Call-In Classic Christianity Radio – Bob George P529 (04-23-20)
Synopsis
The first caller, Anne, wanted to thank Bob for how he encouraged the previous caller, a man who was dying from cancer, to not make decisions based on fear and not to let the doctors or medical staff put fear in you. She had asked Bob if people should at least go more to the Lord instead of the medical profession or even pastors?
Bob and Anne both shared from personal experiences how much fear hospital staff and doctors put in you if you let them. Doctors will insist that if you do not do this or that procedure that you will have these consequences, that if you do not have open heart surgery that you will go into cardiac arrest. Te main point is that you do not let them drive your decision-making based on fear. You lean on the Lord for wisdom and understanding for the decisions you make.
Bob was in agreement with Anne on this matter. Both Anne and Bob shared much heart-breaking experiences of friends or relatives with cancer. A man dies much sooner than expected, and that even from something next to nothing, or a man suffers greater loss of quality of life by following the doctor’s advice, who often expresses the situation with fear, than if he just let the disease takes it course. In other cases, what the doctor feared or thought would happen, never happened, as in the case of Bob who chose to have a stint put in instead of major heart surgery as the doctor had originally insisted. Doctors are not God. Pastors should not tell their church members under their care to just obey their doctor.
Bob also shared the deeper issue to be addressed, and that is one of preparation. The greatest preparation for any issue of life is understanding and knowing the word of God. Do you know you are a temple of the Holy Spirit? Do you know you are a child of God? Do you know you have the mind of Christ? Do you know that God is not the author of fear? Do you know God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind?
If a person knows he is a child of God, then he can trust God in all things, and by doing so, he can have His peace that surpasses all understanding. We will all have to face death some day, and rarely, if ever, do we get to choose how we will die. And it is not a matter of God answering our prayers, but God answering in accordance with His will. If it is our time to die, then we can rest in God’s sovereign care, knowing that when we die we will be in the presence of the Lord. If God wants us to remain, it will be for a purpose of completing whatever assignment God has given us today. When that assignment is over, then it is time to be with the Lord. God will raise up other servants to carry on the work He has fore-ordained for them. God has assigned a unique work to each person, for He is the head of the church.
Many times callers, such as Randy, are asking what Bob’s understanding of salvation is. Many callers are sweet-spirited people, but deeply, deeply in error in understanding salvation. Many people are in fear of death because of not having a clear understanding of the gospel. Randy had difficulty walking in any real peace with God, always in fear of whether he was accepted by God.
Sadly, many people keep listening to blind guides, pastors who teach a contrary gospel, and there are many. This leads people in bondage and in confusion, if not remaining unsaved. The body of Christ is often divided because they do not know the meaning of God’s word and have not studied the word of God for themselves. So they are easily twisted by persuasive men, just like the Galatians in the day of the apostle Paul.
Bob spoke the remainder of the time explaining salvation from Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia and to the church in Corinth. As one reads Galatians 1:6-8, you understand the gravity of the topic of salvation. Here is Paul, a minister of the gospel, taught by no one else but Jesus Christ, appointed to be an apostle by God to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, to administer the totality of the message of grace, telling the Galatians how astonished he is that they are turning away from the gospel he preached and to a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. He is quite bold and firm when he said that if even I or an angel from heaven preaches a different gospel then the one I preached let him be eternally condemned. This is an extremely important matter! Any gospel that adds to or subtracts from the gospel is no gospel at all, but a false gospel.
From reading 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, we read what Paul had preached concerning the gospel. Paul defined quite clearly what the gospel is in his letter to the Corinthians. The gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus, what he did alone for you that you could never do for yourself. When you put your faith alone in what Jesus alone did for you then you are saved. But if you add to it, such as baptism or going back to the confessional booth or using 1 John 1:9 as a means to keep in relationship with God, or tithe keeping or church attendance or going back to the day of atonement, then you have added to the gospel something you do and thereby subtract from what Jesus did. You have believed a different gospel, and as Paul expressed it, you have believed in vain, and are eternally condemned. By adding any requirement to be saved than what was specifically stated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 is subtracting from what Jesus did.
Transcript
Anne from Houston, Texas
Anne calls to thank Bob. She shares from her experiences of those who had suffered with cancer.
Thank you for handling the call with the man with the brain cancer. Christian should not be making decisions from fear. She has had several friends and her own husband died from cancer two years ago. I am not sure if only afraid being used. In some cases it is money. I saw some cancer patients paralyzed with fear. A man dying of cancer, rolling him on the chest. I saw a lot of things my brother-n-law went through. They did everything to putting a big hole in his leg. Everything they did terrorized him. I am hoping he was a believer. It was so tragic and then it hit my family. Oh, Lord if it is going to be his time, do not let them fill him with fear to make the last few months of his life worse. The first thing the doctors said was, “there is nothing more that we can do”. I believed the Lord made them do this. That was my consolation.
