 who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good works Titus 2:11-14 (LSB)

The following is a quote from a sermon by John MacArthur titled ‘The Undying Faith of Christians Facing Death’ in the context of Matthew 24.

“There are false Christians today in the world, there were in the past, there will be in the future. The world is always full of false Christians. There are more false Christians than true ones. I’m afraid to say there may be more false prophets than true prophets. They’re certainly more false representatives of Jesus Christ than true representatives of Christ. But as things get worse, as persecution escalates. The false are going to fall away, they’re going to fall away for reasons that He gives us here. “False prophets will lead them astray,” verse 12, “because of iniquity being increased, their love will grow cold,” they’ll hold on to their sin. The world as it moves is going to get worse and worse and worse. The world’s evil is going to escalate and escalate, we’re seeing it in our own culture today. And people love their sin and as their sin is legitimized, as their sin is normalized, as their sin is legalized they’re going to cherish their sins more openly and more publicly and they’re not going to be interested in the things of Christ and suffering for the cause of Christ.”

That statement really shouldn’t have surprised us. It didn’t me. I’m really not very good at this apologist stuff in that I get discouraged very easily as I research the doctrine, sermons, and what is said by false prophets, and “so-called christian leaders.” Over time, I need to get away from it and rest in my Lord for awhile and get refocused on where my hope really lies. These jokers talk a lot about ‘vision’ and ‘hope’ and ‘transformation’ et cetera, but it doesn’t take very long to see that they are looking for all that from within. They see the potential to be within themselves to do it all. Their hope is in themselves. They may throw God and Jesus around a lot in there sermons, but the focus is all about what they can do and how God has to bless them because they are doing or because they have developed and are pursuing their vision. 

False prophets and false prophecy then and now

by Mike Ratliff

1 Then the word of Yahweh came to me saying, 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to those who prophesy from their own heart, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh! 3 Thus says Lord Yahweh, “Woe to the wickedly foolish prophets who are walking after their own spirit and have seen nothing. 4 O Israel, your prophets have been like foxes among waste places. 5 You have not gone up into the breaches, nor did you build the wall around the house of Israel to stand in the battle on the day of Yahweh. 6 They behold worthlessness and lying divination who are saying, ‘Yahweh declares,’ when Yahweh has not sent them; yet they wait for the establishing of their word. 7 Did you not see a worthless vision and speak a lying divination when you said, ‘Yahweh declares,’ but it is not I who have spoken?”’”Ezekiel 13:1-7 (LSB) 

A false prophet is one who claims to teach the truth from God and His Word, but who actually teaches from the counsel of his or her own heart. God is forever unchanging. He is immutable. His ways never change. His standards never change. At the time of Ezekiel, the kingdom of Judah had become consumed with idolatry. The people mixed Temple worship of YHWH with the worst forms of idol worship. They had taken on the culture and religion of the nations around them. Their culture had become pluralized. They were no longer a separate and unique people from the rest of the nations. The mechanism in people that powers this is compromise. The standard for God’s people has always been to be eternally focused with God in control. Compromise always moves God’s people to make decisions that are temporally focused because obedience to God is always counter to the demands of culture and the temporal.

Work Out What God Works In

by Mike Ratliff

12 So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.Philippians 2:12-13 (LSB) 

God is Sovereign. He has not surrendered any of His sovereignty to any of His creatures, and that includes Man. My Pastor has been preaching through the story of Joseph from the Book of Genesis for that last several weeks. It is obvious to all that God was in complete control of all of those things that happened to Joseph that culminated in his becoming Prime Minister of Egypt during one of the worst famines to ever hit that area. Joseph didn’t just happen to be found by a man who knew that the sons of Jacob had moved to Dothan. Joseph didn’t just happen to come upon his brothers. The caravan of traders didn’t just happen to come by as Joseph’s brothers decided to sell him into slavery. Potiphar, the Captain of Pharaoh’s Guard, didn’t just happen to buy Joseph. It also didn’t just happen that Joseph ended up in prison with the King’s prisoners for a crime he didn’t commit.

