February 28, 2007
Dear
Bellevue
:
True UNITY comes when born-again believers all surrender to their Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. This
includes the man in the pulpit, as well as the man in the pew.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). Jesus
is all we need. He is our
strength. He is our victory.
In Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
We who know Him are complete in Him.
(Colossians 2: 6-9).
God gave us his perfect plan as to how His church is to function.
The pastor is to fill the pulpit and preach the Word in TRUTH.
It is God’s job to fill the pew.
It is the spirit who convicts and brings men and women to the Savior
and who grows us to maturity through His precious Word.
All through the book of Acts, the people shared their testimony and
told the lost how to be saved. The churches multiplied, multiplied, and
multiplied again. (Luke 24:46-49, Acts 5:29-32, Acts
10:39
, Acts 13:31)
Jesus has not come to take sides; He has come to take over!
What we need is total surrender to Him and dependence on His
righteousness. We have none of
our own. This includes pastors
and other leaders, as well as the people in the pew
Dr. Gaines, you must realize our God is Holy.
Be careful when you take a concordance and pick words all through His
precious Word and twist them to beat His precious children.
Beat the sheep and they scatter. Feed
the sheep and they gather to the fold. (John
10, John 21:16-17)
In a sermon given by Steve Gaines in 1999 at
Louisville
,
Kentucky
, he stated from Jeremiah 1:10 that sometimes, as a messenger from God, a
minister needs to “pluck up, break down, destroy, overthrow, before you can
build and before you can plant”. Dr.
Gaines, is not the scripture that you referred to speaking of “nations and
kingdoms” and not of individual church members?
Dr. Gaines, are you beating us deliberately to cause folks to leave?
What discernment do you use to select those who will be cast aside?
Is it everyone who disagrees with your agenda, including true believers
who want to abide by the teachings of Jesus Christ?
What exactly are you “planting”?
It appears to be a lot of discord.
(Jeremiah
23:
Vs.
1- Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter
the sheep of my pasture! saith the Lord.
Vs.
2- Therefore thus saith the Lord God of
Israel
against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have
scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them; behold, I
will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith
the Lord.)
Folks, search the scriptures as the early Berean
church did. (Acts 17:10-11) The
messenger does not validate the message.
Be sure that what is being said from the pulpit is what God is saying
in His Word. We have been taught
that any text taken out of context is just a pretext.
(Galatians 1:6-8) Don’t
be lazy --- study His precious Word. (Hebrews
5:11-14)
We so need to be cleansed --- all of us.
May our Precious Lord have mercy on us and give grace to help in this
time of such great need.
Wade
and Wilda Cappleman
Bellevue
Members