Yea but how do I know you are a Christian ....I cant see your heart....you could be acting the part of a Christian for all I know. Anyway, I'm not a Calvinist....but I do know how a Calvinistic Methodist would have answered the question.
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How far would you go to witness to a Satanist?
- Thread starter righteousdude2
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Yea but how do I know you are a Christian ....I cant see your heart....you could be acting the part of a Christian for all I know. Anyway, I'm not a Calvinist....but I do know how a Calvinistic Methodist would have answered the question.
Yep - You don't know my heart but you might know by my fruit on here or if you knew me in real life you could see it too. You could see a consistency for the last 42 years of a walk with the Lord. That would be an awfully long time to act - especially in the face of severe trials.
Severe trials sister....I sincerely hope not! Perhaps I'm biased but I believe there is a purpose for severe trials....and excuse me for reaching, but I believe that this purpose is to see the Lord in the least of your bretheren.....then (and this is the very hard thing for most) to reach out and touch the flesh.
I have stated this in the past and want to restate....if I were to grow my beard out to the scruffy level, wore shabby clothes (complete with holes) and took an ole cup and begged in front of your church on Sunday morning....what would happen?
I believe that to be the real "real " test of who is or isn't a "true " Christian....and who isn't.
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We would bring you in and have the kids run and get you an egg sandwich. We would see what your needs were and hook you up with those who might be able to help if we couldn't.
Trust me, if you came into our church (which meets in a very barren warehouse, by the way), you'd see all kinds of people meeting there and scruffy beards and torn clothing are nothing.
Just as I posted this, I thought of one of our soundmen. You'd fit right in with him. LOL
We would bring you in and have the kids run and get you an egg sandwich. We would see what your needs were and hook you up with those who might be able to help if we couldn't.
Trust me, if you came into our church (which meets in a very barren warehouse, by the way), you'd see all kinds of people meeting there and scruffy beards and torn clothing are nothing.
Egg-zactly!! People like this HAVE appeared at the door of our church and they are invited in.
EWF - I feel you have had some bad experiences with churches, but please don't allow that to color your feelings of the church in general.
Yes there was once one man who got it actually two.....but that's in the past and they are both dead....and they have made these men's churches a place abhorant to Christ. I still look but I don't find. You might take me in but when I was hungry I was turned away, and when I was ...... oh what's the use....God saves,not churches. Therefore, look to find me with the broken, with the destitute, with the orphans and the widows....that's my church, where I
will find Christ. And isn't that what God is calling us into? Read John 20:27....does not Thomas the apostle resemble us and our temptation for heady faith? So what does Jesus do? He asks Thomas to touch the wounds......and that bretheren completes it. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.
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I'm not asking you to change what you feel you need to do. I'm not asking you to dress up in a suit and tie and join those who only perform Sunday rituals. There's enough of that malarky going around.
I'm just asking you not to close the door on finding a congregation of believers.
AAAAAAAAAAMEN, SISTER SCARLETT!!!! AAAAAAAMEN!!!!!
One cannot separate the head from the body-----Jesus Christ being the head and the church being the body!!!
So, keep searching for one where the head is not separated from the body and the body is not separated from the head
And note----that the Lord Jesus is not coming back for the homeless, the ridiculed, the down and outers, the punks and the pimps
Christ Jesus is coming back for a spotless church!!! He's coming back for His body!!! The down and outers, pimps, punks, and homeless----when they come to the Lord Jesus just like I did----they become part of the church that I belong to---I belong to the church that belongs to the Lord Jesus!!:thumbs:
Excuse me for butting in on this conversation .... BUT how a Calvinist Methodist, or Calvinist Baptist, or Roman Catholic, or Mennonite, or Lutheran, or evangelical. Whatever would have answered your question pales in light of what and how we should respond to any question about our salvation and our relationship with Jesus.
It is not the doctrine that saves us. It is not the doctrine that covers our sin. It is not the doctrine that promises and assures eternal life. It is not the doctrine that we are faithful to and lives to please. It is not the doctrine that pleases God.
Paul says this about religion in Romans 1:17-18, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
He then goes on to describe those who were and who will succumb to the things of the world, the things devised from man's intellectual understandings and warped approach to worship and serve a Holy God in Romans 1:18-32, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
It is clear to me that if one is expected to respond to our questions about salvation and our relationship with Him, it should not be based upon one doctrine OVER another, but on what happened on the cross, and how Jesus has changed our life. Is changing our life. And where we will be spending eternity.
