September 17, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of the Legacy Bible Podcast, we revisit a timeless message on the importance of guarding the church against false teaching. From the letters to the seven churches in Revelation to Paul’s warnings in Galatians, we are reminded that no man, no angel, and no office carries authority greater than the Word of God.
This sermon challenges us to test every claim of apostleship and every teaching against Scripture, holding fast to the gospel of grace—that we are saved not by works or law-keeping, but by faith in Christ alone.
📑 Show Notes
In this episode, Pastor Chuck Rains walks through Revelation 2, Galatians 1, and Ephesians 2, uncovering the dangers of false apostles, moral corruption, and the temptation to elevate human authority above God’s Word.
Key Points:
- The early church faced challenges of false teaching and moral evil—issues that persist today.
- The letters to the seven churches addressed real congregations but also speak to every generation.
- Claims of new revelations, whether from men or angels, must be tested against Scripture.
- Paul’s rebuke of Peter shows that even apostles were not above God’s Word.
- Salvation is by grace through faith, not works or law-keeping (Ephesians 2:8-9).
- Every believer has the responsibility to know truth and reject error.
Scripture References:
- Revelation 2–3
- Galatians 1:6–9; 2:11–16
- Ephesians 2:4–9
- Colossians 3:1–4
Takeaway: God has entrusted His Word to us, not to apostles or councils, but to the church guided by the Holy Spirit. Our calling is to know the truth, live it out, and guard against error.
Thanks for listening and please subscribe. if you have any comments or questions please send them to legacybiblepodcast@gmail.com you can check out the website at www.legacybiblepodcast.com Fellowship Bible Church website is at wwwfbcjoliet.com please come back every week for another legacy lesson from the bible by the Re. Chuck Rains.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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This is the Legacy Bible Podcast, the home of Legacy Audio from the Tape Archives of
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the Fellowship Bible Church of Joliet, Illinois.
Now here's our host, Marcus O'Nate.
Hello and welcome.
Thank you, AI Voice.
There.
I do like that new intro, just something I'm trying out, see how I like it.
The AI Voice that I came across, so I thought I gave it a try.
(00:31):
Okay, so today we're going to be having another one from our tape archive.
And this one is from March 4, 1991.
So we're back to 1991.
I found out why last week was 92 because that was the next one on the list.
They ran out in once in 1991.
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So I converted a few more tapes and I still have a few more to go to.
So we're now back to 1991.
So this is from March 4, 1991.
And the title is Testing Truth, Apostles, Authority, and the Gospel of Grace.
All right, like last week's was that.
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But God's throne of grace, so let's listen in and I'll talk to you on the other side
of it.
At the start of the church, you can imagine that even though God had made perfect provision
by giving them apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, even though he'd made
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perfect provision through the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the whole body and through
the Spirit had brought the gifts, the enablements for Christians to minister in the body.
You can still well imagine that there was a great possibility for error, bad teaching,
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for things to creep in that were not correct.
Why?
Well think of this.
They really had no history as a church.
The body of Christ was new.
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The doctrines, the doctrine of grace, the doctrine of the forming of the body and what
the body of Christ was, the doctrines that told of who the apostles were and what their
ministries were and what their authority was, all of those things were new.
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It was easy then for some to come along and to teach things that were not true and for
Christians to take them up.
In other words, it was important that people learned the foundational things.
You had to know foundational truths so that you could sort out truth and error.
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Now these letters that you have in Revelation chapter 2 and 3, the seven letters to the
seven churches, they actually are letters to churches that existed at this time.
There were churches in these seven cities.
It's true and these letters did have application to those seven churches at that time.
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They also bring a message to us that fits each of them.
It fits a time period, it seems, in sequence, that goes on through the 2000 years of church
history.
But they were at the time real letters to real churches.
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They were given to the church, the body as a whole, but they were also sent to the individual
churches about 90, I'm giving you a rough number now, about 90 AD.
So the church had been going along, and again, I'm going to leave you a rough number here,
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for about 60 years.
And Jesus gave these personal words, revelation, personal letters, messages to the individual
church, seven churches.
So they had, you could say, 60 years of experience, 60 years of history.
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So problems had a rivs.
You can well imagine in 60 years the average church could find a way to have a problem
or two.
It doesn't take that long for the average family to have a problem.
By the way, Linda, Dawn has already started a little class.
If, on and first I want to go.
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Well, that's enough said they're off.
Okay.
60 years, it doesn't take 60 years for the average church to have a problem.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if a church today could have a history?
Of 60 years and never have a problem.
You'd say either they're all sleeping or they've been raptured or, you know, they're
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sleeping.
They have a problem.
Must be something in between there.
We would desire with all our hearts that as problems arise, saints would bring them before
God and resolve them in the Lord and go on in the correction of the Lord and the grace
of the Lord.
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But sometimes flesh comes up against flesh.
Lives are rent apart and the ministry is under by it.
So the Lord sent letters out to these seven churches and each letter is very, very different.
The one to the Ephesian church is first.
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It's a very high level of condemnation, of commendation, not condemnation, but commendation
that we find in this letter to the Ephesians.
Let me read down here with you.
Or he says in verse two, the Lord speaking here, I know thy works and thy labor and thy
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patience and how the consnot bear them which are evil.
That's kind of a moral term, morally evil.
And thou has tried them which say they are apostles.
Now look at that.
You can see two kinds of trouble that can come into a church.
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Moral evil and a false claim of apostleship.
You say, well, that false claim of apostleship business, that's not a problem anymore.
