No. Abraham lived in an age of special revelation. You and I do not. God does not give infallible revelation outside his word in this age.
How does that make God different then than He is now? Isn't he the same today. He does not change. The problem is that your theology smacks of many parallels to Mormonism. Those who support Mormonism use that same argument to support their doctrine and against Christianity in regards to progressive revelation. I take the position that whatever name you give it that God is still the same today as He was then and chose to deal with and reach Abraham with what he could identify with.
No I didn't. The fact is that I think a certain thing. It may not be factually true thought, but that is a different issue. My statement was a statement of fact. It is factual that I think what I said.
Gossip is things that are not edifying and may or may not be true.
Just because we think about something, it may or may not be correct and it may or may not be edifying. If it tears down a person it is gossip whether it is true or not.
I think the full spectrum of your comments here over the years have made it pretty clear that you think you are among the few actually making disciples.
I know many who are making disciples whom I associate with. The thing that bothers me a lot is when anyone peddles Bible studies and various other gimmicks as discipleship when they are not and never will be. We have people in churches who have Bible knowledge but are afraid to share their faith and do not know how to make disciples. They have been fearful for so long that they have been paralyzed into trusting themselves instead of God. They have not experienced the joy of living for Christ by trusting Him. My heart is in the church. That is the reason why I am there. I also recognize that God uses whomever He wishes where ever He wishes. As a child I had gone to church for 16 years and was turned off by the religious nonsense I saw. One of my best friends in high school was the son of a Baptist pastor. I was never invited to any church function by any Christian I knew in high school. When I began to tell some of them that I had become a Christian the look on their face spoke of shame. It is our responsibility to equip people to disciple others and to be effective wherever they live and work. Why would people share something when they have nothing to share or are not convinced of the truth of it.
One of the men I know was a diver and worked on an oil rig in the ocean. He would spend two weeks at a time on that rig. He told of how he complained to God about the lack of fellowship until he started a Bible study among the men and then began discipling them. Isn't that what discipleship is all about? No pastor or local church would ever be present on that rig.
I don't follow this at all.
Your comment earlier was about an old saying much like and old wives tale and is not in accordance with scripture nor what Jesus did and said.
A review of Baptist history will show that the first Baptist church was not supported by any other local Baptist church because there were not any. The first Baptists left other churches.
You said you invited a Mormon bishop to teach at your church. (BTW, "pulpit" is a metaphor for teaching platform.)
If I ever wrote such a thing then it was wrong. It was me who took a stance against such a practice of about 25 years and the deacons did not like it claiming that the bishop was a Christian. It was like hell came loose. Satan had come in the door of that church. There were past pastors who knew about the practice and did nothing. When I asked other Baptist pastors in our local convention to stand with me I got all kinds of excuses. It was one local pentecostal pastor who stood with me. When I pastored in TX as a church we stood against a teacher that was requiring a text to be read that used very vulgar language. When I asked a number of pastors to stand with us not one would. You might say that is unsual and it may have been but I tend to think that it is typical among pastors and church people. If the pastors of churches wil not lead then how can we expect the congregation to follow?
I spend time studying to preach and teach. I spend time with people one on one teaching them the Scriptures and how to live them and apply them to their lives. I teach regularly about how to get involved in other people's lives and see the fruit of that as they actually go and do it. It is great. It thrills me to see. I just don't feel compelled to talk about it all the time. I don't do it as well as I should. I hope to keep learning though.
Think about what might happen if in America you could no longer pastor a church and it was illegal to meet with a group of Christians then what would you do?
I would contend that you would change the focus of your ministry and would become much more focused on what really matters. When I listen to a friend of mine who was a missionary in a former communist country for about 25 years it gets my attention about what really matters. When I consider Daniel and when he was told not to pray I see a man who was focused on God and not much of anything else.
When I listened to Rev. Wurmbrand years ago and he told of the numbers of pastors who left the faith under threat it grabs my attention and challenges me to reach people in a thorough way so that they ccan reproduce themselves.
When I pastored any other thing I did was pale compared to making disciples. I preached at a large youth conference and when I came back to meet with those I met with each week the cinference was pale in comparison to what I saw in the people I met with and where they were going. They were involved in ministry and reaching other people where I would never be welcomed or ever go. I could not preach enough sermons in my lifetime that would equal what those people were doing. When I think of the last group of college students I met with and consider the fact that each one of them were attending church and some were doing something in church but not one of them were reaching people. At the end of two years everyone of them were doing some kind of ministry to reach people. That is when it gets exciting. No amount of preaching will ever train them to do ministry. It is one person reaching another that trains people and enables them to do reach people where ever they are.
When I see college students in my office who have been to church and know almost nothing about the Bible it grabs my heart. I think of how much time has been wasted in church coming and going while the person was never discipled.
Two weeks ago I met with a young college student that went away to a college out of state and he went down the road from faith in Christ to atheism and is now on his way back to faith in Christ. I met with him for two hours discussing where he was misinformed and how to correctly interpret scripture. I know he heard good preaching every week in the church he attended. I also know that he really did not know his Bible well enough to deal with the challenges he faced. People who know their Bible will not as likely be led astray by the misinformed. I believe we are in a serious struggle in America today for the souls of men and women. I think it is far worse then we think. It is up to the Christians everywhere to teach men and women to be prepared for ministry and know their Bible. I believe we have spent too much time in our churches trying to get people in the door when we should be going to them. I believe there is a deep urgency in this matter today that the church can take care of if it will. If we do not then we will become like churches in those countries which have stood by and watched the world come in. The world will be the world but the church must be the church. This is not a time to be silent and it is not a time to be complacent.
So if you think I am loud and full of passion about discipleship, you bet I am. There is a lot at stake for everyone today if we do not make disciples. Discipleship works most everywhere in every country at any time.
I am with you in that I need to learn more. It seems the more I know, the less I know. My ministry has not been the result of how good I am but about how big God is. If it were up to me it would be a complete failure and it would be as a pile of manure. My ministry is the result of one man reaching me and when it hit me of how gracious God had been to me and how my life changed as a result then I realized that not much else mattered. When I began to think about what lasts for eternity I came to the conclusion of two things.
