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What exactly is wrong with teaching?
Linny:
Kent,
I think you have misunderstood the jest of the comments.
"People seem to be too worried about how other people will respond, and instead of standing up, they shut up."
My biggest problem all my life has been not knowing when to shut my mouth. :P
At 46 years old, I am only just beginning to be better about it.
I am not worried about how people will respond. I just don't see the point in making enemies of my family and friends who I know aren't ready to hear the truth. God has made it SO clear to me when I was to speak and EVERY time I listened to Him, it has worked out so great.
I have to discern whether it is my flesh that is offended or whether it is He that is wanting me to speak. That takes time to learn how to discern so my advise to anyone new at these wonderful teachings is to lay low for a while and learn to listen to the Holy Spirit's urgings. The Scripture that several gave in other postings about waiting to be asked is the indicator that has worked every time for me.
David:
Hi Kent.
I would hope and pray that I am not someone who is affraid to "teach" the truth when God presents the opportunity to do so. If someone comes to me either in person or through the internet, which does happen from time to time, preaching hell fire to me, I'll jump on that person and tell them in no uncertain terms that their doctrine and beliefs are from the pit of satan, the deapest most vile depravity there is in humanity, and the worst kind of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I'll give them a few scriptures, some more if they continue to argue. If it falls on deaf ears, I'll tell that brother I have nothing more to say, and thats it. If someone asks me a question, I'll give them an answer for the hope in me with meakness and fear (humility). But, if I hear or see a preacher teaching hell etc to their congregation etc, and not directly to me then its not my place or calling to jump in and say something, in fact its resisting what God is doing, blinding people to the truth through false prophets.
WhoAmI:
I was taken by surprise when one day traveling with my Mom. She has a friend in her church (a baptist church) who lost a relative and they were grieving because they assumed the relative was in hell. My mom starts telling me this and then calmly asks me what do I think. :o
It was odd because I did not go on a long or complicated speech about the subject. I just plainly stated that all my studies and my understanding of God is that He is not sending people to a hell and he is a loving God who is going to save all his children in due time. But I can tell you I did not expect that question. She was all ears and I said my piece and left it at that.
Jeff
Kent:
All I can say is "wow!"
There is a lot of wisdom in those posts.
All I can say is that I am not trying to get others, for obvious reasons, to disobey God and "teach" anyway. If God says "shut up", then we (I) should just shut up. That exact thing has happened to me in the past, when things could have gotten really nasty with someone I knew. So I bit my tongue only because He said to "let it go, he's mine and I am dealing with him", and I am glad I did, because things worked out. My big mouth could have made things a lot worse because I was going to let him have both barrels.
I dont claim to be a teacher. I believe I was called to be "something else". I, and I believe others, should only teach what they know and not just jump in unprepared, because I made that mistake too.
It's not "debate", because there is no real debate. If it was only a matter of debating, then Ray could get into a debate with Hagee et. al. and we all know who would win that debate.
Then peoples minds would change. But we all know it wouldn't happen that way.
Samson:
Some good and Interesting Responses,
After reading all of the responses; I'm inclined to say that BALANCE is the key in all of this, sometimes that's difficult to do. I guess it would depend on how far you proceed when explaining to people about some of these Truths, too much information all at once might be too overwhelming. Once again, if God isn't ready for individuals to see these truths and receive Spiritual sight, then they won't, no matter how thorough and respectfully your explanation happens to be.
Since joining this Site, I've experienced some opportunities to explain about Age-Lasting(Aionios); Chastisement(Kolasin); Lost or Destroyed(Apollemi); Fire being Spiritual with related Scriptures to prove this, Free Will being a Myth or Oxymoron and many of the basic information being taught here. This entailed full explanation to these individuals and they apparently, at least at this time didn't grasp it. I had one guy who said, I don't speak Greek, it didn't seem to matter to him that the Older versions of The King James Bible had many flaws and that the only way to set matters straight was to know what the original meanings of these words are. The guy I'm referring to knows many Scriptures and is good at quoting them. This experience took place many months ago and since then, I've cooled down my conversation with him on Bible topics and he's a good guy in general. He stubbornly clings to an out of date translation, he even quit a Denomination that he was a member of for ten years, because they switched from using the King James to the New International Version. Ray is thoroughly equipped at using the Older Versions of The King James Bible, I'm not, I never used it for study in my life, too many Thee's, Thou's, Shalt's and Suffer the little children for my tastes. I have the New King James, it's okay, it's revised to show many of the Spurious Scriptures. I had a recent discussion with him explaining about God creating Evil and that we are not a finished product, God creating Man in his image and not already a finished created product. He seemed to agree with some of this. He said he never read in the Bible that God created Evil and I told him to read Isaiah. 45:7, telling him that it would probably say Calamity, but the Hebrew word Ra is translated Evil and that their was another Hebrew word for Calamity.This was a month ago and he hasn't responded to me yet and I'm not going to bring it up. I planted the seed with this guy, God will do the rest.
I've had approximately conversations with approximately 8-10 people since joining the Forum and only one person, a Pastor who plays tennis where I play was excited, loved hearing what I had to say and couldn't get enough of it, he was supposed to leave to go somewhere and ended up staying in that Tennis parking lot for 45 minutes, because he loved what he was hearing. I didn't have the Bible with me, no literature, but only my memory of Ray's Talks and writings at my disposal. My point in this example is that if God's Spirit is leading and controlling a conversation about these Truths, it will proceed from your mouth with confidence and ease and you will feel relaxed inside with no back and forth debating involved. This man named Bruce(The Pastor) is a very calm and humble type of man, not your typical Pastor of Christendom.
Like Kat & Barbara mentioned, it will be Christ Spirit in you doing the teaching and my experience with Bruce(The tennis playing Pastor) is the only one like that. Just like those that join the Site, the called out, this is a rare experience, but if it's right, you will leave that Discussion with a calmness in your Heart and that's coming from a man with a Type A personality; ;D
Kind Regards, Samson.
P.S. Just on a funny note, I used Spell check and the computer wanted me to change Age-lasting to Everlasting, even the computer doesn't have the Truth; ;D ;D ;D
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