Well, they didn't think that in upstate New York when Joseph Smith said he had a revelation
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and that the angel Moroni came and helped him with some magic glasses, read some golden
plates, that he had a special revelation.
He's a church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the setup in the head place of authority
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over it.
What do they have in their place of authority over their church?
Do you know?
Joseph Smith said it out.
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What rules in the Mormon church?
For their authority, it is a book called the Book of Mormon, but how about their inner
organization?
Well, you could call it a board.
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Now let me give you a little clue.
There are twelve members.
Guess what their titles are?
Apostles.
Twelve apostles.
Yeah.
Do you know that they teach that those apostles speak without error?
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They get revelations.
They rule really with absolute authority.
Well maybe this isn't just a problem of a long age ago.
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No, cults have come along through the years, through the centuries, that have also made
this error.
Do you know that we weren't very far along, passed about 90 AD, when an idea came into
the minds of some that those that were heads over churches in cities that were populous
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should be recognized as having greater authority over individual churches.
They were even accredited the special titles and they enjoyed that.
And that about 200 years went by and by that time they exercised that authority organizationally
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and brought themselves together so that within 300 years they were ready to say that
the apostolic authority had been passed through them and that there was one of them who was
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to be the leader in that apostolic office over the church.
And he would be called the father, O papa.
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We in English call it the pope.
He's the apostle of the church.
Do you know what they taught?
That the man who is the apostle receives revelation and when he speaks, he speaks without error.
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Now when you do that, you set up an authority above the Word of God.
Do you mean to say that the Mormons actually believe that there is an authority above the
Word of God?
Oh yes.
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They would say it this way.
Yes, we have the Bible, but God has given us another revelation to help us understand
the Bible.
The Book of Mormon and he has given us apostles to receive revelation for us to help us understand
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God's message for us today.
It's interesting that in the Mormon teaching, of course, that the Book of Mormon has never
changed.
It's absolutely the way that Joseph Smith gave it.
It's never been changed.
And some studies have been done to show that they have in fact edited the Book of Mormon
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and changed it literally hundreds of times.
The Mormon church isn't even 200 years old and they've changed their book, their authoritative
unchanging book.
They've already changed it hundreds of times.
They've had revelations in the past that seem not to operate anymore.
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The black man was under the curse of God and could never be a part of God's divine
program.
Well, that was in the days of slavery.
It doesn't work anymore.
They've had a new revelation.
He can be in there now.
Well, they had a revelation that men could have innumerable wives, but they wanted statehood
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and the Congress of the United States would not accept Utah's estate if they didn't alter
that doctrine.
Isn't it convenient that they had a revelation about that?
And they altered it and they got to be a state.
Now the conservatives among them never gave it up.
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They never surrendered it.
And there are still some that were told today that practice it faithfully because it is
revelation.
If any idea of the number of hundreds, I should say thousands of times in one manner
or another, that a man in the office of the pope has spoken and claimed inerrancy from
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the time of the early beginnings of the papacy, many, many, many times.
If a folk would read those supposed revelations that were supposed to be without error, those
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guidelines, those directives from God, they would find out that many of them are directly
contradictory.
Many of them, they would openly today say, no, that isn't the way things are.
You know that one pope told those people, I don't preach, by the way, an anti-Catholic
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message.
I am not interested in doing that.
I'm interested in identifying error.
We are blessed in this church by having almost, well, always we've kind of numbered, we've
kind of looked around and realized this among ourselves, that over half our church are former
Roman Catholics.
So you know that that's not our heart.
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We love people, unsaved people.
If they're green and have two heads, we should love them, you know, and preach the gospel
to them at least twice.
I mean, each.
But no, but we want to identify truth and error.
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There was a pope who taught, well, he put out an encyclical on this, that's a letter
from the pope that claims an erancy in teaching.
And ex-cathedries spoke for the church in his office, and he said that if you would,
this is a good idea, but now think about it, if you would read your Bible 15 minutes each
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day, that's a good idea, isn't it?
A lot of Catholics in those days didn't have Bibles, and there had been a lot of teaching
in the Catholic Church that the Catholics should not read their Bible because they couldn't
understand it, and they really should just wait and come to church and let the priest
tell them what it meant.
And so, you know, but here was a pope saying you should read your Bible every day, and
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if you read it every day for at least 15 minutes, then God would give you 15, I believe it was
15 days.
I may be wrong on that particular point, and I think it was 15 minutes per day you could
have 15 days off of your time in purgatory.
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Well, that was a great motivation.
You never could tell anybody, though, how many days they should expect to be in purgatory?
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How much do I have to work off?
And so they were caught in a chain of slavery.
You know that there were two errors.
There was an error there that a man could speak with authority greater than the Word
of God, and there was an error that there is a place where one goes to perfect their
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salvation after death, either by their own efforts or by those of the people they've
left behind.
That's a lie.
These are false apostles.
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The Ephesian church had problems with those who had come in and bring moral evil into
the church.
That we still have around.
We still have moral evil in the church, but one great blessing in this church was this.
They stood together and recognized moral evil.
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And they said no to it.
Another blessing that the church had was that when somebody came along claiming to be an
apostle, they tested them.
Now, were there any apostles living at the time of the writing of Revelation?
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No, there was one.
He was doing the writing.
John the apostle.
So they were in an age when there were living apostles.
Some young fellows came along and liked that place of power and the thought that they could
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speak with the authority of an apostle.
And maybe as a Joseph Smith or someone like him came and said, oh, you, dear brethren,
at Ephesus, I have a message for you.
