Bible Doctrine

 If you had a large mine field to cross in order to return to a place of safety, would you permit a blind man to lead you across the field?  I do not allow myself to be guided and instructed by those who will not allow the holy scriptures to guide them in what they are to believe and to accept as truth.

There are countless millions who say they believe in God and believe that Jesus Christ was God’s Son and died as mankind’s Savior.  But it seems there are very few who actually believe Jesus Christ – that He spoke utter truth in all the statements He made.  I mean, how many really believe Jesus Christ spoke the absolute truth when He told His faithful followers that they could have whatsoever they asked the Father for in prayer?  (See John 15:16).  Of course He spoke such assurance only to those who “abide” in Him.  (See John 15:7). To “abide” in Jesus Christ means that one continuously stays close to Jesus Christ, allowing their LORD to lead and guide them day in and day out.  THAT is abiding in Christ.  And it is only to that category of believer Jesus promises they shall have whatsoever they ask for in prayer believing.  One who is abiding in Christ, allowing Jesus Christ to guide their thoughts and aspirations will not pray for a new Rolls Royce automobile, or to hit the lottery, or to fulfill some other worldly, fleshly passion.

But what about divine healing from some grave illness?  Can one who abides in Christ ask to be healed without resorting to medical science to provide the healing they desire?  In the past I worked in three different hospitals, one in Texas and two in Kentucky.  I was a medical transcriptionist and typed up hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of medical reports, e.g., surgical reports, medical reports, discharge and admittance summaries, etc.  I know that things can go horribly wrong when human physicians and surgeons begin their treatment of the ill and suffering.  I know it can be quite costly.  Often families spend their entire life savings in the pursuit of medical help for some illness or injury, often to no avail.

It isn’t only unbelievers who reject the promises and assertions made in the scriptures.  Many Christians reject God’s Word as well.  Scripture assures the faithful believer that God not only forgives all our sins but, likewise, heals all our diseases!  (See Psalm 103:3).  Either that is true or it is not true.  As I have pointed out before in several articles I have written on this subject, there IS one illness God will not heal even for the faithful believer, and that is one’s final illness.  For if God healed each and every one of our illnesses, even our final illness, we would be immortal in the flesh and would live to be hundreds and hundreds of years old, dying only in accidents or some such calamities.

I have been healed time and again from many grave and debilitating illnesses – healed by faith in God alone expressed through believing prayer.  I believe the One who has healed me six times will surely heal me seven.  And if God has decreed this to be my final illness, that my life course is over and complete, then a thousand physicians and surgeons working around the clock will not be able to prevent my dying.

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley

It is a tragic shame that there are preachers who have programs on scores of radio and television stations, preaching messages generally every day of the week, but messages that are diametrically opposed to the plain truth of scripture.

David Jeremiah is one such preacher.  I have heard him dozens of times and watched him on television.  Many of his messages are spot on and totally in line with the scriptures, but he preached a message today that will inevitably seal the fate of countless believers, causing them to die premature deaths when they could live for decades more.  His message was on, or I should say, against divine healing.  He wasn’t preaching against the charlatans like Benny Hinn and Oral Roberts, men who claim God uses them to heal the sick.  He was preaching against the idea that God divinely heals today by any means, not even in answer to prayer.  Satan’s blinding power was quite evident in David Jeremiah’s message today.  What on earth does He do with James 5, verses 14 and 15: “Is ANY sick among you (any would include desperately ill folks, believers with even terminal illnesses), let him call for the elders of the church (but don’t call for David Jeremiah), and let them pray over him…..and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, AND THE LORD SHALL RAISE HIM UP!”

Does he think Jesus was kidding when He said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will (that would include asking to be healed when sick), and it SHALL (not might, but SHALL) be done unto you” (John 15:7).

Jesus’ words don’t abide in David Jeremiah.   That’s for sure.  Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or more listen to this man AND BELIEVE WHAT HE SAYS.  How many desperately ill believers will be turned away from believing Jesus Christ, continue in their illness AND DIE, because of this preacher’s words????

