Why it's Just Believe, Merely Believe, Only Believe..in Christ

Obviously this 'brief' will have to be longer than normal, to carry out a "due diligence" disclosure: to document how well-respected Christians mess up the Gospel. (This isn't to accuse them, but is just a fact. We are all human. Famous people, for example, have no time to do homework. Any human can be brilliant on one topic, yet totally STUPID on another. That's the problem here.)

The Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God (a title meaning how He views Himself as GOD), the Savior (in His Humanity -- meaning of the term "Christ") should know better than the rest of us how we get saved, right? So here's a corrected translation of what He Himself said in John 3:16, from the Attic Greek He spoke: "For God loved the world SO MUCH, AS A RESULT He gave His UNIQUELY-BORN Son: so that the one who believes in Him will NEVER perish, but have ETERNAL LIFE." (The words in capitals are the ones most often mistranslated. Bible translators are told to follow weird rules which wreck translation; no good translator would ever follow such rules in a secular profession, so shouldn't follow them for translating Bible, either. The foregoing translation leaves out the weird rules: I used BibleWorks Greek copies of the inspired texts to translate. It's my pastor's translation, too. He only teaches Bible from the original languages.)

The term translated "eternal life" is a technical term in Bible's Greek for the Same Type Of Life As God's. In other words, a plant has a type of life; a dog, a different type of life; a human being, still another-and-different type of life; an angel, yet another different type of life. But God Is Infinite Life: no beginning, no ending. So, when you believe in Christ, you also get GOD'S Life. Which you'd need, to live with God forever after the mortal body ends.

Obviously you Can't Lose What Is Eternal. You get God's Life the same way you got your soul: He breathes it into you, just like He breathed your soul into your body when it first exited from your natal mother's womb. That's why you are, technically, "born again", but spiritually. See the rest of John 3 for the Lord's explanation on this process. Titus 3:5 in Greek explains the Holy Spirit is the Person Who makes this happen, and that Eternal Life 'resides' in a human spirit. "Salvation Attributes" link at Home pagetop further explains this topic.

See, Bible repeatedly and in many ways in the original languages explains that all life begins and ends with an exhale; your first breath as a human being was an exhale, and when you die, you (literally) exhale your own soul out from your body. So, you are alive now; so, your believing was an exhale, based on an 'inhale' of information, the Gospel (here, John 3:16); so you get an inhale as a result, of God's Own Life. Your next breath is thus another exhale, and from that moment forward you are compatible structurally with very God. So when you finally exhale your soul, you will never 'perish', but instead immediately get a new sinless body to house both your soul and your human spirit, and thus will you live with God. Forever. (If the so-called 'Rapture' (not a Bible term) occurs after you die, you will get an interim sinless body to live in. See Luke 16:20ff for the fact of an interim body, though Christ took all believers with Him when He ascended, to Heaven: see Eph4:8-10's Greek. The Final Resurrection body everyone of "Church" (another technical Bible term) gets at the same time, that 'Rapture' date, whenever it may be. As you can tell from Luke 16:20ff, each person is recognizable at all times, so you will recognize your loved ones, etc. The new bodies are basically alike, perfect, wonderful; but also unique, kinda like each person appears unique even down here. So forget all the sci-fi UFO stuff with the floating blobs, lol.)

Despite Bible's clarity, a bizillion fake gospels are sold in ignorance, not malice: you yourself can prove that none of their versions are in the Real Bible. The fake gospels are easy to spot. They always ADD to "believe", or SUBSTITUTE OUT "believe" with a DIFFERENT VERB. Folks selling these fake gospels seem to think they package what in law is called "attestation" (fancy name for admitting you believe): so they add to God's Word and thus negate it, when they tell you to "invite Christ into your heart" or "receive Christ into your life" or "make Christ Lord", etc. Legally, the verbal clause in the "attestation" actually Negates Faith, so the person is Still Not Saved. Because, Instead of Believe, you are the subject of an Additional Meritorious Verb. Listen to testimonies sometime, hear the innocent-but-arrogant pride: I invited Christ into my heart! I made Christ Lord! I repented of my sins! See how horribly arrogant it all is?

