Or why should Christians make study of the New Testament (NT) a priority over the Old Testament (OT)?

Because, if we study our Lord Jesus Christ’s life and teachings in the NT, He does not rely on the OT very much, except to show how He fulfilled OT prophecies and when relating to and debating the Scribes and Pharisees. His teachings, such as Matt 5-7 were somewhat similar to the OT, but with added requirements that make understanding and following them possible only for those born-again and filled with the Holy Spirit.

In fact, in Matt 7:24, where He says, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock”, He seems to be meaning that His words take precedence over all other’s, including the OT! Even His commissioning in Matt 28:18-20 stresses our continual focus and reliance on Him, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go there fore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

The problem with the OT is that it provided covering for sin, but did not have the power to truly transform a person’s life. The Pharisees were proof of this. Although they were fanatical students of the OT, our Lord Jesus exposed their hearts full of sin and pride numerous times, even saying that Satan was their Father, until they started to plan to murder Him and finally had Him crucified. Also, if our Lord Jesus had some faith in the OT, would He not have chosen His disciples from among the best of the Pharisees? Further more, if the OT was really that great, might we say that our Lord Jesus would not have had to come to earth to sacrifice His life to save us? Verses like, John 3:3, 5, 15-21, assert that without our Lord Jesus’ redemptive work, we would be lost in darkness.

The book of Hebrews was written to Jewish people who were following the law. The writer puts forth arguments showing how our Lord Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law as the lamb without blemish sacrificed in payment for God’s wrath on a sinful human race. After His resurrection, He became our high priest who is able to save us and intercede for us. According to Hebrews 8:6-7, He also became “the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.” Verse 13 adds, ‘When He said, “A new covenant”, He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.’

If we follow Jesus life in the Gospels and what He taught His disciples and His debates with the Pharisees, we might see that Jesus is always bringing in new ideas, many of which supersede those of the OT. In John’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus continually tries to communicate the nature of the Father and the fact that He and the Father are one. He also tries to draw attention to His deity and identity as the Son of God who is superior to Abraham, Moses or any of the OT prophets. He tries to show their need for Him to save them from their sin and that there is no other way to the Father, but through Him.

From reading the Gospels, we see that Jesus required His disciples to spend time with Him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for three and a half years. He tried to show them how to live a life of faith to preach the Gospel while drawing power from Him, Father, and Holy Spirit to perform miracles, such as healing, casting out devils.

Moreover, we see from His words in John 10 and 14-17, our Lord Jesus wants us to be totally dependent on Him. In John 10, He is the Good Shepherd who knows His sheep and leads them by His voice. He knows His sheep, His sheep know Him and He lays down His life for His sheep. In John 15:1 He says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” In verse 4 He says, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.” In verse 7 He says, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

Because we never find our Lord Jesus encouraging His disciples to meditate on OT scriptures, I think we should be cautious about spending time in the OT until the fruits of our Lord’s teachings in the NT, such as preaching the Gospel with healing, casting out devils, and working of miracles, can be clearly seen in our lives. Even then, I would be extremely cautions about turning to meditation in the OT which may then lead to a powerless and unfruitful life. I believe our Lord’s discipleship and teachings, along with the indwelling Holy Spirit, were all the disciples needed to turn the world upside down.

I think Our Lord’s warning in Matt 16:11-12 supports this, ‘How is it that you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Also, our Lord illustrates in Matt 9:14-17, “Then the disciples of John came to Him, asking, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “The attendants of the bridegroom cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Because in John 13:16, our Lord Jesus said, “a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the One Who sent him”, we must also be cautious about taking a disciple’s word over our Lord’s word. We must realize, when there is a conflict, that our Lord Jesus’ words should carry more weight than those of one of His disciples, since our Lord is the Son of God, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the Way, the Truth and the Life, while everyone else is merely human and can be mistaken. In John 6:63, our Lord said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing: the words I have spoken to you are Spirit and are life.” My personal opinion is that the Holy Spirit left signs of human weakness in the Bible in order for us to realize how much we need our Lord Jesus through the power of His Holy Spirit!

Something that one may notice that is common among the disciples, including the Apostle Paul, is that each is totally fanatical about our Lord Jesus! This is prominent in each disciple’s writings where they constantly think, talk and teach about living in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. I always wondered what it meant when the Apostle Paul would say, in Philippians 4:13 for example, “I can do all things through Him Who strengthens me.” Now I know this echoes back to where our Lord encourages them, like in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” In Rom 1:16-17, the Apostle Paul exclaimed, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” For more details, please see Bible Resources.

