In our Sunday morning services recently, we have been looking at all the scriptures that cover Jesus’ resurrection until His ascension into heaven. There was a 40 day period after the resurrection, where Jesus intermittently appeared to His disciples, showing them convincing proof of His resurrection.
As we have been studying this, the thought struck me with a fresh realization, that we are really sharing the same message that they shared! That in the 2000 years of church history, the gospel remains unchanged! The thought also struck me, that we are depending and relying upon their eyewitness accounts and their testimonies, which are essentially the writings of the New Testament.
It is vital that we don’t deviate from their message, considering that this message and this message alone is the power of God unto salvation! I believe that if we were to compare our current teaching with these N.T. we may painfully discover that we have subconsciously slipped into preaching a different message.
The current trend we are seeing in our charismatic movement, [ and it has been going on for some time!] is that we are reinventing or redefining the gospel message by majoring in prophecy instead of scripture. I don’t believe that this has been an intentional or deliberate shift by all, but more of a deceptive influence. We have been wooed away from our simplicity which is in Christ, and made Gods message something that it is not. We have fallen into a deception and a delusion, while all the time God is calling us back to New Testament scripture, to trust in this for our power and sufficiency!
Either this gospel is the power of God unto salvation or it isn’t! If it is? Then we should not deviate from it, we should not add to it, or take away, and we should not seek to replace it with a newer or more efficient model!
I wonder what would begin to happen in our churches, if we as Pastors returned back to our N.T. scriptures? If we didn’t allow preachers to preach from our pulpits unless they were proclaiming Gods word, instead of borrowing from one another? Or if we as church members became like the Bereans, checking out everything you hear with scripture, and calling us Pastors to account, when we are not speaking as the oracles of God?
This would more than likely cause a revival and a spiritual revolution. Though it might initially cause something of a drop off in church attendance, at least you would have people attending your services for the right reason! I hope we can recognize that we have gone astray from Gods original message in the N.T. and get back on track!