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continuation...
Are we included there? “Who will have all men to be saved.” Are you a man? If you are a gorilla, then, you are not included. But if you are a human being, God wants you to be saved. Whether you are a lesbian, a homosexual, a harelip, cross-eyed, obese, skinny, rich, poor, or illiterate, God wants you to be saved, but not Manalo! They claim that, if you do not join their church, you will go to hell.
That is why having enemies in faith is inevitable. How about you, are you not mad at me yet? You may react if you are already mad at me. The truth should be straight and exact! And if we are going to talk about salvation, let us always remember that God wants all men to be saved. He doesn’t want anyone to be led to destruction. However, God wants us to obey His will completely and wholly. God does not want us to obey only the commandments that we want to obey. He doesn’t want us to get engaged in a religion whose doctrines are mere inventions. There are people who get in shameless religions.
There are religions, which believe that God is in heaven, on earth, and in every place. In other words, they believe that God is everywhere. Isn’t it that that is the common belief? That is the common belief of many religions but not I! I have a different belief. If you will follow their line of thinking, that God is everywhere, you will eventually realize that, they, themselves, contradict their belief. Why? Let me give you an example: “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Where is God? That part of their prayer said, God is in heaven, but why are they saying that God is everywhere? Whenever you pray, you say, “Our Father, which art in heaven, Hollowed be thy name.” “Nuestro padre de el cielo”; Ama namin, nasa langit ka.” Where is God? He is in heaven! After a while, another prayer is recited. “Hail Mary, Full of grace/ The Lord is with thee.” Where is God, this time? Which is true now? Is He everywhere? Is He in heaven? Or, is He in Mary? You are fooling yourselves!
If you are claiming that God is everywhere, it follows that He is also in cabarets, night clubs, sauna baths, and gambling dens because your God is everywhere. But why is it that when you pray, you say that He is in heaven? But what is worse is that when you say another prayer, you now say that He is in Mary! You are not sure anymore where God really is!
Perhaps, it would be better if you say, “Our Father, who is everywhere!” And do not lift your eyes to heaven anymore, and do not recite the other prayer anymore. Do not say, “The Lord is with thee.” You have said it right when you said that, He is in heaven. But it is not true that God is everywhere. I will give you an example. You called on your child, and you told him, “Child, please hang the laundry in the clothesline in our backyard because the sun is there.” Is that right, or wrong? That is wrong! It is not true that the sun is in their backyard. If that is so, then, their house could have been burned and reduced to ashes already. Where is the sun? The sun may be about 92 million miles away from the earth. But despite the distance, the rays of the sun could reach even the farthest part of the world. The same thing is true with God. God is in heaven, but He could go wherever He wants to go. But it is wrong to believe that God is everywhere. This is what Acts 17:24 says--
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”
The God who made the world and all the things therein … the Lord of heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made by hands. He does not dwell in temples made by men. Does God dwell in temples? The Bible said, “NO!” However, the Iglesia ni Cristo, in the August 1969 issue of their "Pasugo" said “We are summoned by the Lord God to serve him in the body, or the Church of God,. We have to worship him in the house where his spirit dwells like the modern house of worship pictured above.”
They said, we must worship God in the Church of God or in a house of worship, where his spirit dwells. Obviously, the INC is opposing Christ. Through Paul, Christ said that God does not dwell in temples made by men. For the INC, their god dwells in their chapel in Roosevelt. For the Catholics, God dwells in their churches, but in reality only the priests is dwelling there. How can we be saved when the teachings that we received were all contradictory to what the Bible teaches. You may get mad at me for telling you this, but I don’t care! I am ready to endure your anger, just for you to be saved.
So, if we really want to study salvation, we must not forget that, salvation is an exact thing. But, where can we find salvation? Where are we going to base our belief, our obedience? Who are we going to obey? What must be our basis, if we want to be saved? Romans 1:16 says--
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.”
Are we included there, brothers and sisters? Yes, we are. However, before we can be included, please note of what St. Paul said, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel …” Therefore, if we are going to study about salvation, we need to be guided by the Gospel. If St. Paul said that he is not ashamed of the Gospel, the more we should not be ashamed of it! I am not ashamed of the Gospel. With my head up high, I will shout to all that, salvation is in the Gospel. I don’t care if other people get mad at me. The Gospel is more reliable than hearsays. There are a lot of beliefs out there which you could not be proud. According to the Mormons, God is of flesh and bone, and the reason why God begot many children is because he espoused many women. In “Doctrines and Covenants” section 120, this is what verse 122 says, “The father has a flesh and bone as tangible as man is.” They had made God like a human being that has flesh and bone. And since he is just like a man, he could also marry and beget children. And how many wives are they entitled to have? (132:61-62):
“And again as pertaining to the laws of the priesthood – if any man espoused a virgin and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espoused the second, and they are virgins, and have not vowed to another man: then he is justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else. And if he had 10 virgins given unto him by this law he cannot commit adultery; for they belong unto him, and they are given unto him therefore he is justified.”