He is a smooth talker.  Like I said, I have heard him dozens of times.  He quotes a lot of scripture, even telling his listeners what such and such a word is in Greek or Hebrew, but he is deceived in much of what he preaches.  I guarantee you his congregation rejects the instructions of James 5.  None of the elders of Mr. Jeremiah’s church pray over the sick fully expecting God to heal them.  Show me a congregation that omits this practice and I will show you a pastor and a congregation that embraces profound error and may well be worshiping that “other Jesus” Paul warned us about.  And I’ll bet they’re preaching against Sabbath observance and ridiculing the keeping of God’s commandments.

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12), 

Donald Wiley

“And they (the Jewish leaders) watched Him (Jesus), whether He would heal him (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath day, THAT THEY MIGHT ACCUSE HIM” (Mark 3:2).

To slam the Jewish mind shut instantaneously, one only had to appear to dishonor the sacredness of the Sabbath day!

And what did these Jews do immediately after observing Jesus Christ healing this man on the Sabbath?  “And the Pharisees went forth and straightway took counsel with the Herodians (those with political power) against Him, how they might destroy Him (crucifying Him)” (Mark 3:6).

Few seem to realize that it was the Lord’s supposed Sabbath violation that got Him arrested and killed!  When we read in the opening chapters of the book of Acts that “a great company of the priests believed,” becoming Christians, you can well believe the apostles and their followers were still observing the Sabbath.  Had they forsaken the Sabbath for Sunday observance, honoring the day of the sun god, the day venerated throughout the Roman Empire as a sacred day, they, like Jesus, would have been killed!

I cannot find a sufficient number of adjectives to describe Satan’s ability to deceive.  It is staggering, fantastic, stupendous, mind-boggling…..To think that Sunday observance replaced Sabbath observance starting in Jerusalem and with the apostles and temple priests is about the most ludicrous thought that Satan could inject into the human mind.  And yet Satan’s deceptive powers are so formidable that he has led multiplied millions of Christians and their leaders to believe that this is exactly what happened!

No wonder scripture warns us against comparing ourselves with one another, using another’s beliefs to gauge whether we have and know and practice the truth ourselves.  Satan’s deceptive powers are so great that the other guy, regardless of who he may be, may be utterly deceived and wrong in some, if not much, of what he believes.

Yes, I am going to live a while longer, for the Lord has found one more servant who will come against Satan’s lies with a formidable amount of scripture, who will not cave in to peer pressure, and who will now and always “tell it like it is.”

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley 

In Matthew Chapter 11, verse 27, we read these words spoken by Jesus Christ  to His disciples: “All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knows the Son, but the Father, neither knows any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.”

I fear most Christians read that verse and it never dawns on them what Jesus Christ was actually saying when making that rather cryptic statement.  If God had not inspired the writing of the Book of Hebrews, mankind, yes, and even true believers, would have remained in the dark regarding the words we have just read from Matthew’s gospel account.

Do YOU know who the Son is and who He is not?  There is one denomination in Christianity known as the Apostolic Faith Church, also known as the “Jesus Only” people.  They have been dubbed “Jesus Only” believers due to the fact that one  doctrine they ascribe to says that there is Jesus only in what many call “the godhead.”  They believe that Jesus Christ and God the Father are one and the same person.  After all, didn’t Jesus say to Philip, “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”  Didn’t He also say, “I and the Father are one.”  Doesn’t that settle the matter.  No, not quite.

Yes, Jesus did tell Philip, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” but don’t leap to a false conclusion here.  (See John 14:9).  Jesus was not telling Philip that He and the Father were one and the same being, but only that He so perfectly reflected the Father’s character, mind and personality that to see and know Jesus was if you had actually met and been with the Father.  In Hebrews 1:3 we learn that Jesus bore the express image of the Father’s person.  We are also told in that same verse that after ascending back to heaven Jesus “sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”  Since that moment in time Jesus has served as God the Father’s high priest between God and men.

And when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” He was not saying they were one and the same being.  He was merely saying that they were one in purpose and plan, that they were in total unity in all matters.  The very context in which He makes that statement shows that is what He actually meant.  (See John 10:27-30).  It is in that very same context Jesus says, “My Father…is greater than all,” including Himself!

