Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Testimony of Connie Spivey


Testimony of Connie Spivey

Going back over my childhood isn’t easy to do and I find it hard to write about; but I believe that God wants me to do this and if that is what he wants me to do; I am more than glad to do it. Growing up in the country is so different than in a large city, not so crowded with families living many miles apart. So brothers and sisters usually just played together, my sister who was two years younger, and I were pretty close.
There was an elderly couple holding Sunday school classes at the country school where I attended. My mother allowed my sister who was ten, and I was twelve to go the first Sunday. I was so surprise to hear what they were saying as they told us that God loved us so much that He gave His only Son to die on a cross and paid for all our sins and all we had to do, is just believe on Him, and accept Him into our lives and, we never had to worry about not going to Heaven when we died, that God gave us eternal life and it was a free gift! I had never felt loved as a child and I couldn’t imagine anyone loving me that much so it was easy for me to just accept Him into my life and believe in the One who had did that for me! I wanted that Person more than anything I could think of. I don’t think I understood all that was being said but, I remember when they were asking us if we wanted to accept Him as our Savior, I know I was saved in my seat but, when they ask us to come down to the front I was more than glad to go. Will when I got down to the front as I looked back I notice that all the children were gone and we were the only ones left. They had all gone home and my sister had gone also, there were thirteen of us left.

So I had to go home alone, and I couldn’t understand why my mother was anger with me. I learned my sister had told her what had happened and she was waiting with a belt for me. I was afraid of her because she had used it on me many times, but couldn’t see what made her get that anger at me since, I didn’t feel like I had did anything wrong. I was so happy before I got home and it was hard to imagine this was happening, all my joy I had felt was turning into sadness. But she said there was no such thing as “Once Saved always Saved” and I was too young to be saved in the first place.

She just told me to go to the table and eat lunch but I wasn’t hungry at all, I was wishing I could go back to school and talk some more to the nice couple who; had made me so happy with what they told me. I was devastated as I heard her telling me I could not go back to the classes anymore, since they were going to continue them through the summer. I was wondering if the other children would get to go. Will anyway I was afraid to ask her if I could go back, after that! I know that was the worst thing I felt could happen to me. I don’t believe my family understood how hurtful that was to me, my sisters that were older, made ugly remarks that hurt me. I didn’t know why they were doing this to me and why did they not understand about God; and all the things He had did for them, I was afraid to tell them, so I just kept it to myself. It wasn’t easy growing up in a non-Christian family, but time went quickly and I wanted to go to High School, we lived quite a distant from a small town where the high school was and I could walk to the bus that carried the country children to the high school in town. But after my first year my parents let me live with my Grandmother who lived close to the school.

I found that Children weren’t much different than the little country school where I had gone. The children seemed more mature than I was, and I found myself spending all my time in my books.

It seemed like everyone just lived as if there was no God! At least that was the way it looked to me; I guess they just wanted to have fun anyway they could. I knew I couldn’t forget my experience I had, and although I was confused and I had no one to talk to, and I was very lonely. I couldn’t talk to my family or my Grandmother and so that left me just talking to the “One who had made me so happy on that summer day.” I did not know He lived inside me at the time. But I did know I could trust Him with everything and I just talked to Him, I knew He was the only real friend I had. I had tried reading my bible but found I couldn’t understand it. I knew I needed someone to help me understand the Scriptures, but I was afraid to even mention it, since my mother had acted like I did something wrong when I came home from Sunday school that day. I can’t explain why I felt the way I did, but I guess it was because of the fear, that my mother had put into me as I was growing up. I know that she made a difference between me and my other sisters.

I became confused not knowing just what to do, not having any Christian friends, and not knowing how to meet them. I know there are those who might wonder why didn’t I just go to a Church and ask the people to give me all the answers I wanted to know? But I remembered what had happened when my mother told me there was no such thing as “Once saved always saved” I was afraid they would tell me the same thing.

I believe God watches over His children and I believe He was watching over me all that time. I later moved to a large city and that is where I met my husband; I found He couldn’t help me with my questions either, but he understood more than I did. He was a Christian also but, his mother had brought him up in a Pentecostal Church. So he didn’t know that he had eternal life at the present time either. He was dissatisfied with the way the Church where he went believed on the subject of our Security in Christ. Now I believe that was the reason maybe we met since we both had some of the same problems. Maybe we would be able with God’s help to find the answers we needed.

