Watchman Magazine

(Editor’s Note: The following article by brother Hafley is the fourth and final in a series appearing in the January, February, March and April issues of Watchman Magazine. Each article consists of 3 sections [or smaller articles]. Combined, they systematically answer the Calvinist doctrines of Total Depravity and Individual Predestination. I commend them to you.)

(Section 1)

Free Will “To Dye For”A modern colloquialism to express great desire for a certain thing says the item is “to die for.” Wayne Camp, in an effort to show that man does not have a free will, cites three tests or principles which he says proves that man does not have a free will. We examined his first test in our last article. In this segment, we shall discuss his last two principles, one of which is “to dye for.”

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Editor’s note: What we have in this article is the response by Larry Ray Hafley to a Mr. Charles Ellis of the Baptist Church. If this were a formal debate, we would publish both sides of the discussion. However, this is not intended to be in such a format, even though Mr. Ellis is directed and quoted in the article. Our purpose in publishing this is to show the inadequacy of Baptist Doctrine in light of the Word of God. If there is a need for any of this article to be challenged, then we will deal with that as it occurs. We commend the article to you for your personal and private study. May God help us all to know His will and do it.

I. “How Can I Be Sure?”

Mr. Ellis is correct about two things. First, we can be sure that we have been saved. Jesus said, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). When we have done what the Lord said, we can know that we are saved (John 8:32). We can know that we have been forgiven of our past, or alien, sins. Obviously, if one may forget that he was forgiven, cleansed of his past sins, he must have known it to begin with, for one cannot forget what he has never known (2 Pet. 1:9). John wrote “that ye may know that ye have eternal life” (1 John 5:13; Cf. 1:7; 2:3-5, 25). Second, feelings, indeed, may be deceitful. Jacob “felt,” believed, that Joseph was dead (Genesis 37:33-35). Joseph was alive. Jacob’s feelings that Joseph was dead did not make it so. Saul truly “thought” that he “ought” to persecute the name of Christ, the disciples of Christ (Acts 26:9-11). His feelings, his murdering of the saints “in all good conscience,” did not make it right (John 16:1-3; Acts 23:1; 1 Timothy 1:13).

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Our Attitude and Practice Toward Error

(Acts 17:16-34)

Dennis C. Abernathy
ca. 1975

We all are aware, I am sure, that error is all around us. A very important question is: “What shall be my attitude and practice toward such?” Let us in this article use the example of the apostle Paul. We find him in the city of Athens waiting for his companions to join him. He had come there to escape opposition (Acts 17:13-15). Upon his arrival Paul found the city wholly given to idolatry (v. 16). In other words, Athens was full of idolatry. It is said that Athens had more idols and images than all the rest of Greece. That it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens.

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IntroducciónEl tratar con hermanos inmaduros puede ser una prueba muy grande. Ya sabemos que son necesarias la amonestación y la reprensión a hermanos errados. Es importante que sigamos todos los pasos bíblicos en este asunto de la disciplina a hermanos errados. Pero en esta lección nos enfocamos a otra cosa: ¿Mantendremos una actitud de optimismo en este proceso de disciplina, o seremos pesimistas? ¿O se puede decir que en realidad no importa el optimismo o el pesimismo, con tal que tratemos con estos hermanos siguiendo los pasos bíblicos?

 

La definición del pesimismoEl diccionario Larousse dice que pesimismo quiere decir, “opinión de los que piensan que todo es malo en este mundo… propensión a juzgar las cosas desfavorablemente.” En este artículo, cuando usamos la palabra pesimismo, nos referimos a la actitud que niega la sinceridad de otros. El pesimismo es el rehusar tener esperanza del progreso y la madurez del otro. Supongamos que, en un momento dado, se necesite en otro hermano el arrepentimiento, y supongamos que el errado aun haya confesado la necesidad de arrepentirse. El pesimista rehusa aceptar que tal hermano sea sincero en su confesión. “El nunca va a cambiar. Ella nunca va a llegar a ser algo bueno,” dice el pesimista.

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There are so many directions we could go in covering the subject of influence, but we will concentrate on those areas which affect women the most. Whether we realize it or not, we are influencing someone every day of our lives. Let’s examine some of the ways we influence others.

First, right in our own homes. We certainly exert an influence on our husbands. Suppose year after year our husbands see the first day of the week pass by while we take that time to read our paper and pour over the great ads, or maybe we use that day to do our baking for the week ahead. After all, we reason, that’s the only free time we have. But, we’re showing where our priorities lie and what comes first in our lives. How can we think about teaching someone the truth when we fail to practice it ourselves? Paul said, in 1 Corinthians 7:16, “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? … “ Also, Peter said, “Like wise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear” (1 Peter 3:1-2).

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(The Apostle John and “Doctrine of Christ”)
(2 John 9-11)

This part of Watchman has been devoted to a study of difficult passages (“Solid Food”) recognizing that some passages are said by Peter to be “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). We are emphasizing that difficulty is not impossibility. Just as milk is for babes, meat is for mature adults and this process of growth is analogous to spiritual maturity. We are to “desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). At the same time, we are be “no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive, but, speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ” (Eph. 4:14-15). Growing up in Christ means attaining a “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (v. 13), that of a mature Christian who has gone on to “perfection.”

