e-Newsletter

Volume Fifteen, Issue One
12/9/05


Volume 15, Issue 1
"DECEPTION IN THE CHURCH" e-Newsletter
12/9/05

Dear All,

Christmas blessings to all the DITC e-Newsletter readership.  I hope you have a blessed time and are taking this opportunity to talk to people about Jesus Christ.


FEATURE ARTICLE

The feature for this issue is "The Meaning Of Christmas" by A.W. Tozer, Warfare Of The Spirit, Chapter 22.  A thoughtful article on the meaning of Christmas.  Let us take this opportunity that is afforded us as believers, where once a year the world's attention is focused on at least some aspect of Jesus Christ, to preach the Gospel of the God-man to this generation.




Click on the above graphic to see our
Special Christmas Offer!



New DVD Study Series!

This video study series is taken from the Discernment Toolkit  book but includes a lot of footage of false teachers and false prophets.  It will help you and/or your group learn how to test, discern and judge teaching and prophecy that is out there today in a very practical way.  It covers the core doctrines, how we can use them to test, and examples on the DVD that can be paused for discussion.  This series also includes a teacher guide and links to resources on the web.  This 3-DVD series is available now!
Go here for ordering details!


Every Pastor Needs This!

THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION
What is it and where is it going?
is a DVD /VHS expose of  the NAR and it's leadership of C. Peter Wagner, Cindy Jacobs, Chuck Peirce, Dutch Sheets, Bill Hamon, Jack Deere and others. It  features commentary by Bill Randles, Arnold Fruchtenbaum, Jacob Prasch, Mike Oppenheimer, Orrel Steinkamp, Gary Gilley, Dave Hunt, Sandy Simpson and others.
Go here for ordering details!



 
New Book!
FINISH THE RACE! was written to help believers to realize the absolute necessity of growing to maturity in Christ. Many churches are urging Christians to push aside discernment in favor of experience. It is our hope that this book will inspire many believers to fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith (2 Tim. 4:7). Go here for ordering details.
Companion Book!
THE NEW APOSTOLIC REFORMATION is now available in book form. This is the DVD script plus commentary by Sandy Simpson. The commentary of the DVD series is not in the book, but there are many more quotes available than in the video series.  Good reference material.  Also available on CD-ROM.
Go here for ordering details.
Timely!
LETTERS TO THE CHURCH is a fitting manual for the Revelation Christian. All the precepts are in the seven letters in Revelation 1:9 - 3:22 to help us keep the faith, stay in sound doctrine, and reach out to those who are perishing. I hope and pray that this book will help the reader to be an “overcomer”.
Go here for more details and how to order!
Demolish Arguments!
Want to be able to see your way through to clear biblical discernment? Want a set of tools that will allow you to disciple your loved ones so they will stand firm in the Faith? Want to sort out many of the false arguments and teachings that have invaded the churches? Then DISCERNMENT TOOLKIT book is for you!
Go here for more details and how to order!
Important Video Information 
On Benny Hinn!
SPIRIT OF TRUTH OR SPIRIT OF ERROR? PART 1 - BENNY HINN 
features Jacob Prasch, Mike Oppenheimer & Sandy Simpson and tons of video showing the teachings and prophecies of Benny Hinn.  This is a proven tool to keep people away from heresy. 
Go here for more details and how to order!
Living Water 2003 
Discernment Conference
3-DVD Set & 2-VHS Set Now Available!

Featuring Bill Randles, Gary Gilley
& Ray Yungen

Go here for information!

Discernment 2001 
Conference
6-DVD Set & 2-VHS Set Now Available!

Featuring Dave Hunt, Duane Magnani, Mike Oppenheimer, Jacob Prasch, Jewel Grewe & Bill Randles

Go here for information!


Lord bless!

In His hands,
Sandy Simpson
Apologetics Coordination Team (ACT)


The Meaning of Christmas
by A.W. Tozer, Warfare Of The Spirit, Chapter 22

EVERYWHERE, EVERYWHERE, CHRISTMAS TONIGHT!—Phillips Brooks.