But I didn’t know it would take so long, and God wants us to know the truth and to hide it in our hearts so we can live for Him the way He desires us to. I now know that it is so much easier to live for the Lord, when you know you have eternal life and He will never take it from you. Because eternal life is eternal or it isn’t eternal life at all. So that was why I was having so much trouble and so confused, there is nothing to rejoice about if you can lose your salvation. How could you trust God and be worrying about loosing your Salvation at the same time.

But I still had a lot to learn and it took me many years to forget about those bad things that had so confused me when I was young. I would read the New Testament over and over, since that was where my husband told me to read. He knew that I certainly couldn’t understand the OT so I read the new Testament through over 15 times in about 6 months. But it was not until after my second child was born and in school. One day I was reading my bible and praying for the Lord to help me, see the Security of the believer just like I did as a child of 12. While I was reading the book of John it seemed like John 3:16 stood out to me as if it were the first time I had read it, although, I had memorized it. I was taken back in my mind to the time when I was in the little country school and I could see the same thing again. I realized I had everlasting life all that time. You can’t imagine how I felt, all my joy returned to me and I was just as happy as I was years before. I couldn’t thank God enough for what He had done for me and for allowing me to once again to see that I could not lose my salvation.

I am hopeful that my Testimony will be a help to those who may have problems about the fear of loosing their Salvation after they are saved. I know that God will keep us in Christ and I can just trust Him for everything. I can certainly trust Him after all the Scriptures say so much about our security in Christ in His Word. Here are some of them that I have made a part of my life. John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 5:24, “He that hearth my word and believeth on Him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Colossians 2:2, Buried with Him in Baptism wherein also ye are raised with Him through the faith of the operation of God, Who hath raised Him from the dead.” (Corinthians 12:13) “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one Body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles whether we be bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:5-6) “Even when we were dead in sins, have quickened us together with Christ (by Grace ye are saved) and raised us up together, and made us set together in Heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” I realize as far as God is concerned we are already seated in Heaven since, we are put into His Body, by the Spirit of God. We just have to wait for our Heavenly Bodies. (1 Thessalonians 4:16) “For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Arch Angel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”(Verse 17) “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

I believe with the help of the Lord, my husband Cecil, and I was used in my mother’s life, and she was saved before going to be with the Lord. Trying to live up to certain standards to get to Heaven is one of Satan’s lies. I know I have eternal life and the devil cannot take it away from me. Romans 8:38-39, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, not life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor heights, nor dephs, nor any other Creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We are now attending a Grace Bible Church about thirteen miles from us, and I know that the Lord has helped us come to the knowledge in His Word and to find the fellowship we have found in where we are right now.


HE PROVE HE WAS GOD
Connie (Ashlock) Spivey 1997

HE PROVED HE WAS GOD - Connie (Ashlock) Spivey 1997


 Posted By Cecil and Connie Spivey
cspivey1953@gmail.com



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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Paul’s Gospel By - William R. Newell



           
Paul's gospel

by WILLIAM R. NEWELL
 

There are two great revelators, or unfolders of Divine Truth in the Bible—Moses in the Old Testament, and Paul in the New. 

Someone may say, "Is not Christ the Great Teacher?" In a sense this is true; but in a real sense Christ is the Person taught about, rather than teaching, in the Gospels. The law and the prophets pointed forward to Christ; the Epistles point back to Him; and the Book of Revelation points to His second coming, and those things connected with it. The Four Gospels tell the story how He was revealed to men, and rejected by them. Christ, Himself, therefore is the theme of the Bible. Moses in the Law reveals God's holiness, and thus by means of the Law reveals human sin, and the utter hopelessness and helplessness of man. Paul in his great Epistles reveals Christ as our Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption, and All in All. 

The twelve Apostles (Matthias by Divine appointment taking the place of Judas) were to be the "witnesses" (Acts 1:22) of Christ's resurrection—that is, of the fact of it. They were not to unfold fully the doctrine of it, as Paul was. The twelve were with Jesus personally, and knew Him as a man; and when He died they saw it. When He was buried, they knew it personally, as eye-witnesses. And when He was raised, they found it out experimentally, visiting His actual tomb, and seeing that it was empty. They were also to see and handle the physical, risen body of our Lord. And it was with them that our Lord abode on earth forty days after His resurrection, "shewing Himself alive (physically, in a body) by many "infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3). 

This great fact—that is, that the Person that the Jews themselves well knew they had crucified and buried, was risen Romans the dead and ascended to heaven—this tremendous fact the twelve Apostles witnessed to Israel at Jerusalem, and everywhere else. Thus we find the opening chapters of the Book of Acts filled with the single testimony that Jesus of Nazareth had risen Romans the dead; and that remission of sins was through Him. 

