“It is a crime against lost humanity to go in the name of Christ and missions just to do social work yet neglect calling men to repent-to give up their idols and rebellion-and follow Christ with all of their hearts.”
K.P. Yohannon / Founder GFA
“I… resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)
The following excerpt is taken from Carl Henry’s Commentary:
Biblical Expositor: The living theme of the Great Book. Volume 3: Matthew to Revelation, A. J. Holman Company, 1960.
This volume is written by a number of authors, including Gordon H. Clark who wrote the commentary on Romans.
Romans 11 teach that God gave the Jews a spirit of slumber and caused them to stumble in order to bring salvation to the Gentiles. But God has not forsaken the Jews. Once the complete number of elect Gentiles have come to faith, the partial hardening will be lifted and all ethnic Jews (or at least the vast majority) will come to believe in Christ.
Hath God then cast away His people forever? Not at all. First, His people, in the sense of those individuals whom He foreknew, God has not cast away. This does not mean all the Jews. For as it was in the time of Elijah, so now the elect are a remnant. Election is of grace, not of works, so that while the remnant obtained grace, the rest were blinded. God gave them the spirit of slumber and caused them to stumble in order to bring salvation to the Gentiles.
Of course, no one would suppose that God would cast away the remnant elected by grace. But there is also another sense in which God will not cast off His people. The Jews as a race still figure in God’s plan and they will have a glorious future. [Emphasis mine] For if the impoverishment of the Jews in the first century enriched the Gentiles, the return of the Jews in the future will produce much greater blessing. It will be like life from the dead.
The history of the Church can be illustrated by an olive tree. Some of its original natural branches were broken off so that branches from a wild olive tree could be grafted in. This, of course, is no compliment or ground of boasting for the Gentiles. And if God did not spare the natural branches because of their unbelief, the Gentiles should take heed lest God spare not them also. Furthermore, if God has grafted in wild branches, is it not all the more certain that He will graft back the natural branches at some future date?
The blindness of the Jews is to continue until the “fulness [sic] of the Gentiles” be come in. This fulness may indicate a time when the great majority of Gentiles then living shall have been converted. Virtually the whole world will be Christian. Such an interpretation makes a proper contrast with “all Israel” in the next verse. Or “the fulness of the Gentiles” might possibly refer to a time when all the Gentiles whom God has chosen for salvation, even though not a majority, have been saved and God will save no more of them. At any rate, when this fulness occur, then the great majority of the Jews shall be saved also. This ultimate conversion of the Jews was prophesied in the Old Testament. [Emphasis mine]
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! . . . For of him, and through him, and to him are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen” (11:22, 36)
Is food a ‘basic human right’?
What does the Bible say?
2 Thess 3:10—”For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
Yes… it’s a command!
Conform your thinking and values to the Word of God, not to the World. If you are a Christian, your politics and worldview should be shaped by the Word of God.
In the Old Testament, the mark of a true prophet was that he must always be 100% accurate in all his prophecies. If a prophet prophesy something that is not fulfilled, that prophet is false and must be put to death.
Deut 18:20-22 (NET) writes:
20 “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. 21 Now if you say to yourselves, ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’— 22 whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”
In Jonah, we read about how God told Jonah to preach to the wicked nation of Nineveh and to proclaim a message that:
Jonah 3:4-5, 10 (NET)
4 When Jonah began to enter the city one day’s walk, he announced, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!” 5 The people of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them…
10 When God saw their actions—they turned from their evil way of living!—God relented concerning the judgment he had threatened them with and he did not destroy them.
Was Jonah a false prophet for declaring disaster on Ninevah in 40 days when in the end, Ninevah repented and God did not destroy the city?
9 Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
Just in case there is any further doubt that Jonah’s prophecy was a conditional one, let us consider Jeremiah 18:7-10.
Jeremiah 18:7-10 (NET)—7 There are times, Jeremiah, when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. 8 But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, I will cancel the destruction I intended to do to it. 9 And there are times when I promise to build up and establish a nation or kingdom. 10 But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it.
