Has Jesus Accepted You? Steven Long 10/18/2012

It is a common phenomena in our culture when sharing the gospel with people to ask, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior?"

While the Bible does place emphasis on personal faith and relationship with Jesus, the question is not actually relevant to Scripture. The proper question would be, "Has Jesus accepted you?"

Now, most people would immediately point to John 1:12 and John's usage of "receiving" Christ and affirm the first questioned mentioned. However, the context of John's usage in the first chapter of John has more to do with Jesus' own people, the Jews' acceptance of Him.

Many may accuse me of being over-the-top on this issue but with so much false teaching abounding and with focus on self rather than Christ's finished work I think it is a crucial issue that people realize that nothing, not even their faith (which is a gift according to Scripture: Acts 11:18, 2Tim 2:25) had anything to do with their salvation. A "decision" or "acceptance" does not affect your standing before God.



Rather, what affects our standing before God is that we have been accepted by the Father based upon Christ's finished work on the cross!. Everything from our faith, to our repentance, to our sanctification has already been purchased. Even the works that Christ has for us to do as believers are already chosen (Eph 2:10).

Therefore, it is important when evangelizing to make sure that people understand that God doesn't care about whether or not they "accept" His Son as Messiah, Lord, God, or whatever; what is the most crucial thing is for them to be aware of whether God has accepted them based on Christ's perfect work. The understanding must be that God's standard is absolute perfection (Ex 20:1-17), that we will all be judged by that standard (Heb 9:27), and that if we have violated any of those standards God will separate us from His presence for all eternity (Re 20:15).

Praise God that He sent His Son to live the Law and meet God's standards for us (John 3:16, Mt 5:17), and give His life a ransom for all those who would ever believe (John 10:11). God now only requires us to repent of our sins (again, stressing that even this is a gift from God) and trust Christ's work and His work only for salvation that He might clothe us in Christ's righteousness and cause us to stand before the Father and have judgment pass over us as it was in Christ (1Thess 3:13, Jude 24-25).

Thank God for His mercy and gifts of faith and repentance!

The $65,000,000 RecapDan Long 10/13/2012

So yesterday morning at 4:30am I did the $65,000,000 Man podcast. Here is the link to the show, http://www.spreaker.com/user/4903048/the_65_000_000_man.

This episode discusses the $65,000,000 debt of Harvest Bible Chapel under the leadership of Pastor James MacDonald. The information concerning this and other issues such as MacDonald's desire for power, his $500,000 a year salary, and the Elephant Room 2 controversy can be found at The Elephants Debt, http://theelephantsdebt.com/.

The gentlemen that put this website together are former members of Harvest Bible Chapel where James MacDonald pastors. They have done extensive research on these issues, and they post all of their sources in links.

The most disturbing thing to me was one of the comments MacDonald made to the elder board in 2007:

By 2007, as a direct result of the unprecedented debt that had been accumulated under the leadership of James MacDonald, there were significant and routine conflicts occurring between MacDonald and the elder board.  These meetings culminated in a particularly tumultuous confrontation which reportedly functioned as an ultimatum by the elders on MacDonald’s leadership.  At the climax of this meeting, the Senior Pastor of HBC reportedly said something to the effect of:

“If you want to remove me, you’re going to have to sue me to get me out of here.  And gentlemen, I have two things you don’t have: control of the pulpit and the control of the money.  So good luck.”  http://theelephantsdebt.com/the-power/

I also promised that I would post a video of Dr. James White, Phil Johnson, and Carl Truman discussing the Elephant Room Conference in the video entitled "No Compromise Ever Ep. 1.
Here is the link to that video, https://vimeo.com/47844054.

Hey Haters, What is the Purpose of the Church? Dan Long

Last night I recorded my first solo podcast for Long for Truth. The reason is that Steve and I are  having trouble with the Skype programs we are trying to use in order to record the show together. After several major attempts, and one horrible sounding upload, we decided that for right now (at least until we can find a way to do the show together) we would do separate podcasts.

So last night I played video clips from Steven Furtick's "Hey Haters," as well as his video "What is the Purpose of the Church." As I promised, here are the links to the videos, and to Elevation's web site. The Elevation Church link is directly under the second video, "What is the Purpose of the Church."




 



http://annualreport.elevationchurch.org/

New Podcast!!Steven Long 10/03/12

You may have a noticed a new container to the right with a little blue box. Just wanted everyone to know that we are now podcasting Long for Truth! This is something that we have talked about in the past but were not quite sure if and when we would be ready.

Part of the problem was that I am here in North Carolina while Danny is in New York. But with new technology and a wonderful piece of equipment called Skype we will be able to record our podcast together and then upload them immediately.

We've done two episodes already on the topic of justification. If you haven't listened to the first one you can find it (or both episodes) here: Long for Truth Show. Also, as soon as Apple approves it, we'll be available on iTunes for download and listening.

Just a note: we are certainly not professionals. We're just a couple of guys who love truth and want others to understand it. We're also just a couple of guys sitting around talking theology. While we try to follow a format so that we're not all over the place, our main goal is to let the conversation flow naturally.

So if you're expecting a "professional" sounding show I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Of course, we hope to hone our program and make it better in the future, but for now we'll just go with what we know.

If you'd like to hear a particular topic of if you have an idea for the show be sure to drop us a line at the show's site, here on the blog, or on our Facebook page. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.