Many fake gospel sellers sincerely conclude that because they see Bible verses with other verbs in them, these verbs are additionally required for "salvation" to occur. Catholicism is rooted in this misuse of Scripture, and today most independent churches are as well. So it's a big misuse, in 99% of Christendom. Fortunately, you can prove all these other verbs are not only irrelevant, that God only saves you if you Simply Believe, but you can prove why these other verbs negate "belief". Examples showing how the negation results, follow below. Fortunately, the person who fell for these defective 'gospels', will probably realize the Real Gospel at some later point, and Just Believe. Whether or not he recognizes the prior 'gospel' was defective, isn't an issue: God recognizes the Correct Faith-Alone Act as of the point it actually occurs. Whew.

The fake gospel sellers probably don't realize their extra verbiage negates the Simple Belief which God the Holy Spirit makes save you: John 16:9, Eph2:8-9, Rom5:1, Tit3:5, Eph1:13, 4:30b. It's Only Believe, to save you, and it's Only Believe, after salvation: for Belief in God is On Trial, not works. See here of Heb3 in any translation: compare 3:12 with 3:19, Heb11:1, Heb11:6. (In Hebrew, "shemah" of Deut 6:4 means to-hear-and-believe, which is the "obey" God wants. Writer of Hebrews is showing that precedence, in Heb3, because Believing was Always the Way to 'Obey' God, and is still True.) So we see that to get saved or to obey God after salvation, at all times, extra verbs Negate Belief; because any other verb is an assertion of SELF merit. Whether the person realizes it, or not. For if I invite, I accept, I repent, I receive, I I I I I am doing something. But to Believe means the Object Did Something On My Behalf. So believing stresses the Object, not the subject.

Christians aren't the only ones who sell fake gospels. Virtually every religion ever on this planet contends you have to do something to warrant Divine approval, however "Divine" is defined, because (sotto voce), you gotta merit Divine approval.

So though the Bible says baldly that you can't do anything to warrant Divine approval for salvation, hence Christ paid for all mankind's sins on the Cross, 'Christians' add to and thus negate that Truth with their i-do-something, 'tags'; thus they sell a FAKE 'gospel': for they substitute their idea that you must 'do' something besides/other than "believe", to get saved, get blessed, etc. ad nauseam. That's why most 'Christians' are unhappy, frankly: it's an inherent unhappiness, to believe a lie.

The heart of the Gospel (="official/royal good news") is that God saves you due to grace, not due to any merit of your own. So, ever jealous of us getting something for nothing (never mind that they could've also), Satan&Co. are out to propagate their own kiddies, as a way of 'getting back' at God; to steal God's harvest, so to speak; to prevent salvation, to malign salvation, to mock us hapless Christians who nonetheless 'manage' to simply believe and thus get saved, anyway. We like sheep go astray because we are more helpless due to being saved.

So, as you read the indented paragraphs below, note carefully how these fake verb clauses all (piously, cleverly!) signify you are doing something. You, not Christ. Thus you negate belief in what Christ did, in favor of what you do. So God will not accept these verbs, because by nature, the verb "believe" depends on the Object's merit, not the subject's. You buy the can of tomatoes due to its merit, not yours. You believe in Christ due to HIS WORK, not your own. So notice again how the SUBSTITUTE clauses and verbs all stress the subject's action, negating 'believe'. But God stresses the Object He Himself Judged, His Own Son.

A really common false gospel is an idea akin to attestation, that you must 'invite' Christ somewhere. The many American peddlers of this genre prove they need to learn how to read English: so Satan&Co. are mocking our stupidity. Look: Christians get the 'invite' idea from Rev3:20, but it's addressed to BELIEVERS ('Church' means believers, in NT) at Laodicea -- a Knock Of Disciplinary Warning. Clearly the Way/Door of Salvation would not Himself be knocking to get in...

Another common false gospel claim since WWII is called "Lordship salvation", viz., that you must 'make Christ Lord' of your heart, your life, 'commit' (what a farce), give some vow of obedience, etc. If I didn't hear such nonsense with my own ears, I'd never believe such lies were actually sold on TV! Right alongside those magic exercise machines! So look how easily the Bible refutes such claims: "NIV 1 Corinthians 12:3 Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit." See? One must be saved already before he can even admit Jesus is Lord. Romans 10:10 says the same thing (covered below). See also Matt22:43.