And my message comes to you as from an apostle who speaks as from the Lord.
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My message is to be taken as absolute from God in arid.
Well, now how do you test somebody's message or somebody's claim to apostleship?
How do you test it?
What would you do?
Would you jot off a letter to any of the living apostles and say, no, we just had the fellow
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come last week.
His name is, let's give a good name to it, Snobbius Urias.
And Snobbius says that he deserves to be thought of as an apostle.
Now should we accept him?
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Now if one is alive, maybe John, you could write off a letter to John and he could send
a letter back.
If you knew where John was, if he was accessible, if he could write a letter, and if you could
wait long enough to get your reply, by the way, the male wasn't too swift in those days.
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He's right in the wintertime to somebody that's on the Isle of Patmos.
The boat doesn't go over there until spring.
You know, something like that.
Could a church have a lot of trouble in two, three, four, five, six months?
Could somebody get entrenched and split the church?
Yes, it could.
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And even with living apostles, it was necessary for the church to know the scriptures and
to be able to test right there in the church, whether somebody was an apostle.
Now after John died, you couldn't write letters to apostles.
Then you really had to know the scriptures and be able to test right there in the church
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as to whether somebody was an apostle or not.
How would you do that?
How would you do that?
Dan, how would you do that?
Your leadership to get right.
Okay.
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And this fellow and three of his friends were in leadership with the rest of the boys,
and they got into prayer meeting, and they felt led to vote with the other three that
this fellow was an apostle, had the majority.
How would we do?
We had our prayer meeting, we took our vote.
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And the majority was with this snobbiest being an apostle.
And we went with the Word of God.
Determine whether it is in agreement with the Word of God.
Okay.
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That's what he's suggesting.
Aren't you Bill?
They had the written Word of God.
And to use that as their standard and see if the message that they had received from the
apostles was the message that this man was bringing.
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What if he was teaching?
You must believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, and you must keep the law.
Is that taught anywhere today?
Yes, it is.
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Where?
Who teaches it?
You must believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and keep the law where who
teaches it.
Little closer, little closer, Jehovah's Witnesses.
You see, they won't take away the terminology.
They will still say you should receive the Lord as your Savior and Lord.
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They will use those terms, but you know, they add on, but you've got to keep the law.
As Lord and Savior, they will say it, but they have their definition for what Lord means.
They use the terminology, but their definitions are their own.
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But you were going to say, Jack, not taught.
Yeah, they Israel as part of the back, they don't teach it.
But they don't teach salvation by faith in Christ.
No.
I thought you were going to say, well, that's not taught in any church that one could ever
call evangelical or fundamental.
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No, that's true.
But it is taught.
It's taught in error.
Well, if this false apostle came along and taught that, how would you know he was a false
apostle?
Because it didn't agree with the revelation that God had given thus far in his written
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word.
Go to the book of Galatians chapter 1, and you'll see exactly that same thing.
The apostle Paul, and we're taking a jump back here, 40 years before John's writing.
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You see, this problem didn't just happen in 90 AD or in some years after.
This had been a problem 40 years before.
There were those that came in with false teaching.
Now as the apostles died off, they even elevated themselves as apostles.
But back here in Galatians, basically we get the kind of stuff that false apostles brought
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in in their claim for apostleship later.
Apostle Paul says, at verse 6 of Galatians 1, I marvel that you are so soon removed from
him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another.
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It really can't be called another of the same kind.
It isn't really another gospel.
But there be some that troubled you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
He's identifying specific people, teachers that were there at the church in Galatia,
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and they were corrupting the message of the gospel.
And so here's what he says.
But though we, and I think he's identifying the we here himself and other apostles,
the we here in Galatia, is not above the word of God.
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Though we, or an angel from heaven, being an angel from heaven, is not above the message
of God.
If an angel from heaven came and said, I am an angel from heaven.
Look at my glorious ramen.
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Let me do a few little things here to prove to you I'm an angel from heaven.
Now I have a message for you that doesn't agree with the word of God.
I don't think he'd quite say it that way, but let's just say make it easy.
I meant he'd say, here's my message.
And it didn't agree with the word of God.
If an angel from heaven did that, you are not to accept it.
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No creature, and I have to say creature because it could be an angel or a man.
No creature or no person or creature, no matter what his office, what his title, what his nature
is, angelic or human.
In his offices, it could be Michael the Archangel.
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Joseph Smith tried to make sure that people understood that he had had revelation from
very high ranking angels.
It doesn't matter.
It could be the Archangel.
If he brought a revelation that was not in agreement with the word of God, he was not
to be received.
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His message was not to be received.
If an apostle came and brought a message that didn't agree with the gospel of Christ, his
message was not to be received.
And therefore he was not to be received as an apostle.
Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we
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have preached unto you, let him be anathema.
As we said before, so say I know again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than
you have received, let him be a cursed anathema.
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You say you can't set anything above the gospel of the grace of God.
And the gospel of the grace of God, you'll go with me to Ephesians 2.
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I'd like to read it verse 4.
But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love, were with him, loved us even when we
were dead in sins, has quickened, made us alive, together with Christ.
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Now get this by grace, you'll see.
What you've done is the message in the gospel.
You're not made alive in Christ by your works, you're made alive in Christ by grace.
It's on the basis of the love of God for you and what Christ has done, not on the basis
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of what you have done.
For by grace are you saved through faith.
You see, when you exercise your faith, you enter into the provisions that God has made
according to grace, not according to your works.
