Friday, March 27, 2020

Using The Law To Witness Essays - Christian Soteriology,

Using The Law To Witness Today I am going to share with you something that I have found to be the most important part of how we witness to other people. In the late 1970s, a man named Ray Comfort began to explore Church growth records. He found that 80 to 90 percent of those making a decision for Christ are falling away from the faith. A major denomination in the United States reported to have 11,500 churches in the U.S. This same denomination reported to have obtained 294,000 decisions for Christ in 1991. This same church could only find 14,000 of those people in fellowship today. Modern evangelism is preaching the benefits of salvation, with out using the law to show the sinner why they are lost with out God. These statistics are the normal results of modern evangelism. The way that we present the Gospel determines the kind of response the person will make. We need to present the Gospel with the law in mind. Here is an illustration that Ray Comfort uses in his Book, Hells best kept secret: Two men are seated in a plane. A stewardess gives the first man a parachute and tells him that it will improve his flight. The passenger is a little skeptical, but after hearing the persuasion of the stewardess, he decides that what she says is true. After he puts it on, he notices the uncomfortable weight of the parachute, and that it makes it uncomfortable to sit with it on. Eventually other people in the plane start laughing at him. The passenger decides that it isnt worth it to wear the parachute anymore and he takes it off. He feels that he has been lied to. Another stewardess gives the second man a parachute. She tells him to put it on because at any moment he will be jumping out of the plane. The second passenger gratefully straps the parachute on. He doesn't notice its weight upon his shoulders. All he can think about is that he would die without the parachute. When other passengers laugh at him, he thinks, You won't be laughing when you're falling to the ground! The first person was promised that the parachute would only improve his flight, but he wasnt told why. But the second man was promised that the parachute would save him from would otherwise be the death to come. We can now see that when someone is promised love joy and peace and they do not receive it, they feel like they were lied to. So how can we prevent this from happening. We must use the law when we witness to the unsaved. Psalm 19:7 says The law of the Lord is perfect for converting the soul. You must show each man or woman that they have broken Gods law. Everyone at some time has stolen something, and many people who are not saved use Gods name in vain. Show them that stealing is breaking the ten commandments, and that using Gods name in vain is blasphemy. Therefore, we have all broken the entire Law of the Lord. We must present the consequences of breaking the law. Explain to them that we will all be judged for the sins we have committed. In Romans 7: 7 Paul says I did not know what sin was until the law told me. In Romans 3:19 we see that God says the law will stop the mouth of the sinner. It will stop the sinner from justifying his sin. We have all heard the argument that I am not that bad, or there are plenty of people who are worse than me. When people use these arguments you must show them that we have all broken Gods law, and because of that we are in need of his grace. If you approach a sinner and say Jesus loves you and he died on the cross for your sins, it will offensive because he doesnt think he is a sinner. But if you show him that he has offended God by breaking his law, he will realize that he is a sinner and want to avoid Gods wrath. A great verse to use here is Romans 6:23. Once you have established

Friday, March 6, 2020

Free Essays on Oppression

The Limits to Freedom What is oppression? The word oppression can relate to a wide myriad of situations, as it did in the 1960’s. Oppression is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as the act of oppressing; arbitrary exercise of power or a feeling of being heavily weighed down in mind or body. In the 1960’s it was not just one entity that experienced this need to obtain freedom, but it was many groups. According to Miller, â€Å"Something of value did happen in the sixties. New Voices were heard, new forms of beauty appeared. And most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness- political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new- are with us still† (Miller, 8). These â€Å"limits of freedom† explained by Miller are the oppressive standards that were evident in the 1960’s by not only college students, but also by African-Americans, women, the people of Vie tnam, and many other Americans who were exposed to technocracy, this era of oppression and its consequences is one of the major themes of this course. Technocracy triggered many of the social movements of the 1960’s that were lead by young adults of this time. Their beliefs arose from their opposition toward the violence of the Vietnam War, which unionized them. They felt that they were being oppressed, because people’s lives were in danger. The students were against society’s intentions of maintaining a status quo, these individuals tried to break the barriers of society and develop their own minds to change themselves and the world around them from being exploited. According to Roszak, â€Å"When any system of politics devours the surrounding culture, we have totalitarianism, the attempt to bring the whole of life under authoritarian control. We are bitterly familiar with totalitarian politics the from of brutal regimes which achieve their integration b... Free Essays on Oppression Free Essays on Oppression The Limits to Freedom What is oppression? The word oppression can relate to a wide myriad of situations, as it did in the 1960’s. Oppression is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as the act of oppressing; arbitrary exercise of power or a feeling of being heavily weighed down in mind or body. In the 1960’s it was not just one entity that experienced this need to obtain freedom, but it was many groups. According to Miller, â€Å"Something of value did happen in the sixties. New Voices were heard, new forms of beauty appeared. And most of the large questions raised by that moment of chaotic openness- political questions about the limits of freedom, and cultural questions, too, about the authority of the past and the anarchy of the new- are with us still† (Miller, 8). These â€Å"limits of freedom† explained by Miller are the oppressive standards that were evident in the 1960’s by not only college students, but also by African-Americans, women, the people of Vie tnam, and many other Americans who were exposed to technocracy, this era of oppression and its consequences is one of the major themes of this course. Technocracy triggered many of the social movements of the 1960’s that were lead by young adults of this time. Their beliefs arose from their opposition toward the violence of the Vietnam War, which unionized them. They felt that they were being oppressed, because people’s lives were in danger. The students were against society’s intentions of maintaining a status quo, these individuals tried to break the barriers of society and develop their own minds to change themselves and the world around them from being exploited. According to Roszak, â€Å"When any system of politics devours the surrounding culture, we have totalitarianism, the attempt to bring the whole of life under authoritarian control. We are bitterly familiar with totalitarian politics the from of brutal regimes which achieve their integration b...