The New Testament everywhere teaches that salvation will be accompanied by evidence.

1. Consider some of the Scriptures that teach that salvation is accompanied by evidence:

Consider 1 John 2:3-4.

Consider 2 Corinthians 5:17.

Consider Titus 1:16, where Paul warned about those who profess Christ but deny Him by their works.

Consider 2 Timothy 2:19, where we see that the seal of salvation is the two-fold truth that God knows those who are His and that the true believer will demonstrate his salvation by departing from iniquity. To depart from iniquity is not the way of salvation; it is the evidence of salvation.

Consider Ephesians 2:8-10. Though salvation is “without works” in that it is God’s free gift through Christ, it is “unto good works” (Eph. 2:8-10). The good works are God’s works showing themselves in the individual’s life. The good works are the evidence.

Consider John 3:3, which teaches that salvation is a supernatural birth that changes the individual’s life.

Consider the conversions described in the Gospels under Christ’s earthly ministry. In every case the individual’s life was dramatically changed: e.g., the woman at the well (John 4), Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10).

Consider the conversions described in the book of Acts. Again, in every case the individual’s life was dramatically changed: e.g., those who were saved on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41-42), the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-39), Paul (Acts 9:1-21), Lydia (Acts 16:14-15), the Philippian jailor (Acts 16:27-35).

Consider the believers at Thessalonica who modeled genuine salvation (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10).

The fact is that God has zero culpability in this. He has given light and those who respond to the light receive more light.

The Bible says that God gives light to every man (John 1:9).

In the epistle to the church at Rome, Paul explained that God has given three types of light to mankind. (1) He has given the light of creation that we might know that there is a wise and powerful God (Romans 1:20). (2) He has given the light of conscience that we can know that there is a moral God (Romans 2:14-16). (3) He has given the light of prophecy and Scripture that we might know who this God is and might have a personal relationship with Him (Romans 3:1-2).

God has raised up prophets to the nations from the time of Abel to the present. “God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21), but God’s messengers have been ignored, ridiculed, persecuted, killed far more often than they have been honored and believed.

In the days of Solomon the kings of the earth heard the prophetic wisdom God had given him (1 Kings 4:34).

Jesus commanded His disciples to carry the gospel to every nation, and even by the end of the first century it was already preached in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The whole Bible has been translated into every major language and portions thereof into more than 2,000 other languages.

The nations have heard, but they have not listened.

The nations will be condemned by the likes of the Ethiopian eunuch, the treasurer of that nation, who obtained a copy of the prophet Isaiah and sought Philip’s assistance in understanding it (Acts 8:26-39). When a man sincerely tries to comprehend the light he has, God will send him a Philip. God requires that men seek after Him, and promises to be found of those who do (Acts 17:26-27; Jeremiah 29:13; Luke 11:9; Hebrews 11:6).

It is not God’s fault that most people sit in darkness today.

Jesus said that men are condemned already by rejecting the light that they have (John 3:18-20).

“The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth against the LORD” (Proverbs 19:3).

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VOLUME 13 ISSUE 19
GRAPHICAL PDF VERSION.

The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this does not imply an endorsement. For instructions on how to unsubscribe to this list or to change mailing addresses, please consult the information paragraph at the end.

ANDY STANLEY’S HERESY ON GRACE AND HOMOSEXUALITY (Friday Church News Notes, May 11, 2012, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - In a sermon entitled “When Gracie Met Truthy,” the seventh in an eight-part series on what it means to be a “Christian,” preached on April 15, 2012, Southern Baptist mega-church pastor Andy Stanley proclaimed heresies pertaining to grace and homosexuality. He described a couple in his church who divorced when the wife discovered that her husband was in a sexual relationship with another man. Instead of disciplining the man, the church allowed the homosexual couple to move to another “campus” of North Point Church and work together as a “host” team. They were allowed to do this until it was discovered that one of the men was still married and therefore was “living in adultery” (Al Mohler, “Is the Megachurch the New Liberalism?” May 1, 2012). The homosexuality was apparently never an issue. Stanley told of how the wife showed “forgiveness” by bringing all of the parties to a Christmas service (her and her daughter, the former husband and his homosexual partner and that man’s daughter). But proper forgiveness as defined scripturally requires repentance (Luke 17:3). Stanley is promoting the psycho-heresy of “unconditional forgiveness,” which is blind emotional mysticism. (See The God of End-time Mysticism, a free eBook available from Way of Life, www.wayoflife.org.)