From this passage in Jeremiah, we know that when it comes to prophecies regarding the destruction of nations, they are always conditional. God promises us that if a nation repents, he will not carry out the threats of judgment he said he would do to them.
These two reasons we have covered so far should be more than enough to vindicate Jonah from the charge of false prophecy.
However, there is a third reason I would like to bring to the attention of my readers.
Not many people realize that what God said he would do from the beginning, actually came to pass. This requires a bit of knowledge about the Hebrew and its play on words. Unfortunately, as it is with most translated works into English, such word plays are often lost in translation; but the concept here is not hard to understand, and I think most people should be able to follow what I am about to say here.
3. The third reason why Jonah was not a false prophet is that what he had preached actually came to pass.
Jonah 3:4-5 (NET) says, “At the end of forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown!”
The Hebrew word often translated overthrown, is the Niphal form of the word הפך (hpk), meaning: to overturn or change. This word can also be translated as a reference to an altered/changed heart.
Consider these two examples in the Bible, which like Jonah 3:4, have the same Hebrew verb stem (i.e. Niphal) for the word, הפך (hpk). In both cases, the word is translated as a reference to an altered/changed heart.
Exodus 14:5 (NET)—When it was reported to the king of Egypt that the people had fled, the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people, and the king and his servants said, “What in the world have we done?
Hosea 11:8 (NET)—How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? I have had a change of heart! All my tender compassions are aroused!
In the same way, Jonah’s prophecy against Nineveh can be translated two ways. First, it can be interpreted as:
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”: or, it can be translated as:
“Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be changed (of heart)!”
In other words, Jonah, who was merely repeating God’s word to the people (Jonah 3:1), was actually 100% correct in his prophecy. While he misunderstood his words to mean that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days, God intended those words to mean the opposite—in 40 days, Nineveh shall repent!
Jonah was not a false prophet. If anything, his prophesy was fulfilled in an incredible fashion—in a fashion that Jonah himself did not expect. True to Jonah’s prophecy, the entire nation of Nineveh was converted within an extremely short period of time.
In the same fashion, the Bible tells us that one day, we will see another incident similar to what happened to Nineveh. This time round, it would involve the sudden miraculous conversion of Jerusalem.
The Bible tells us that towards the end of the Tribulation period, Jerusalem will likewise repent and cry out to the LORD (c.f. Rev 11:13). In just a short time span, all of Jerusalem will miraculously repent and recognize Jesus Christ’s kingship over them after an earthquake destroys one tenth of Jerusalem and kills 7,000 people. All who survive the earthquake in Jerusalem will repent and turn to the LORD. When Jerusalem cries out, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD!”(c.f. Matthew 23:39b), Christ will return, defeat the enemies of Israel, bring an end to the Tribulation, and establish his Kingship in His millennial kingdom (c.f. Zech 14).
2 Thess 3:6-15 … we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. … For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.’ … If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”
c.f. 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15
This is a clear commandment from the Scripture — that if a man will not work, he shall not eat. Any professing believer who rejects this teaching and still proceeds to feed those who will not work, is to be shunned and shamed by the Christian community.
This commandment from the Lord should shape how as Christians we are to act. More importantly, this command is not just addressing those who are lazy and who refuse to work. It is first and foremost, addressing Christians who reject his teaching and still insist on feeding those who refuse to work. Such people are to be shunned.
