The II Timothy Church, & the Finney Ritual

[tulsa 2011]

The II Timothy Church, The Finney Ritual, The Shortened Gospel and The Non-Essentials

The II Timothy church is found in II Timothy 3: 1-2, 5, 7-8: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy....Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away....Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith."

The II Timothy church begins to exist after the falling away of II Thessalonians 2: 3, and the leavening of the Gospel in Luke 13:

"Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?
19.It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.
20.And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?
21.It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened."
Luke 13: 18-21

The word "till" indicates that this leavening happens over a period of time. The parable of the leaven is also found in Matthew 13: 33, though it is has not been fully understood to refer to the apostasy of the church.

II Thessalonians 2: 3-4 says "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."

Parts of the II Timothy church have turned II Thessalonians 2: 4 into a fable (II Timothy 4: 4, II Peter 1: 16), saying that the dispensationalist anti-Christ political leader will desecrate the newly re-built temple in Jerusalem. But Paul is talking about a metaphoric concept he calls the man of sin who will occupy the minds and hearts of those who claim to be the people of God - and the temple he is talking about it is the believers (I Corinthians 3: 16-17, I Corinthians 6: 19). The man of sin is the spirit of anti-Christ (I John 4:3). The huge number of false prophets (Matthew 24: 11, II Peter 2: 1) can also be said to occupy the minds and hearts of those who claim to be believers.

The II Timothy church is said to have a form of godliness but it denies the power of God, it is always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, and it resists or opposes the truth.

Faith is the basis for coming to the knowledge of the truth, and for having a love of the truth.
We begin to come to the knowledge of the truth and to have a love of the truth by having faith that the Word of God is truth, and that Jesus Christ is, among other things, The Truth (John 14: 6).

Having faith that the word of God is truth is based upon the belief that the word of God is absolute truth and teaches absolute morality or righteousness.

"For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by
us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea and nay, but in
him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him
Amen, unto the glory of God by us." II Corinthians 1:19-20

In Jesus Christ there are no shades of grey, no double mindedness,
only absolutes. The dialectic
mind, on the other hand, operates on shades of grey and doublemindedness.

"But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven,
neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be
yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation." James 5: 12

But the dialectic mind does not believe in the absolute truth of the Word of God. It wants to argue
against that absolute truth, and tries to compromise it in some way - by a dialogue with those who are presenting the truth.

The dialectic mind starts from a position that there are no
absolute truths or absolute morals. It is a double minded mind, and
accepts yea and nay about doctrines taught in the scripture. Those who
use dialectic
arguments against the facts of scripture are always looking for
loopholes, shades
of grey, contradictions and verses where the meanings and implications
are not spelled out in great detail to hit at with their rejection of
the absolute.

Those who operate with the dialectic - which is now almost everyone in our culture -
try to justify themselves before men (Luke 16: 1).

The dialectic as an argument, a way of changing the absolute truth
that one's opponent holds to, historically has come out of a system of
thought which teaches that there is no God.. It comes out of Hegel
and Marx. But before Hegel and Marx it came out of the second beast of
Revelation 13: 11, who has two horns like a lamb but speaks as a
dragon, and from the dragon himself whose use of the dialectic was on
Eve in Genesis 3 to fix her obedience to the absolute authority of God over her.

In Genesis 3: 3-4 Satan got Eve to dialogue with him, which was her big mistake.
"But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:"

Satan in Genesis 3: 4 demonstrates his dialectic mind when he argues with Eve that God the Father as the absolute authority did not say she would die if she ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree.

Then in the temptations of Christ by Satan in Matthew 4, the devil tried to lure Christ away from his absolute obedience to the Father, but Christ always answered with the absolute truth of scripture, "It is written." In Matthew 4: 4 Christ told the devil, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," and in Matthew 4: 7, "It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him." Matthew 4: 10-11. Jesus was consistent in not dialoguing with the devil and his dialectic mind, but in always answering by the absolute truth of scripture Christ defeated the devil.