That's the message of Ephesians.
Let's look at Colossians.
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Chapter 3 verse 1.
If you then be risen with Christ, by the way, it was in Ephesians right there, where we
were reading in chapter 2 that says this in verse 6, and hath raised us up together
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and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Now that's what God has done in your salvation.
Now if you are raised up with Christ, and that's what Colossians is saying, if you
then be risen with Christ, now that is a truth.
That is done, not will be raised, but if you are raised.
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Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
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When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory.
Do you see Christ is your life?
You are dead if you have died with Christ.
You are alive if you have received Christ.
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Why?
Because Christ is your life.
Now and not only are you alive, you are raised up.
Why?
Because Christ has been raised up.
Whatever has happened to you, Christ has happened to you.
Are you dead?
Yes, Christ died, and I am in Christ, so I died.
Are you alive?
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Yes, I am alive.
Because Christ is alive in me.
Christ is my life.
Right there.
Are you raised up?
I am raised up.
Why?
Because Christ is raised up.
What does that mean?
It means that God looks at me and sees me in Christ.
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Whatever has happened to Him, He puts to my record.
You said, but I haven't experienced it all yet.
That's true.
Yeah, it's true.
But the guarantee is, you will.
But spiritually, before God and in God's mind and on the book, it's already taken care
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of.
Let me ask you a question.
How can you improve on holiness?
What pill would you take to be more alive than alive in Christ?
How much higher do you want to be raised than raised up in Christ?
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What I am saying is, can you improve on what you have in Jesus?
Can you add something to it?
Can you make it better?
And the scriptures everywhere would say, no, no, no, no.
And if anybody ever comes and preaches any other gospel, you test them by this book and
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you say, I don't care if you are an angel from heaven.
I don't care if you are an archangel.
I don't care if you have the title of the Apostle across your t-shirt.
This book helps me tell whether you are an apostle.
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It helps me tell whether you are truthful, whether your doctrine is right.
I don't have any living apostle I can write a letter off to today, but I have the Word
of God.
And if a man teaches something that isn't in agreement with the Word of God, he is wrong.
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I don't have to try to appease him.
I don't have to surrender to him because he has authority or title.
He is wrong.
He has no authority greater than the Word of God.
This is my life, Christ.
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And again, approve on it by law keeping or by religion, but he does want me to live out
that life.
I'm going to give you one verse on that in Galatians again in chapter 2 where he is talking to
Peter, Paul is talking to Peter, another apostle who has erred.
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You see the Judaizers of that day had a strong argument.
Here was their argument.
Here was their argument.
It would seem.
We are putting the pieces together.
It seems that they might have made a reference to the fact that there was an apostle, namely
Peter, who went along with law keeping even though he also taught that one must have faith
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in Jesus Christ.
Apparently, there were evidences that that was true.
How many times Peter did it?
We don't know.
But one of the instances is actually cited in Galatians chapter 2 where the apostle Peter
went along with law keeping as a requirement for Christians.
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And that's why this whole thing is even cited in Galatians chapter 2.
That's why we have that reference here.
The apostle Paul is telling these people even though you even have an apostle.
And if it's the apostle Peter, and he comes along and goes along with something that
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is not right, he's wrong.
Peter is not greater than the Word of God.
And a man who sits in an office and says, I am an apostle according to the apostolic succession
that there is in Peter, had better read Galatians 2.
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Because when Peter himself spoke or acted in separating himself from the Gentile Christians
and separating himself with other Jewish believers and in an elevation of Judaism and law keeping
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above the gospel of grace, he had to be rebuked and the apostle Paul did it.
Not because the apostle Paul is a greater apostle.
Paul's no greater apostle than Peter.
What is true here isn't which man is greater?
What's the issue?
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What's the issue?
What is truth?
And what did Paul use?
The Word of God, the gospel of grace.
And if it came down and showed that Peter was wrong, Peter had to be rebuked.
And if Paul had been wrong, he had to be rebuked.
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No apostle is greater than the Word of God and the gospel of grace that we have from him.
No man, no church, no body of men calling themselves apostles.
No man voted in as supreme father over them all.
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No body in this earth, no angel can speak contrary to the Word of God and be right.
And into your hands, he's committed that Word, isn't it an amazing thing that he has
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given us the Word of God and he has not continued to give us apostles?
My God must really believe that Christians, by the help of the Holy Spirit, by the help
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of those who teach the Word of God in truth that Christians can know truth and error,
without apostles.
And I believe that's exactly what God is saying.
Every individual Christian bears a responsibility to know the truth of the Word of God and to
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know the gospel of grace, to know what you have in Christ and to be able to recognize
any error that would contradict.
Don't you try to escape your responsibility on this?
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Study the Word of God.
Father, thank you for your Word.
And thank you for the help of the Spirit of God for our understanding.
Thank you.
That through it we have truth and you guide us in that truth so that our lives are protected
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from confusion.
Hope us this week, spend time with you in the Word of God.
In Jesus' name, amen.
All right.
Thank you, Pastor Rains, for another fine message from the Word of God.
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Thank you, listeners, for listening.
And thank you, e-mailer.
I got an e-mail from a listener the other day and, well, I passed that on to the pastor.
So he's gotten it.
So thank you for sending it.
And I'd like to encourage you more to send more.
So I want to know who's out there and who's listening.
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So send in e-mailers, comments, whatever you have to the legacy or just the legacy Bible
podcast at gmail.com.
Or you can visit the website, there's a comment box under it's www.legacybiblepodcast.com.