These are all important questions we need to ask ourselves as Christians in light of 2 Thess 3:6-15
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As Vincent Cheng writes,
“This is a rather self-explanatory passage. The challenge is to make Christians take it seriously, and to obey it. Paul had said, “warn those who are idle” in his first letter (1 Thessalonians 5:14), but apparently that did not eradicate the problem. So when he receives report that some of them remain idle (2 Thessalonians 3:11), he brings up the matter again in this second letter. This time he takes on a more urgent tone, first appealing to “the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” and then issuing a “command” to compel the brothers to take decisive action against those who persist in idleness. … It is precisely to those who are not among the idle that the apostle directs most of his statements on the subject. So no one should take what Paul says only as a matter of exegetical interest, but this is something that Christians must do, that all churches must implement as official policy, as a matter of obedience to the Lord Jesus. …The decisive action that Christians are to take against those who are idle is to “keep away” from them – that is, to literally, really, shun them. What? Should we just let them starve? Is that the Christian way? Yes, it is. Paul adds, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’” (v. 10). In the name of Christ, Paul commands all Christians to let idlers starve to death. It would be a sin to feed them. Then, the apostle proceeds to “command and urge” those who are idle to “settle down and earn the bread they eat.” Verse 14 repeats the command to those who are not idle: “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed.” Mark this person. Know him by name and by face. And then avoid any association with him. There must be a concerted effort of the entire Christian community to shun and to shame this person. The command has obvious implications for policies on welfare and charity. Those who are able to work, but are unwilling to work, are to be shunned and shamed. They are not to receive any financial or material aid. If they do not work, they do not eat. If they starve to death, then so be it.
More details here:
http://www.vincentcheung.com/…/26/starve-those-who-are-idle/
Question: What is the best technique to use when preaching to an unbeliever?
Answer: Avoid sugar-coated eloquence in your preaching: The mark of a faithful preacher is one who faithfully preaches the full counsel of God and who does not depend on eloquent speech. He does not shrink from preaching things that may sound unpleasant to the ears of his hearers, nor does he use all kinds of worldly entertainment to make church more appealing to unbelievers. Rather, the faithful preacher depends on the Holy Spirit to move and to save those who are his. Consider what Paul says in 1 Cor 1:17, “ For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
Why would eloquent wisdom empty the cross of its power?
Until a preacher/evangelist understands this, he has not grasp the essence of effective biblical evangelism. In contrast to all the worldly gimmicks used in modern day evangelism, we read: “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (c.f. 1 Cor 1:31) The person who accepts the Lord’s teaching concerning this has “the mind of Christ.” (c.f. 1 Cor 2:16), while the one who disagrees with this is given a rebuke by the Apostle Paul–effectively asking him who he thinks he is to instruct God concerning effective evangelism (c.f. 1 Cor 2:16)
1 Cor 2:14-16 (ESV) The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
In preaching the full counsel of God in its plainness, the preacher moves not “in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” (c.f. 2 Cor 5). In direct contrast to the seeker-sensitive movement, the Apostle Paul taught that sugar-coated preaching of eloquent words, empty the cross of its power. (c.f. 1 Cor 1:17). In short, if you want to avoid making false converts, and if you want to be faithful in preaching the word of God; if you want to be an effective evangelist pleasing before God; and if you want to see God move in the Spirit to convict hearts, preach the full counsel of God in its plainness. The Lord will save those who belongs to him, and the Spirit will convict hardened hearts. Remove unnecessary gimmicks in your preaching and focus on the word. The modern day preacher only has a short amount of time to teach a whole list of biblical truths. Use that time wisely. Preach the word with clarity and as plainly as possible, and pray that the Lord moves in power to save those only he can save. Do not water down your sermons, but preach the deep things of God. It is the Spirit who illuminates the eyes and ears of your hearers and give them understanding, not you.
There is also a popular trend to limit the preaching of a sermon to only three points. In some churches, they now limit this to one point! These preachers claim that if we teach more than three points in a sermon, people are not able to absorb what is being taught. To be an effective preacher and communicator, they say, a preacher should limit his sermon to only three points. How tragic. By those standards, we must conclude that Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets must have been the worst preachers. They preach ten… even twenty point sermons. Preach the word in its entirety. It is the Lord who brings understanding to them, not you. And if the Spirit so wishes, he is able to cause your hearers understand everything you preach to them, and cause them to remember it all, and even reveal truth to them through your sermon that you might not have thought about. Three point sermons are nothing more than a disguised attempt at manipulating the sermon with eloquent wisdom. No. Seek to preach the text in its entirety to the best of your ability. It is God who gives understanding and discernment of his word. You want to know how to move in the Spirit? Begin first by getting rid of all these gimmicks. Trust the Lord to illuminate their minds. Preach the word plainly, and the pray.
This my friend, is the most important lesson an evangelist/preacher must learn. Preach the full counsel of God in its plainness. Sadly, this simple truth is one of the most neglected teaching in evangelism/mission course.