The Pharisees of Christ's time had the dialectic mind. In a number
of scriptures the Pharisees argued with the doctrines taught by Jesus Christ, who is fully
God. Because the Pharisees had a relationship of feelings toward
their position and
the doctrines they had been taught and were teaching to others, what Christ
was teaching threatened them. So, they argued against the Truth,
standing before them.

"If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the
Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation." John 11:
48

The dialogue between Christ and the Pharisees in John 8 is just
one example of their use of the dialectic to argue against Truth. God
could not speak doctrine into their group mind because they did not
have ears to hear it.

Paul as Saul had
been a Pharisee before his encounter with the risen
Christ on the road to Damascus. That encounter shook Saul
up so much that he became Paul an apostle of Christ. Now, after
Paul had been so transformed, Christ could now
speak truth into the new mind of Paul, which has been transformed by incorporating
some of the mind of Christ himself. But the other Pharisees did not
have ears to hear the truth, still having the dialectic mind and having a
feeling relationship with their false doctrines and their positions as leaders of
physical Israel.

Paul describes that encounter with the risen Christ in Acts 26: 13-16, "At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.
But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;"

Christ told Paul that he, the risen Christ, would appear to Paul again and give him the revelation which Paul later preached to the Jews and especially to the Gentiles in Roman territories and finally in Rome itself, and which he wrote down in his letters.

"But without faith it is impossible to please him..." Hebrews 11: 6. Without faith it is impossible to please God. And faith is based upon the strong belief that the word of God is absolute truth and absolute righteousness.

Jesus Christ had broken through the veil of the Old Covenant with its shadows of the substance which was to come in Christ, and had paid the price required by the Father for our sins, in order to be able to give us something of his righteousness if we accepted it in strong faith, so we could become sons of God.

"Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. 23.Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised" Hebrews 10: 22-23

But the II Timothy church follows the Finney Ritual, the alter call, as a procedure for salvation, follows a shortened Gospel and divides the New Testament, including the revelation given to Paul by the risen Christ into that which is essential and that which is not essential. Deciding that some part of the New Testament is non-essential opens the door to allowing false doctrines to persist in that church.

There is a lot of reliance by the II Timothy church now upon the Alter Call begun by Charles
Finney in the early 19th century, in which people under the influence
of the group dynamic of preacher and congregation have an emotional
experience of coming to confess Christ, but no transformation happened to the person making the alter call, as it often turns out.

A person could have been really transformed and have something of the mind of Christ in him and then answers an alter call. But it is that transformed spiritual state, not the alter call which saves him.

By emphasizing easy salvation and quoting only scriptures like Romans 10: 9 and John 3: 16
the present day church tends to rely more upon the ritual or enactment in the church of professing faith in Christ than in the transformation required by John 3: 1-7. The II Timothy church does not quote II Thessalonians 2: 10-12 in its presentation of the Gospel to those who are considered to be lost. That scripture would be one which might become "non-essential" because its certain implication is that those who do not have a love of the truth are not saved.



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[tulsa 2011]

Thanks, Fragrant Grace

Romans 10: 9 says "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

John 3: 16 says "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But John 3: 3 says "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And again in John 3: 7 says "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again."

John 3: 1-7 tells us a great deal, for example, that the Pharisees as represening physical Israel, are not given salvation by virtue of their physical descent from Abraham, or their sitting in the seat of Moses, as they brag, but that they must be spiritually transformed in Jesus Christ to be saved. But this verse does not tell us about which is involved in that spiritual transformation, only that it is necessary.

Paul's revelation from the risen Christ gives us some indication of what that spiritual transformation called being born again involves.

Being born again is a transformation of a person who lives almost entirely in the flesh, in the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes and the pride (self-esteem) of life (I John 2: 16), and leans to his own understanding (Proverbs 3: 5-6), to a person who lives to a great extent in the Spirit. Leaning to one's own understanding can mean leaning to man-made understanding as false doctrines. Being born again is a major change in a person.