The Source of the New Birth

by Mike Ratliff

6 That which has been born of the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who has been born of the Spirit.”John 3:6-8 (LSB) 

I grew up as a Southern Baptist. Much of the memories from my childhood have something to do with being at church each and every Sunday morning and evening. One thing I remember was an annual event in our church called a ‘Revival.’ The Pastor and his staff would plan it for a certain date, put that date in every church bulletin leading up to it, put signs up in front of the church advertising it, and make announcement after announcement from the pulpit to remember the upcoming ‘Revival.’ The speaker for these revival meetings was usually some evangelist I had never seen before or a Pastor from another SBC church. One time we had a group of brothers come in and ‘do the revival.’ One preached, one played various instruments, while the other sang solos. That was my concept of ‘Revival.’ Is it possible for people in one place to plan for a certain date and time on the calendar to be the time and place God moves, pouring out His spirit on a local body of believers? The emphasis in those ‘Revivals’ I witnessed were on evangelism instead of a moving of God to bring about repentance and a rededication of a group of people to live for God instead of self. 

Penal Substitution

by Mike Ratliff

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. 11 And not only this, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.Romans 5:6-11 (LSB) 

As I researched the doctrine of Penal Substitution for this article I was amazed at the lengths some people go to in order to obscure God’s truth through man-centered verbiage slanted away from Sacred Scripture towards human reasoning. Not one piece I read that decried Penal Substitution could attack it exegetically. In every case I read, the focus was on the barbarity of such a doctrine and how this shed a very negative light on the character of God. Before we go any further let us define what Penal Substitution is.

Penal Substitution is a theory of the atonement within Christian theology, especially associated with the Reformed tradition. It argues that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished in the place of sinners, thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive their sins. Penal Substitution is, therefore, a specific understanding of substitutionary atonement, where the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ death is understood in the sense of a substitutionary punishment.

The Compromised Church is rooted in Spiritual Blindness

by Mike Ratliff

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23 (LSB) 

Since I began this blog back in 2006 and became involved with discernment ministries such as Christian Research Network, I have become aware of a disturbing phenomenon in the Church in America. Perhaps you have noticed it as well. The phenomenon I am writing about is willful ignorance in our spiritual leaders.

The Nebulous Jesus

by Mike Ratliff

31 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly My disciples; 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s seed and have never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”John 8:31-33 (LSB) 

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
neb·u·lous
–adjective
1. hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused: a nebulous recollection of the meeting; a nebulous distinction between pride and conceit.
2. cloudy or cloudlike.
3. of or resembling a nebula or nebulae; nebular.
[Origin: 1375–1425; late ME < L nebulōsus full of mist, foggy, cloudy. See nebula, -ous]

—Related forms
neb·u·lous·ly, adverb
neb·u·lous·ness, noun

cer·tain·ty
–noun, plural -ties.
1. the state of being certain.
2. something certain; an assured fact.
—Idiom
3. for or of a certainty, certainly; without a doubt: I suspect it, but I don’t know it for a certainty.
[Origin: 1250–1300; ME certeinte < AF, equiv. to certein certain + -te -ty2]

—Synonyms 1. certitude, assurance, confidence. See belief. 2. truth.

truth
–noun, plural truths
1. the true or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth.
2. conformity with fact or reality; verity: the truth of a statement.
3. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths.
4. the state or character of being true.
5. actuality or actual existence.
6. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude.
7. honesty; integrity; truthfulness.
8. (often initial capital letter) ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life.
9. agreement with a standard or original.
10. accuracy, as of position or adjustment.
11. Archaic. fidelity or constancy.
—Idiom
12. in truth, in reality; in fact; actually: In truth, moral decay hastened the decline of the Roman Empire.
[Origin: bef. 900; ME treuthe, OE tréowth (c. ON tryggth faith). See true, -th1]

—Related forms
truthless, adjective
truth·less·ness, noun

—Synonyms 1. fact. 2. veracity. 7. sincerity, candor, frankness. 10. precision, exactness.
—Antonyms 1. falsehood. 2, 4, 7. falsity.

Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

I have always loved Astronomy. Looking into the sky at night in Oklahoma back in the mid to late 1950’s we could clearly see the Milky Way and planets and the constellations. This was before light pollution washed out the night sky. I remember seeing pictures in the library books I checked out on astronomy back then. I had no problem understanding the differences between stars, planets, comets, asteroids, meteors and meteorites. However, at that time, it seemed that there was still a great deal of conjecture about the nature of nebulas. Their explanations left me confused.

