contact: 218-288-3737
Woodlands Bible Church
  • Home
  • Our Beliefs
    • God's Bridge to Eternal Life
  • Leadership
    • Guest Speakers/Music >
      • Speakers Woodlands Pulpit
      • Speakers
  • Audio Messages
    • Weekly Messages Start Jan, 2022
    • Weekly Messages Archived 2
    • Weekly Messages Archived by Pastor Shaulis
    • Weekly Message archives - Pastor Nathan Shaulis
  • Missionaries
    • Dr. Michael
    • Rachel Langendorfer
    • Aaron Coffey
    • Marty Zide
  • Ministries
    • Devotionals >
      • Our Daily Bread
      • Keys for Kids
      • Bible Search
    • Bible Studies and Prayer
    • Sunday School >
      • God's Bridge to Eternal Life for Children
  • Photo Gallery
  • Contact Us
  • Sunday Videos
  • Giving

The Gospel? Prosperity, Genie in a bottle indeed! by Jeremiah Schunk

2/23/2018

4 Comments

 
What is the Gospel? Jesus Christ and he crucified. Yes, true enough. But that is not the whole, part of the story yes, but lacking nonetheless. Did Jesus die to make us have a better life? Did he save us from hell? Did his brokenness make us whole? The answers are yes, yes, and yes but that these promises are at their core Spiritual should be clear for all to see and this is where people fall into all sorts of gross heresies that run rampant within modern day Evangelicalism. When Spiritual promises are applied to earthly, here and now, things and problems, we end up with fallacious doctrine and theology. We shall seek to show within this short paper that the gospel Firstly, is not for prosperity in the here and now, Second, is not to save us from hell, and Third, that the Gospel is not meant to give us a free pass in this life. Once we have went through these it should be sufficiently clear that the Gospel peddled by the modern day Evangelical salesman is no Gospel at all.
First, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not meant to give us prosperity in the here and now of life. This can be easily shown with a few Bible verses, but I would first like to give some Scripture passages that Prosperity peddlers use to defend their position. Probably the most used Bible passage for this is

Isaiah 53 

These verses to them are invincible proof of the fact that by Christ’ physical suffering we are made physically well. This may seem reasonable, after all, if we are going to say that this is speaking of Christ’ suffering in the body than why wouldn’t it be speaking of our bodily healing? But this underlies an inaccurate Hermeneutic when speaking of this passage. Their error is in their fact that they do not, when interpreting this as firstly physical, take into account the whole of Scripture on this topic. I will here provide just one verse because when we get into the next couple of points we will bring out several more that will make my point. Here is the verse “All those who desire to live a godly life, in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” 2 Timothy 3:12. Now if we are to suffer persecution when saved would that not be the very opposite of physical well-being? Yes, indeed it would and we can therefor easily see that this view does not and indeed, cannot hold itself up under the weight of its own assertions.
The next false view that we will seek to look at is that Christ died to save us from hell. This view is probably the subtlest of the views that I will be confronting in this article. After all Jesus did save us from hell, but here is the problem with this: When that is the locus of the presentation it is a false Gospel. A.W. Pink sums this up well when he says, “The nature of Christ’ salvation is woefully misrepresented by the present-day Evangelist. He announces a savior from hell rather than a savior from sin. And that is why so many are fatally deceived, for there are multitudes who wish to escape the lake of fire who have no desire to be delivered from their carnality and worldliness.” This essentially shows the foolishness of proclaiming a savior from hell, the famous ‘fire insurance’ plea that we hear repeated oft over until our ears are ringing with the folly. While no one will deny that we are saved from hell; the moment that that becomes the focus instead of being saved unto righteousness it becomes a false Gospel and bad doctrine.
Next, we look at that Christ did not come to give us a free pass in life. We cannot live however we want now that we are saved. We are now bound to Christ by an unbreakable contract that will bring us to holiness and righteousness in Christ Jesus our Kurios. Now you may be wondering what the word Kurios means? It is a Greek word, used often in the NT, that means to be “Lord over one or many; The power to do as one pleases with the ones that are being ruled over” “TO dispose or dispense with t will.”. This is what the word means, and we find a plethora of times throughout the NT, appearing around 740 times in the NT! Mostly referring to Christ as Lord and ruler. While some are opposed to the term “Lordship Salvation”, saying that it is un-Biblical, I challenge them to find in Scripture one passage that teaches the contrary of this. “Lordship Salvation” is simply another term for “Biblical Salvation”, as Spurgeon famously said that “Calvinism is another word for the Gospel” so I say that “Lordship salvation is only another word for true and not false salvation”. I challenge you, my readers to find one passage that teaches anything contrary to Lordship salvation, upon which I will capitulate. Some passages that support this with inexorable thoroughness are: Matthew 20:8, Romans 14:7-9, Acts 10:36, Romans 1:1, Ephesians 1:1-2, etc. etc. These passages demonstrate the necessity and truth of Christ being Lord and king of the believer’s lives. In some of these passages it is even taken so far as to call believers doulos or slaves, this should be somewhat of a wake-up call to modern day Evangelicalism.
Summing up: We have seen in this post that the Gospel is not for physical well-being, to save you from hell, and/or to let you live your life the way you want to live it. All these are true and if any of them is erred from it results in an aberration from the Gospel of our blessed Lord and savior Jesus Christ. This aberration results in erroneous doctrine and theology leading to a corrupting influence within the lives of believers and the church at large.
4 Comments