Take a try either one of those.
Okay, so thank you for listening.
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Come back next week.
We'll have another one from our deep collection here.
And until then, what did I say?
Have a great day.
All right.
See you next week.
This is the Legacy Bible Podcast, the home of Legacy Audio from the Tape Archives of
(00:10):
the Fellowship Bible Church of Joliet, Illinois.
Now here's our host, Marcus O'Nate.
Hello and welcome.
Thank you, AI Voice.
There.
I do like that new intro, just something I'm trying out, see how I like it.
The AI Voice that I came across, so I thought I gave it a try.
(00:31):
Okay, so today we're going to be having another one from our tape archive.
And this one is from March 4, 1991.
So we're back to 1991.
I found out why last week was 92 because that was the next one on the list.
They ran out in once in 1991.
(00:54):
So I converted a few more tapes and I still have a few more to go to.
So we're now back to 1991.
So this is from March 4, 1991.
And the title is Testing Truth, Apostles, Authority, and the Gospel of Grace.
All right, like last week's was that.
(01:17):
But God's throne of grace, so let's listen in and I'll talk to you on the other side
of it.
At the start of the church, you can imagine that even though God had made perfect provision
by giving them apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, even though he'd made
(01:47):
perfect provision through the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the whole body and through
the Spirit had brought the gifts, the enablements for Christians to minister in the body.
You can still well imagine that there was a great possibility for error, bad teaching,
(02:17):
for things to creep in that were not correct.
Why?
Well think of this.
They really had no history as a church.
The body of Christ was new.
(02:38):
The doctrines, the doctrine of grace, the doctrine of the forming of the body and what
the body of Christ was, the doctrines that told of who the apostles were and what their
ministries were and what their authority was, all of those things were new.
(03:04):
It was easy then for some to come along and to teach things that were not true and for
Christians to take them up.
In other words, it was important that people learned the foundational things.
You had to know foundational truths so that you could sort out truth and error.
(03:32):
Now these letters that you have in Revelation chapter 2 and 3, the seven letters to the
seven churches, they actually are letters to churches that existed at this time.
There were churches in these seven cities.
It's true and these letters did have application to those seven churches at that time.
(03:57):
They also bring a message to us that fits each of them.
It fits a time period, it seems, in sequence, that goes on through the 2000 years of church
history.
But they were at the time real letters to real churches.
(04:21):
They were given to the church, the body as a whole, but they were also sent to the individual
churches about 90, I'm giving you a rough number now, about 90 AD.
So the church had been going along, and again, I'm going to leave you a rough number here,
(04:44):
for about 60 years.
And Jesus gave these personal words, revelation, personal letters, messages to the individual
church, seven churches.
So they had, you could say, 60 years of experience, 60 years of history.
(05:10):
So problems had a rivs.
You can well imagine in 60 years the average church could find a way to have a problem
or two.
It doesn't take that long for the average family to have a problem.
By the way, Linda, Dawn has already started a little class.
If, on and first I want to go.
(05:31):
Well, that's enough said they're off.
Okay.
60 years, it doesn't take 60 years for the average church to have a problem.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if a church today could have a history?
Of 60 years and never have a problem.
You'd say either they're all sleeping or they've been raptured or, you know, they're
(06:00):
sleeping.
They have a problem.
Must be something in between there.
We would desire with all our hearts that as problems arise, saints would bring them before
God and resolve them in the Lord and go on in the correction of the Lord and the grace
of the Lord.
(06:21):
But sometimes flesh comes up against flesh.
Lives are rent apart and the ministry is under by it.
So the Lord sent letters out to these seven churches and each letter is very, very different.
The one to the Ephesian church is first.
(06:42):
It's a very high level of condemnation, of commendation, not condemnation, but commendation
that we find in this letter to the Ephesians.
Let me read down here with you.
Or he says in verse two, the Lord speaking here, I know thy works and thy labor and thy
(07:04):
patience and how the consnot bear them which are evil.
That's kind of a moral term, morally evil.
And thou has tried them which say they are apostles.
Now look at that.
You can see two kinds of trouble that can come into a church.
(07:29):
Moral evil and a false claim of apostleship.
You say, well, that false claim of apostleship business, that's not a problem anymore.
Well, they didn't think that in upstate New York when Joseph Smith said he had a revelation
(07:57):
and that the angel Moroni came and helped him with some magic glasses, read some golden
plates, that he had a special revelation.
He's a church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the setup in the head place of authority
(08:27):
over it.
What do they have in their place of authority over their church?
Do you know?
Joseph Smith said it out.
(08:50):
What rules in the Mormon church?
For their authority, it is a book called the Book of Mormon, but how about their inner
organization?
Well, you could call it a board.
(09:15):
Now let me give you a little clue.
There are twelve members.
Guess what their titles are?
Apostles.
Twelve apostles.
Yeah.
Do you know that they teach that those apostles speak without error?
(09:45):
They get revelations.
They rule really with absolute authority.
Well maybe this isn't just a problem of a long age ago.
(10:07):
No, cults have come along through the years, through the centuries, that have also made
this error.
Do you know that we weren't very far along, passed about 90 AD, when an idea came into
the minds of some that those that were heads over churches in cities that were populous
(10:34):
should be recognized as having greater authority over individual churches.
They were even accredited the special titles and they enjoyed that.
And that about 200 years went by and by that time they exercised that authority organizationally
(10:59):
and brought themselves together so that within 300 years they were ready to say that
the apostolic authority had been passed through them and that there was one of them who was
(11:25):
to be the leader in that apostolic office over the church.