In Jesus’ high priestly prayer recorded in the 17th chapter of John, Jesus prays that believers “may be one, as we are.”  (See John 17:11).  Therefore, if Jesus saying “I and the Father are one” meant that He and the Father were one and the same being, then He was praying that believers become one and the same being – no longer individuals.  He was merely praying that believers be unified in their beliefs, doctrines and goals, all “speaking the same thing, and that there be no divisions (differing denominations) among you” (See I Corinthians 1:10).  In Luke 1:32 Jesus is called “the Son OF THE HIGHEST.”  Paul would be appalled at the scores of denominations now in Christianity.  (Satan is far better at his job than many remotely suspect).

Following His resurrection, Jesus appears to Mary at the garden tomb.  Notice what He says to her: “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go unto my brethren, and say unto them, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, AND TO MY GOD, and your God.”  (See John 20:17).  Some might argue, “Well, that was true while Jesus was still on earth and in the flesh, but it is no longer true.”  Read on, friend.

Jesus has been back in heaven at the Father’s side for sixty years when He speaks these words to the church at Philadelphia: “Him that overcomes will I make a pillar in the temple of MY GOD, and he shall go no more out, and I will write upon him the name of MY GOD, and the name of the city of MY GOD, which is new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from MY GOD, and I will write upon him my new name.”  (See Revelation 3:12).

In these two verses of scripture alone we see Jesus referring to His heavenly Father as being HIS GOD, and continuing to call Him that after having returned to the Father’s side in heaven and seating Himself at the Father’s right hand!  To be continued…..

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12), 

Donald Wiley

Remember, brethren, Malachi is the book of the Bible that contains the admonition, “I change not!” (Malachi 3:6).  He warns, “I am a great King, says the Lord of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the nations” (Malachi 1:14).  What folly to trifle with this King, who has a spirit army one soldier of which annihilated 185,000 Assyrian warriors! (See 2 Kings 19:35).  But the believer might retort, Christians are immune from God’s wrath and punishment.  Such believers conveniently ignore the Bible’s account of how God struck dead two Christians who were merely posturing before God’s church.  They were seeking self-exaltation.  They envied the praise and good name of Barnabas.  Their egos got involved and their service to God became absolutely worthless.  When a believer resorts to lies and deception Satan is filling his, or her, heart.  Like Ananias and Sapphira, some are laying only a part of their lives at Jesus’ feet. (See Acts 4:33-37 with Acts 5:1-11).

Through the pen of Malachi, God asks the question, “If you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil?  And if you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?  Offer it now unto your governor.  Will he be pleased with you, or accept your person? says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 1:8).  God says, “I gave you my best and I expect your best in return.  Do not bring to me half-hearted, inferior service or obedience and expect from me my best.”  

“You have wearied the Lord with your words.  Yet you say, ‘Wherein have we wearied him?’  When you say ‘every one that does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them,’ or, ‘Where is the God of judgment?'” (Malachi 2:17).

Brethren, the God of judgment is alive and well.  “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3).  The answer is we cannot.  “For the time is come that, judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (I Peter 4:17).  God sees our sin as clearly and as surely as He saw the sins of Ananias and Sapphira.  “But if you be without chastisement (when you sin), whereof ALL (God’s children) are partakers, then are you bastards (false converts), and not sons” (Hebrews 12:8).

“Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.  Prove your own selves.  Know you not your own selves how that Jesus Christ is IN you except you be reprobates…And this also we wish, even your perfection…Finally, brethren, farewell.  Be perfect.” (2 Corinthians 13:5, 9 and 11).

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley

So they don’t receive my written messages?  They didn’t receive Him in the inn at Bethlehem.  So they reject what I say, doubting it is really from God?  His own family rejected Him.  So they do not invite me to speak in their pulpits?  They had no place for Him in the temple.  So they think me to be in error.  They said He had a devil.

Read the prophets.  Those who speak boldly the Word of God were never popular.  “They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword…being destitute, afflicted, tormented…” (See Hebrews 11:37).

The truth of God never has been and never will be popular as long as Satan remains free to spread his deceptions.  Those who speak forth the Word of God in plainness and clarity never will pastor mega-churches with thousands of members laughing and clapping their hands and shouting “Hallelujah!”  But they will be blessed and highly favored by the Most High.