Revival or Reformation?

by Mike Ratliff

1 Hezekiah became king when he was twenty-five years old; and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. 2 And he did what was right in the sight of Yahweh, according to all that David his father had done.
3 In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of Yahweh and repaired them. 4 And he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them into the square on the east.
5 Then he said to them, “Listen to me, O Levites. Set yourselves apart now as holy, and set apart as holy the house of Yahweh, the God of your fathers, and bring out the impurity from the holy place. 6 For our fathers have been unfaithful and have done what is evil in the sight of Yahweh our God, and have forsaken Him and turned their faces away from the dwelling place of Yahweh, and have turned their backs. 7 They have also shut the doors of the porch and put out the lamps, and have not burned incense or offered burnt offerings in the holy place to the God of Israel.2 Chronicles 29:1-7 (LSB) 

We must admit that the spiritual condition of the 21st Century Church in this country and in most of the West is generally or mostly apostate. Thankfully, God always has His remnant of faithful believers even in the worst apostate periods. Over the last several posts we have been looking at righteousness, repentance, sanctification, Antinomianism, and the nature of salvation. The resistance to some of these teachings has been quite eye-opening. There are some who see any call to walk righteously as hypocritical because they associate it with self-righteousness. Is walking in right behaviour hypocritical?

Persecution is the natural result of teaching or preaching God’s Word without compromise

by Mike Ratliff

14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. 17 This I command you, that you love one another.
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. John 15:14-19 (LSB) 

A study of the book of Acts reveals that as Christianity spread as the Apostles obediently made disciples wherever they went, it was always accompanied by persecution. The hotter the persecution the more encouraged the brethren became. While that is not logical to the fallen mind, that is exactly how God grew His church. In the early 2nd century the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John, was brought to the Roman authorities and ordered to confess that Caesar is lord. Polycarp was eighty-six years old at this point. All he had to do was utter that statement as he offered a pinch of incense to Caesar, but he refused. He was martyred by fire.

What is Knowledge?

by Mike Ratliff

8 ἀλλὰ μενοῦνγε καὶ ἡγοῦμαι πάντα ζημίαν εἶναι διὰ τὸ ὑπερέχον τῆς γνώσεως Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου μου, δι’ ὃν τὰ πάντα ἐζημιώθην, καὶ ἡγοῦμαι σκύβαλα, ἵνα Χριστὸν κερδήσω 9 καὶ εὑρεθῶ ἐν αὐτῷ, μὴ ἔχων ἐμὴν δικαιοσύνην τὴν ἐκ νόμου ἀλλὰ τὴν διὰ πίστεως Χριστοῦ, τὴν ἐκ θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην ἐπὶ τῇ πίστει, 10 τοῦ γνῶναι αὐτὸν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν τῆς ἀναστάσεως αὐτοῦ καὶ [τὴν] κοινωνίαν [τῶν] παθημάτων αὐτοῦ, συμμορφιζόμενος τῷ θανάτῳ αὐτοῦ, 11 εἴ πως καταντήσω εἰς τὴν ἐξανάστασιν τὴν ἐκ νεκρῶν. (Philippians 3:8-11 NA28)

⁸ But even more so I consider all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, on account of whom all things I suffered loss and I consider them dung, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness that is of the law, but the righteousness through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based upon faith,  ¹⁰ to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death, ¹¹ that if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:8-11 translated from the NA28 Greek text)

Speaking from experience, which I am sure most of you can relate to very much, one the most frustrating things for me to bear is to have to be subjected to a teaching or information or even something shared about a situation or another person that I know to be false beyond any doubt and yet those expounding what is not true either will not listen to the truth or are beyond the reach of my revealing the truth to them. It is an amazing thing to witness those sure in what they perceive to be the light of a truth that really is darkness. Those mired in postmodernism may at this moment be wanting to scream at me that “truth is relative,” however that stance is illogical and the orthodox Christian doctrinal stance says that God’s truth is revealed to us in his Word and his truth is immutable, eternal and authoritative. This being so, and since believers should seek to be Orthodox Christians who reveal their authenticity through their Orthopraxy as they abide in Christ, through this they must come to a true knowledge of their Saviour. In fact, genuine Christians have that hunger born of the Spirit as Paul declared in the passage above that to “know him” was worth losing all things that this world has to offer. I submit that in our time there are many declaring that they have attained this knowledge, but what they proclaim reveals that they are liars because what they are saying our Saviour is like or what he is saying the Church is to be about is not Biblical. We know they are liars and are, therefore, false teachers or wolves in sheep’s clothing, because we compare their teaching with the straight line of God’s Word, our Orthodoxy and this reveals that what they are saying is Orthodoxy is, instead heterodoxy, that is, another truth, therefore, a lie. 

