Very good information

I wanted to share a website with you that is a good idea to visit. It is www.familywatchdog.us

When you visit this site you can enter your address and a map will pop up with your house as the small icon of a house and red, blue, green, dots surrounding your entire neighborhood.

When you click on these dots, a picture of a person will appear with an address and the description of the crime he or she had committed.

This site was developed by John Walsh from Americas Most Wanted. Another tool to help us keep our kids safe.

What shall we do with the truth?

Therefore, O faithful Christian,

search for truth,

hear truth,

learn truth,

love truth,

speak the truth,

hold the truth,

defend the truth

till death.

- Jan Hus

Peter--a Christian who found the truth

Last Thursday I met a most interesting man after I spoke at the Pasquo Church of Christ (southwest of Nashville). I did not get his last name, but his first name was Peter. Peter and his wife are immigrants from Ukraine. Peter (in his forties) grew up in the former Soviet Union as a Baptist. Many of the Christians (members of the church) in the Soviet block had to become Baptists in order to continue to worship, even though they did not desert their beliefs. Our campaign groups met several such people in Belarus and Ukraine. These brethren knew the truth long before evangelists from America arrived in the early 1990s.

Peter, however, did not know about us. When he came to the United States, he came as a Baptist. By providence, he was late one evening coming home. He decided to stop at the nearest church on his route, and the nearest place was Pasquo Church of Christ.

Peter heard the truth being preached. He knew it when he heard it. He left the place he was worshiping and identified with Pasquo. The Baptist churches of USA weren't preaching and practicing the things he had been taught growing up. With great joy he has been attending the Pasquo Church of Christ ever since. I was delighted to meet him. (Contact Joe Spann at Pasquo for more information.) I have urged them to write Peter's story down to share with others.

People can learn and know the truth just by reading the Bible. I have been so intrigued with people like Peter who studied the Book and knew the truth when he heard it!

One prominent preacher among us has argued that people just reading the New Testament would not come to the conclusion that instrumental music was wrong. John Price, who wrote Old Light for New Worship, has disproved that claim.

The perspicuity of the Bible needs to be taught once again. The Bible is clear about much.

• The Lord only built one church, and it is pre-denominational and undenominational.
  
• God's grace is abundant, but works only when people repent.
• Baptism is still a burial in water for those who have been taught and penitently believe, not for unbelieving infants.
• Salvation still follows baptism.
• Christians in the New Testament sang in worship.
  
• It is never right to add or subtract to the teaching of God's Word.

Well, I am thankful for Peter's example. One can learn the truth on his own by a study of God's Word.

kindly,
Phil

A. T. Pate's advice

A. T. Pate is one of my fellow-instructors at Nashville School of Preaching. He is a prince of a man, a good friend, a great encourager, and a soldier in the Lord's army.

He spoke to us last night about what we should tell ourselves when we speak to ourselves. Everyone, after all, talks to himself. What is important, then, is what one says. He suggests that when we talk to ourselves, we should tell ourselves these four things:

(1) I know who I am.
As Christians, we are sons of the King, children of God, royal priests, a person of God's own possession, saints, and workers in the vineyard. Knowing who we are sets our minds on how we behave.

(2) I know where I am going.
As Christians our destiny is heaven. The Father has an inheritance for us there. Jesus went there to prepare a place just for us--a place that is without spot or blemish.

(3) I know how to get there.
The gospel is good news and is very simple and practical. Anyone can go to heaven, if he will simply obey the gospel. God's grace is wondrous and open to those who will respond to His love by obedience.

(4) I will take someone with me.
Preachers are in the recruiting business. We recruit people to be children of God, so that they can live with God forever and ever.

This is excellent self-talk for the preacher or for any soul-winning brother or sister. We thank our godly and good brother, A. T., for sharing this mindset with us.

kindly,
phil

Seven Things I Wish to Accomplish by Age 65

1. I wish to have preached the gospel of Christ to one billion people, including people on every continent and in every state of the United States. I pray God will allow me to be a voice for Him to a corrupt world.

2. I wish to have the ear and the confidence of the President of the United States of America, so that a voice for God may speak.

3. I wish to overcome the sin in my life and develop the spiritual disciplines that keep me focused on God’s purpose and will.

4. I wish to see college students and young adults everywhere convicted with the truth and zealous to share God’s will.

5. I wish to see the Bible return as the most influential moral, doctrinal, and spiritual document of our time.

6. I wish to develop some ground-breaking tools for evangelism and spiritual growth, so that those who have not entered a church building might nonetheless hear the gospel.

7. I wish to train thousands of men who desire to preach the gospel.

The pope has made quite a stir

Benedict XVI has issued a new document this week claiming his primacy as pope and the primacy of the Catholic Church.

The new document -- formulated as five questions and answers -- restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation." The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation."

"Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church," said the document, released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy’s Dolomite mountains. The other communities "cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession -- the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles -- and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said.

The document said that Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they do not recognize the primacy of the pope -- a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an ‘internal constitutive principle’ of the very existence of a particular church," said a commentary from the congregation that accompanied the text.

Ratzinger is feeling his oats. He is predictably standing for his traditions and asserting his place of primacy in the world of Christianity.

The truth is. The pope can't save anybody. He has no holes in his hands. There is only one Savior and one Lord, and that is Jesus. The idea that there is apostolic succession is a fallacy beyond credibility. For those who would like to know about Peter being a pope, apostolic succession and other such matters, please take a look at:

http://www.god-answers.org/Online_Tools/books/Roman%20Catholicism.pdf

Did you know that Peter was married? That celibacy was not demanded for 300 years? That no one claimed to be a pope until 606 AD? That Catholics did not honor the apocrypha until the Council of Trent? that several popes excommunicated other popes? that the popes called each other's doctrines heresies?

Jesus is the only and only Lord of His church and the one and only Savior of the church. There is no other. The gospel is God's means of saving mankind, and the Lord himself adds the saved to His church. The church does not control salvation; the church is the saved (not the Savior).

The church of the New Testament is certainly very different from the Roman Catholic church. For my part, I am pledged to the church I can read about there, not to any other.

phil