Of course, sheer common sense would say, "how can puny man make God, God?" John's Gospel says He Always Was Lord, so what the heck do people think they are making? LOL. And if we could 'commit' or 'vow', why did He have to go to the Cross? See the utterly weird blasphemy? Unintended, of course! Inane, insane, drunk. No verse in any way whatsoever says you have to commit or vow or obey to be saved. In fact, the belief is treated as a synonym for "obedience" in NT. "Disobedience" is to not believe: as per John 16:9 -- "concerning sin, BECAUSE THEY HAVE NOT BELIEVED in Me."

Another common group of fake gospel verbs/clauses are 'repent', 'receive', 'accept', 'come into [my, your] life' or 'heart'. Again, all verbs you do, believing in what YOU DO to gain something, not believing in what HE gained for you. These fake gospels are all based on real Bible verses which folks really misread, but with great prejudice, not (necessarily) stupidity: kinda like reading "UFO", though you see a weather balloon made shiny by the way light hits it. They can't read English, either.
For example, "repent" salespeople never notice that "sin" is never the object of the verb: Acts 2:38 has "repent", for example, but the Object is Christ, not sin. Greek verb "metanoeo" means to change your mind about something. You know: you were planning a trip to the grocery store, but you repent of that, since something else proves more important, or the trip isn't needed. The second misreading the "repent" salespeople do, is they don't recognize WHO is being told to repent in a verse, so again they don't recognize the object that is to be repented of. For example, you must change your mind about your sin and admit it, as a believer, to be back in fellowship with God, 1Jn1:5-10. But that's for a BELIEVER, not an unbeliever. Notice how it has nothing to do with believing in Christ, since you already did that.

The "receive" salespeople can't read Bible, either. "Receive" in Greek really means "to welcome", and in Bible is usually the Greek word "dechomai". So when someone comes to your door, you welcome him inside. In the Bible, only believers "receive". Notice the welcoming analogy: if someone knocked at your door and you believed in welcoming him in, then what did you FIRST do? You BELIEVED in letting him in, before you actually would let him in. See? The Believing Precedes the Welcoming. And that's how Christ used it, when He warned the Pharisees that they must receive the Kingdom of God (salvation, its inheritance spotlighted) "like a little child" (i.e., Mark 10:15). Children BELIEVE, and that's why they are so vulnerable to welcoming strangers, etc. Another common usage of "receive" is really "hear-and-believe", in the Greek, idea that you welcome the information. Well, that's a synonym of believing, but you aren't doing anything: so such "receive" verses in translation are mistranslated, for in English there are different types of receiving, and the translation doesn't make clear it's BELIEVING; but God's Word in the Greek makes it clear. So, see? If you read Bible without God's Brains, you can't even properly read it in your native tongue, and are too lazy to learn what Word God Himself Wrote!

Another false gospel, this one based on a MIStranslation at the end of Romans 10:10: the lie that you must TELL someone you believe in Christ, or you're not saved. Notice how that's an Added Verb again, ooops! and Something You Do again, ooops! Aha. For even common sense tells you that's false: if I'm all alone, I must FIND someone to say I believe, to get saved? What if it were 3am? What if I died while looking for someone, huh? Puleese: see the human arrogance and ignorance?
Look: when you Simply Believe In Christ, obviously Omnipresent God hears you, and He is the Only Relevant Witness To Your Faith. Not man. Christ Paid God, So You Believe Toward God. Not man. If you feel more official, you can privately say or think, "Father I believe in Christ." You never have to say aloud that you believe, and you never have to say anything to any human being. Again, this ludicrous idea you must admit salvation aloud is another false 'gospel' commonly pandered, based on a misuse of a Bible verse. Note: the false stresses what man does, and disdains what GOD does. That's a signature characteristic of a satanically-sponsored lie.

For, Who got paid for sins? Surely not man, who owed the payment, himself. So to claim you must tell man you believe in order to be saved, makes man the arbiter of your salvation! What whopping arrogance, to claim that one sinner talking to another sinner, SAVES the speaker! That's as insane as the claim getting wet ('baptism') saves you, lol! So saves you not at all!

