The Faithful Christian a blog of The Lighthouse Ministries

  The KJV only Controversy     I want to talk about the King James only controversy… Now, while I’m not trying to be controversial, I want you to know up front that I am not a KJV only person, never have been and never will be.  I don’t have a problem with the KJV, I grew up with it and I like it just fine, but it’s written in Elizabethan English that no one on the planet has spoken in well over 200 years.  While that was great for the time since people actually spoke that form of English, we need to be using a Bible written in modern English today.   There are a lot of people that claim the modern versions of the Bible are somehow inferior and full of errors and missing verses and all this and that’s why I decided to do this little lesson in Bible history so you can be better informed on some things.   So, when the KJV was published in 1611, and by the way, you folks that are so fond of saying “KJV 1611,” we don’t use the 1611 version of the...

First off, you need to understand that I grew up in the seventies and eighties, before computers, cellphones, and cable TV.  When I was a child, we had one television, (luckily it was color) in the house and it had four channels, five on a clear, windless day.  Also, no remote controls, if you wanted to change channels you had to get up off the couch and walk to the television and turn the dial. You young people today have no idea how easy you have it! Now I sound like my dad. When we would complain about something he would say, “when I was your age I had to walk to school,” and my siblings and I would chime in, “uphill both ways in five feet of snow.” We heard that story a million times if we heard it once. I remember when cable television first came to our little neighborhood.  It was 1981.  We went from having four channels to having 35 channels overnight.  It was the most wonderful thing in the world to four young children. ...

  Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12:1 We have this sentimentality in the western church today that we need to go out of our way to live at peace with the people around us.  We need to be tolerant, accepting, supportive, and approving of everybody and every body’s lifestyle choices.  This is what we think being a Christian is all about. This is what we call love.  To compromise means to love…And those of us who call ourselves Christians have made compromise an art form.   I mean we compromise on everything from homosexuality, transgenders, abortion, adultery, fornication, lying, you name the sin and we western Christians will happily support it, and if we don’t, we will just stick our heads in the sand and ignore it for the sake of peace.  Even though we know that Jesus said that we cannot live at peace with the world.  He plainly said that the world will hate us. All ...

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Romans 12:2 In Lewis Carroll’s famous novel Alice in Wonderland, an exchange takes place where Alice comes upon the grinning Cheshire Cat. She’s lost and asks him, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” The cat quips back, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” “I don’t much care where,” Alice replies. So the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” Many folks today, like Alice, simply don’t know where they’re going. Then they’re surprised after they’ve ended up wasting their years starting this, stopping that, switching gears, but never really having a purpose in life. But what would happen if we became not more “simple” minded, but “single” minded in our resolve? What if instead of looking for just the right job or person to marry, people began with the end in mind o...

  No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13   When Benjamin Franklin was seven years old, a visitor gave him some small change. Later, seeing another boy playing with a whistle, Benjamin gave the boy all his money for it. He played the whistle all over the house, enjoying it until he discovered that he had given four times as much as the whistle was worth. Instantly, the whistle lost its charm. When he grew up this idea took on a different meaning. When he saw a man neglecting his family for popularity, or a greedy rich man giving up friendship for the sake of making more money, he would say, “He pays too much for his whistle.” The above story has an excellent lesson in it: Too often we pay far too great a price for something that looks good. Fish are hooked because they...

  Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” Philippians 2:3 What we believe affects the way we live. For example, a person thought that honesty was the most important thing, then it would cause them to be honest in everything they did. The problem with life is that we don’t always know what it is we believe. The way we are living is being affected but we don’t know why.  God gave Samson the gift of incredible strength, but Samson was very careless with his gift. As a Nazirite, there were three rules he could never break. The first was to never cut his hair. The second was to never have any wine or anything that came from a grapevine. The third was to never touch or eat anything that was considered ‘unclean’. There was a specific set of laws that determined what was considered to be unclean. One of those stated that touching a dead body was unclean and, therefore, eating anything that had touch...

This is a scriptural truth that we in the modern church seem to have forgotten and simply tossed aside.     We seem to have tossed aside a lot of scriptural truth because we don’t like it or it doesn’t fit with our preconceived notions of God and what He’s like.     So have tossed aside the truth in favor of our own idea of God.     A man-made God if you will.   We have this idea today that God loves us so much that He would never send anyone to Hell. That’s called universalism.  That’s a lie, of course, and there are plenty of scriptures to prove it.  But I’ll leave that for another time.   We also have this idea that all we need to do is pray a prayer at some point in our life, ask Jesus into our hearts and we are saved.  You will not find that concept anywhere in scripture.   We have a wrong idea about freewill as well. Do we have freewill? Yes, we do.  But not the freewill that people think we have....

Mathew 6:19-21 19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:   20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:  21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. In recent years I’ve become much more frugal in my spending habits.  Some would say cheap, but I’ve come to a point in  my life where I don’t like to waste money.  There are things out there that I really want, things I would like to have, the question is how much do I really need them?  Are they really that important?  Will I use them or will they sit around and collect dust?  I never impulse buy anymore.  When I go to a store and see something that I want I ask myself all of those questions.  I think on it and pray about it for awhile before making a decision.  Some things just are ...

  1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” The Scewtape Letters is a book written by C.S. Lewis, published in 1942, the book looks at the sinful condition of mankind through the eyes of a junior demon named Wormwood.  Wormwood receives instructions on how to secure the damnation of a man named Patient through letters from his uncle Screwtape.  This book isn’t an allegory of the Christian life as is Chronicles of Narnia, this is the Christian life, right down to the nitty gritty.  The second that we make a decision to follow Christ the devil unleashes all of the forces of Hell against us to destroy our faith and our testimony.  He wants to make us useless to God. Regardless of whether you believe it or not when you became a Christian the devil marked you as a victim.   He put you in his cross hairs.   You are on his blacklist and he will stop at nothing to tea...

  For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Jeremiah 29:11 Have you ever wondered if God really has a plan for your life?  Ever wondered; Does God really know what He’s doing?  Does He really know or really care about my situation? As Christians we all go through times of doubt, frustration and suffering.  These are called “desert experiences”.  We all have them.  Even Jesus himself had them.  These are time that we have to rely on our faith in God to pull us through. Have you ever been going through something, some trial, some tragedy in your life that has really pushed your faith to the end of the rope?  Don’t you just hate hearing someone tell you that God is in control and has a plan for your life? Maybe you’re like me. Maybe sometimes the future looks dark and hearing someone say, “God has a plan” is the equivalent to rubbing salt in an open w...