If You Love Me . . .12

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. (James 2:26)

The pleasing of people, the rights of the people, man-centeredness, humanism, is one of the four great horsemen of error. The spirit of humanism creates lawless Christians, Christians who follow their own pleasures rather than the laws of Almighty God.

The second of the four horsemen is the of error of Gnosticism. Gnosticism is a philosophy that was in existence before Christianity and has strongly affected Christian theology. It is believed that some of the early Christians became Gnostic in doctrine.

Gnosticism has influenced Christian thinking in two aspects:

The belief that matter is evil and spirit is good.

The belief that salvation comes through special knowledge rather than changed behavior.

Both of these aspects have promoted lawlessness, exactly as Antichrist intends they should.

The first idea, that matter is evil and spirit is good, has led to the concept that eternal residence in the spirit Paradise is the goal of the Christian salvation. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament reveal clearly that eternal residence in the spirit Paradise is not the goal of the Christian salvation.

The goal of the Christian salvation is to fill the material creation with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Kingdom of God and its eternal location is this earth and then the new earth. The Kingdom is in the spirit Paradise now but this is temporary, lasting only until the firstfruits of the Church has been made ready to appear with the Lord Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is the doing of God's will in the earth. When the Lord God created the material realm He pronounced it "very good." Evil came to the material realm from the spirit realm. The evil lords of spiritual darkness are still affecting the material realm from their place in the heavens. The material realm cannot be filled with the Lord Jesus until first the wickedness is driven from the heavens.

To view eternal residence in Heaven as the goal of salvation is to make any biblical definition of salvation impossible and to render the Scriptures incomprehensible.

Limiting the definition of Divine grace to an eternal amnesty apart from a transformation of the individual from lawlessness to lawfulness has arisen because salvation is viewed as an escape from this world and entrance into a sinless Paradise. But sin began in Paradise!

An individual is not fully saved until he has been delivered from the influence of Satan and brought under the influence of the Lord Jesus in spirit, soul, and in body when the Lord appears. Mere entrance into the spirit realm, even into the paradisiac spirit realm, accomplishes no change in the individual. Entrance into the spirit realm is not what the Gospel means by "salvation" nor does it result in salvation.

We have been greatly influenced by Gnosticism. Because of the Lord's statements that we are to lay up our treasures in Heaven, and Paul's teaching that we should set our affection on things above, the philosophy of Gnosticism appears to have much in common with Christianity. Some of Plato's teaching also lends support to the idea that it is the spirit realm that is the desirable place to be.

This hardly is the case!

To be continued. If You Love Me . . .13