That there were in the world multiplied millions who had never heard of Christmas did not matter to our poet for the purpose of his poem. He was expressing an emotional fact, not a statistical one.

Throughout the Western world we tend to follow the poet and approach Christmas emotionally instead of factually. It is the romance of Christmas that gives it its extraordinary appeal to that relatively small number of persons of the earth’s population who regularly celebrate it.

So completely are we carried away by the excitement of this midwinter festival that we are apt to forget that its romantic appeal is the least significant thing about it. The theology of Christmas too easily gets lost under the gay wrappings, yet apart from its theological meaning it really has none at all. A half dozen doctrinally sound carols serve to keep alive the great deep truth of the Incarnation, but aside from these, popular Christmas music is void of any real lasting truth. The English mouse that was not even stirring, the German Tannenbaum so fair and lovely and the American red-nosed reindeer that has nothing to recommend it have pretty well taken over in Christmas poetry and song. These along with merry old St. Nicholas have about displaced Christian theology.

We must not forget that the Church is the custodian of a truth so grave and urgent that its importance can not be overemphasized, and so vast and incomprehensible that even an apostle did not try to explain it; rather it burst forth from him as an astonished exclamation:

Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations;
was believed on in the world,
(1 Timothy 3:16)

This is what the Church is trying to say to mankind but her voice these days is thin and weak and scarcely heard amid the commercialized clangor of “Silent Night.”

It does seem strange that so many persons become excited about Christmas and so few stop to inquire into its meaning; but I suppose this odd phenomenon is quite in harmony with our unfortunate human habit of magnifying trivialities and ignoring matters of greatest import. The same man who will check his tires and consult his road map with utmost care before starting on a journey may travel for a lifetime on the way that knows no return and never once pause to ask whether or not he is headed in the right direction.

The Christmas message, when stripped of its pagan overtones, is relatively simple: God is come to earth in the form of man. Around this one dogma the whole question of meaning revolves. God did come or He did not; He is come or He is not, and the vast accumulation of sentimental notions and romantic practices that go to make up our modern Christmas cannot give evidence on one side or the other.

Certain religious teachers in apostolic times refused to believe that Jesus was actually God come in the flesh. They were willing to exhaust the language of unctuous flattery to describe His glorious manhood, but they would have none of His deity. Their basic philosophy forbade them to believe that there could ever be a union of God and human flesh.Matter, they said, is essentially evil. God who is impeccably holy could never allow Himself contact with evil. Human flesh is matter, therefore God is not come in the flesh.

Certainly it would not be difficult to refute this negative teaching. One would only need to demonstrate the error of the major premise, the essential sinfulness of matter, and the whole thing would collapse. But that would be to match reason against reason and take the mystery of godliness out of the realm of faith and make of it merely another religious philosophy. Then we would have rationalism with a thin Christian veneer. How long before the veneer wore off and we had only rationalism?

While faith contains an element of reason, it is essentially moral rather than intellectual. In the New Testament unbelief is a sin, and this could not be so if belief were no more than a verdict based upon evidence. There is nothing unreasonable about the Christian message, but its appeal is not primarily to reason. At a specific time in a certain place God became flesh, but the transcendence of Christ over the human conscience is not historic; it is intimate, direct and personal.

Christ’s coming to Bethlehem’s manger was in harmony with the primary fact of His secret presence in the world in preincarnate times as the Light that lighteth every man. The sum of the New Testament teaching about this is that Christ’s claims are self-validating and will be rejected only by those who love evil. Whenever Christ is preached in the power of the Spirit, a judgment seat is erected and each hearer stands to be judged by his response to the message. His moral responsibility is not to a lesson in religious history but to the divine Person who now confronts him.

“Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight.” But Christmas either means more than is popularly supposed or it means nothing. We had better decide.