23 March 2025

Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 1 (TMF:2580)

Friday, March 28, 2025

Peace to Live By: Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 1 (TMF:2580) - Daniel Litton
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Anyhow, continuing in verse 23: “not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister” (ESV). What does Paul mean that the Gospel “has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven”? That doesn’t seem to make sense, considering that by his time, early on, that Gospel had not gone into all the varying parts of the world. Well, we could, for one, say that it is a prophecy. Maybe Paul is telling us, giving us a hint through the Spirit of God, of what is going to happen in the future—that the Gospel is going to reach all the different parts of the world. That’s possible. Or, two, he could mean that it has been already proclaimed in all the known or populated areas of the time. Three, we could say that the Gospel had been proclaimed to all the known people groups. (This obviously would have excluded people like the Native People of America since they weren’t a known people at the time). All of these theories of what Paul is saying here are reasonable, and perhaps it is a combination of all of them.

Blinded by the Goodness Around Us (TMF:2579)

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Peace to Live By: Blinded by the Goodness Around Us (TMF:2579) - Daniel Litton
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For us, in American society, another prevalent way in which Satan operates is through the goodness that most of us experience, in that he uses the good times people experience to lead them to forget about God, and the need for personal purity. What is meant is that because most of us live in circumstances which are not hard, per se (at least compared to other times and existences in world history; or other areas of our current world), it can be easy to become complacent. Even more than that, it can become easy to just assume that it really doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter for the women struggling in her marriage to go ahead and get a divorce. It doesn’t matter for the Christian boyfriend and the girlfriend to go ahead and move in together. So mindsets such as these. After all, everyone is doing it right? So, the goodness we experience intermingled with the discreetly poor example of everyone else can lead people to shift from the gospel, the truth, from being followed in one’s life.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 3 (TMF:2578)

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 3 (TMF:2578) - Daniel Litton
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The presumption is that if Mary had had relations with Joseph that this somehow would have sullied her, made her less of a pure individual. Argued here, though, would be the idea, and it certainly seems so, that this was based on a lesser view of women that prevailed at the time, something that Jesus himself stealthily worked against in his earthly ministry. The point in saying all this is that a far-off view can enter our thinking, as Christians, and that we need to be careful. That’s why we filter everything through the Scriptures. Gnosticism obviously has no basis in Scripture, nor, in reality, does the Perpetual Virginity. Those in the latter group, because it is not a major core doctrine really affecting other doctrines, are still to be classified as true believers regardless of this. But careful attention needs to be paid. Even though it may not be central, it still doesn’t line up with the evidence of the Scriptures, and we don’t want anything that we are believing which does not line up.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 2 (TMF:2577)

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 2 (TMF:2577) - Daniel Litton
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Even after the fall, and though the world is under the curse until the future, it is still good. God created it good, and it is still our responsibility as humans to take care of it and manage it. But what we need to understand is that Satan presents other gospels, and even other forms of beliefs, by which people can live by. And many people, including Christians, are carried along by these beliefs. Perhaps more common in our times (which was also present in the early church fathers as they are called—even later to John Calvin), and really dare this even be discussed, is the thought-process among Christians of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the mother of God, the mother of Jesus. This is the idea, or belief, that Jesus’ earthly mother Mary remained a virgin even after she had Jesus. It is believed to be unholy and disrespectful to think, among Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic believers, that Mary was not a virgin her whole life.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 1 (TMF:2576)

Monday, March 24, 2025

Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 1 (TMF:2576) - Daniel Litton
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A popular form of false beliefs that Satan used on the early church is what we have come to call Gnosticism. This is the fully developed form of what was being discussed in the opening of the message today. Basically, there were people during the time of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John (for it seems John also confronted the beliefs head on in his epistle of 1 John), who were cultivating these ideas and making their influence. The beliefs were a mix of what Paul was saying, along with some older Jewish beliefs and even some secular (or pagan) ideas. It was a blend that led to wrong conclusions, which led to wrong behaviors. And the idea was that everything physical was evil while everything spiritual was good. Sounds bizarre to us probably in our day and age. Though, at times, it seems like some Christians are even promoting such a type of a belief system—that the world God created is so corrupted that all is evil. We have to be careful with that.