And he would be called the father, O papa.
(11:46):
We in English call it the pope.
He's the apostle of the church.
Do you know what they taught?
That the man who is the apostle receives revelation and when he speaks, he speaks without error.
(12:16):
Now when you do that, you set up an authority above the Word of God.
Do you mean to say that the Mormons actually believe that there is an authority above the
Word of God?
Oh yes.
(12:39):
They would say it this way.
Yes, we have the Bible, but God has given us another revelation to help us understand
the Bible.
The Book of Mormon and he has given us apostles to receive revelation for us to help us understand
(13:00):
God's message for us today.
It's interesting that in the Mormon teaching, of course, that the Book of Mormon has never
changed.
It's absolutely the way that Joseph Smith gave it.
It's never been changed.
And some studies have been done to show that they have in fact edited the Book of Mormon
(13:25):
and changed it literally hundreds of times.
The Mormon church isn't even 200 years old and they've changed their book, their authoritative
unchanging book.
They've already changed it hundreds of times.
They've had revelations in the past that seem not to operate anymore.
(13:53):
The black man was under the curse of God and could never be a part of God's divine
program.
Well, that was in the days of slavery.
It doesn't work anymore.
They've had a new revelation.
He can be in there now.
Well, they had a revelation that men could have innumerable wives, but they wanted statehood
(14:29):
and the Congress of the United States would not accept Utah's estate if they didn't alter
that doctrine.
Isn't it convenient that they had a revelation about that?
And they altered it and they got to be a state.
Now the conservatives among them never gave it up.
(14:52):
They never surrendered it.
And there are still some that were told today that practice it faithfully because it is
revelation.
If any idea of the number of hundreds, I should say thousands of times in one manner
or another, that a man in the office of the pope has spoken and claimed inerrancy from
(15:19):
the time of the early beginnings of the papacy, many, many, many times.
If a folk would read those supposed revelations that were supposed to be without error, those
(15:40):
guidelines, those directives from God, they would find out that many of them are directly
contradictory.
Many of them, they would openly today say, no, that isn't the way things are.
You know that one pope told those people, I don't preach, by the way, an anti-Catholic
(16:07):
message.
I am not interested in doing that.
I'm interested in identifying error.
We are blessed in this church by having almost, well, always we've kind of numbered, we've
kind of looked around and realized this among ourselves, that over half our church are former
Roman Catholics.
So you know that that's not our heart.
(16:28):
We love people, unsaved people.
If they're green and have two heads, we should love them, you know, and preach the gospel
to them at least twice.
I mean, each.
But no, but we want to identify truth and error.
(16:53):
There was a pope who taught, well, he put out an encyclical on this, that's a letter
from the pope that claims an erancy in teaching.
And ex-cathedries spoke for the church in his office, and he said that if you would,
this is a good idea, but now think about it, if you would read your Bible 15 minutes each
(17:21):
day, that's a good idea, isn't it?
A lot of Catholics in those days didn't have Bibles, and there had been a lot of teaching
in the Catholic Church that the Catholics should not read their Bible because they couldn't
understand it, and they really should just wait and come to church and let the priest
tell them what it meant.
And so, you know, but here was a pope saying you should read your Bible every day, and
(17:43):
if you read it every day for at least 15 minutes, then God would give you 15, I believe it was
15 days.
I may be wrong on that particular point, and I think it was 15 minutes per day you could
have 15 days off of your time in purgatory.
(18:09):
Well, that was a great motivation.
You never could tell anybody, though, how many days they should expect to be in purgatory?
(18:31):
How much do I have to work off?
And so they were caught in a chain of slavery.
You know that there were two errors.
There was an error there that a man could speak with authority greater than the Word
of God, and there was an error that there is a place where one goes to perfect their
(18:59):
salvation after death, either by their own efforts or by those of the people they've
left behind.
That's a lie.
These are false apostles.
(19:20):
The Ephesian church had problems with those who had come in and bring moral evil into
the church.
That we still have around.
We still have moral evil in the church, but one great blessing in this church was this.
They stood together and recognized moral evil.
(19:47):
And they said no to it.
Another blessing that the church had was that when somebody came along claiming to be an
apostle, they tested them.
Now, were there any apostles living at the time of the writing of Revelation?
(20:09):
No, there was one.
He was doing the writing.
John the apostle.
So they were in an age when there were living apostles.
Some young fellows came along and liked that place of power and the thought that they could
(20:31):
speak with the authority of an apostle.
And maybe as a Joseph Smith or someone like him came and said, oh, you, dear brethren,
at Ephesus, I have a message for you.
And my message comes to you as from an apostle who speaks as from the Lord.
(20:54):
My message is to be taken as absolute from God in arid.
Well, now how do you test somebody's message or somebody's claim to apostleship?
How do you test it?
What would you do?
Would you jot off a letter to any of the living apostles and say, no, we just had the fellow
(21:19):
come last week.
His name is, let's give a good name to it, Snobbius Urias.
And Snobbius says that he deserves to be thought of as an apostle.
Now should we accept him?
(21:40):
Now if one is alive, maybe John, you could write off a letter to John and he could send
a letter back.
If you knew where John was, if he was accessible, if he could write a letter, and if you could
wait long enough to get your reply, by the way, the male wasn't too swift in those days.
(22:09):
He's right in the wintertime to somebody that's on the Isle of Patmos.
The boat doesn't go over there until spring.
You know, something like that.
Could a church have a lot of trouble in two, three, four, five, six months?