After a miracle ministry of three-and-a-half years the Son of God Himself had but one hundred and twenty staunch followers – 120!!!!  Those who do not read their Bibles closely think the early church of God had thousands and thousands of members and grew exponentially with each passing year and decade.  They get this idea from statements in the Book of Acts, wherein it is written that “the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly (hence, showing God’s holy sabbath was still being honored), and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith (again proving that God’s hallowed sabbath was still intact)” (See Acts 6:7).  They also read that “they that gladly received his (Peter’s) word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls” (See Acts 2:41).  And again, “Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed, and the number of the men was about five thousand” (See Acts 4:4).

But don’t stop your reading there.  Within just a few short decades, or less, we read these words from the apostle Paul: “This you know, that all they which are in Asia be turned away from me…” (See 2 Timothy 1:15).  And later the apostle John would write: “I wrote unto the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, receives us not…prating against us with malicious words, and not content therewith, neither does he himself receive the brethren, and forbids them that would and casts them out of the church” (See 3 John 9-10).

A great false church springs up, producing many offshoot churches.  The true people of God are cast out of those ever-growing assemblies.  The church of God, for the most part, goes underground.  False Christianity blossoms, grows and spreads around the earth.

Christ’s Aged Servant (Galatians 1:1012),

Donald Wiley

“For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified, and whom He justified, THEM HE ALSO GLORIFIED” (Romans 8:28-30).

Seems mighty clear, doesn’t it.  It is all past tense, isn’t it?  We have already been predestined to be saved and granted eternal life.  We have already been called to both hear and accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.  We have already been justified by the merits of His sacrifice.  And we have already been glorified!  

But in what sense have we already been glorified?  Ah, that’s the question.  Have we been glorified in the sense that we have put off our physical bodies and have become immortal, incorruptible spirit beings?  Well, of course not.  That is still future and will not occur until our resurrection from the dead.  (See I Corinthians 15:40-58)

So HOW have believers already been glorified?  We have already been glorified by the forgiveness of our past sins, by God imparting His powerful Holy Spirit to us, and by our being incorporated into the body of Christ, the family of God.  In that sense we have already been glorified and in no other.  We can still fall away, return to the world and abandon our walk with the Lord.  It happens daily, around-the-clock.  And the old argument, “Well, they were never really saved in the first place” is without a shred of scripture support.  God help us all to understand and accept the truth.

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley

How many are the Christians who can quote Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Yet how few are the believers who can quote the 29th verse wherein God informs us just WHAT is this good God is seeking to work in us! I quote: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated TO BE CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF HIS SON, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

Yes, there is awesome purpose in our being called by God to become members of the Body of Christ. It is not merely to save us from eternal death or even to inherit the splendors of heaven. It goes far beyond that and begins in the here and now! God is literally creating a family of spirit sons (ladies included) – what the Bible calls, “sons of light.” (See Hebrews 12:9; James 1:17; John 12:36; Matthew 5:14-16 and I Corinthians 15:40-42). As sons of light, we are called out of the darkness and misunderstanding of this world. And we are called to walk in holiness and purity in this present physical body so as to be a burning and shining light in whatever generation we happen to be born into. Satan hates this doctrine and truth and blinds countless numbers of believers from seeing it. (That is why every warning to beware of spiritual deception is directed to believers. See I John 4:1; 2 Peter 3:17; James 1:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:3, etc.)

God places teachers in the body of Christ “for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect (spiritually complete, mature) man, TO THE MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST” (Ephesians 4:12-13). Let’s not water that down or try to “interpret” it. Those words mean exactly what they say. It is God’s clearly stated intention to conform or mold YOU into the very spiritual image of Jesus Christ, so that upon our Lord’s return He can be presented with a resplendently pure bride that is “glorious…not having spot (of sin) or wrinkle (of impurity), or any such thing, but that she should be HOLY and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). Remember, God has COMMANDED us “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (See I Peter 1:16). Would God give His human followers a commandment He knew good and well could not be obeyed? Peter goes on to say that Jesus Christ “left us an example that you should follow Him, WHO DID NO SIN!” (See I Peter 2:21-22). He further stated that we are to be “dead to sins” and “should live unto righteousness” (See 1 Peter 2:24).