Over twenty years ago they said I had to have my gall bladder out. I still have my gall bladder. Christians should not make medical decisions based on fear. I would be doing much more praying and communication with the Lord than be submitting our bodies to the medical profession. I am not a faith healer. Benny Hinn would have nothing for me. At times the Lord has healed me when I have gone to Him for that and other times I have had to endure. There are the ungodly in the medical profession. But even if a doctor is a Christian, you have to deal with people in the labs and all kinds of things. As far as me, I am not afraid to totally submit my body totally only to the Lord. Do you think people at least need to go more to the Lord?
Bob then shares what he thinks the real issue is.
Anne, I see that understanding and knowing the word of God is more preparatory to me than crisis. I see a lot of people who spend no time at all studying who they are in Christ Jesus. They really do not have a clue. They say they are Baptist or Presbyterian, or whatever, but they do not have answers to even the most fundamental questions. The questions are, “Do you know you are a child of God? Do you know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Do you know you are totally forgiven?” And the answer I mostly hear is that they do not know. Every one of us is going to die some time. We are all going to face that. How are we going to prepare for that? By watching Benny Hinn? By watching such preachers on television, you would think that all Christians are sickly. You are not prepared in your heart. Someone says, “You have to pray”. Praying should be natural because you know something. The Lord knows everything about me. I do not want my prayers answered. I want God’s will answered. I do not want my prayers answered because I can pray some dumb things some times.
People in faith movement say, “If I pray this in accordance with His will, then you have negated it”. Yet in scripture we read that if we pray anything in accordance with His will, He hears us.
1 John 5:14
14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.
So I do not know how anyone can make such a ridiculous statement.
Bob then shares from his own personal experiences.
I have had melanoma removed. I had prostate cancer. I have had a heart attack. Yet I consider myself a healthy person. I see none of those things as a crisis to me. It is like I went to a restaurant and had a meal, and as far as a concern for any one of those things, it was a decision.
When I found out I had prostate cancer, I asked the doctor, “Is it confined?” The doctor replied, “Yes, it is confined”. Then, if it is confined, then I will take care of it. So at Loma Indiana, and I would recommend anybody, to go there. If I was older, I would not even bother because the chances of dying of it is very slim.
While there, the doctor says, “let me check you over. Oh, you have melanoma on your back“. To me, it was so what. The doctor says, “Oh, you have to get it out right now. Oh, this is more dangerous than prostate”. I told him, “I have no fear of death, so quit trying to put fear in me. I will not get it done here. I will get prostate done here, and when I get back to Dallas, I will get it done there”. “Oh, you don’t wait. You might…” I said, “I will get my prostate treated here. I will get the other removed when I get back to Dallas”. I told the doctor, “Quit trying to put fear in me. Doctor, this is all in God’s hands. I am not going to get it done here”. I just about had to slap him in the head. “You did not hear what I said, ‘I am not going to have it here’””
Another time the doctor said he had a heart attack and said he needed open heart surgery. “You have 95% blocked arteries”. When I had a heart attack, I told the doctor, “I am not going to have open heart surgery. Put a stint in”. When I saw my brother with open heart surgery, I made a commitment, “I am not going to do that”. The doctor insisted, “Oh, there is a place in there that if I do not put a stint in just right, then you will have cardiac arrest”. I replied, “Well, I cannot think of a better way to go than cardiac arrest. I cannot think of a better way to go”. Bob never did have cardiac arrest. He died of failing health much later in life, about four years after having a stroke.
Anne then shared from her personal experiences. She had a friend in his 40’s and told him something similar. He was walking and talking like you and me are talking. She gave him a bible to encourage him in the Lord. They, the medical staff, put fear in him. He went and had open heart surgery done, and for seven years he was in a vegetable state.
Bob said he has had a number of friends who went in the hospital for next to nothing and then had been killed. Hospitals are a good place to kill you. Doctors are not God.
Anne then continues sharing. I felt like almost every pastor I was running across, besides the tithe, on every issue, they have almost turned medical field, between medical doctors and psychologists, they have excluded God. But these pastors go and tell you to do what the doctor tells you to do. So we need to listen to God instead of to do what they say we do or listen to them to do.
Bob responds. I am not opposed to doctors but I am opposed to doctor’s putting fear in me. I saw my dad, the suffering through the medicine and treatment more than from the cancer itself. Bob said, “there is no way I am going to do that. I will walk in the Lord and let the Lord take care of it”. Fear does not come from God. We are told that. God did not give us a Spirit of fear but of power, of love and a sound mind. My sound mind tells me that doctors are not God.
2 Timothy 1:7
7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
Anne closes by saying, “I thank you for sharing that about not giving into fear. That exalts the Lord.”
Randy
I have a generic question. How do I know that I am saved beyond a shadow of a doubt?
Have you come to put your faith in the finished work of Christ Jesus at the cross? There are two things paramount to salvation.