The claim you must speak your faith aloud stems from an inexcusable MIStranslation of Rom10:10's 2nd "eis": the shortest corrected translation of the end of that verse should be, "as a result of salvation". For just as in 1Cor12:3, Romans 10:10 means you can't SAY you believe, UNLESS you ALREADY did (Rom10:9). Which common sense corroborates: since when could your mouth say what you weren't FIRST thinking, huh? Sheesh. We really DID lose our brains at salvation. And do you know, the 1550 Geneva Bible translated Rom10:10 reasonably well. No other English translation since, has done so. Sigh. For almost 500 years! translators have messed up this verse, and didn't even look at one of their own VENERATED Bibles! Talk about hypocrisy! We couldn't care less about God, and it shows. Click here for exegetical proof of Romans 10:10's mistranslation.

So people misuse Rom10:10, claiming you must speak your faith aloud in front of them to be saved. Which even common sense proves false: for, since when do humans supplant God, The Only Relevant Witness? Always suspect as a lie any claim about Scripture which emphasizes man, his behavior, or his role. People want to 'peg' others as being part of the 'in' group or the 'out' group, so they 'read' into Bible a 'requirement' that you must tell them you believe, to get saved. Well, sheesh: surely God would not make satisfying human prejudice or approbation, a requirement of salvation!

Souls who are in a prolonged state of sin or are too far gone.. sell false gospels. Pray for them, but don't argue with them. They have no brains. So they can't hear you. If a person isn't hearing God, he won't hear you, either. Use 1Jn1:9, pray to Father in Son's Name for their healing. They need all the prayer they can get, since they may not even be saved, and surely their own prayers are going no higher than the ceiling.

Try this experiment: search in any Bible you have, on the word "repent". Olde English meaning of that term was to change your mind about something. That's the Greek meaning, too: metanoeo, "change"(meta)+"thinking"(noeo). Notice how the Object isn't mentioned, for you can CHANGE YOUR MIND about anything. So, there can be multiple objects. Notice also how it's the MIND, not emotion. How you feel is adjunctive, not causative. So: when you see "repent", and there is no object in the verse, you can't ASSume that the object is "sin". What you can assume is that the topic in the verse is what you are to change your mind ABOUT.

In Acts 2:38, for example, Peter says simply "repent", but next says "be baptised WITH REFERENCE TO the forgiveness of sins". (capped words are corrected translation of the preposition "eis", in the Greek: alternate translations can be RESULTING FROM, or BECAUSE OF, or DUE TO -- there's a link below on Romans 10:10 which also mistranslates eis, so you can understand this problem better.) Notice how BELIEVE isn't mentioned.

Because, Changing Your Mind Is Adjunctive, and so is the baptising. If you didn't believe in the Gospel, it's because you believe it's not true. So, before you believe, you first discover why is it true, and thus Change Your Mind about it. Then, you believe. Having believed, were you in Peter's day you'd have followed the then-popular custom of dipping yourself in a river, to Illustrate The Identification With Christ On The Cross (going down in the water), and identification with Christ forever (coming up out of the water). Greek word "Baptismos" means IDENTIFICATION WITH: it's an EFFECT, not a cause. Greek Hoplite recruits had a graduation ceremony where they BAPTISED their graduation swords in pig's blood because they GRADUATED, not to get graduated. So, being baptised is an optional ceremony illustrating the effect of salvation, not causing it. The term Baptismos is repeatedly covered in my other sites in more detail.

If course, sheer common sense would tell you, if the Bible says belief in Christ saves you, then says belief and something else in another verse, it can't be that the something else is also needed for salvation -- or God would be a liar. Hence the presence of the something else, is ABOUT something else, not how-to-be-saved.

Even common sense proves that if Christ paid for all mankind's sins a whopping 2000 years ago (see 1Jn2:2), how can there be anything to add, for crying out loud? Just Believe It. Even common sense proves you're not saved if you substitute or add anything to belief. Because, Christ Is The Only Object Of Belief, Because He Is The One Who Paid. Use Your Brain: if you must 'repent' (etc.) to be saved, then you are believing in What You Do (repentance, inviting, accepting, etc.), instead of in Christ..so you'd reject Him in favor of yourself.. so, not saved! Just as He explained in John 16:9, "Concerning sin: Because They Do Not Believe In Me." Him. Alone. Believe. 100% SUPERnatural, no human additives, Alone pleases God: Heb11:6.