The Time of the End

by Mike Ratliff

20 Come, my people, enter into your rooms
And close your doors behind you;
Hide for a little while
Until indignation passes by.
21 For behold, Yahweh is about to come out from His place
To visit the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth;
And the earth will reveal her bloodshed
And will no longer cover those of hers who were killed. Isaiah 26:20-21 (LSB) 

God is Sovereign! He has always been and always will be Sovereign. I use Gmail as my main email. Unfortunately Google embeds ads in the interface just above the control buttons. Sometimes I will see something interesting there and click it. Usually I regret it. I once saw one that advertised a study that was supposed to show the real definition of Hyper-Calvinism. I am Reformed in my Theology, but I abhor Hyper-Calvinism. I know that many confuse the two so I hit the link to see what was what. The formula this writer of the document used to determine if a person was Hyper-Calvinistic was if all they talked about was God’s Sovereignty and glory instead of insisting on man’s responsibility. While I can see what the writer was trying to say I also saw that even though he agreed that God was Sovereign, he still was not sovereign over Man’s will. I read about half the document then gave up because the further I read the less Sovereignty God had and the more Man had. I had to go get a cold drink of water after that because it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Isn’t this the very essence of Man’s rebellion against God?

Repost of: Warning Against Apostasy

by Mike Ratliff

11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern both good and evil.Hebrews 5:11-14 (LSB)

Apostasy: [Middle English apostasie, from Old French, from Late Latin apostasia, defection, from Late Greek apostasi, from Greek apostasis, revolt, from aphistanai, aposta-, to revolt : apo-, apo- + histanai, to stand, place; see st- in Indo-European roots.]

Noun pl -sies abandonment of one’s religious faith, political party, or cause [Greek apostasis desertion] from: Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

I posted this back on May 5th, 2020, however, last night I was doing research and ran across a video that claimed to identify the AntiChrist. I watched it. It was well done and the man who had done the research and was making those claims was a Jewish Christian who had published a book about the subject and the video was an interview that included a great deal of his proof. Because I came to agree with his research I also knew that if what he was claiming to be true was, in fact, true then the next thing we would be witnessing in the Church is the Great Falling away. That is why I am reposting this. Here is the link to the video.

I am convinced that a good way to understand apostasy and what causes one to abandon his or her religious faith is to think of it in the verb form of “to forget.” In the history of civilization, the battle between intellectual honesty and intellectual barbarity is one that has cycled back a forth for millennia. When intellectual honesty is on top, truth is seen as succinct and knowable and authoritative. When intellectual barbarity is on top, truth is seen as relative and completely unknowable.  In case you weren’t sure, we are now in an intellectual barbarian stage in the 21st Century.

I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content

C. H. Spurgeon from his Morning by Morning Devotional for February 16.

“I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.”—Philippians 4:11.
THESE words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. “Weeds grow easily.” Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We need not sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to earth: and so, we need not teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education. But the precious things of the earth must be cultivated. If we would have wheat, we must plough and sow; if we want flowers, there must be the garden, and all the gardener’s care. Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven, and if we would have it, it must be cultivated; it will not grow in us by nature; it is the new nature alone that can produce it, and even then we must be specially careful and watchful that we maintain and cultivate the grace which God has sown in us. Paul says, “I have learned . . . to be content;” as much as to say, he did not know how at one time. It cost him some pains to attain to the mystery of that great truth. No doubt he sometimes thought he had learned, and then broke down. And when at last he had attained unto it, and could say, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content,” he was an old, grey-headed man, upon the borders of the grave—a poor prisoner shut up in Nero’s dungeon at Rome. We might well be willing to endure Paul’s infirmities, and share the cold dungeon with him, if we too might by any means attain unto his good degree. Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented with learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience. Brother, hush that murmur, natural though it be, and continue a diligent pupil in the College of Content.

Christ the Foundation Stone

by Mike Ratliff

42 Jesus *said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures,
‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED,
THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone;
THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD,
AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES’?
43 Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation, producing the fruit of it. 44 And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”Matthew 21:42-44 (LSB) 

The message to the Christian throughout the New Testament is to deny self, to view with contempt the temporal or world system, to understand that love of the temporal and genuine discipleship are mutually exclusive because it is from the former which all genuine believers are being delivered. This deliverance is progressive mortification of all carnal affections and impediments. This must be so in order for the Christian to attain more speedily the heavenly Kingdom of Christ. It is to Christ’s Kingdom that all believers are called by the grace of God and it is revealed to them in His Son. All believers have received this by faith, possessed it by hope, and have therein confirmed it by Holiness of life.