How heavy my heart became when reading today that an internal survey conducted by the Church of England determined that 1 out of every 33 clergy in that denomination don't actually believe in God. It astonishes me. I would suggest that they've pursued a career for some reason other than "for the sake of the Name".
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How does "acting faithfully" become transformed into being called "your love"? Isn't that an odd way of describing things? First he compliments them on their faithfulness—their adherance to the attitude and behavior one would expect of Christians—but further states that this behavior resulted in a testimony to their love.
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After being away from home for a few years I returned from the Army to discover that everyone has a "measuring stick". When you haven't seen someone for a very long time, and you're catching up on what's happened in the intervening years, you will notice that they start nearly each and every individual report the same way which also betrays how they judge the qualities of another's life. For instance, one person began each status report with the person's occupation. (Bob's a carpenter, Larry's a doctor (gush-gush), Sheila's still pumping gas (too bad).) Other such examples were how much money a person makes, what kind of house they have, how many kids—one guy qualified each person by how beautiful a wife they married. Even amongst my many Christian friends, there never seemed to be anyone whose "measuring stick" was the quality of one's walk in Christ.
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There IS a line we must not cross, a doctrinal threshhold that can be practically measured in this life indicating whether or not one is maintaining a right relationship with God: Whether or not we "abide in the teaching of Christ".
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To be absolutely sure, there IS a single individual that will rise to world prominence that holds the title of "antichrist"; but there is also a ROLE of the spirit of the antichrist that is played out by the evil one through his false prophets and false teachers amongst every generation of Believer. If we only focus on the one, End Times personality called "antichrist", we may fail to see the even more dangerous work that is going on ALL the time that is the spirit of the antichrist.
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What? Just "SOME"? Not ALL? That's completely outrageous! Since he didn't at least use "most" then I suppose we can even infer that the MAJORITY have become back-slidden and are now lost forever. Why does this sound like a compliment instead of bemoaning the obvious disaster that it actually is?
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This can be a tough verse because John doesn't specify which is a sin "leading to death" and which is "not leading to death". And it grabs our attention because John actually says not to pray for those committing a sin "leading to death"? As with all verses both difficult and easy, the number one rule for proper biblical interpretation is to always look at what other Scripture has to say. It's never a good thing to base a doctrine on a single verse, but on what the Bible has to say about a topic as a whole. So what we need to do is look for anything related in the rest of God's Word.
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