Again, always suspect as a satanic lie any claim which emphasizes man, his behavior, or his role. The sweeter (or guiltier) the lie, the more it will be urged upon you. God doesn't need to urge, anything at all. But Gramma Satan sure does: we're Hansel und Gretel, to them!

Religion always is from Satan, and religion always makes stinks about human merit. God's saying there is NO AMOUNT of human merit or demerit which can count, since He Is Infinitely Holy. So He Did Something About The Problem, since Only Infinite God can Solve a Problem Related To Infinity. Hence John 3:16, no additives, no works, no emotion, ritual, and definitely no MAGIC (baptism, incantations, etc). If you can do something, it's not the solution. Believing in the Object however, isn't doing anything. You believed a can of tomatoes was good, so you bought it. You believe Christ paid for your sins, so you 'buy' John 3:16. Without money, and without price, Isaiah 55!

Again, God doesn't need anything from you, Because Christ Paid, get it? So don't add anything: Just Believe Christ Paid For All Your Sins. If you added anything to faith in the past, you are not saved, because ADDING is works, which CANCELS faith (Eph2:8-9, Rom4:1ff). So Simply Believe In Christ. Read John 3 for yourself, or ANY verses the Lord speaks, even in the Gospels. He never says anything BUT "believe", saves.

Oh: you need Believe Only Once To Be Forever Saved, so technically you can choose to sin like crazy after that; not a bright idea, since sin has its own nasty, damaging effects apart from any offense against God; but you can't lose your salvation. God didn't invent sin, so He didn't invent the nasty effects of sin, either; He merely warns of it, and will 'punish' to slow down those nasty effects.

Sin shrinks your soul, eventually making you mean and small, unable to enjoy your life; making everyone around you, wish they could be a million miles away. Goes like this: with every sin you sin, you LOSE the ability to enjoy; for you INCREASE the addiction to the same sin. If you know anything about addiction to anything, at some point the initial 'high' of it becomes instead, a tyrant over you, and that tyranny replaces the enjoyment. So you end up just trying to appease the tyrant, never actually enjoying anything, anymore. Doesn't matter if it's drugs, booze, sex, TV, church attendance, works, beauty pageants.. if you have this URGE to do it, you're looking at the tyrant. And if you appease it (which you are urged to do), you will reduce your freedom, your ability to enjoy, and you will instead increase the very urge you are trying to get rid of. But you can't lose your salvation. You can only lose a whole lot of enjoyment that learning to say NO to the urges, builds. Which is why you need a Bible to learn: it fights the urges, you fire Bible at the urges. Kinda like sports practice, where you practice the same moves over and over.

Self-righteous people are addicted to their self-righteous sins, like the Pharisees were, so they bristle when they hear the Lord forgave David when he fornicated, Moses when he murdered, Paul when he persecuted others, the adulteress in John 8, etc. See, you can truly sin all you want after salvation -- these self-righteous people sure are, infecting TV with their activism, their prolifer lies, as if God were so stupid (or sadistic) as to put a soul in a womb! Yeah, and look how they prove the foregoing paragraph: small, mean souls, enjoying nothing, constantly appeasing their own self-imposed tyranny of self-righteousness, even abusing interpretation of Bible, so they can falsify spirituality as something YOU do, falsify the Gospel as something YOU do, adding to Gospel and spiritual life just like Satan added verbs in Genesis3! Just like Cain, who was ticked off God didn't want his hard-won vegetable crop, in Genesis 4!

So notice what else is missing from GOD's Truth about your life, post-salvation: all the religious tyrannies. There's no penance, no ritual, no need to attend church, no need to give money or be 'a good person' (see Isa55, Rom5:8); in short, none of what is pandered as 'needed', is. Further, nobody has spiritual power over you, for you are your own priest! The first time you simply believe Christ paid for all your sins, all these things happen to you. If you want to know Right This Second what it means to be a Royal Priest, (Royal Ambassador-for-God, really) Click Here. (Yes: ROYAL.)

