Notes for
Divine Directives- What is God saying to the church?-2
Embrace Righteousness
Revelation 2:7 “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches.
Revelation 2:9-11 ‘I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the slander… Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.
Revealtion 3:1-3 ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, and yet you are dead. Be constantly alert, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent.
The first thing that Jesus is speaking to His people is to embrace righteousness.
Matthew 6:33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you.
What we believe and how we view the world around us is called our worldview.
Only 9% of all American adults have a biblical worldview.
Among “born again Christians,” only 17% had a biblical worldview.
Ephesians 5:17-18, 20-24 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts… That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
What makes your opinion or the Bible’s opinion any better than mine?
If it doesn’t hurt anybody, why can’t I do it?
If it feels good, and I’m an adult, why can’t I do it?
I’m going to choose what I believe.
I’m OK; You’re OK-don’t judge me.
Homosexuality, transgenderism-what is wrong with that?
72% of Americans believe that there is no such thing as Absolute Truth.
64% of born-again Christians agreed.
In 1991, 52 percent of our born again church kids said there is no absolute truth.
In 2002, 91 percent of our born again church kids said there is no absolute truth.”
Relativism says that ethical and moral truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.
Virginia Bill of Rights (June 12,1776): Article XVI That Religion, or the Duty which we owe our Creator… it is the mutual Duty of all to practice Christian Forbearance, Love, and Charity towards each other.
-George Washington:
It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.
-Samuel Chase (signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the first Supreme Court Justices 1799:
By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson 1803:
Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.
-U.S. Supreme Court 1844:
The plan of education proposed is anti-christian, and therefore repugnant to the law…The purest principles of morality are to be taught. Where are they found? Whoever searches for them must go to the source from which a Christian man derives his faith-the Bible…There is an obligation to teach what the Bible alone can teach, viz. A pure system of morality…Christianity…is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public.
Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country…
And we cannot overlook the blessings, which such (lay)men by their conduct, as well as their instructions, may, nay must impart to their youthful pupils. Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation in the (school)-its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated?…
Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?
-Abraham Lincoln 1863:
I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for this Book we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.
-U.S. Supreme Court 1892:
Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.
Charles Potter had a vision to turn our Christian public schools into secular humanistic training grounds.
Secular humanism is the belief that humanity is capable of morality and self-fulfillment without belief in God.
Charles Potter: “Education is the most powerful ally of humanism, and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching.”
Our nation has come to the place where two things are happening:
1) Everyone does what is right in their own eyes.
2) Bad is now considered good and good is now considered evil and intolerant.
Isaiah 5:20-21, 24-25 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight… for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the Lord’s anger burns against his people;
Judges 2:10-14 When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed.
Here is the cycle humanity has repeated for thousands of years:
Step 1: We know God and we do what is true and right.
Step 2: Eventually, children or grandchildren are raised up who don’t know God like we do and they turn their back on God and choose their own beliefs.
Step 3: Disaster strikes; divine judgment comes.
1. What are you basing your beliefs on?
2. Is there any proof that what you believe is actually true?
3. Do the people telling you to believe a certain way have a hidden agenda or reason for that belief?
The truth is that relativism is it is an excuse to live however you want and still feel good about yourself!
