None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.  Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.  The venom of asps is under their lips.  Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.  Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.  There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Romans 3:10-18

Man’s condition is utterly hopeless.  There is but one hope…

- William Temple

you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.

Greek study has been and will continue to be the downfall of Protestant Fundamentalism

Other colleges such as West Coast Baptist College which states to believe that the KJV is also the perfect preserved version for English people as well as the entire Sword of the Lord crowd won’t go that far, but it’s the next necessary step to take if you are going to take a “perfectly-preserved-English-version” position.  How could it be ‘perfectly translated’ unless it was a work of inspiration by the Holy Spirit to ensure it to be perfect?  Has man done anything other than the original manuscripts as perfectly?  Nobody in their right mind would dare presume that.  Yet the good folks at Grace Baptist College take it that far and the other KJVOnlyists don’t have the guts to take that next logically necessary step into utter lunacy. So props go out to the administration at Grace.  Congratulations on following your craziness to its ultimate outcome.

A group of false teachers in the Colossae region went around making people feel guilty because they didn’t keep a list of rules not found in Scripture.   To them, even if you had received Christ, you weren’t saved if you didn’t keep their pet menu of rituals and regulations and routines.  External standards are always tempting.  Unconverted phonies can conform to them, so they don’t provide a suitable basis to judge someone’s conversion.  Salvation is by grace through faith, but spiritual bullies desire to coerce others into their own criteria for spirituality, causing confusion and doubt to a church.

So Paul tells these churches at Colossae and Laodecia not to restrict themselves solely because of these false teachers that want them to cramp their lifestyles to earn their way to righteousness (v. 16).  This contradicted the sufficiency they had in Christ (vv. 9, 10).  He wasn’t, by the way, saying to them that they could do whatever they wanted.  Colossians 2 isn’t the only passage in the Bible on liberty.  There are huge chunks of text on this in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians as well.  For instance, he wasn’t requiring them to jump through the salvation hoops of the Essenes, but in other passages he does tell the church to look out for the welfare of the weaker brother.  They didn’t have liberty to sin, to be worldly, to be a stumbling block, to be a bad testimony, to let their good be evil spoken of, to disobey church leadership, or to cause disunity in the church.  But he didn’t want them to be bullied by the onerous self-serving dicta of genuine legalists.

You aren’t a Christian because you show up for church work day, men’s prayer time, and for both times of door-to-door evangelism.  You aren’t a Christian because you are a regular kneeler at the front during invitations and you shout “amen” louder than anyone else in the church.  You aren’t a Christian because you don’t go to the movie theater, don’t subscribe to Sports Illustrated, your hair doesn’t touch your ears, you don’t have a Christmas tree, and you’ve never read a Tolkien novel.  You’re a Christian only because of Jesus Christ, because of His work on Calvary, because of His resurrection, because He intercedes for you on the right hand of the Father, and because of the righteousness with which you are robed in Him.  That will all look like good works and holiness and love for God and others.  However, nothing that we can do will add anything to the fulness that is in Christ.

The problem represented by Paul’s warning in Colossians 2:16-17 can raise its ugly head in any church, but I know it to be a particular one for separatist churches.  The churches often have high, scriptural standards of holiness.  People in those churches can replace actual salvation and spirituality with the rules of the church.  Those rules don’t even exist, but they do in the minds of some.  Some church members might live a double life buoyed by their ability both to wear the Christian uniform and nitpick others who don’t wear it like they do.  Inside they hold evil thoughts and an ugly spirit.  They’ve really developed their own religious system separate from the Bible and true godliness.   This kind of culture can spread, either causing major difficulties in a church or verging on taking over.  Paul says don’t let it happen.

Don’t let spiritual bullies have their way in a church.  I know they latch hold of one thing that I say in a sermon.  I might say that I don’t eat at some restaurant because of the prominent bar and they take that as “anyone who goes there isn’t saved.”  They themselves aren’t devoted to God but they won’t go to a restaurant that maybe they don’t go to anyway, and they’ll condemn anyone  else that goes there because they haven’t kept the rules of the church.  I’ve found that they do very little to help anyone else.  They will even bully the pastor into regulating himself for fear of the campaign they might start due to his inability to keep their ways.  And yet they expect to be thought highly of because they know how to look and they keep all the regulations they know are important.  Some of those standards might be helpful, but they don’t exist as a bar for measuring spirituality.

The Lord Jesus set us free from bondage through His death.   Jesus delivered you from the captivity of Satan and his demons.  Let’s not be bullied into another type of subtle, insidious imprisonment after all that the Lord has done.

Thanks to Kent Brandenburg

Q: What is the chief end of each individual Christian?
A: Each individual Christian’s chief end is to get saved. This is the first and great commandment.