Bible uses special vocabulary, poetry, wit, wordplay. If you are self-righteous, all that enjoyable reading just goes right over your head. So Bible is a "mystery" to self-righteous Christians. Yeah, and "mystery" is one of those special vocabulary words the Bible uses to designate the Body of Christ, aka all believers in Him between Pentecost and Rapture, aka "Church". Bible defines all these terms: but if you're busy hating, you can't read it very well. Satan is busy hating. So the term "mystery" is applied in Rev17 to show Satan's out to make Christ and Bible a "mystery" to us, since we are the "mystery", the unknown solution until Christ announced it in Matt16:18, Church. Unknown, in the OT, because until Israel rejected Him, there WAS no such thing. So now a "mystery": Greek word "musterion" means an exclusive KNOWLEDGE, not an unknown; but because exclusive, it's unknown to those outside the group. Church is that group. So the mystery harlot in Rev17, is unknown to hapless humans, a satanic counterfeit. See the wordplay? Satan reverses the "mystery" we are, to make God mysterious, foreign to us!

As noted earlier, the originating sin "fall" of Adam was religious in nature, so the "sin nature" ("flesh", in English Bibles) is religious in nature. Always claiming self good, trying to get good.. at someone else's, expense. So of course everyone who lived before us, had the same problems and insecurities we do. So of course when Israel's promised Messiah (Savior) came, she rejected Him, preferring her religious works. Unfortunately, all time grants depended on Israel's acceptance, so theoretically the world should have come to an end. (That sounds bizarre, but you can prove it from Bible, math, and history: how to's are in Mirroring.htm.) So, the Lord's going to the Cross 'rescued time' at the very last minute (Mirroring covers this, too). But He had to "call out" a new Bride since the planned one had rejected Him (reverse of Book of Esther, but same meaning). That's what Matt16:18 is all about. So we are made to be a solution, in that the Lord was awarded a Bride, and the first one said no.. so now the second ("last" in Bible) says yes. Obviously we're completely graced out, huh. But technically, all this is a "mystery", unknown because NOT DONE, prior. And as far as the world is concerned, we are unknown, too. So, a mystery to them; but we get the Bible, our Book of "mysteries" (again, Greek term means knowledge only known within a special group, which group here CAN BE anyone in the human race). Nothing mystical about it.

So now see Satan's wit: since the Church is a "mystery", he wants to make it mysterious to the Church, what this Bible says! So fosters a FAKE Church, so to confuse us as to what's Christian, and what's not; what's "Biblical" and what's not; even, what books are the Real Bible, and which are not. The Jews got put through all this as well, so.. well, the Last Bride gets even more obfuscation. That's what Rev17 is all about: a religio-political 'Church' which passes itself off as being from God. Not any one denomination, but a character of false Ambassadorial representation (priesthood), teaching, etc., ad nauseum. Which by the way, looks like every other religion ever on the planet, except it has the name "Christ" slapped on.. preening. History shows how this harlot has behaved, and you can watch her parade in nearly every pulpit and 'Christian' station you turn on, at any given moment of the day.

So "TITHE" is misused, too: real Bible says it's SECULAR INCOME TAX, not something you give to a church, for crying out loud. This blatant misuse of Scripture you can prove in translation, lol. Read Leviticus and Deuteronomy yourself. Notice the difference between the Levitical offering and the "tithe", remembering that the Temple was a fortress, the safest place to put the state treasury's income tax. For, that's what "tithe" was: a National Income Tax, not for 'church' at all (God imposed a flat tax). Levitical offerings were for what we'd call 'church' today; always voluntary, never based on income at all (see also Luke 21, NASB or NIV).

It's not rocket science, to prove the Bible disagrees with what popular people say: in either the translation OR the original languages (and the original is unmistakable). See also Rev21:24,26, where the income tax (tribute) is called "glory", in eternity (cf Ps72:10). There's no temple fortress in eternity, k? So you can't mistake that this money isn't going to any church, even if you were dumb enough not to notice the OT secular use of the Temple for national income taxes because it WAS a fortress. But there remain taxes! When taxes are paid by foreign dependents, the ancient term is "tribute". God sure knows how to state a condition of happiness -- imagine considering it a GLORY to pay taxes?