Dr. Damadian, biophysicist, is the recipient of the Lemelson-MIT Achievement Award as “the man who invented the MRI scanner.” In 1988 he was awarded the National Medal of Technology, America’s highest award for applied science, and a year later, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame, an honor he shares with Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, and the Wright Brothers. The first MRI scanner that Dr. Damadian and his colleagues built in 1977, “The Indomitable,” resides at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

QUESTION: Why do you believe that the Bible is true?

DAMADIAN: If you take the trouble to examine the evidence supporting the Bible and contradicting alternative theories, from my perception, the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the biblical record and vacates alternative thoughts such as evolution. The evidence for evolution is non-existent. In my opinion, evolution is science fiction.

QUESTION: Does the Bible’s account of creation contradict any known facts of science?

DAMADIAN: No. Absolutely not. In my opinion evolution contradicts them.

QUESTION: What things would you think that evolution contradicts in terms of known facts of science?

DAMADIAN: Just as an example, it contracts the first law of thermodynamics. It contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. And it contradicts a major, fundamental law of physics, which is the law of cause and effect. The effect can never be greater than the cause, but evolution has to start with slime mold and end up with a human being. So that is an outright contradiction of the law of cause and effect. The second law of thermodynamics says that everything is running downhill. All of the processes of nature are degenerating to the point where the ultimate outcome is going to be equilibrium where no actions of any kind occur because you have a universal equilibrium. Evolution says the opposite. Evolution says that by the sheer process of chance things are not running downhill, they are getting progressively more perfected. That is an outright contradiction of the second law of thermodynamics. Evolution ducks the question of where does matter come from. The only way you can start is that you have to make something out of nothing. You have to start with nothing and end up with matter. When you go from nothing to something you are violating every one of the laws of physics that we know about. The first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, and the law of cause and effect.

(first published July 15, 2008) (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org; for instructions about subscribing and unsubscribing or changing addresses, see the information paragraph at the end of the article) -

Sue Monk Kidd is a very popular writer. Her first two novels, The Secret Life of Bees (2002) and The Mermaid Chair (2005), have sold more than 6 million copies and the first one is being produced as a movie. She has also written two popular books on contemplative spirituality: God’s Joyful Surprise (1988) and When the Heart Waits (1990).

Kidd is quoted favorably by evangelicals such as David Jeremiah (Life Wide Open), Beth Moore (When Godly People Do Ungodly Things), Richard Foster (Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home), and Philip Yancy (Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?). Kidd’s endorsement is printed on the back of Dallas Willard’s book The Spirit of the Disciplines. She wrote the foreword to the 2006 edition of Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands and the introduction to Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation.

It is “contemplative spirituality” that changed Kidd’s life, and her experience is a loud warning about flirting with Catholic mysticism.

She was raised in a Southern Baptist congregation in southwest Georgia. Her grandfather and father were Baptist deacons. Her grandmother gave devotionals at the Women’s Missionary Union, and her mother was a Sunday School teacher. Her husband was a minister who taught religion and a chaplain at a Baptist college. She was very involved in church, teaching Sunday School and attending services Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday. She describes herself as the person who would have won a contest for “Least Likely to Become a Feminist.” She was even inducted into a group of women called the Gracious Ladies, the criterion for which was that “one needed to portray certain ideals of womanhood, which included being gracious and giving of oneself unselfishly.”

But for years she had felt a spiritual emptiness and lack of contentment. Prayer was “a fairly boring mental activity” (Kidd’s foreword to Henri Nouwen’s With Open Hands, 2006, p. 10). She says,

“I had been struggling to come to terms with my life as a woman--in my culture, my marriage, my faith, my church, and deep inside myself” (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, p. 8).

She was thirty years old, had been married about 12 years, and had two children.