DISCIPLE

by John Brahmall Isaiah 21:11-12   “The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night.” THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES WARN OF JUDGMENT     In this Scripture, Dumah is Edom. Dumah means “silence”, the silence of death. Isaiah, the watchman received an inquiry, repeated twice— “How far on is it in the night?” The answer is: Though morning is coming, night will yet envelop it.     The Millennial day is coming for Israel and the world, but before this the Day of the Lord will come in judgment, and they will pass through the night of the Great Tribulation (Mt. 24:15).     The believer is to be a “watchman” who listens to God’s Word and His counsels, and looks for the event, standing upon the watchtower in fellowship with God (Ezek. 3:17; Hab. 2:1-2; Mk. 13:35-37).     The Sign of Israel . Proof that the Bible is the Wor...

by William MacDonald Like every other good thing, grace can be abused. Fire and water can be great blessings, but they can be used wrongly. People can twist the sovereignty of God to teach fatalism: what is going to be is going to be, and there's nothing you can do about it. The doctrine of election is sometimes perverted to suggest that evangelizing is a waste of time and effort.     Sad to say, it is possible to use the grace of God as an excuse for careless living, for believers to use their freedom as a pretext for launching into all kinds of indulgence. This does not mean that the doctrine is faulty. It simply means that some people are desperate to justify ungodly behavior, and if they can do it by using Scripture, so much the better, or so they think.     It is true that believers are not under law but under grace. But that does not mean that they have a right to be lawless. They are not under the law, with all the penalty and condemnation that is...

by Donald Grey Barnhouse      "The perils that are to be avoided, then, in looking at life are two. The first peril to avoid is that of thinking that the man of refined nature who picks out the dry spots along the swampy road to Hell is really on the road to Heaven because his life is so much better than that of the man who wallows in all the filth to Hell. The second peril to avoid is that of thinking that the man who professes to believe, who turns aside at one of Satan's many imitation gates, but yet goes on his life way wallowing in sin, has really passed through the real gate of Christ. In other words, there is a counterfeit road for the one who refuses Christ, and there is a counterfeit gate for the mere religious professor who does not truly possess new life in Christ..."      "...I wish to add to that preaching an increasing emphasis on the necessity of giving diligence to make our calling and election sure by a constant walking...

Sometimes we hear of a politician or other celebrity who is made a "chief" of one or another tribe of American Indians. He is greeted solemnly, powwowed over in guttural tones, invested with a gaudy headdress of eagle feathers, has his picture taken with the big men of the tribe and is from that time on a chief among them.     His self-conscious smirk tells us plainly that he considers the whole thing a joke, but the unsmiling Indians apparently take it all pretty seriously. It requires no great penetration to see that all the ceremonies, beads, feathers and powwows in the world cannot make an Indian out of a white man. At the most he is only an honorary chief, not a real one.     Compare this to many evangelical churches, which have altogether too many members who are Christians by initiation, not by spiritual birth. They have been powwowed over by the local sachems and given the impression that they are Christians in face, when the truth is that ...