I was let go from the place of my previous employment after two incidences of using company email for personal use. The first incident occurred about mid-December 2020 when I emailed an encouraging message, titled “The Gift that Keeps on Giving” to fellow employees with my Bible Resources document attached. I explained that I had compiled the document of essential principles I had acquired while attending healing meetings for almost 20 years. What I learned so impacted my life that I wanted to get the information to as many people as possible. Another motive was to honor our Lord Jesus Christ for protecting and prospering us as a company through the past year. Afterwards, I was counseled and issued a formal warning and agreed to comply with the policy.

Additional background to my first email related to some informal meetings in March 2020 with my next-cubicle neighbor, a Quality Engineer whose wife is a pastor, where I was showing him how to make declarations while sowing faith seed (cash) into his ministry. One of the declarations I made was that the Lord would keep all of us 1000+ world-wide employees safe from the Covid-19 virus. The prayer for protection also included clients, vendors, supporting vendors, and those who over the years have left the company and are now living in retirement or are now working elsewhere. I stated that, “we honor God when we pray extravagant prayers because we serve an extravagant God.”

More background regarding the first email is that when I first contemplated sending the email, I had the thought that I could wait until Spring 2021 to do it. But, that Sunday morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading Kevin Zadai’s book, “You can Hear God’s Voice” after finishing breakfast, when suddenly I felt an urgency to compose and send the email with attachment. It was like, “I have got to do this now!” I think this may have had something to do with my being let go right before the spiritual atmosphere would have changed when President Biden was inaugurated.

The second incident occurred about mid-January when I sent an email, with attached “Bible Resources” document, to a consultant (not an employee) who had started teaching weekly training classes. I reasoned that he is a consultant and probably would be accustomed to receiving emails from people in companies he consulted with. My motive was to get the gospel message to him in obedience to our Lord’s commission. I knew there may be a chance that I might transgress our company’s policy, but I figured that whatever happened would be in the Lord’s control and He would work it out for good. I reasoned that his soul’s eternal destiny is more important than trying to protect my comfortable life. A couple of weeks later, I was terminated after admitting to sending the email. Note: This incident occurred on a Monday in which I had taken a vacation day.

Looking back, I realize that over the past several years, I had felt that my status at the company seemed to have steadily deteriorated. I would talk to my wife about it and always end up thinking it is all in my head. Not wanting to abandon our post, we would always decide to stay on until we had a clear message from our Lord Jesus Christ that we should leave. I was never sure how it would actually work out.

At one point I thought this might not be a pretty situation, since I reasoned that no company in its right mind would let an employee go unless there was some kind of infraction. So, after being let go, I recognized the Lord’s hand in all this. My thought is that it may have been a worse situation if the Lord hadn’t put in my heart to send those emails, even though I didn’t intend to be let go. I think it was the Lord, since what better way to get let go than as punishment for “preaching” the gospel message!

Some have expressed that they did not think our Lord Jesus Christ would have someone violate a companies policy in “preaching the Gospel message”. However, I think that His love for the lost and desire to save souls is such that He is willing to take extreme measures to get His message to them. A passage that comes to mind is Acts 5:40-42, “They took his advice, and after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them. So they went on their way from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.”

I have also had the thought that, even though a company may think their email is theirs, it really ultimately belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, since He is truly the real source of all our creativity and productivity – whether we know it or not! I think it’s like in John 12:12-15 when our Lord Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young donkey. He only borrowed the “donkey”, in this case the email system, for a few minutes for His purposes before giving it back to the owner.

Further more, I think the owner of the donkey must have been blessed, so even though I was let go, I think the company is actually benefitting from the blessings due to the effect on everyone who read that attachment. Another thought I have had is how greatly blessed that donkey must have been! So, I feel great honor and joy for having had the privilege to be a part of the “donkey” on which our Lord Jesus Christ could  use to “ride on” for the moment, even though I did not really know what I was doing.

Blessings to you, -Tony

Happy New Year! We welcome you to our page where we pray that we can help you find true fulfillment in this life. We trust that you have found your way into God’s Kingdom (please see previous articles for more information).

The Kingdom of God is like any culture, in that it is possible for one to progress from a very brief exposure through a web page to finding more information in a book to experiencing through a video to visiting as a tourist to learning to speak the native language to living in the land for extended periods to eventually actually immigrating and becoming a permanent resident.

There is a difference for us; though since after having asked Jesus Christ to be the Savior and Lord of our lives, He has granted us full citizenship to His Kingdom. Not only that, He made us heir to His Father’s Kingdom with real benefits that apply now on this earth and forever in heaven!

