The Daily Word of Righteousness

Grace—What Is It?, continued

Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding. (Proverbs 23:23—NIV)

Forget today's teaching and reread the New Testament. Say "Amen" to every verse. Forget about Dispensationalism and everything else you have ever heard.

I know this is threatening. No one wants to believe he has been wrong for many years.

But a true seeker of truth, a person of integrity, does not care how long he may have been wrong. I saw Dr. Ray Jarman turn to Christ after many years as a successful minister, when his secretary pointed out to him the truth of the Gospel. There was a man of integrity! His large church got rid of him when he began to tell the truth.

There is no problem with having been wrong for many years. But there is a huge problem if we are faced with the truth and then do not have enough integrity to change. Even though it may be embarrassing, God will honor us if we are faithful enough to pursue the truth at whatever cost to ourselves.

If God has shown us in time to make a change, we are blessed indeed. But there is absolutely no profit whatever in continuing with what we know to be incorrect. Many souls may be at stake, including our own family, and we do not want to pass into eternity knowing we have been a false witness of God!

I have been preaching for fifty years. Yet I like to think if I find I have been incorrect I am enough of a person to admit I have been wrong and change to what is scriptural.

It is reported that one older minster when confronted with the falsity of the "rapture" teaching said, "Why won't you let an old man be at peace?"

In effect what he said was, "It does not matter what the truth is, I want to be comfortable."

God deliver us! Of all people in the world, a minister of Jesus Christ ought to be a seeker after truth! Can you understand the reason for this? He is responsible for the eternal welfare of people.

Many of us are off the track today. It is time to change. We are preaching our traditions, not the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to go back to the Lord, ask Him to open the Scriptures to us, and then do what He commands.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the lawless-grace message of our day has nothing to do with the Epistles of Paul. Nor does it take much brains to understand Paul's comforting words to the saints in Thessalonica with deceased relatives was by no stretch of the imagination an escape hatch for those on the earth at the time of Antichrist and the Great Tribulation. There is nothing whatever in the text of the fourth chapter of First Thessalonians to suggest an escape from trouble for people already raised from the dead, and yet the totally unscriptural tradition of the "pre-tribulation rapture" continues as though it was solidly supported by the most rigorous exegesis.

Let all of God's saints examine the Scriptures and then turn away from the destructive heresy of the "pre-tribulation rapture." It is leaving the believers unprepared for the age of moral horrors we are entering.

Grace—what is it? Grace is the power and virtue of God in action through Jesus Christ to take fallen man, forgive him, and then recreate him in the image of God.

(from Grace—What Is It?)