I know this will set off a round of discussion, because I have trampled upon the vaunted and lofty expectation that men have of their precious doctrines. And while it is necessary that the church follows doctrines, it is when man places more emphasis upon the doctrines they have written then the words of Scripture, that those man-made doctrines become IDOLS to us, and we then begin to slide further and further from the simplicity of the work of the cross, HIs blood that was shed to cover our sins, and how the cross brings us a new relationship rather than a religion. When relationship turns into religious doctrines and things we must say and do to remain faithful not to God but to the man-made doctrines, then those doctrines become an idol whom we follow, and Paul tells us that we become "fools" and regress into sinfulness, because it is not the doctrines of man, but rather the work of Christ on the cross that changes us, and teaches us, and leads us. Or allegiance and responses must not be to doctrines, but to Christ.
The scripture doesn't say that they shall know us by our doctrines, but by our love. And sorry to say, doctrines squeeze the love out of us, and turn us into the very things God sent HIs Son to put an end to!
Something about Idols, and warnings against making and following Idols. It is my belief that when we hold certain doctrines above the simplicity of the Gospel message, idols are born, and they only grow from that day on: http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Idol-Worship/
Good luck finding a spotless church.:laugh:
I haven't closed the door....rather I have expanded my definition of it.
That was my exact thought. BTW who do you think the "THEM" are in this verse? "Que the Jeopardy music"
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Mark 2:17 New International Version (NIV)
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Your comment is very confusing especially using covens, Satanists and white supremists inner changeably (if I misunderstand, please forgive me).
I simply share the Gospel with them-ie they are sinners, God commands all me to repent and believe and that Christ died to save sinners. It is really that simple.
Why are you scared? I thought that as Christians that we have the Word of God (Bible), prayer, and the Holy Spirit.
BTW, I know of a situation where a man was the Grand Master of a Satanic coven and was even born on Oct 31 (and if you know anything at all about Satanism that is the holy grail of a Satanist) who was truly converted to Christ through someone sharing the Gospel with him. It happens-imagine that. I have never led a Satanist to Christ, but have shared the Gospel with them and it can get quite interesting
Back in the late 1980s, I found myself "witnessing" to quite a few self-styled satanists in Central Texas. It started out by the simple act of prayer. I, and a group of about seven or eight other people were praying for God to break into their lives and unseat the evil one. Next thing you know we were under demonic harassment and found ourselves in close contact with them through circumstances we did not engineer. I decided that God was answering my prayers and took every opportunity to love them in deed and word.
If they are not just play-acting, they are people who are experiencing quite a bit of heady power. The demonic manifestations of power around them make them feel invincible. By being people of love, confidently trusting in God and expressing the grace of the Kingdom of God in action and word, it puts them in a strange position. The grace and love is attractive, but the addiction of power is strong. I had a number of them try spells and send demons after me - much of the time I did not know about it because I did not experience any signs - while other times I faced down impressive demonic manifestations in the name of Jesus. The combination of love and grace and demonstration of God's loving power over the meager malevolent powers of the demonic brought several people we were praying for to repentance and faith in Christ. There were others who began to avoid us in every way possible and that we did not see any manifestations of change in their lives at the time we lost touch. I pray that God continued working with them and they eventually came to faith in Christ.
Saying that, if God is leading the questioner to seriously invest his/her life in witnessing to someone in the occult, you should not discourage it. If they are simply going to wave a tract at them or use an evangelism method (the "Way of the Master" (sic), the "Four Spiritual Laws" or the "Roman Road"), they should avoid an encounter. Clearly they are not spiritually-ready or prepared to
do that type of ministry.
Unless the Lord changes anyone's mind, they cannot come to faith. That's the human condition.
If I go out and manage to change someone's mind about Christ through my rhetoric, sales technique or personal charisma, I still haven't done evangelism.
As a Christian, my job is to immerse the lost into the living and present reality of the life of the Triune God and teach them to do the things that Jesus taught so that they can live and growth in the everlasting Kingdom of God*.
Simply put, that is our commission from Jesus, and we are empowered by his spirit to do it under His unlimited authority.
* And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28-28-20)
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Stil, you spent time with this Grand Master and came away without a thing except valueable experience
The Grand Master was a believer when I met him. He had shared the Gospel with several and seen a few convert to Christ -if I remember correctly.
The Grand Master was a believer when I met him. He had shared the Gospel with several and seen a few convert to Christ -if I remember correctly.