Following Hireling Preachers: The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

There was a man who got a job as pastor in a medium-sized church. The man had a vision for the big city near his church, so he said. He generated a lot of support for his vision among pastors of other small churches and became a bit of a folk hero among them. He spoke with lots of passion. In these circles, various winds of doctrine would sweep through the churches. Many maverick apostles (by the way the Scriptural Church does not have independent maverick apostles) would come through. There was a prophet, too. These mavericks had a way of saying what folks like to hear. Then, a group of brethren came through and talked to this pastor about the Kingdom of God and the Scriptural order of the Church. (One aspect of this order is that local elders are plural, no chief elder, and no salary for elders. The elders in the original church worked for a living with their hands and took care of the church but not for monetary gain. As a father in a home does not receive compensation for being the head of the home, only a level of respect, that is exactly how it was in the early Church, the Church that Christ designed.) The reaction of this pastor was, "I am not going to work for free!"

As time passed, this pastor’s wife had a habit of "prophesying" to people about their problems in front of the rest of the church. People started leaving the church. Eventually, the church didn’t have enough money to keep up this pastor’s salary, the man who had a vision for the big city near his church. Suddenly, the pastor’s vision changed. He never had a vision for the big city near his church. He had a different vision. He sent out fund raising letters to everyone he knew to raise money for his new vision. In his letters, he stated that he had always had this new vision. He left the church without a shepherd because they could no longer come up with the money to pay him.

If a pastor is working because he is getting a salary, and if that pastor would leave his ministry if he didn't have the salary, then that pastor is a hireling.

John 10:11-13 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

A man who would leave the sheep because of lack of funds will certainly not lay down his life for the sheep.

In a system where people are hired into an office and can be fired at will, you will find that those people filling the office must, for fear of being fired, not always preach what the Holy Spirit tells them to preach. It would be hard to tell whether this is what is happening, but it is common. I know of one church were the pastor told a member that he did not dare teach against shacking up because several members were living together without being married. Same with abortion and many other topics.

The church is in a terrible state, but God is raising up a first-fruits company who will overcome. The overcomers will act as a priesthood to the rest of the church and open the door, just as the Levites stepped into the Jordan with the ark of the covenant and the waters parted for everyone else to come into the Kingdom land. That was a type of what is going to happen. So, be encouraged. God will establish His order and righteousness in the Earth. The systems of this present evil age will fall suddenly and the Kingdom will be established. We can't see it yet, but it is coming.

For now, follow the Lamb wherever He goes. Listen to the voice of the Spirit even if it is totally against what you have done in the past. Remember that you cannot put new wine into old wine bottles. The Spirit will fulfill all the Scripture, even the parts that they told you no longer apply or made some excuse for not obeying them. When you hear His voice directing, faith will be born in your heart and give access into God's grace so that God can do His work through you. Allowing the Spirit to flow as you submit will result in holy seed being planted in your heart and the fruit of the Spirit will spring up. You will die progressively to self and life to Christ. New truth from Scripture will be made real to you by the Spirit. You will discern the Body of Christ as never before. If you do all of this, doors of ministry will open up to you and you will be able to walk through them by the power of the Spirit of God.

Following Hireling Preachers: The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

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