Where do believers get the warped, and frankly satanic, idea that believers cannot break with sin, that sin has been, is now, and ever shall be an insurmountable obstacle for the fully surrendered child of God. 

The apostle Paul says, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (See Romans 5:1). How can I have peace with God if I keep sinning day in and day out? Sin interrupts our peace with God. Our conscience is bothered. We feel a distance developing between ourselves and God when we sin. A believer is to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), a life of joy unspeakable and full of glory – not a life of constant defeat and subsequent depression! Paul says that the believer is “made free from sin” (Romans 6:18). The tempter’s power is broken. Finally, I can say “NO!” to the pulls of the flesh.

Paul told the believers at Corinth that the life of Jesus is to be made manifest IN OUR MORTAL FLESH! (See 2 Corinthians 4:11). Satan would have us believe that the flesh is stronger than God’s Holy Spirit and that as long as we are in the flesh we will do the deeds of the flesh. That is a devil’s LIE! “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” (Romans 6:2). Yes, dead to sin NOW. Turn a deaf ear to any who say that none of us will be free from sin as long as we live in these physical, fleshly bodies. That diabolical error has served to lock-in millions of unsuspecting believers to continual sin and the equally diabolical error that a believer’s own death frees us from sin, not Christ’s death. We then become our own savior – not Christ! What a satanic teaching that is!  The companion error that usually accompanies the foregoing falsehood is that when God looks upon a sinning or disobedient believer all He sees is the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.  When God looks at you He sees YOU!  Your PAST sins have been blotted out. (Romans 3:25).  ANY sin you commit after your justification must be confessed and forsaken in order to be forgiven. (I John 1:9 with Proverbs 28:13). 

“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). We don’t gain the victory over sin through our own human strength and efforts. GOD gives us the victory via the Holy Spirit. “Now thanks be unto God, who always causes us to triumph in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14). Don’t look at your weakness. Look at HIS strength. “Look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). “Having therefore these promises dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves (through HIS strength) from ALL filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). God help you to understand is my hope and prayer.

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley

The Book of Acts is an almost daily chronicle of the history and happenings of the church, the true church, the church led and fed by God’s apostles and miracle-working servants.  And there is something very surprising in that account, especially in its early days.  Coming in to the church, joining themselves with the followers and disciples of Jesus Christ were Pharisees, Sadducees, temple priests, Levites, ordinary Jews, and Gentiles, former pagans (worshipers of such deities as Zeus, Aphrodite, Diana of the Ephesians, etc.).  Now stop and think a minute.  These folks didn’t come to see eye-to-eye and agree on all points of doctrine overnight.  Yet they were all members of God’s true church.  (If there ever was what could be called a “true” church it was the church whose history is given us in the Book of Acts).  All of them had been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ, yet for quite some time they were diametrically opposed in some of their beliefs.  They were all, as it were, “saved,” and heirs of eternal life.  And this explains why you will find truly converted men and women in denominations that differ remarkably as to what they believe and teach. 

Could that plain clothed Amish man driving a horsedrawn buggy be a truly converted, forgiven, Holy Spirit endowed child of God?  Of course!  How about a Lutheran?  Sure!  How about a Roman Catholic?  Yes!  How about Billy Graham, or Jimmy Swaggart, or that tongues-talking Pentecostal pastor across town?  Yes, yes, yes.  But they must all give account to God for just why they believed as they did.  Great eternal rewards can be lost or forfeited.  Did they fail to follow the apostolic command to “prove all things” of a spiritual nature.  Did they hold to a course they knew was unscriptural out of fear of losing their position, their pulpit, their following?  Did pride prevent them from saying, “I have been wrong!”

Never forget that every person you have ever met or ever will meet is either a potential child of God or already is a true child of God who says “Vengeance is mine.  I WILL repay those who offend or harm you.”  That is why we must show respect and compassion toward all men.  Failing to do this, we tread on dangerous ground.  God help us to understand.

Christ’s Faithful Servant (Galatians 1:10-12),

Donald Wiley