Several centuries before Christ, when the Greeks were depending upon the experiential for assurance from their gods, a new kind of world-view began to appear, which eventually permeated the Greek culture. This was intellectualism. It began in the 6th century B.C. with the rise of the scientific method. This began the Greek “Age of Enlightenment”. Their scientist made fun of and chided the idea of spirits. They suggested that it was time for man to grow up and come of age (sound familiar?). The erudite competed with the religious. Two sides cannot win, one has to be defeated. In the arena of ideas, the “scientific” got most of the intellectual and learned while the religious won the vulgar, the common people. Today, the “scientific” community (like those of the Greek age of Enlightenment) do not like restraints on their social or moral desires. They have teamed up with the “educated elite” and formed a new religion called Humanism. Humanism is a religion. The doctrine is the “evolution” of man from a lower species. The Public School System since 1938 adopted this religion and demands it promoted by the school teachers and college campuses all across our nation. It has fostered the worship of Satan, left man to his OWN un-governed passions, and initiated a reaction which stresses the subjective emotional experience OVER the rational!! The intellectuals were demanding proof that there was/is God and the super-naturalists were producing it with emotional experiences, supposed miracles, and tongue speakers. The magical, tongue-speaking, healing demonstrations checked the influence of the Greeks’ “Enlightened”, it gave them assurance at a time when their ground for assurance was questioned and denied by many!! The “intellectual” had then and has today, taken away from the persons ignorant of God’s Word, the assurance of God He has provided, HIS WORD. The “miracle-demanding religionists of today are left needing to be reassured or QUIT believing!! I will say it again: the only way to get the “demons” out of people today is to “preach the Word” and let the message of God’s Spirit compete with the message of the “spirit” of denominationalism!! Preach Christ and Him crucified, and the demons will “run out” of the like as swine did down the mountainside to their demise!!
IF THE BIBLE IS THE RESULT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, THEN THE BIBLE IS A WAY TO TEST THE SPIRITS, TO SEE IF THEY ARE OF GOD, or as brother John wrote; “try the spirits to see if they are of God, for many false prophets are gone out into the world.” 1 John 4:1 Supposed Tongue Speakers should not think that men of the Book would stand around and mock the God of Heaven and His Inspired Word as they burp up this deceit!! Those with the Book as their sword and shield can support the Truth and it is clearly anti-scriptural to practice speaking in tongues in violation of what the Book teaches!! 1 Corinthians 13:8-13
One primary proof that the Word of God leads and directs our lives is that we adorn the doctrine of Christ with the personal character therein described. “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit”. Galatians 5:24 The next verse begins to outline ways to walk by the Spirit: “Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another…” The Spirit produced the Bible, but He does not live IN the Bible, He lives IN the people He has made!! The God, who produced the Book, can guide us to live BY the Book!! If WE HAVE BEEN UNITED WITH CHRIST, WE must be FED the Word and learn to USE our new tools IN our lives. Being a babe “in Christ” 50 years denies the fact that we “must grow thereby”.