The Meaning of Christmas by Xander Simek

12/27/2017

5 Comments

 
The meaning of Christmas has so much more of a deeper meaning than waking up your parents to tear apart the presents under the Christmas tree. The true meaning of Christmas is different than the way the world has sculpted it. There was a baby born long ago named Jesus. He came here to cleanse a sinful world of its dirty deeds. Luke 2:11 “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior which is Christ the Lord”. The true meaning of Christmas has been buried, Jesus has been covered by Santa and worshiping has been covered by opening presents. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of God as a man who came to our filthy earth to save every soul that chose so trust in him. Give Christmas it’s true meaning back by thinking of Jesus and sharing the word with anybody you meet. Giving and getting presents isn’t a bad thing to do at Christmas but don’t obsess on them. Thank the lord and be grateful for what you get. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Christmas is the greatest holiday of the year and remember to worship Jesus for showing his love for us. As Christians we want to celebrate the birth of Christ together and share the good news with our families. We need to be forgiving and kind through Christmas as we do all year round. Always remember we can’t be blinded by greed this Christmas season, let Christ work through you this holiday season and years to come.
5 Comments

​Worship: A Thankfulness Toward God  - by Stephen Schunk

12/10/2017

6 Comments

 
​Worship: a thankfulness toward God
​
Psalm 100:4  Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him and bless his name.

  Worship is a part of almost every church service in the country. It is also, for many people, a deciding factor in what church they are going to attend. So what is worship and does it play a major role in the church?

  Well Col. 3:16 says " Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." So worship is used to teach and admonish, but it is also for being thankful toward God for everything he has done for us . ( Ps. 98:1, 95:1-3 ....) There are many passages in the psalms about being thankful to the Lord. not only for salvation, but also for him being a just God, a Rock of salvation, the protector of his people, and there are many other reasons also.

  Even though there are other reasons to worship one of the most important is to give thanks unto the Lord for all the tings he has given and done for us. So this Christmas season remember to worship God for the gift of his son to us.

  Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. Psalms 95:2
6 Comments

The True Meaning of Thanksgiving - by Noah Monacelli

11/21/2017

7 Comments

 
​The Bible talks a lot about the importance of being thankful however, most of that meaning is lost today. We say thanks and thank you a lot and sometimes don’t even mean it. So, what does it mean to give thanks? It’s an expression of gratitude or to show appreciation. We need to give thanks to God. The bible is filled with commands to thank God, 1 Chronicles 16:34, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good; His love endures forever”.
The opposite meaning of thankful is ungrateful. Look at the ways the Jews behaved. They had everything they needed, and they were still ungrateful. Exodus 16:2 “And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” God provided them with everything they needed but they were still upset and complained all the time.
 Thanksgiving is a time about giving thanks to the Lord for all He has provided you. Thank him for everything you have like your water, house, food, and your Bible. Psalm 107:8-9, “Let them give thanks to the Lord for His unfailing love and His wonderful deeds for mankind, for He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things”.
 The world has turned Thanksgiving into something else. Some people think Thanksgiving is about eating turkey and having the family over. Those are great things, but the true meaning of Thanksgiving is about thanking the Lord for all that you have. Don’t be ungrateful like the Jews, but be thankful for all the Lord has done for you.
7 Comments

    Author

    Youth Group Blog
    ​11/21/17 - Noah Monacelli

    Archives

    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

 Woodlands Bible Church  | Pastor Shaulis (218) 288-3737 
Copywright Promotions by Web 2014

204 Adams Avenue, Eveleth, MN 55734 contact us email: woodlandsbible@gmail.com
Favicon Credited   |   Web design by Promotionsbyweb.com