Guess it's no surprise then, that Christian teachers nearly all focus on teaching you how to use the Word, rather than Simply Teach What Bible Says. Just like they add to the real Gospel, other verbs you do, they add to the Word what they think you should do with it. But that's not God's Will: God's will is that you yourself Learn The Word and you yourself Live On It. Which you can prove pretty easily, since in nearly every Bible verse, you are exhorted to Live On It (e.g., Matt4:4).

Note how, if you are living on IT, then IT has the merit, not you. IT does all the work. That's the Lord's claim. By contrast, if you are to do something apart from it, then you, not it, are meritorious. That's Satan's claim. So teachers who tell you how to use the Word apart from you yourself knowing the Word itself, are telling you to make the Word powerful by means of your power. They don't mean to be saying this: they think they are merely packaging the Truth, and don't realize they thus negate the Truth. Just as, they don't mean the 'packaging' of the attestation to negate salvation, either...

So teachers should merely teach you what the Word says, proving to you from the original languages what the actual inspired words, are. In short, the "pastor" is supposed to teach you how to fish, not give you fish to eat. For example, congregations are inspiringly exhorted to have faith, be patient, do for others, avoid sin; the brilliant oratory makes one enthuse to get cracking, too -- but how? Before WWII, American soldiers were drilled and exhorted and pumped up: but they had only cars, no tanks to train with. They had broomsticks, no guns to practice shooting. So too, today's churches. Lots of great and enjoyable speeches, but no spiritual fuel -- so the people perish for lack of Knowledge Of God (Hos4:6). Not for lack of rah-rah.

Christ Himself didn't use His Own Power to have faith, be patient, avoid sin: but instead, Ate The Word (Matt4:4). The Word did the work (central theses in James, 1Jn, Romans8). But how is a congregation gonna eat a Word which it doesn't HAVE? Pastors have the Word, and prove they really eat it: but they don't pass the Word onto their congregations, they pass the use of the Word onto them: use, but not the Word itself -- folks can read the verses, but don't really know what the verses mean. They are left to fend for themselves on how Bible words interrelate across Scripture, and eat too little, too infrequently. Because instead of being taught the Word itself, they are assumed to know the Word itself, so are taught the usage. Bible is too rich in nuance, to get it by reading yourself. You need a pastor to beat his brains out LEARNING THE MEANINGS of a passage -- and then he takes you through the meanings, passing on that info TO you. Now you have it. Directly.

If instead all you get is inspiring usage of a verse (50 seconds on the verse, 50 minutes on the usage), the resulting problem goes like this: if you do my dishes for me, then exhort me to do the dishes, how can I, since I still didn't learn how to do the dishes? Here's another analogy, throwing money at poor people to get them out of poverty: since they don't have money, they don't know how to use money (especially, how to save) -- so they remain poor despite money. GIVE a man a fish, and you give him dinner; TEACH a man how to fish, and you give him a livelihood.

Imagine telling a man to build a spaceship, when he has no math or physics background. Imagine further that you build the spaceship, and he watches: that's what most sermons are. The pastor knows the Word, but doesn't explain the Word ITSELF, but rather only the usage. So now you try to build the spaceship, but.. um, you don't have the knowledge underneath, to really do it. You can only ape what you saw/heard. That will build a few parts to the ship, maybe.. but the vehicle certainly won't fly. Catholicism got started via a sincere belief that teaching do's rather than Know's of the Word somehow 'helped' people. Look at all the historical havoc wrecked in and by Christians, as a result. Exact same trend goes on now, but via the independent churches.. Rev17 harlot. Christian, beware...

Another example. In math class, you learn the math, but then you APPLY the math, i.e., get homework exercises to use what principles you learned. Bible is spiritual math par excellence, and you need it TAUGHT to you -- at which point, you as a Priest are to apply it 24/7. Never-ending homework, since it's really Your Life. Idea for it to become a thinking pattern (secular math, even, is a thinking pattern). You need words and grammar and sentence structure and style data to craft sentences and paragraphs and papers. You need Bible to craft Divine Thinking, which is why we Got The Book. But the Book is Designed to be Taught: Matt4:4 uses the word "rema" for "Word"; in Greek, "rema" means Taught-by-Teacher-Word (regular word for "Word" is logos). Eph4:11-16 is blow-by-blow explicit about the role of the teacher in making you grow up in Christ (very graphic, trans from the Greek is in RightPT.htm).

