author's thoughts

The Primary Threat to Man’s Eternal Existence on this Planet:  Belief Without Faith        

By Paul J. Wickliffe

I have prayed for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and words in what I am about to write. Approaching 47 years in Christ, namely my spiritual birthday being November 28, 1976, I have been deeply moved over what Providence has permitted in my life and the moral and spiritual decline of this “city set on a hill”—my America the beautiful.

Enduring unimaginable physical pain, suffering and sleepless nights, I have experienced two bouts of severe ulcerative colitis and two parathyroid surgeries. The last surgery extracted a benign tumor, one of the larger growths the surgeon had ever seen. Along with my health challenges, I have been privy in witnessing a cultural decline moving at warp speed. This spiritual famine within our Republic has moved me to unspeakable bouts of grief and despair. It was only by Jesus’ grace that got me through, his hope that buoyed my soul, and Christ’s promises that gave me clear direction in a double-minded and confused world gone mad.

With that said, let me get to my most urgent and pressing point. It’s a question to my audience. Do you know what the New Testament teaches regarding redemption and where that puts you in the eternal scheme God has scripted for your life? I say this because the time is short. Short, because your life, and mine, is a vapour that appeareth for a time, then vanisheth away (James 4:14). It is short because the seed of the serpent has made it clear what their 2030 objective is—massive global depopulation, with those remaining being cyborgs to serve the global masters. This conspiracy labeled by the Left against Constitutionalists has dramatically shifted within the last three years and become a tidal wave of undeniable, empirical evidence.

Jesus words, his New Testament, declares that he came to set the captives free. Yes, Jesus died for your sins, but you were also imprisoned to the flesh and held captive by the world. Without his blood shed for the ransom of many, I would not be where I am today. 

So, the first tenet the New Testament teaches is that JESUS DIED FOR SINNERS! While this is the call God extends to all, it is NOT the anticipated hope of the elect that have been chosen.[1]

Of profound significance, the second tenet revealed in the New Testament is THE HOLY SPIRIT’S DESCENT.[2] It involves most importantly, the crucifixion of the sin nature—the destruction of pride with its seat of sin. This single, one-time event grants to the sinner a new position from darkness to light, from hell to heaven, from judgment to blessing. At that moment the saint also experiences the loosening of the world with its lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. 

Also occurring at the same time as transformation, sanctification involves the holy setting apart of the saint for God’s purposes. It is the reason the believer must come out from the world with its participants and touch not the unclean thing. One must avoid worldly associations as much as possible. Worldly, physical, and spiritual separation is one of the keys marking a believer’s transformation and therefore proof of the Holy Spirit’s residence within. If this mindset and behavior are not evident, the Spirit is absent and the individual remains lost, blind, naked, and condemned. 

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit’s descent reveals the individual’s complete inability (biological, spiritual, innate)[3] to come to God on their own. Scripture’s third tenet involves man’s radically corrupt nature and God’s election of the sinner.  This teaching completely destroys the heresy of man’s ability to come to God on his own (Legalism, Circumcision, Nicolaitanism, Gnosticism, Arminianism, Pelagianism, Romanism and Protestantism[4]). The idea that man can come to God freely, in the context of redemption, is not taught anywhere in scripture. 

The fourth tenet in scripture, is that with the death of the beloved disciple John, that page in Bible history had been completed. The word of God would now take center stage in the realm of spiritual authority for the believer. No human, visible, clerical agency, hierarchy and entity was to supplant the authority of Jesus’ words.

   
On top of that, an additional fifth tenet must be observed. In I John 2:27 Jesus tells his followers that they would now be taught by the blessed anointing and abiding of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ words that the Holy Spirit would be the believer’s teacher would now materialize. Not only would there be no need for a visible church, as was necessary during the apostolic church age, where the church was “the pillar and ground of the truth” (I Tim. 3:15), but the Holy Spirit would now be the teacher to the believer instead of a pastor or minister. 

I John 2:27 (K.J.V.)

But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. 

I must warn you that what you have just heard is not taught in any Catholic church or Protestant assembly. Grace and assurance are opposite of works and doubt. This is how they keep getting you to come back, time and time again, through shame, guilt, manipulation, and deceit. This shameful and subversive behavior is what has marked the church post-apostolically,[5]whether it be Rome or Reformation’s Protestantism. 