Did you see the lust for women of the leader of the Mormons? They can have as many wives, even 10, provided they are virgins. See how foolish this doctrine is? Who taught this? Joseph Smith! How many wives did Joseph Smith have? Let us read from “Cults and Isms”: “Mormonism seeks to reduce God into a carnal plane and even ascribes unto him human method of reproduction fully in keeping with the immortal and polygamous character of Smith and Young who had forty-eight and twenty-five wives respectively, and the latter, 46 children.” So, Joseph Smith had 48 wives.
How about in the Bible, does God permit a minister, or a bishop, to have as much as 48 wives? In I Timothy 3:2, “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife …” How many wives must a minister, or a bishop, of Christ have? Only ONE ! Joseph Smith had 48. A belief that
has no Biblical basis is shameful. Like this one … “Friend, we are going ahead because we still have an appointment somewhere.” Her friend answered,
“Couldn’t you leave a little later? We’re still eating.” “But we have an appointment …” “Well, it’s you that I am worried about. If you really like to leave,
you may just rotate the plates so that you won’t meet any accident on the road.”
Did you get that? The reason why she didn’t want her friend to leave was because she was not through eating yet. Their belief was that, he who leaves in the middle of a meal will meet an accident. And to prevent this from happening, the plates on the table must be rotated. Therefore, their fortune, or misfortune, depends on the plates. Question: Where did that belief come from? What was its basis? SALVATION HAS A DEFINITE AND EXACT BASIS!
In Arithmetic: 1+1=2, 2+4=6 and 6x6=36. The answer is always definite. Since I was young, it had always been that way. Nothing changed. 6x6 has always been 36; it never became 48. The answer is fixed. If you want to confirm that 6x6=36, you follow another operation. Count by six: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36. “Let’s start from the very beginning/A very good place to start/ When you read you begin with ABC/ When you sing you begin with DO-RE-MI … Do, a deer, a female deer/ Re, a drop of golden sun/ Mi, a name I call myself/ Fa, along, long way to run/ So, a needle pulling thread/ La, a note to follow sol/ Ti, a drink with jam and bread/ That will bring us back to Do …”
If you have mastered the musical notes, no matter what rearrangement they make to the song, you can still follow. Any musical composition is based on the notes; computations are based on mathematical operations. And when it comes to salvation, there should also be a basis. What should be our basis?
Take these for example: “Do not sweep the floor at night time; the blessings will go out of the house.” Or, “Put it off for tomorrow when the sun has risen, because God showers His blessings the moment the sun rises.” You mean to say, God does not shower His blessings at night? Many people do their work in the evening. Will that mean that they will not receive any blessings for their labor because it is when the sun rises that God showers His blessings everywhere? Where did you get those beliefs? During interments, young kids are being lifted and are made to cross over the coffin because they believe that in doing this no other member of the family will pass away soon. Can you ever prevent death? Where did you get that belief? Does it have any basis? Is it written in the Bible? Is that a word of God? Or, is it a mere superstitious belief that had been handed down to us, and we did not even bother to check where such a belief came from, and if it has any basis? “Cheers!” “Give me a toast!” What is its basis? Where did you get the idea that when there is a celebration, you need to toast before drinking? You have to find out first where that practice began.
Find out why it is bad to take a bath during Good Friday, and why is it prohibited to laugh and to eat meat (during Good Friday). Granting that it is really prohibited to eat meat, what do you take as a substitute? A kilo of beef costs P120. But since one must abstain from eating meat, what did the rich do instead? Instead of meat, they bought blue marlin, which costs P350. (Blue marlin is a good tasting fish.) I thought you are making a sacrifice? It is true that you did not eat meat, which costs P120 a kilo, but what did you buy instead? Crabs and blue marlin, which are more expensive than meat! What kind of a sacrifice is that? And where did you get the belief that, it is also prohibited to take a bath during Good Friday because God is dead at that moment? There is also a belief that, during Good Friday, a person may get the chance to own an amulet, or a charm, if he is able to swallow the crystal-like fluid that comes out of a banana blossom!
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