Christians have both many reasons and an obligation to give thanks to God. All nations are called upon to acknowledge and be thankful to God, for He is the ultimate source of every blessing, but genuine Christians especially should “Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations” (Psalm 100:4-5).
What does Scripture tell us about thanksgiving as it relates to us as Christians?
Rod Reynolds explores why it is that so many people do not understand the Bible. Also vital keys in unlocking God’s Word so you can understand it better. The Bible is the most widely circulated book in the world. Well over 2 billion copies of the Bible have been printed and distributed worldwide. Almost every household in much of the western world has at least one Bible, and yet it is a book that is little understood.
The Bible is full of symbolic language, and references to physical symbols as well, which have deep spiritual significance, little understood by most people, even many who read the Bible and profess to be Christians.
Explored in this message presented by Rod Reynolds is the symbolism associated with the “lampstand,” in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple of God in Jerusalem, and also “lampstands” referenced in the book of Revelation and elsewhere in Scripture. These have significance for every person who is part of God’s Church, and for the world at large, that I hope will interest you, and that you will gain understanding of if you have not understood before, or reminded of if you did.
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Many people believe that to be a Christian — to be converted — you don’t have to know much of anything and you don’t have to do anything. More than a few have sought to juxtapose knowledge and faith in such a way as to make it appear they are in opposition to one another. The only “truth” you need to know as a Christian, some allege, is “that the gospel is Christ plus nothing.” The implication, perhaps stated in various ways but amounting to the same idea, is that if you profess faith in Christ as your savior, nothing else matters.
Does the Bible have anything to say about the value, even the necessity, of knowledge in connection with conversion and salvation? Does God honor ignorance? Is knowledge something to be abhorred, shunned and avoided. Or might it be an essential element in one’s relationship with God, and in having a place in God’s Kingdom?
The Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy have made extremely bold and audacious claims. The papacy has claimed authority to appoint kings or depose them, to grant salvation or to deny it.
Innocent III (1198-1216) claimed as pope that he was the “Vicar of Christ” and of God, and that he was “Supreme Sovereign over the Church and the World.” He claimed that “All things on earth and in heaven and in hell are subject to the Vicar of Christ.” (Halley’s Bible Handbook, p. 883).
Pope Nicholas I (858-67) declared: “We popes alone have the power to bind and to loose,” claiming that the judgment of a pope “alone is infallible” (cited, A Woman Rides the Beast, Dave Hunt, p. 85).
Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), “…declared that the power to ‘bind and loose’ granted by Christ to Peter gave the popes ‘the right to make and unmake kings, to construct and reconstruct governments, to wrest from those who disobeyed all the territory held by them, and to bestow it upon those who would hold it subject to papal authority'” (A Woman Rides the Beast, p. 233).
On what foundation do such bold claims rest? They rest on the proposition that Jesus Christ gave to Peter the power to “bind and loose,” and that power somehow was passed on to a supposed unbroken line of successors. The idea is that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, and that he was the first Pope, and that his authority has been passed down to his successors as Bishops of Rome.
It would seem that anyone, especially those who are interested in following Jesus Christ, would want to carefully examine such claims, to test their legitimacy. Before turning over your hope of salvation to such claims, wouldn’t you want to know their validity? Let’s then examine the question: “Was Peter the First Pope?”
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