But unto none of these twelve Apostles did God reveal the great body of doctrine for this age. Just as God chose Moses to be the revelator of Israel for the Ten Commandments, and all connected with the Law dispensation; so God chose Saul of Tarsus to be the revelator and unfolder of those mighty truths connected with our Lord's death, burial, and resurrection, and His ascended Person. And all the "mysteries" or "secrets" revealed to God's people in this dispensation by the Holy Spirit are revealed by Paul. Finally, Paul is the unfolder of the great company of God's elect, called the Church, the Body of Christ, the individuals of which body are called members of the Body of Christ—members of Christ Himself. 

No other Apostle speaks of these things. Peter himself had to learn them Romans Paul (2 Pet 3:15-16). When Paul finishes his thirteen great Epistles (Romansans to Philemon) those which belong to the Church, God indeed permits him to give a message then to the Hebrews. This is not part of the Church's doctrine, but is simply explaining to Hebrew Christians the character, the real application, the typical meaning, of their Levitical system—that is, how it pointed forward to Christ. 

James addresses his Epistle to "the twelve tribes"—that is, his Epistle has special reference to the Jewish Christians in the early days, and to such throughout the dispensation, for that matter. Peter writes to "the strangers who are sojourners of the Dispersion," that is, to the dispersed Jews who acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. 

In the second of Galatians we are distinctly told by Paul, that James, Cephas and John were to go to the circumcision, while Paul tells us that his message was to the Gen-tiles. Since then the testimony by the Jewish Apostles to the Jews was duly given, there is now no distinction between Jews and Gen-tiles; and Paul's message holds good for the world, both Jews and Gen-tiles. So that we find Paul finally sets the Jewish nation aside in the last chapter of the Book of Acts, and opens his great Epistle to the Galatians at the center of the world with the statement that "there is no difference" between men; for "all have sinned;" and that there is again "no difference," for "whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;" since the same Lord is "Lord of all" (Romans 3:22-23 and Romans 10:12). 

God does as He pleases, and it pleased Him to choose—first to save people in this dispensation through "the foolishness of preaching," or the "preached thing"—that is, through the message about the Cross, and what was done there (See 1 Cor 1:21). And second, it pleased Him to choose Paul to be the great proclaimer and revealer of just what the Gospel is for this dispensation. 

You can judge any man's preaching or teaching by this rule—Is he Pauline? Does his doctrine start and finish according to those statements of Christian doctrine uttered by the Apostle Paul? 

No matter how wonderful a man may seem in his gifts and apparent consecration— if his Gospel is not Pauline, it is not the Gospel; and we might as well get our minds settled at once as to that. Paul calls down the anathema—that is the curse of God Himself—upon anyone who preaches any other Gospel than that which he declared (Galatians 1). 

Not for one moment are we to believe that James, Peter and John were at variance with Paul—not in the least. They were given certain things by the Spirit, to say to certain classes of people. They do not conflict with Paul. And their words are included in the statement that "All Scripture is profitable" (2 Tim 3:16). 

But, nevertheless, Paul is the declarer and revealer of the Gospel to us. Take Romansans to Philemon out of the Bible and you are bereft of Christian doctrine. For instance, if you were to take Paul's Epistles out of the Bible, you cannot find anything about the Church, the Body of Christ, for no other Apostle mentions the Body of Christ. You cannot find one of the great mysteries, such as the Rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4; 1 Corinthians 15) or the mystery of the present hardening of Israel (Romansans 11). No other Apostle speaks of any of those mysteries. Paul alone reveals them—the great doctrines such as Justification, Redemption, Sanctification. And what is perhaps the most tremendous fact of every real Christian's life, that of his personal union to the Lord in glory. Paul is the great divinely–chosen opener to us of truth for this age. 

The great doctrines that Paul reveals may be outlined as follows— 

1. The unrighteousness before God of all men. 

2. The impossibility of justification by works before God—that is, of any man's attaining a standing of righteousness before God, by anything done by him. Do what a man may, he is a condemned sinner still. 

3. The fact and the scripturalness of righteousness on the free gift principle—that is, of a Divine righteousness, separate Romans all man's doings, conferred upon man as a free gift Romans God. 

4. Propitiation. That satisfaction of God's Holy nature and law for man's sins rendered by Christ's blood. 

5. Reconciliation. The removal, by Christ's death for man, of that obstacle to righteousness which man's sin had set up between God and man. 

6. The plan of the actual conferring of the gift of righteousness upon all who believe, without any distinction. This change of a sinner's standing before God, Romans one of condemnation to one of righteousness, is called Justification. Negatively, it is deliverance Romans guilt on account of Christ's shed blood, and deliverance out of the old creation, by identification in death with Christ on the Cross. Positively, it is a new standing in the risen Christ before God. 