Could somebody get entrenched and split the church?
Yes, it could.
(22:32):
And even with living apostles, it was necessary for the church to know the scriptures and
to be able to test right there in the church, whether somebody was an apostle.
Now after John died, you couldn't write letters to apostles.
Then you really had to know the scriptures and be able to test right there in the church
(22:54):
as to whether somebody was an apostle or not.
How would you do that?
How would you do that?
Dan, how would you do that?
Your leadership to get right.
Okay.
(23:17):
And this fellow and three of his friends were in leadership with the rest of the boys,
and they got into prayer meeting, and they felt led to vote with the other three that
this fellow was an apostle, had the majority.
How would we do?
We had our prayer meeting, we took our vote.
(23:39):
And the majority was with this snobbiest being an apostle.
And we went with the Word of God.
Determine whether it is in agreement with the Word of God.
Okay.
(24:00):
That's what he's suggesting.
Aren't you Bill?
They had the written Word of God.
And to use that as their standard and see if the message that they had received from the
apostles was the message that this man was bringing.
(24:21):
What if he was teaching?
You must believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, and you must keep the law.
Is that taught anywhere today?
Yes, it is.
(24:43):
Where?
Who teaches it?
You must believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and keep the law where who
teaches it.
Little closer, little closer, Jehovah's Witnesses.
You see, they won't take away the terminology.
They will still say you should receive the Lord as your Savior and Lord.
(25:06):
They will use those terms, but you know, they add on, but you've got to keep the law.
As Lord and Savior, they will say it, but they have their definition for what Lord means.
They use the terminology, but their definitions are their own.
(25:29):
But you were going to say, Jack, not taught.
Yeah, they Israel as part of the back, they don't teach it.
But they don't teach salvation by faith in Christ.
No.
I thought you were going to say, well, that's not taught in any church that one could ever
call evangelical or fundamental.
(25:52):
No, that's true.
But it is taught.
It's taught in error.
Well, if this false apostle came along and taught that, how would you know he was a false
apostle?
Because it didn't agree with the revelation that God had given thus far in his written
(26:15):
word.
Go to the book of Galatians chapter 1, and you'll see exactly that same thing.
The apostle Paul, and we're taking a jump back here, 40 years before John's writing.
(26:38):
You see, this problem didn't just happen in 90 AD or in some years after.
This had been a problem 40 years before.
There were those that came in with false teaching.
Now as the apostles died off, they even elevated themselves as apostles.
But back here in Galatians, basically we get the kind of stuff that false apostles brought
(27:03):
in in their claim for apostleship later.
Apostle Paul says, at verse 6 of Galatians 1, I marvel that you are so soon removed from
him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another.
(27:33):
It really can't be called another of the same kind.
It isn't really another gospel.
But there be some that troubled you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
He's identifying specific people, teachers that were there at the church in Galatia,
(27:55):
and they were corrupting the message of the gospel.
And so here's what he says.
But though we, and I think he's identifying the we here himself and other apostles,
the we here in Galatia, is not above the word of God.
(28:18):
Though we, or an angel from heaven, being an angel from heaven, is not above the message
of God.
If an angel from heaven came and said, I am an angel from heaven.
Look at my glorious ramen.
(28:41):
Let me do a few little things here to prove to you I'm an angel from heaven.
Now I have a message for you that doesn't agree with the word of God.
I don't think he'd quite say it that way, but let's just say make it easy.
I meant he'd say, here's my message.
And it didn't agree with the word of God.
If an angel from heaven did that, you are not to accept it.
(29:07):
No creature, and I have to say creature because it could be an angel or a man.
No creature or no person or creature, no matter what his office, what his title, what his nature
is, angelic or human.
In his offices, it could be Michael the Archangel.
(29:31):
Joseph Smith tried to make sure that people understood that he had had revelation from
very high ranking angels.
It doesn't matter.
It could be the Archangel.
If he brought a revelation that was not in agreement with the word of God, he was not
to be received.
(29:54):
His message was not to be received.
If an apostle came and brought a message that didn't agree with the gospel of Christ, his
message was not to be received.
And therefore he was not to be received as an apostle.
Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we
(30:22):
have preached unto you, let him be anathema.
As we said before, so say I know again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than
you have received, let him be a cursed anathema.
(30:43):
You say you can't set anything above the gospel of the grace of God.
And the gospel of the grace of God, you'll go with me to Ephesians 2.
(31:17):
I'd like to read it verse 4.
But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love, were with him, loved us even when we
were dead in sins, has quickened, made us alive, together with Christ.
(31:40):
Now get this by grace, you'll see.
What you've done is the message in the gospel.
You're not made alive in Christ by your works, you're made alive in Christ by grace.
It's on the basis of the love of God for you and what Christ has done, not on the basis
(32:01):
of what you have done.
For by grace are you saved through faith.
You see, when you exercise your faith, you enter into the provisions that God has made
according to grace, not according to your works.
That's the message of Ephesians.
Let's look at Colossians.
(32:26):
Chapter 3 verse 1.
If you then be risen with Christ, by the way, it was in Ephesians right there, where we
were reading in chapter 2 that says this in verse 6, and hath raised us up together
(32:47):
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Now that's what God has done in your salvation.
Now if you are raised up with Christ, and that's what Colossians is saying, if you
then be risen with Christ, now that is a truth.
That is done, not will be raised, but if you are raised.
(33:13):
Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.
Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.
For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
(33:34):
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory.
Do you see Christ is your life?