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A good friend of mine lent me the June, 1984 issue of National Geographic, which has a large section on ants. The main article in this section is well-written, lavishly illustrated, and downright fascinating. The author is clearly an expert on ants – and a firm believer in the general theory of evolution. In fact, he begins the essay by describing his efforts to find a rare Australian ant called Nothomyrmecia macrops, which he had hoped would prove to be a “missing link” between modern ants and their alleged primitive ancestors. As you are probably aware, scientists who believe in the general theory of evolution are always looking for “missing links”, because they have not yet found any hard physical evidence of the supposed evolution from primitive to complex forms of life. As it turned out, the Nothomyrmecia macrops proved to be yet another disappointment. Rather than providing a link between modern social ants and their alleged semi-social or solitary ancestors, this ant prove to be, in the author’s words, “fully social.”

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“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:3-6).

Even the most casual of Bible students is able to determine that the “us” of Ephesians 1, which as a group has been chosen “in Him before the foundation of the world”, has reference to the church of God which Christ “purchased with His own blood” (cf. Acts 20:28). Most Christians are able to give a concise definition of the term “church”, derived from the greek term “ekklesia”, and referring to the “called out” which are the people of God. Fundamental lessons we learn as babes in Christ allow us to identify the church built by Christ (Matthew 16:18), and to respect its grand design which had its origin in the mind of God “before the foundation of the world.”

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Gospel preachers are the best friends gospel preachers have.

While it is true that a special bond exists between all Christians (Gal. 6:10), gospel preachers share labors, hopes, problems and experiences that only other preachers can understand. This is not to say that preachers are any better than other Christians. It is but to admit that there is a field of service peculiar to preachers of the word that none can understand unless one has filled the shoes of another preacher. Mothers can understand certain issues of life that single women have never known, creating a special bond between mothers. Medical doctors, coaches, teachers and certain professions have a bond that they share within their field because of the peculiar circumstances that make them what they are. Likewise, gospel preachers recognize their responsibilities, challenges and opportunities and relate to one another, knowing the trials, temptations and pitfalls that face each other. It is this commonality of service that makes one preacher sensitive to the needs and weaknesses of other preachers. Without lessening the brotherhood that exists between all Christians, gospel preachers need the relationship with other preachers to face the variety of challenges their work will thrust upon them.

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The Philippian jailer is a most interesting tale of conversion. The scene is set and the characters are introduced in verses 22 – 24. The magistrates, in response to allegations made against Paul and

It is interesting to note that neither the beating nor the imprisonment shook the faith of Paul nor Silas. In fact at midnight the scriptures say that they were praying and singing hymns to God. This activity is an example of what Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:16 “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter.” It was a testimony of their faith in God, to both the prisoners and the jailer. Maybe this is the reason that no one left when the earthquake opened all the doors and loosed everyone’s chains.

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How “the Lord Opened Her Heart”In the city of Troas on the northeast coast of the blue Aegean Sea, Paul the apostle of Christ received the “Macedonian call”. He saw a man in a vision saying “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:10). Paul and his preaching companions immediately sought passage to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had called them to preach the gospel there. They sailed across the Aegean and made their way to Philippi, “which is the foremost city of that part of Macedonia” (Acts 16:12). On the Sabbath day, they went out of the city to the riverside to a place where prayer was customarily made. They sat down and spoke to the women who met there. Here is the account of what happened next in the inspired words of one of the evangelists who was present:

“Now a certain woman named Lydia heard us. She was a seller of purple from the city of Thyatira, who worshipped God. The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. And when she and her household were baptized, she begged us, saying ‘If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.’ And she constrained us” (Acts 16:14-15).

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“And he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch; and he baptized him.” (Acts 8:38)

It must have been an odd sight to anyone who might have passed by – these two grown men down in the water practicing this strange ritual; one dunking the other, burying him completely under the water and then raising him up again; the one dunked coming up out of the water rejoicing like some kind of heavy burden had just been lifted from his shoulders, or like he had just been set free from a life of slavery, or prison. But then, maybe it was not such an odd sight after all. Maybe this kind of thing was going on all over Judea. We know that three thousand had gone through a similar experience in one day in Jerusalem not many weeks before this (Acts 2:41). And we know that a multitude of men and women in Samaria had done this exact same thing just days before. Perhaps by now the typical response of the passer-by would have been, “There goes another one!”

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In Acts chapter 2 we have the record of the conversion and salvation of about 3000 souls, Acts 2:41. These conversions were effected by the power of the Holy Spirit as He worked through the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are told that the 12 apostles were together in one place on the day of Pentecost when they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, Acts 2:1-4. This was the promise from the Father, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which was promised the apostles in Acts 1:4,5. On that first day of Pentecost following Jesus’ resurrection from the dead the Holy Spirit worked through the 12 apostles. He worked through them in performing the signs and wonders of that day, Acts 2:4-12. The Holy Spirit revealed the truth to the apostles, reminded them of Jesus’ words, and gave them the very words they were to speak, John 16:13; 14:26; Matthew 10:19,20. In doing this the Holy Spirit was fulfilling the work Jesus said he would perform in convicting the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment, John 16:8.

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