The devil is a liar.

 

When you find people in government,

 

 

church, school, etc. lying

 

you know whose side they are on. 

– eab, 7/28/12

Read Full Post »

Tares and Wheat

The tares and wheat together grow,

At harvest time angels will know,

They’ll separate good from the bad,

The tares to be burned, Oh, how sad!

Are you wheat?  Do you for Christ glow?  -eab, 2/2/07

Penned in eastern Ontario, Canada, while pastoring the Kingston Pilgrim Holiness Church.

Read Full Post »

Well . . . has it?

Has the church become a non-Prophet organization?

                   – eab, 7/92 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Temple Talk

He went into the temple

Where you’d think one could look up.

But his attitude was humble,

He saw “dregs” in his cup.

 

He asked God for mercy;

He beat upon his chest,

Called himself a sinner

(Not better than the rest).

 

He cast his eyes downward,

They sought the lowly ground.

But God, who measures all things:

The simple, the profound,

 

Liked his honest spirit,

Heard his call and cry,

Knew he meant his temple-talk,

Knew it more than “humble pie,”

 

And justified his soul;

He went back to his own place,

With a calm in his heart,

And heaven’s smile upon his face.

 

Friend, the next time you go to meeting,

The next time you’re in church

Avoid petty piousness,

Avoid the highest perch.

 

Look at God, worship Him,

And see yourself contrasted,

As this man of old did. 

His grace has ever lasted.            – eab, 5/2000

 

Written while Associate Professor Bible at Hobe Sound Bible College, Florida

Read Full Post »

Lpost – John Darby (born Nov. 18, 1800)

John Nelson Darby was a British-Irish blooded, Dublin-trained, lawyer who turned Church of Ireland minister and then moved on (1828) to help establish the Plymouth Brethren.  He would perhaps be unknown today but for his meeting with eighteen-year-old Margaret MacDonald who is said to have had a vision regarding a “secret rapture” of the church.  Though this doctrine has other, older, questionable roots, Darby popularized it in the Isles and in America having a strong influence on C. I. Scofield.  Scofield in turn, placed the secret rapture idea in his Scofield Bible and today it has widely held acceptance among many evangelicals though the word rapture is non-biblical.  Many also have failed to atempt to reconcile their concept of “thief in the night” with the rest of Peter’s inspired words, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” 2Pe 3.10.  Three items are here which surely seem to not be secret.

Jesus is going to come! That is in the Bible.  The return of Christ is not in question! 

Too many are accepting the doctrine of a “secret rapture” without examining it.  Look up it origins (the “s” is purposeful) – it will surprise you.  The secret rapture appears to have catholic roots. It has also this visionary root in MacDonald. 

Conversely does a “secret rapture” have any roots in the actual Bible?  Do your homework.  Be willing to re-examine this doctrine.  Or for many – be willing to examine it for the first time.  Can (will) this doctrine play into the hands of the antichrist?

One source to see is Grace, Faith, and Holiness, (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1988), 586.

Read Full Post »

Faith

I’ve never been to Bethlehem,

Nor walked by Galilee.

And the hills that knew my blessed Lord,

I may never live to see. 

But I’ve tried to trace His footsteps,

Across the Sacred Page. 

And by faith, I know He rules today,

As He has in every age.

 

O, Faith, faith without it, 

You just cannot please the Lord.

Have faith, faith, to doubt it, 

Brother, you cannot afford.

For faith is the substance

Of things hoped for and yet not seen.

And lack of faith is why the church is so awfully lean.

                                                                         –eab, 11/1973   

 

Written while principal of Wyandot Christian School in Ohio

Read Full Post »

Lpost – Ventriloquism Is Not of God!

One of the signs of our age is the worldliness of the supposed church.  Among the major changes is what is being accepted as “innocent” entertainment.  Once “Howdy-Doody” and Charlie McCarthy were clearly seen figures of the world.  They had no church association.

 Today the world is coming into careless Evangelical churches and even some so-called holiness connections via ventriloquism.  Ventriloquism is always tied to humor – canned, pre-planned jokes – both forms of carnal entertainment.  It may surprize some that ventriloquism is addressed by the Ante-Nicene writers – writing in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries.