WHAT THE NEW TESTAMENT TEACHES ABOUT BEING BORN AGAIN:

1. Jesus died for sinners
2. The Holy Spirit’s baptism accomplishes crucifixion, transformation, and the mind of Christ
3. Man is corrupt and cannot save himself. By one man, all have sinned.  Election negates “free-will.” A creature subject to bondage is not free
4. Jesus’ words, The Holy Bible, is the believer’s authority
5. The Holy Spirit is the believer’s teacher. Any defense for the establishment and acceptance of a top-down clerical agency (religious collectivism), in any of its forms, cannot be biblically justified

  FAITH VERSES

• Acts 19:2—He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.
• Rom. 7:18—For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
• Rom. 8:9—But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
• Heb. 4:2—For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

WHY I DON’T ATTEND A PROTESTANT CHURCH, BUT RATHER HAVE A HOUSE CHURCH

1. The origin of Protestantism—As an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther didn’t cease to be profoundly influenced by Rome’s teachings as well as Rome’s saint Augustine of Hippo (Roman north Africa, 354-430 A.D.) What Luther vehemently opposed was Rome’s immoral leadership and specific teachings—magisterium (pontifical teachings) vs. biblical faith (“the just shall by faith.” Gal. 3:11). While rejecting Rome’s transubstantiation, Luther championed consubstantiation, or the belief that Christ is with (con) the Eucharistic elements. The bread and grape juice (“fruit of the vine”—Matt. 26:29) are merely physical representations, possessing no inherent, esoteric significance. They were memorialized in the communion Christ shared with his apostles and are to be observed by all succeeding believers
2. What Protestantism is—Simply put, Protestantism is denominationalism which Paul condemned in I Corinthians 1:11-13. From the Reformation, denominationalism, which is nothing more than the cult of personality (William Miller (Adventism), Charles Wesley (Methodism), John Wesley (Wesleyanism), Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah's Witnesses), Joseph Smith (Mormonism), Chuck Smith (Jesus movement in California, Calvary Chapel and Maranatha Music founder, 1971), Tim LaHaye ("Left Behind" book series with Jerry Jenkins, human temperament profiling based on psychological analysis), John Wimber (Vineyard Church founder, Rodney Howard Brown--disciple of Wimber, "holy laughter") fractured into innumerable denominational splinters. This phenomenon came to be known as religious sectarianism
3. What Protestant churches, as well as all Christian churches teach (not exhaustive by any means):

• WORKS—In spite of a church’s statement of faith, the church’s very existence depends on its staunch devotion to numbers, consensus, and marketing. Grace is completely absent, because its opposite, works, rejects redemptive freedom
• LEADERSHIP—With the completion of the Bible, all physical-clerical agencies would be subject to the eternal, inspired, inerrant, and completed scriptures. This is not what is evident in the post-apostolic church 
• TEACHER AND TEACHING—While I don’t say Bible teachers are not important, they cannot and should not ever be substituted for the real thing—the Holy Spirit (John 16:13; I John 2:27)
• SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY—For the believer, there is only ONE authority—the completed, inerrant scriptures (K.J.V.). C’mon, do you observe the Bible’s authority in any Christian church? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
• ‘CHRISTIAN’ PSYCHOLOGY—As a blatant oxymoron, no shred of biblical evidence can support such outlandish teachings as personality profiling or blaming others for your own, ungodly, carnal decisions. What ever happened to the Bible as one’s standard for determining the individual’s direction, purpose, hope, and confidence in life
• SCRIPTURE CELEBRATES FREEDOM AND THE UNIQUENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL, CHURCHIANITY INDOCTRINATES DEPENDENTS AND MAKES COLLECTIVISTS—A totalitarian, clerical hierarchy always produces slavery and a reprobate mind

FOOTNOTES:   

[1]  Matt. 20:16—So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Matt. 22:11-14—And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: 12 And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. 13 Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.

The wedding garment representing Christ’s righteousness imputed to the crucified saint, is an event that happens only once in the elect’s life—baptism by the Holy Spirit—“one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” (Eph. 4:5)

John 15:16—Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

[2]  Recorded in Acts 2, and fifty days after Christ’s crucifixion or Passover (Ex. 12:1-6--April, 14)  Pentecost is celebrated. Called the feast of first fruits it was observed by the harvest and thanksgiving to God for his blessing upon the land, his people, and the crops. 

[3]  Man’s physical and genetic make-up being polluted by sin is what is known as biological sin. While man has been granted a moral conscience, this isn’t enough to save him. This spiritual deficiency, while a component of man’s personality, is not adequate to deliver the sinner from judgment to blessing. This eternal dilemma is known as man’s spiritual sin or alienation from God. Man’s cognitive integrity to think clearly, reason logically, and reflect on Christ as the Creator of all, is what is known as innate sin. 

[4]  Within Protestantism, the exception to this might be the acronym T.U.L.I.P. or man’s total depravity; unconditional election; limited atonement; irresistible grace; perseverance of the saints. While this was advocated early on by Calvin’s followers, many Lutheran and Presbyterian denominations have abandoned grace for works and man’s total corruption for the heresy of man’s free-will.

[5]  The death of John, the gospel writer, in 99-100 A.D. marks the end of the apostolic church age and the preeminence of Jesus’ words, the Bible, as the believer’s authority, NOT THE CHURCH.