First, I have to believe what God says about me. I have to believe what God calls about my sin. I am not going to call homosexuality an alternate lifestyle. I am not going to call drunkenness alcoholism. I am going to call what God calls it, drunkenness. I am going to agree with God as to what He says about me and my problem and I am going to agree with Him in regards to His solution and I am going to put faith in that.
Jeremiah 17:9
9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
Romans 3:10
10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;”
Now God said that about you and your lost state. He said that my heart is deceitful above all else and who can know it. He said no one is righteous, no not one. That is a problem. For how can an unrighteous person come into the presence of a righteous God? Now, God says, “I will tell you. I came to give you my righteousness. I took your sins, all of them, and placed them on me at the cross”. There, Jesus, who knew no sin so that you could become the righteousness of God in Him. He took away your sins, all of them, never to see them again.
Romans 5:8
8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
2 Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Randy thanks Bob. You are the only person who teaches this kind of salvation. You do not have to keep confessing your sins. I quit listening to guys like Hank Hanegraaff and others.
Randy continues sharing his struggle to hold onto truth. I struggle with doubt in my faith and wonder if I am trusting. It is a day to day problem. It is an up and down thing. I never heard anyone ask that question. Thank you, Bob.
Bob George
Due to a couple of callers, sweet-spirited people, but deeply, deeply wrong in their understanding of salvation, Bob decided to use the remainder of his time to share more on what salvation is from the scriptures.
Turn to Galatians 1:6-8, and let us read what the apostle Paul said to the Galatians, and to you and me today.
Galatians 1:6-8
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!
That is unbelievably strong language, coming from an apostle who taught grace, a teacher of grace, the administer of grace to the Gentile world, commissioned directly by Christ Jesus. Here is this person, who taught the totality of the grace of God, saying that if anyone teaches a different gospel, let him be eternally condemned. Sounds like quite strong language from a person who teaches grace. He is saying these infiltrators in Galatia are teaching a different gospel or a false gospel.
What would a false gospel do? A false gospel would add to the gospel, subtract from the gospel, deny the truth of the gospel, and make Jesus into someone he is not. Basically, a false gospel adds to what the gospel is.
Let us turn to 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, and read what the apostle Paul says is the true gospel. So let us find out what the same apostle said is the true gospel, the one he preached
1 Corinthians 15:1
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
Here is the gospel. What did God do? What is the good news that God did that you and I could not do for ourselves?
1 Corinthians 15:2
2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
By this gospel, not one added to or subtracted from, but this gospel, but this one, the one you hold on to, is how you are saved. But if you add to or subtract from this gospel, then you did not believe the gospel that saves. You would have to deny the truth of this gospel, to add to it to believe a different gospel. And, so you would have believed in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
That is the gospel. He died, he was buried, he was raised, according to the scriptures, and he appeared to us. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus is the gospel that saves you. If anyone comes along and teaches a gospel contrary to that, which is no gospel at all, then do not listen to him. Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, and we just heard the gospel he preached, then let him be eternally condemned.
Is there anything about baptism in this statement? No. Baptism is not the gospel. It is not in the gospel. We must understand the truth of this. It is not in the gospel. Paul talked about baptism and said he did not baptize anyone, except Crispus and Gaius. He said Christ did not send him to baptize.
1 Corinthians 13:13-17
13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that passage totally annihilates the idea of baptism being in the gospel. He did not send me to baptize. If baptism were in the gospel, why would he say that? To preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross be emptied of its power. How is the cross emptied of its power? By adding to what the cross did.
Paul is saying, “I have given you a definition of what the gospel is, no more and no less. It is all Jesus. It is all what Jesus did, period. It has nothing to do with you”. So when the same author, defines the gospel, it is the death, burial and resurrection of Christ Jesus, and if anyone says something contrary to this, and when you add anything to the gospel, then you have a contrary gospel, which is no gospel at all. Why? You added to it or subtracted from it. He says, “let them be eternally condemned”. When you add to this, then you have no gospel at all.
If some Church of Christ person called and says you must be saved by baptism, he should be petrified? Why? The bible says he will be eternally condemned. Why? He is not preaching the gospel. So if you are adding to the gospel, which is what he is doing, adding something you do, and thereby subtracting from what Jesus did. You cannot add tongues, baptism, church attendance, tithing records to the gospel.
The gospel comes from God. There is only one thing you can do with it. You enter into the gospel by faith. That is what obedience to the gospel is. They say obedience to the gospel is being baptized. Is that all you are going to do as a Christian, get baptized, and forget about the rest of the obedience to God, such as quit loving one another? My prayer is these people come to their senses and quit teaching this divisive gospel, which is no gospel at all, adding to what Jesus did, under the direction of God Himself through the apostle Paul, saying you will be eternally condemned if you continually do that. There is only one way you are saved. It is nothing what you have done. It is everything that Jesus did.
He died to take away your sins, was buried to prove his death, and was raised from death so that the life that raised him from the dead will raise you from the dead. You had nothing to do with any of that. Quit adding the additives and come to believe the real gospel.