 Ante-Nicene Fathers II, Clement of Alexander, The Instructor: Book 2

“But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own diseases, are ruled by a most lickerish demon, whom I shall not blush to call the Belly-demon, and the worst and most abandoned of demons. He is therefore exactly like the one who is called the Ventriloquist-demon. It is far better to be happy than to have a demon dwelling with us. And happiness is found in the practice of virtue.”

Ante-Nicene Fathers III, Tertulian, A Treatise on the Soul: Ch.28

“—we know very well what are the resources of magic skill for exploring hidden secrets: there are the catabolic spirits, which floor their victims; and the paredral spirits, which are ever at their side to haunt them; and the pythonic spirits, which entrance them by their divination and ventriloquistic arts.” For was it not likely that Pherecydes also, the master of our Pythagoras, used to divine, or I would rather say rave and dream, by such arts and contrivances as these? Might not the self-same demon have been in him, who, whilst in Euphorbus, transacted deeds of blood? 

 Ante-Nicene Fathers V, Hippolytus On the Sorceress (ventriloquist), or On Saul and the Witch, On Kings

“The question is raised, whether Samuel rose by the hand of the sorceress or not. And if, indeed, we were to allow that he did rise, we should be propounding what is false. For how could a demon call back the soul, I say not of a righteous man merely, but of any one whatever, when it had gone, and was tarrying one knew not where?”

 Ventriloquists themselves (and/or modern writers about them) know they have these roots in the sinful world.  Read on

 A Feature Profile of Ventriloquist David Strassman, Published in the London Daily Telegraph, 1997

“Ventriloquism started life in ancient societies not as entertainment, but to get in touch with the dead. In Greece, Africa and even the polar regions, people believed that departed spirits took up residence in the stomachs of prophets from where they foretold the future. (The word ventriloquist comes from the Latin term meaning “belly speaker”) . . . From day one the church saw it as the work of the devil, except in France where they were much more relaxed. Cardinal Richelieu even hired a ventriloquist to play a practical joke on a bishop he did not much like.”

Can ventriloquism make a comeback? | Stage | The Guardian

“Ed Sullivan considered his show incomplete without a “vent“. Now neither of Sullivan’s two mighty successors, David Letterman and Jay Leno, will have anything to do with what they call “prop acts” . . .Odd that a practice with this kind of pedigree should have become stage entertainment; and even odder that it should have evolved during the late 18th century into a form almost exclusively associated with the dummy, cousin only slightly removed from the devil doll, taker of pins and curses, comer to life.”

Catharine Price at Mother Jones describes her experience at the convention with Christian illusionists:

“As the annual convention of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians kicks off on a hot July afternoon, the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University is awash in displays of irreverent reverence. Ventriloquists converse with Scripture-quoting puppets, unicyclists pedal through the halls, and a man plays “Amazing Grace” on a turkey baster. In the gym, vendors sell mysteriously materializing Communion cups, paper that dissolves in water (perfect for making sins “disappear”), and fire-spouting Bibles ($50 each, they open “with or without flames”). Visitors to the auditorium are greeted by a Noah’s ark and Jesus, life-size and complete with cross and crown of thorns, made from balloons by a group of self-described “balloonatics.” Outside, preteens wearing gold crosses and short shorts practice high kicks: The five-day event coincides with a gathering of the Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders.” www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/religion_in_america/hocus_pocus_for_jesus.html

 

 If your church is using ventriloquism or cheap pre-planned humor. please pray it away and do not support it.  It is clearly the world taking the center of the church platform.

How sad then than what were once careful living people have allowed the dummy/doll of ventriloquism to enter holy doors.  How sad that the church is determined to laugh (and that at canned humor) while the world teters on the brink of destruction.

Read Full Post »

Earth’s First Institution?

 

 

It was not the state      – politicians may hate to hear that.

 It was not the school       – professors may hate to hear that.

 It was not the church        – preachers may hate to hear that.

 Earth’s first institution was the HOME 

                                       – may all Parents applaud that!

                                                                             – eab 

Read Full Post »

Church

A certain kind of people,

Meeting under a tall steeple,

Imagine that that’s the church.

Tall walls do not a church make.

New birth is more than a handshake;

Which these find out when in a lurch.

 

The church is made of redeemed hearts,

And though they meet in various parts,

Under clear sky, under a huge tree;

Worship, that’s why we gather,

Even in cold, wet weather.

Church is you and me.         -eab,  10/1/08

 

Written at Westfield,Indiana

 

Read Full Post »