7. Redemption. The buying back of the soul through the blood of Christ Romans sin; Romans the curse of the law—even death, involving exclusion Romans God, under penalty; Romans the "power of death," which involves the hand of the enemy; and Romans all iniquity. 

8. Forgiveness. The going forth of Divine tenderness in remitting penalty for sin, in view of the blood of Christ trusted in; and in complacency and fellowship, to creatures who before were necessarily under Divine judgment. 

9. Remission of sins. That is, the actual removing of transgressions or trespasses Romans the sinner, so that for all time and eternity his sins shall not again be upon him. 

10. Identification (see above, Justification). The great fact that those who are in Christ were united with Him at the Cross, by God's sovereign inscrutable act; were crucified with Christ and buried with Him; so that their history is now ended before God; and when Christ was raised up as the First-born of the new creation, they also were raised up with Him, and their history began as new creatures in God's sight, in Christ, the Last Adam. 

Of course, in the experience of the Christian, there comes a time when he is actually made partaker of this new life—that point of time when he is, as we say, saved, or converted, or born again, etc. Nevertheless, the life that is in every Christian came up out of the tomb, and it is in Christ Jesus that a man is created anew. 

11. Incorporation. This tremendous doctrine Paul alone mentions, and he makes it practically the foundation of all his exhortations to the saints with regard to their conduct and life. By "incorporation" we mean the fact that all those who are really saved and are new creatures in Christ Jesus become members of one organism, which is more real than the very earth we tread upon, called "the Body of Christ"—Christ Himself in heaven being the Head of this Body, and every real Christian a member of it. So that believers are thus members of Christ in heaven, and also members one of another here on earth. No wonder Paul is able to exhort the saints to love one another when they are members one of another! (Romansans 12, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4). 

12. Inhabitation. The wonderful fact that the Body of Christ and each member of it individually is inhabited, indwelt, by the Holy Spirit Himself, and not only so, but that the Church is being "built together" as a great temple of God so that in the future God's actual eternal dwelling place will be this wonderful, mysterious company built into a building called "a holy habitation of God in the Spirit." 

This mystery is a great and marvelous one, the fact that we are saved, are partakers now of the life of the Lord in glory, that the Holy Spirit indwells us. 

13. Divine Exhibition. That is, that through the Church, in the ages to come, is to be made known that which God counts His "riches," even His Grace (Eph 2:7; 3:10). 
The failure or refusal to discern the Pauline Gospel as a separate and new revelation and not a "development Romans Judaism," accounts for two-thirds of the confusion in many people's minds today as regards just what the Gospel is. Paul's Gospel will suffer no admixture with works on the one hand or religious pretensions and performances on the other. It is as simple and clear as the sunlight Romans heaven. The end of man is where God begins in Romansans 3, at what might be called the opening of the Pauline Revelation. Most unsaved people today believe in their hearts that the reason they are not saved is because of something they have not yet done, some step that remains for them to take before God will accept them. But this is absolutely untrue.*** When Christ said, "It is finished," He meant that He had, then and there, paid the debt for the whole human race. "He gave Himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim 2:6). 

Now Paul in his wonderful revelation declares that God has reconciled the world to Himself; that God was in Christ (at the Cross) reconciling the world to Himself; 
(2 Cor 5:19). Men do not know this, but they conceive that something stands between them and God, before God will accept or forgive them. If you tell a man that God is demanding no good works of him whatsoever, no religious observances or church ordinances, that God is not asking him to undertake any duties at all, but that God invites him to believe a glad message that his sins have already been dealt with at the Cross, and that God expects him to believe this good news and be exceedingly happy about it—if you tell an unsaved man such a story as this, he is astonished and overwhelmed—yet this is the Gospel! 

Would that we had grace just as vigorously to defend his great message today, whether Romans its enemies or its real friends who do not see it clearly as yet; or who, like Peter (Galatians 2), through fear of others, are ready to compRomansise and tone down the Gospel of God.



Lewis Sperry Chafer
Founder of  Dallas Theological Seminary



The Coming Judgement on the Whold World- Isiah 2:14
By Les Feldick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgigDZRi-Pw

 



How God Saves Men
Believing Christ DIED, that’s HISTORY.
Believing Christ DIED for YOU SINS and Rose again that’s SALVATION.
Read Romans 1:16, Romans 10:9-10 and 1. Corinthians 15:1-4


(A 10 Minute Video)




  
Posted By Cecil and Connie Spivey
https://www.facebook.com/cecil.spivey



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