You are dead if you have died with Christ.
You are alive if you have received Christ.
(33:57):
Why?
Because Christ is your life.
Now and not only are you alive, you are raised up.
Why?
Because Christ has been raised up.
Whatever has happened to you, Christ has happened to you.
Are you dead?
Yes, Christ died, and I am in Christ, so I died.
Are you alive?
(34:18):
Yes, I am alive.
Because Christ is alive in me.
Christ is my life.
Right there.
Are you raised up?
I am raised up.
Why?
Because Christ is raised up.
What does that mean?
It means that God looks at me and sees me in Christ.
(34:40):
Whatever has happened to Him, He puts to my record.
You said, but I haven't experienced it all yet.
That's true.
Yeah, it's true.
But the guarantee is, you will.
But spiritually, before God and in God's mind and on the book, it's already taken care
(35:02):
of.
Let me ask you a question.
How can you improve on holiness?
What pill would you take to be more alive than alive in Christ?
How much higher do you want to be raised than raised up in Christ?
(35:27):
What I am saying is, can you improve on what you have in Jesus?
Can you add something to it?
Can you make it better?
And the scriptures everywhere would say, no, no, no, no.
And if anybody ever comes and preaches any other gospel, you test them by this book and
(35:49):
you say, I don't care if you are an angel from heaven.
I don't care if you are an archangel.
I don't care if you have the title of the Apostle across your t-shirt.
This book helps me tell whether you are an apostle.
(36:10):
It helps me tell whether you are truthful, whether your doctrine is right.
I don't have any living apostle I can write a letter off to today, but I have the Word
of God.
And if a man teaches something that isn't in agreement with the Word of God, he is wrong.
(36:31):
I don't have to try to appease him.
I don't have to surrender to him because he has authority or title.
He is wrong.
He has no authority greater than the Word of God.
This is my life, Christ.
(36:54):
And again, approve on it by law keeping or by religion, but he does want me to live out
that life.
I'm going to give you one verse on that in Galatians again in chapter 2 where he is talking to
Peter, Paul is talking to Peter, another apostle who has erred.
(37:22):
You see the Judaizers of that day had a strong argument.
Here was their argument.
Here was their argument.
It would seem.
We are putting the pieces together.
It seems that they might have made a reference to the fact that there was an apostle, namely
Peter, who went along with law keeping even though he also taught that one must have faith
(37:49):
in Jesus Christ.
Apparently, there were evidences that that was true.
How many times Peter did it?
We don't know.
But one of the instances is actually cited in Galatians chapter 2 where the apostle Peter
went along with law keeping as a requirement for Christians.
(38:18):
And that's why this whole thing is even cited in Galatians chapter 2.
That's why we have that reference here.
The apostle Paul is telling these people even though you even have an apostle.
And if it's the apostle Peter, and he comes along and goes along with something that
(38:40):
is not right, he's wrong.
Peter is not greater than the Word of God.
And a man who sits in an office and says, I am an apostle according to the apostolic succession
that there is in Peter, had better read Galatians 2.
(39:08):
Because when Peter himself spoke or acted in separating himself from the Gentile Christians
and separating himself with other Jewish believers and in an elevation of Judaism and law keeping
(39:30):
above the gospel of grace, he had to be rebuked and the apostle Paul did it.
Not because the apostle Paul is a greater apostle.
Paul's no greater apostle than Peter.
What is true here isn't which man is greater?
What's the issue?
(39:52):
What's the issue?
What is truth?
And what did Paul use?
The Word of God, the gospel of grace.
And if it came down and showed that Peter was wrong, Peter had to be rebuked.
And if Paul had been wrong, he had to be rebuked.
(40:17):
No apostle is greater than the Word of God and the gospel of grace that we have from him.
No man, no church, no body of men calling themselves apostles.
No man voted in as supreme father over them all.
(40:40):
No body in this earth, no angel can speak contrary to the Word of God and be right.
And into your hands, he's committed that Word, isn't it an amazing thing that he has
(41:01):
given us the Word of God and he has not continued to give us apostles?
My God must really believe that Christians, by the help of the Holy Spirit, by the help
(41:24):
of those who teach the Word of God in truth that Christians can know truth and error,
without apostles.
And I believe that's exactly what God is saying.
Every individual Christian bears a responsibility to know the truth of the Word of God and to
(41:51):
know the gospel of grace, to know what you have in Christ and to be able to recognize
any error that would contradict.
Don't you try to escape your responsibility on this?
(42:13):
Study the Word of God.
Father, thank you for your Word.
And thank you for the help of the Spirit of God for our understanding.
Thank you.
That through it we have truth and you guide us in that truth so that our lives are protected
(42:39):
from confusion.
Hope us this week, spend time with you in the Word of God.
In Jesus' name, amen.
All right.
Thank you, Pastor Rains, for another fine message from the Word of God.
(43:00):
Thank you, listeners, for listening.
And thank you, e-mailer.
I got an e-mail from a listener the other day and, well, I passed that on to the pastor.
So he's gotten it.
So thank you for sending it.
And I'd like to encourage you more to send more.
So I want to know who's out there and who's listening.
(43:23):
So send in e-mailers, comments, whatever you have to the legacy or just the legacy Bible
podcast at gmail.com.
Or you can visit the website, there's a comment box under it's www.legacybiblepodcast.com.
Take a try either one of those.
Okay, so thank you for listening.
(43:45):
Come back next week.
We'll have another one from our deep collection here.
And until then, what did I say?
Have a great day.
All right.
See you next week.
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