Presents
Pamphlet #1027
"If You Truly Believe"
The apostle John in this first
of his three epistles makes it quite clear
that if a person does not believe
in Jesus Christ,
that He is indeed the Son of
God,
then he or she does not have
the Father either.
He also taught us that we are
not to believe every spirit that comes along
but to try the spirits to see
whether or not they are of God.
This we are to do in order that
we may know
from the Word of God how to
discern the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
John also warned us that the
antichrist is soon coming
but meanwhile we had better
know that the spirit of antichrist is presently at work in his children,
the children of the devil (1
John 3:10).
1 John 5:1
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God:
and every one that loveth Him that begat loveth Him also that is begotten of Him.
What does it mean to believe
that Jesus is the Christ,
the Anointed One of God?
We have already seen that just
saying the words
"Jesus is the Christ"
does not really mean that a
person truly believes, i.e. that he KNOWS in his HEART,
without a shadow of a doubt,
that Jesus is the Messiah born
of the virgin Mary.
In fact, haven't we already read
from the words of Jesus Himself
that MANY shall come in His
name saying
He is the Christ and shall deceive
MANY.
Matthew 24:5 "For many shall
come in my name,
saying, I am Christ; and shall
deceive many."
You see, though many claim to
"believe" in Jesus,
they do not know His Word nor
do they keep His commandments,
which they think means just
the 10 Commandments.
For example, most Christians
have never followed the direct command of Jesus Christ in Mat. 24:32:
"Now learn a parable of the
fig tree!"
Have you?
Nor do they follow the commandment
He gave us through John in the
first verse of the last chapter whereby we are commanded to
"try the spirits"
to see whether or not they of
God.
Consequently, because of their
disobedience to His Word,
His commandments,
they follow in blind ignorance
after the traditions of men
that have been allowed to slip
in unawares (untested) into the churches of Christianity.
Many of those "traditions of
men" are quite contrary to the Word of God,
yet those precepts are all that
many know about the love of God.
Yes, they love the Lord but their
hearts, i.e. their minds,
are far from Him because they
are far from knowing His Word.
Therefore they receive not the
spirit of tried and tested truth
but the spirit of error and
confusion ("babel" in Hebrew).
In fact, in Matthew 15 Jesus quoted these words from the 29th chapter of Isaiah: