"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

  The Gospel and Authentic  New Testament Ministry : Part VII The Gospel is not a proposal. It is the good news of a person, the Lord Christ. In the Gospel, we proclaim Christ the God/Man who lived perfectly, revealed the Father perfectly and died perfectly. We preach Christ the mediator and substitute, the eternal Word made flesh who, having successfully accomplished His purposes, rose from the dead and ascended to the throne of heaven (John 1:14; Ephesians 4:8-10) . He is enough to bring the dead to life and to give strength to the weary.   Christ crucified is the centre of authentic New Testament ministry. Him we preach (Colossians 1:28) ! Being that the cross was a place of death we see that Christ’s entire life was, in one sense, characterised by the cross. To save us, He, as a man, died to all divine entitlements that were His by sovereign right.  Consider this: ● He created all things, but in grace, He stooped to become one of His own creation--...

"The kingdom of God suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."   - Matthew 11:12 [KJV] We say hunger will break through stone walls. Desperate circumstances make men violent. Thus is it with a convinced sinner. He sees himself in the city of destruction, and Moses has set his house on fire about his ears, as Mr. Bunyan says in his Pilgrim’s Progress. Now, he cannot think of God, sin, death, judgment, heaven, and hell with indifference. No, he is awake. He sees the importance of them. His soul is alive. He feels the weight of them. He finds sin has destroyed him. The law terrifies him. Death stares him in the face. Judgment alarms him. He trembles to see hell moved from beneath to receive him.  Now his fancied good works, his morality, etc. stand him in no stead. He hungers after righteousness. His apprehensions of wrath make him violent. His hunger is keen. He besieges the kingdom of God with eager prayer. He forces his way through every opposition. He breaks thro...

"...a certain beggar, named Lazarus."   - Luke 16:20 [KJV] What an affecting representation hath the Holy Ghost here made of a poor, but gracious man! He was not only poor in the mere wants of life, but exposed in person to great misery; full of bruises, sores, and griefs. His lot was not to be taken into the house of the rich man, but to lie at his gate. He had the sorrow to behold every day some pampered at the tables of the great, caressed and entertained; but for himself, the crumbs which fell from their over-abundance appear to have been denied him. At length his sorrows are ended, and death removes him to the upper world. "The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lifteth up his eyes, being in torments, and beholdeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom." My soul! this is no parable, but a reality; and in the general view of it, may serve to teach how very widely we err in our estimate of men and things. Who that looked on, but would have co...

"Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." -II Corinthians 6:17 [KJV]   If we are entangled in the love of the world, or fast bound and fettered with worldly anxieties, and the spirit of the world is rife in our bosom, all our profession will be vapid, if not worthless. We may use the language of prayer, but the heart is not in earnest; we may still manage to hold our head high in a profession of the truth, but its power and blessedness are neither known nor felt. To enjoy any measure of communion with the Lord, whether on the cross or on the throne, we must go forth from a world which is at enmity against Him.  We must also go forth out of self, for to deny it, renounce it, and go forth out of it lies at the very foundation of vital godliness. There must be "a mortifying, through the Spirit, of the deeds of the body;" a being   "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that ...