About

Per Fidem Intrepidus means "Fearless Through Faith". My courage isn't my own, it comes from the Holy Spirit, it's my faith in God and my personal savior Christ Jesus that calms my fears and allows me to move forward in this fallen world. Personally I'm afraid of a lot of stuff, but having the faith that Jesus adopted me as his little, sin filled, brother keeps me going.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Hell's Best Kept Secret

If I've been blessed with any gifts, talents, or special abilities by the Holy Spirit I believe that the most important of these gifts is that of discernment. When I hear something good and right and biblical I just know, and when something isn't biblical (but claims to be) I tend to feel bad about it. I may not know why I feel good or bad about something but it drives me to do the Berean thing and find out why I'm being nudged in that direction. For example I've never felt right about the Douay-Rheims bible, I eventually found out that it's not a bad translation, but it's not translated from original documents like our modern bibles. It's a fair translation of a fair translation (The latin vulgate) and when you run a document through that many translations which always gets messed up. Try it for yourself - go to www.Babelfish.com and translate something a few times. Here's an example: I took Matthew 17:19 and translated it from English, to German, German to Italian, back and forth between a few languages. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not drive it out?” eventually became "Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said: "could not but why we still going?"

Although it's not the 16th Century version of The Message, it feels that way to me.

Other things upset me: The Rapture is a big one. Not the Rapture itself but many of the arguments for what ever flavor of Rapture you enjoy just grate on my heart. While others get excited about the Rapture and will talk for hours about how X verse backs up Y theory according to Z timing, I just feel awful when I hear it. I want to scream "The Rapture has nothing to do with your salvation! Why are you wasting your time? You could be hit by a bus tomorrow!" When I see Christians get tied up in discussions over aliens and nephlim, I just shake my head. When I see the heathen antics that Charismatics claim is the 'Holy Ghost' (babbling, twitching, giggling,) I want to run far far away.

Inversely when I hear something good and right I feel elated, it's like another piece of the puzzle just fell into place. When Pastor Brimstone or Pastor Lovejoy say something I don't understand, and I find their reference in my Bible I feel that something good has happened, even if they just pointed out yet another sin I'm guilty of committing. When I hear something that makes me weep for my foul evil nature and the pain I've caused my creator I also feel good because I know that what I heard is right and good. When hyper-Calvinism and hyper-Arminianism are dismissed with "The truth lies closer to the middle" I know that's a correct statement. 

So when I heard Ray Comfort's sermon titled "Hell's Best Kept Secret" I knew he was right, that the Holy Spirit is behind his words. I've spent years teaching and training people and from that experience I know that the method he's using here is right, the illustrations he uses are valid, and the delivery is dead on. I urge everyone who visits this blog to spend the 40 minutes and watch:


1 comment:

  1. Wow it's finally on Youtube! I loved the video, and enjoyed having it for my church as a DVD

    ReplyDelete