Consider what the Apostle Paul says on this very subject:
1 Cor 1:17-25;1 Cor 2:1-5 (ESV)
1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”
20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
2:1 And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling,
4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
Isaiah 6:8 is a verse often misused by many churches. It is used from everything from encouraging people to sign up to become missionaries, to asking people to dedicate their lives to God.
Isaiah 6:8 (ESV)
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
What is the context of this passage?
Answer: God is sending Isaiah to preach the word of God to a Nation that will not listen. He is being sent to preach God’s word to a people in order that God might harden their hearts and in so doing, bring judgment to the nation–Until everyone is killed: leaving behind only the “stump”.
“The holy seed is its stump.”
The ministry of Isaiah was primarily one where as a preacher of God’s word, he was commissioned to preach the word of God in order that God might bring about the hardening of hearts. Through that, God would judge the nation and bring about destruction. Isaiah 6:8 is indeed a missionary passage. It is a verse about God commissioning Isaiah as a preacher/prophet; but it is not to be understood in the way most churches use it.
Let us not forget that the preaching of the word serves a dual purpose. Both conviction of Sin as well as the hardening of hearts are part of God’s purposes in the proclamation of the Word. God’s word that goes forth, never returns to him void. It always does what it is meant to do.
Yet if the proclamation of the word serves both the purpose of hardening of hearts as well as the conviction of sinners from sin (since Isaiah’s call was primarily one of hardening hearts through preaching), we must conclude that Isaiah was bearing fruit in his ministry even through the process of hardening hearts.
This tells us that a preacher/missionary/pastor should not be judged by the size of his congregation, nor by the number of decisions he gets people to make, but by his faithfulness in proclaiming the full counsel of God. A missionary to an unreach people group who faithfully proclaims the full counsel of the word of God his entire life, yet see nobody coming to faith, is a still successful preacher. Like Isaiah, we must conclude that he has bore much fruit in his ministry if he is faithful in proclaiming the full counsel of God. When Christ returns, he will receive the full wages for his faithful labor. (c.f. 1 Cor 3:8 ESV)
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. . . Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. (1 Cor 3:7, 12-13 ESV)
Indeed, Isaiah’s labor in proclaiming a message to harden hearts, bore much spiritual fruit.
In light of this, what do we make of the church growth movement? It demonstrates that the entire church growth movement is based upon an unbiblical motivation, as well as on an inadequate understanding of what it means to be successful and bear fruit.
The implications of understanding God’s purposes in both election and reprobation are many. One of the main reasons why churches nowadays are swarmed with KPIs, Church growth techniques, entertainment to attract unbelievers, and the reason why they are always setting numerical targets for the church, is because they do not have a biblical understanding of what constitutes success and “fruit” in Christian ministry. They have no place for an Isaiah, nor do they understand that God’s purposes go beyond the salvation of individuals, to God’s own self-glorification. But that is another discussion for another day.
For a start, let us begin by first correcting our misuse of Isaiah 6:8.
Habakkuk 1:5 is a verse that is often misused by churches to stir their respective congregation towards a “church vision”, or as a promise how God is promising them that their respective congregations will experience great and magnificient things in the near future. This is not what Habukkuk 1:5 says.
Habakkuk 1:5 (ESV)
““Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told.”
The verse is not a positive verse at all. Read the context: It is speaking about God sending the Chaldeans to kill and conquer them.
Habakkuk 1:5-11 (ESV)
“Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
that you would not believe if told.
For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
that bitter and hasty nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth,
to seize dwellings not their own.
They are dreaded and fearsome;
their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.
Their horses are swifter than leopards,
more fierce than the evening wolves;
their horsemen press proudly on.
Their horsemen come from afar;
they fly like an eagle swift to devour.
They all come for violence,
all their faces forward.
They gather captives like sand.
At kings they scoff,
and at rulers they laugh.
They laugh at every fortress,
for they pile up earth and take it.
Then they sweep by like the wind and go on,
guilty men, whose own might is their god!”
A man after God's own heart 
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