Blessings in Christ Jesus,
I don’t know about you but I am excited to take on February 2017. I believe God has blessings and obstacles waiting for each of us individually and all of us collectively and am excited to see God further reveal His faithfulness.
I wanted to provide some further thoughts on salvation (as I had preached about it this past Sunday at BPBC) and provide some resources on that topic for you as well. I have a couple of Facebook notes that I had written on the topic of Salvation. You will find those links below. However I just wanted to share some highlights from those notes as I reviewed last night and this morning.
“According to 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, we believe in vain if we do not believe the message that Paul preached, and in Galatians 1:6-9, the man who preaches and throws people into confusion with another gospel other than the gospel that was preached by the Apostles is ETERNALLY CONDEMNED. Yikes! That is enough incentive for me to make sure that I am in line with the teaching of the Apostles.” – Pastor Michael Miano
In my studies of Scripture and following proper Biblical interpretation and context I have seen that Biblical salvation always has to do with God being understood as King!
I mentioned a bit this past Sunday that coming to a truly salvific moment requires work of the Spirit of God and is a work done in those He calls and elects. Natural theology as it has come to be known is to be rejected, and as some scholars have noted it comes close to “robbing God of His glory” when we say that man can come to truly know God by observing nature.
There is a damaging trend in the Christian Church – the ‘knowledge of God’ has been turned into “religious feel good messages/ cliches” and a captivation with having a partially-sanitized self-righteousness (you know- it’s all about not smoking, not drinking, and not doing the things the ‘big bad world does’). Instead the knowledge of God should be leading us to worldview apologetics (1 Peter 3:15), namely asking ourselves and others what source of knowledge and wisdom is lead our lives? Are we falling in love with our Creator by the revealing of Himself and His Will, or falling into false narratives?
Also, here is a great video presentation done by a brother with a beautiful accent on fulfilled covenant salvation –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADKqHVYlXAg
**Remember our Adult Sunday School now starts at 9AM. Also, feel free to join us for a Saturday Bible Study anytime, we follow the dates and reading at the following link,http://oneyearbibleonline.com/weekly-one-year-readings/?version=49&startmmdd=0101
In Service to Him,
Pastor Michael Miano