Having a love of the truth of God's word is one part of being born again. Having a love of the truth means a person, in joy of obeying the Lord, gives up man-made understandings and one's own peculiar understandings and comes to love, know and accept that understanding given by revelation to the Apostles by Christ, and to one by the Holy Spirit.

II Thessalonians 2: 10-12 "And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12.That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."

In developing a love of the truth of scripture a person has a zeal for the word of God. Revelation 3: 16: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

Having a zeal for the word of God means one is not lukewarm.

Having a zeal for the word of God is a change of coming to believe the word, and to having a strong faith.

Those who live entirely in the flesh do not understand many of the specific transformations that take place when one is changed by the Holy Spirit. In fact, coming to understand the things of the Spirit of God is another mark of being born again "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (I Corinthians 2: 14)

Paul in Romans 12: 2 uses the Greek word metamorphoo, or transformed in describing a person transformed in Christ Jesus by his power. Romans 12: 2 says: "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."

Such a person transformed in Christ by the Spirit is a new person, or as Paul phrases it, a new creation. II Corinthians 5: 17: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." The Greek word is ktisis, creation or creature. Such a person begins life anew. He is a different person in Christ than he was before he became a new creation.

What happens when one is born again or transformed by the renewing of his mind (Romans 12: 2) is that the person incorporates into his inner life a part of the mind of Christ. We are not transformed outside of Christ; it is Christ in our inner life, in our spirit, given us by the Holy Spirit, which is that transformation.

Philippians 2: 5 is a very important verse about the transformation that takes place when one is born gain in Christ. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:"

We are saved by the transformation which occurs when the mind of Christ comes into our spirit, our minds and our hearts because of his having broken through the veil of the Old Covenant shadows, or physical things, to bring us his spiritual power. Christ, in human flesh, paid the price for our sins, which include our false doctrines, for those who come to him ins strong faith in the absolute truth of his word.

We have no righteousness before God the Father outside of Christ. We cannot become righteous in our human flesh. Flesh also cannot inherit the kingdom of God. God the Father gives those who come to Christ in faith in the absolute truth of his Word that righteousness required by the Father. We cannot attain that righteousness by any ritual or enactment. We must have the mind of Christ in our spirit, heart and mind in order for that righteousness of Christ to be imputed to us by the Father.

In Romns 4: 1-16 Paul explains Abraham's role as the spiritual father of those to whom righteousness is imputed. "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
9. Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness.
10.How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
11.And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:"

Paul goes on in Romans 4: 21-24 on God imputing righteousness to those who have faith. "And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.
22. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.
23. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him;
24. But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead;"

Again Paul says in II Corinthians 5: 19, "To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation."

Those who have been transformed in Christ and have his mind in their spirit, mind and heart have Christ's righteousness given to them and so they are of the elect. But if they have another Gospel, as Paul says in Galatians 1: 8-9, "let him be accursed." Such a person is not of the elect.

In his discussion of the death and resurrection of Christ in I Corinthians 15: 1-8, leading toward his statements on the resurrection of the elect in I Corinthians 15: 47-56, Paul does not include the doctrines that circumcision or following any other part of the ceremonial law of the Old Covenant is necessary now for salvation. Yet he says in Galatians 1: 6-9 that if anyone preaches another Gospel let him be accursed, meaning that one of the doctrines that are another Gospel is the doctrine that one must observe circumcision or any other ceremonial law to be saved. In other words, what Paul is describing in I Corinthians 15: 1-8 is not the entire Gospel, but only a part of it. The church cannot reduce the Gospel of Christ to what is said in I Corinthians 15: 1-8. There can be no coming to the truth within a church which teaches that there are essential and non-essential doctrines in the New Testament. All the doctrines are essential, and all the word of God is absolute truth, and absolute righteousness and without the mind of Christ, revealed in all the doctrines, there is no righteousness imputed.