As a kid attending Sunday school at a Lutheran church in North Dakota, I learned songs that still come to my remembrance today. One of them had these lyrics…
Into my heart/Into my heart
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus
Come in today/Come in to stay
Come into my heart, Lord Jesus
Sorry to say, that song didn’t mean anything to me then. None of my Sunday school teachers or my Lutheran pastor ever taught that I must be born again. It wasn’t until years later when I fully realized why I should have Jesus in my heart.
Some ministers oppose use of the phrase “ask Jesus into your heart” claiming it’s unscriptural. One nationally known pastor went so far to label the phrase “superstitious”, “dangerous”, and “damning.” I beg to differ. Jesus Himself said in John 7:38, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” (Other translations use the terms “belly” and “innermost being” instead of “heart.”)
Even the Old Testament talked about a time when man could receive a supernatural change of heart…
“And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” - Deuteronomy 30:6
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” - Jeremiah 31:33
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” - Ezekiel 36:26
Unfortunately, a few Christians have gone the other extreme by embracing the false doctrine of Universal Reconciliation. One of my Facebook friends recently posted this claim, “Jesus lives in every single human being RIGHT NOW!” This is an inaccurate statement. Jesus said in John 14:23, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” This was a response to a question Judas (not Iscariot) asked in the verse before, “Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus also said in John 14:17, “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”
Jesus wants to live in the heart of every human being but He will not enter uninvited. Have you invited Him into your heart yet?
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” - Revelation 3:20
I was a born again Christian until I discovered the following:
ReplyDelete1. The Bible is not inerrant. It contains many, many errors, contradictions, and deliberate alterations and additions by the scribes who copied it. The originals are lost, therefore we have no idea what "God" originally" said. Yes, its true---Christians can give "harmonizations" for every alleged error and contradiction, but so can the Muslims for errors in the Koran, and Mormons for errors in the Book of Mormon. One can harmonize anything if you allow for the supernatural.
2. How do we know that the New Testament is the Word of God? Did Jesus leave us a list of inspired books? Did the Apostles? Paul? The answer is, no. The books of the New Testament were added to the canon over several hundred years. Second Peter was not officially accepted into the canon until almost the FIFTH century! So why do all Christians accept every book of the New Testament as the word of God and reject every non-canonical "gospel"? Answer: the ancient (catholic) Church voted these books into your Bible. Period.
There is nowhere in the OT or the NT where God gives men the authority to determine what is and what is not his Word. If Second Peter was really God's Word, the entire Church should have known so in the first century.
3. Who wrote the Gospels? We have NO idea! The belief that they were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is based on hearsay and assumptions---catholic tradition. Protestants denounce most of the traditions of the Catholic Church but have retained two of the most blatant, evidence-lacking traditions which have no basis in historical fact or in the Bible: the canon of the NT and the authorship of the Gospels.
The only shred of evidence that Christians use to support the traditional authorship of the Gospels is one brief statement by a guy named Papias in 130 AD that someone told him that John Mark had written a gospel. That's it! Papias did not even identify this "gospel". Yet in 180 AD, Irenaeus, a bishop in FRANCE, declares to the world that the apostles Matthew and John and the associates of Peter and Paul---Mark and Luke---wrote the Gospels. But Irenaeus gives ZERO evidence for his assignment of authorship to these four books. It is well known to historians that it was a common practice at that time for anonymously written books to be ascribed to famous people to give them more authority. For all we know, this is what Irenaeus did in the case of the Gospels.
The foundation of the Christian Faith is the bodily resurrection of Jesus. If the story of the Resurrection comes from four anonymous books, three of which borrow heavily from the first, often word for word, how do we know that the unheard of, fantastically supernatural story of the re-animation of a first century dead man, actually happened??
Maybe the first book written, "Mark", was written for the same purpose that most books were written in that time period---for the benefit of one wealthy benefactor, and maybe it was written simply as an historical novel, like Homer's Iliad; not meant to be 100% factual in every detail, but a mix of true historical events as a background, with a real messiah pretender in Palestine, Jesus, but with myth and fiction added to embellish the story and help sell the book! We just do not know for what purpose these books were written!
I slowly came to realize that there is zero verifiable evidence for the Resurrection, and, the Bible is not a reliable document. After four months of desperate attempts to save my faith, I came to the sad conclusion that my faith was based on an ancient superstition; a superstition not based on lies, but based on the sincere but false beliefs of uneducated, superstitious, first century peasants.
I question if you really had a heart relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. People who have truly tasted His goodness wouldn’t want to leave Him. God watches over His word to fulfill it (Jeremiah 1:12) and does so with signs following such as the sick being healed (Mark 16:17-18). I’ve seen many supernatural things like this happen when ministering on the streets. Other people I’ve met claiming the Bible is full of errors are bitter due to disappointments such as a loved one dying young or another believer who mistreated them. Others simply aim to discredit God’s word as an excuse to live in sin. Regardless of your motives, I encourage you to reread the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to bring clarity to passages that appear to contradict each other. God is not the author of confusion but of peace and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
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