8. Q: How then can we make such a Decision, seeing that the Scripture saith, we are dead in our trespasses and sins?
   A: By this the Scripture meaneth, not that we are dead, but only that we are sick or injured in them.
9. Q: What is the assurance of thy salvation?
   A: The assurance of thy salvation is, that I know the date on which I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer, and have duly written this date on an official Decision card.
10. Q: What is thy story? What is thy song?
    A: Praising my Savior all the day long.
11. Q: You ask me how I know he lives?
    A: He lives within my heart.
12. Q: And what else hast thou got in thine heart?
    A: I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
13. Q: Where??
    A: Down in my heart!
14. Q: Where???
    A: Down in my heart!!
15. Q: What witness aid hath been given us as a technique by which we may win souls?
    A: The tract known commonly as the Four Spiritual Laws, is the chief aid whereby we may win souls.
16. Q: What doth this tract principally teach?
    A: The Four Spiritual Laws principally teach, that God’s entire plan for history and the universe centereth on me, and that I am powerful enough to thwart His divine purpose if I refuse to let Him pursue His Wonderful Plan for my life.
17. Q: What supplementary technique is given by which we may win souls?
    A: The technique of giving our own Personal Testimony, in the which we must always be ready to give an answer concerning the years we spent in vanity and pride, and the wretched vices in which we wallowed all our lives until the day we got saved.
18. Q: I’m so happy, what’s the reason why?
    A: Jesus took my burden all away!
19. Q: What are the means given whereby we may large crowds of souls in a spectacular manner?
    A: Such a spectacle is accomplished by means of well-publicized Crusades and Revivals which (in order that none may be loath to attend) are best conducted anywhere else but in a Church.
20. Q: Who is your boss?
    A: My boss is a Jewish carpenter.
21. Q: Hath God predestined vessels of wrath to Hell?
    A: God hath never performed such an omnipotent act, for any such thing would not reflect His primary attribute, which is Niceness.
22. Q: What is sanctification?
    A: Sanctification is the work of my free Will, whereby I am renewed by having my Daily Quiet Time.
23. Q: What rule hath God for our direction in prayer?
    A: The rule that we must bow our hands, close our heads, and fold our eyes.
24. Q: What doth the Lord’s Prayer teach us?
    A: The Lord’s Prayer teacheth us that we must never memorize a prayer, or use one that hath been written down.
25. Q: What’s the book for thee?
    A: The B-I-B-L-E.
26. Q: What are the seven deadly sins?
    A: The seven deadly sins are smoking, drinking, dancing, card-playing, movie-going, baptizing babies, and having any creed but Christ.
27. Q: What is baptism?
    A: Baptism is the act whereby, by the performance of something that seems quite silly in front of everyone, I prove that I really, really mean it.
28. Q: What is the Church?
    A: The Church is the tiny minority of individuals living at this time who have Jesus in their hearts, and who come together once a week for a sermon, fellowship and donuts.
29. Q: What meaneth “The Priesthood Of All Believers”?
    A: The Priesthood Of All Believers meaneth that there exists no authority in the Church, as that falsely thought to be held by elders, presbyters, deacons, and bishops, but that each individual Christian acts as his own authority in all matters pertaining to the faith.
30. Q: Who is the Holy Spirit?
    A: The Holy Spirit is a gentleman Who would never barge in.
31. Q: How long hath the Holy Spirit been at work?
    A: The Holy Spirit hath been at work for more than a century: expressly, since the nineteenth-century Revitalization brought about by traveling Evangelists carrying tents across America.
32. Q: When will be the “Last Days” of which the Bible speaketh?
    A: The “Last Days” are these days in which we are now living, in which the Antichrist, the Beast, and the Thief in the Night shall most certainly appear.
33. Q: What is the name of the event by which Christians will escape these dreadful entities?
    A: The event commonly known as the Rapture, in the which it is our Blessed Hope that all cars driven by Christians will suddenly have no drivers.
34. Q: When is Jesus coming again?
    A: Maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening, and maybe soon.
35. Q: When the roll, roll, roll, is called up yonder, where will you be?
    A: There.
36. Q: Hallelu, hallelu, hallelu, hallelujah!
    A: Praise ye the Lord!
37. Q: Praise ye the Lord!
    A: Hallelujah!
38. Q: Where will we meet again?
    A: Here, there, or in the air.
39. Q: What can a pastor say while all heads are bowed?
    A. Yes, I see that hand.
40. Q. How is a person saved?
    A. If you walk this aisle…”
41. Q. And what requirement is there if you should fall into sin?
    A. You just need to rededicate your life to God.
42. Q: Can I hear an Ay-men?
    A: Ay-men.