Look: my pastor taught his congregation how to study the Word, by teaching us the Word ITSELF. As is. Daily. Verse by verse, mostly, from the original languages of Scripture, over 53 years. So, as I Learned The Word Itself, that Word became my own thinking, because I habitually ate (believed) it and live on it. I didn't need my pastor to tell me how to use it, I needed him to teach me WHAT IT IS. So, now that I know what IT is, It cycles in my head 24/7, even while sleeping. Sure, as he learned fantastic uses of the Scripture, he taught us those also: but we already knew first what the Scripture WAS, so we could understand the uses of it he explained. So we ourselves could ourselves USE it. But had he merely explained the use without the Meaning Underneath, we'd have been aping what he said like kids ape their parents, clomping around in Mommy's/Daddy's shoes...

Every shepard of physical sheep 'feeds the sheep' by teaching them how to forage. Sheep alone among animals have zero instinct; they don't know how to scent water, forage, etc -- they are the dumbest of creation's animals. That's why the shepard is a nomad, leading his sheep to where they should eat. He doesn't chew the food for them! Thus Christian sheep today don't have a clue, despite carefully-crafted messages by millions of often-brilliant! pastors worldwide, messages you can't even understand Unless You Already Know Scripture. Which, they don't teach. Instead, they eat the food and then regurgitate it for you -- so you get no nourishment. Thus the pastor's got the hardest job on earth!
For, the Bible is a Thinking Pattern. Alive and powerful, like Heb4:12 says. IT is the power, not me. It is alive, more than me. So if IT is in me, then IT RUNS me (with my continuing consent, of course), so long as 1Jn1:9 is breathed (staying online with the Holy Spirit, Who runs IT). Because of what IT is, I love IT, for "IT" is the Thinking of My Beloved Lord. So, "I" merely respond to "IT", and "IT" does all the work. So, I'm motivated by IT, nourished by IT, sustained by IT, empowered by IT. By IT. Not by 'me'. I can't be empowered by someone else's use of IT, but only my own -- so the Word has to be IN me for 'me' to have IT, capisce? Everything else, is an effect, but the Word In You Is The Uncreated Cause, Even As God Is Truth (uncreated). So you can kiss goodbye all those fantasies of being faithful, obedient, patient, nice -- because you can't do anything on your own. Even Christ didn't do anything but Get The Word In Him. Which is how He BECAME the "Way, the Truth, and the Life". So also.. us.

Notice how there are no added verbs in God's Plan. As a sheep, you eat Word, which everywhere in Bible is a metaphor for BELIEVE. You just eat Word; you don't run around doing works, getting involved in politics, urging others to do the same. Sheep don't do anything but EAT and get FAT. Sure, in real life you've got a job to do: but BIBLE tells you what to do with your body, and it's always and only based on the Word you ATE. Not on anything else. For your real job, is to be a Royal Priest for Father. So whatever you do, is for FATHER. Not, for the world. Learning how to do with this body in this world for Father is rather a different job than the harlot-y stuff pandered by Satan's Fake Counterfeit Churchinanity. So you need downtime, to learn; even as when you were a kid, you didn't jump up and start driving a car, so also you need to learn how to drive God's car. It takes time.

Again, always suspect as a lie any teaching which stresses man and his role. That's the opposite of the Truth That God Does Everything. So the lies are sponsored avidly by Satan&Co. You can detect the lie and prove by Scripture what's the lie, what's the truth: usually, quickly. For, again: always suspect as a lie, any teaching which stresses man and his role. For more information, you can use the "Quick Lie Detector" in the "Testing" Box on Home Page. The very long "Thinking" webseries (in the "Advanced" box on Home Page) has a threaded theme displaying and explaining Satan's system of lies, showing how he stresses good deeds and people as substitutes for salvation and growing up in Christ, but that's a lot of reading.