Isn’t all this very exciting? There is much to being heir to the Father’s Kingdom that we only come to understand as we learn to walk in it each and every day of our lives under the care and direction of the Lord through His Holy Spirit in us. Generally, the process involves extensive training and learning in order for us to grow into the wisdom and maturity required to carry out the responsibilities that the Lord wants to entrust us with. Further more, because of the Father’s infiniteness, there is forever more to know, understand and explore, so that we will always be in awe of His Awesomeness!

Another way to think of this process is that we come into Jesus’ Kingdom as His child. He lives in us and teaches us through His Holy Spirit who dwells in us (John 16:13-15). The apostle Paul likens us to an adopted child in that we need to go through training in order to begin to adapt to a very different way of thinking and culture (see the following excerpts from the book of Galatians).

3:26 For you are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

4:1 Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all,

2 But is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father.

3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.

4 But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,

5 To redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying out, “Abba, Father!”

7 Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Isn’t this great stuff? Doesn’t all this just make you hunger for more? We pray that we have succeeded in encouraging you to search the scriptures for more; as this is truly only scratching the very top surface of the vast treasures of God’s Kingdom!

Here are some resources to help with your own rootings:

www.DreamsAndMysteries.com by John Paul Jackson. Jackson is a mature Christian leader with a unique prophetic anointing to teach Biblical wisdom, understanding and insights. This website is well worth your time and is even free!

www.StreamsMinistries.com This is another great web site by John Paul Jackson! For a small subscription fee you can access even more material that will greatly help increase your understanding of God’s kingdom!

Jackson is an accomplished Biblical dream interpreter like Joseph (Genesis 40 and 41) and Daniel (Daniel 2) in the old testament. Though Jackson has had this ability from his youth and credits God as his source, he encourages us that God speaks to each of us through our dreams (see Job 33 verses below).

33:14 For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it.

15 In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds,

16 Then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction.

17 In order to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man,

18 He keeps back his soul from the Pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.

The dream interpretation courses Jackson offers are well worth the price. You will learn that God often communicates with us through the use of Biblical symbols. We have found that increasing our learning in this area has opened the door to hearing from God as He is able to provide day-by-day wisdom, guidance and direction in many areas of our lives.

Below is our prayer for you!

III John 2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.

Greetings,

If you have received Jesus as your Lord and Saviour and have become a follower of Jesus, you are already on your way to abundant living (see previous article, Becoming part of God’s family, for more information).

What is so great to know is that Father God wants all His children to prosper. This is the underlying tone of the Bible from start to finish. One of the reasons that Father God has given us His word in the Bible, is to connect with us and to show us how being in relationship with Him – by knowing and loving Him each and every day of our lives – we can draw on the vast and abundant resources of His kingdom to live happy and fulfilled lives.

Psalm 1 is a passage that shows how we can prosper and find true success in our lives here and now on this earth. It’s shown below, in case some one does not have his/her Bible handy.

“Blessed is the man/woman who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgement, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

From the above scripture passage, it is clear that in order for God to be able to prosper us in whatever we do, we need to meditate on God’s word day and night. In the process of meditating on the contents of God’s love letter to us, He reveals Himself to us so that we are able to touch His heart as He touches our hearts.

Psalm 1 is a great passage to commit to memory in order to start conforming to God’s word (Romans 12:1-2). It’s a great passage to meditate on in the first moments of waking up! What a great way to start the day knowing that God wants to prosper you!

Along the same lines, God instructs us in Joshua 1:8-9, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”

In the New Testament, we read in 3 John 2, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.” God reveals here that His prosperity includes our health (We hope to expound on this further in a future article)!

We are happy to pass these truths along to you because, with His help, we have come to know God’s heart for us in our every day lives. We pray that God will supply wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to you as you apply these truths to your lives. God wants you to know that He loves you and has great plans for you!

Please pray for us as we pass on to you what we know of Father God’s love for us. We give God the glory and praise for all He has done, all He is doing, and all that He is going to do!

May God bless you all abundantly as you seek Him daily in His word!

Greetings to all of you!

Having commemorated Jesus death and resurrection, we are reminded that Jesus chose to go through all He did for us in order to restore us back into fellowship with God (John 3:16). However, even though God very much wants us restored back into His family, He still gives us the option whether to choose or reject His offer.

To accept His gift of eternal life, we acknowledge that we are totally helpless to save ourselves because of our sinful condition (Romans 3:23); and hence, we are totally dependent on Jesus Christ to save us through His perfect and complete work of redemption completed on the cross of cavalry 2000 years ago.

In gratefulness for His abundant blessings, we ask Him to take the position of Lord of our lives and ask Him to help us be obedient to Him and make us more and more like Him in all aspects of our lives (Romans 10:9). If this sounds complicated and you can only manage a prayer that sounds like “Help!”, you can be sure that God will honor that.

If we choose to reject God’s offer, He never retracts His offer and He doesn’t ever give up on us! Jesus taught, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7). If you ask God to help you to find Him, He will honor your request.

However, please realize that in rejecting God’s offer, we are choosing to continue to live in dangerous territory. A good read that might help is Mark Cahill’s book, One Heartbeat Away: Your Journey into Eternity.

An excellent web site to checkout is Ray Comfort’s and Kirk Cameron’s www.WayOfTheMaster.com where you can get answers to some questions that you may have. And please, by all means, keep coming back here. With God’s help, we should have more resources for you to explore.

We pray for God’s abundant blessings to result in wisdom, knowledge, understanding, discernment, and fulfilment in your life through His truth as recorded in His love letters to us, the Bible. We read in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”

Thank you for visiting our site! Until next time, blessings to all of you!

We hope you are as excited as we are to commemorate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead!

This was the final seal of victory that God the Father planned from the beginning of the world. Based on this victory, the human race is now able to join Father God’s family (John 1:12), so that we can experience the richness of His friendship and all the benefits of His kingdom while we are on this earth (Matthew 6:10).

This is something that comes up over and over again as we read the Bible. Derek Prince, in his Atonement book teaches about the 9 exchanges made by Jesus Christ’s perfect work of redemption completed on the cross of Calvary (Ephesians 1:7-8; Galatians 3:13-14). These are so great to think about, we list them here:

1) Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. 2) He was wounded that we might be healed. 3) He was made sin with our sinfulness that we might be made righteous with His righteousness. 4) He died our death that we might share His life. 5) He was made a curse that we might receive the blessing. 6) He endured our poverty that we might share His abundance. 7) He bore our shame that we might share His glory. 8) He endured our rejection that we might enjoy His acceptance. 9) Our old man died in Jesus that the new man might live in us.

Prince summarizes the exchanges, “All the evil due, by justice, to come to us came on Jesus, so that all the good due to Jesus, earned by His sinless obedience, might be made available to us.” He continues, “You will never be able to find any reason you deserved His exchange. It is the outworking of God’s sovereign grace. It is the expression of His measureless love.”

Isn’t this exciting? Doesn’t it just make one want to read the Bible and find the nuggets of truth that God has for us in His love letter to us?

We hope you are as encouraged and lifted in learning more about God’s great love for us, as we are! Also, The 700 Club at www.cbn.com has been a great source of encouragement for us. Please check it out!

Finally, we are doing a lot of praying and planning for this web site. Please pray that the Lord will enable us to do a great job in spreading His love around the world with the goal of helping more people find the Father and belonging in His kingdom. We know that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!

To God be the glory! Blessings to you all!

Welcome!

We are excited that you are visiting our website! We hope to encourage you that God loves you and wants you to be part of His family. We are a husband and wife team that both have 3 to 4 decades of experience in living the Christian life. We have grown to appreciate God and His love for us over the years.

We have also come to understand that His love for us is really an expression of His love for the entire human race! So, we wish to pass on what we know works or doesn’t work because we know that’s what God would want us to do.

With that said, we would like our website to help increase our understanding of the God’s book written to and for us, the Bible, and applying Biblical truths to various areas of our lives that result in spiritual growth and benefits as God also desires this.

There are a lot of different Bible translations out there and you may find one that is easy to read, handy to carry with you, or other nice-to-have feature. Because we believe knowledge of God’s will as revealed through the Bible is so central to living a fulfilled life, it is critical that we know that the translation is faithful to the original Hebrew or Greek texts.

So, whatever translation you are using, we recommend having a King James version with which you can reference when you have a question about a passage of scripture. Many King James version Bibles come with a concordance section in the back that lets you locate a passage if you remember a word from a passage you partially recall.

Some Bibles have explanations in the margins; for example, the Dake’s Bible is very good in this aspect. Some Bibles like John Maxwell’s “The Maxwell Leadership Bible” is the New King James Version text accompanied by excellent insights and teachings by John Maxwell, a godly leader of leaders. In the conclusion of his book, “The 21 Most Powerful Minutes in a Leader’s Day”, Maxwell writes, “… the Bible is the greatest leadership book ever written.”

One resource we have enjoyed immensely is Sid Roth’s, “It’s Supernatural!”. Roth’s website, www.sidroth.org, features both television and radio interviews which he conducts each week. The interviews are testimonials of personal encounters with God in some aspect; such as, healing, deliverance, or provision.

We have found most of the interviews uplifting and encouraging. Also, each interview typically is accompanied by some resources; such as, a book or set of CDs or DVDs that can be ordered.

Once again, we hope you enjoy our website! Please come back again!