That is the main thing.

What does Kermit the frog and John the Baptist have in common, same middle name,

What does false prophets and fake news have in common? both are liars, they mislead with lies, OT false prophets did the same thing, Preachers and cults today do the same thing.

Funny, our government just created a ministry of truth department, just after Elon Musk bought Twitter. Then, this pass week, the white said that there was no covid vaccine before Biden became president. But, he was vaccinated twice before he went into office. Funny, how they are going to monitor the truth for us, while they are lying to us, go figure. I guess if you are in charge you can do that. That is what false prophets do.

I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot imagine what they do discuss; but it is quite evident that they have ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing.

The thing is a part of a certain modern tendency to avoid things because they lead to warmth; whereas, obviously, we ought, even in a social sense, to seek those things specially. The warmth of the discussion is as much a part of hospitality as the warmth of the fire. G. K. Chesterton:

SALVATION! The Main Thing

At various times in its history, the church’s leaders have met together to settle doctrinal issues. For example, historians recognize seven ecumenical councils in the first several centuries of the church’s existence. Of those seven, perhaps the two most significant were the Councils of Nicea (325), and Chalcedon (451). At those councils, erroneous teaching about the person and nature of our Lord was condemned, and the biblical position carefully defined. In Matthew 7:16 Jesus says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” It’s not what they say but what you see in their lives that matters. A false teacher cannot produce good fruit because evil cannot produce good.

Acts 15:1–15 And certain men came down from Judaea and taught the brethren, saying, Except ye be circumcised after the custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved. 2And when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and questioning with them, the brethren appointed that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.

4And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church and the apostles and the elders, and they rehearsed all things that God had done with them. 5But there rose up
certain of the sect of the Pharisees who believed, saying, It is needful to circumcise them, and to charge them to keep the law of Moses.
6And the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider of this matter. 7And when there had been much questioning, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Brethren, ye know that a good while ago God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel, and believe. 8And God, who knoweth the heart, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as he did unto us; 9and he made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. 10Now therefore why make ye trial of God, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? 11But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in like manner as they.
12And all the multitude kept silence; and they hearkened unto Barnabas and Paul rehearsing what signs and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles through them. 13And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Brethren, hearken unto me: 14Symeon hath rehearsed how first God visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. 15And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
19Wherefore my judgment is, that we trouble not them that from among the Gentiles turn to God 20but that we write unto them, that they abstain from the pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from what is strangled, and from blood.
22Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas; namely, Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren: 23and they wrote thus by them, The apostles and the elders, brethren, unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greeting:

Mormons have always said that they believe just like Protestants, but they don’t. They are false prophets.

In June 1998, on the occasion of the meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Salt Lake City, the Mormon President, Gordon B. Hinckley, was quoted in the LDS Church News as saying that Latterday Saints “do not believe in the traditional Christ. No I don’t. The traditional Christ of whom they speak is not the Christ of whom I speak. Dr. Patterson stated the following:

I appreciate your acknowledgement of a point most evangelical theologians have been stating for some time and that is: that traditional Christians (including Baptists) and Mormons do not believe in the same Jesus.

President Hinckley, the issue of who Jesus is, as well as that of the nature of His work, is absolutely critical. If one does not have their faith in the genuine, biblical Christ then we must acknowledge that they are not Christian.

At various times in its history, the church’s leaders have met together to settle doctrinal issues. For example, historians recognize seven ecumenical councils in the first several centuries of the church’s existence. Of those seven, perhaps the two most significant were the Councils of Nicea (325), and Chalcedon (451). At those councils, erroneous teaching about the person and nature of our Lord was condemned, and the biblical position carefully defined.

In Matthew 7:16 Jesus says, “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” It’s not what they say but what you see in their lives that matters. A false teacher cannot produce good fruit because evil cannot produce good.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life. Mere Christianity,

For mere improvement is no redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. Christ’s work of making New Men [is like] . . . turning a horse into a winged creature. . . . It is not mere improvement but Transformation.

It is a change that goes off in a totally different direction—a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago.

The Bible really seems to clinch the matter when it puts the two things [faith and works] together into one amazing sentence. The first half is, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”—which looks as if everything depended on us and our good actions: but the second half goes on, “For it is God who worketh in you”—which looks as if God did everything and we nothing. I am afraid that is the sort of thing we come up against in Christianity. I am puzzled, but I am not surprised. You see, we are now trying to understand, and to separate in water-tight compartments, what exactly God does and what man does when God and man are working together.

The wholesale entrance of Gentiles into the church was very disturbing and threatening to some of the Jewish believers.

Many believed that Gentiles who wanted to become Christians had to first become Jewish proselytes. They saw Christianity as the culmination of Judaism.

The Jerusalem church has already established a beachhead in the Gentile world in the church in Antioch of Syria, and from there, Paul and Barnabas went out to evangelize Cyprus and the area of Galatia in Asia Minor. They have finished their journey returned back to Antioch, and the closing of verse 28 indicates.

That they had taught, that they had organized the church with the appointing of elders, that they had commended the church to the Lord, and then they had returned to Antioch to carry on their ministry as they had begun it there.

Now the fact that Gentiles had been included in the church becomes the fuel for the fire that blazes in chapter 15. It was always a very difficult thing for Jews to allow the inclusion of Gentiles into the church. For the most part, Jews in the early years of the church saw Christianity, and this is important to note, they saw Christianity only as a sect of Judaism.

Christianity had no distinctness from Judaism.

And it’s easy to see how they felt like that because in the progress of Judaism, Christianity is only a logical fulfillment. All of the promises to Israel are fulfilled in the coming of Messiah. And so they just, came to the place where they were confident that Judaism simply resolved itself in Christianity.

The Jews saw that you could not honestly have Christianity in its purity, unless you were plugged into Judaism. That would be like jumping in a process at the end, and not really going through the process.

They saw Christianity only as the logical end to Judaism, and for the most part they saw the only way into Christianity as jumping into the Judaism process, and going through Judaism to Christianity. And so the very concept that a pagan could simply jump right into the church, and be equal to a Jew was foreign for most of them, and they could not handle it.
As a result of the inability to see Christianity independent of Judaism a conflict ensued, the conflict then is the theme of Acts 15.

They began to resent the fact that they Gentiel’s were entering into the church on an equal basis, and without having to subscribe to Jewish law. That they could get away with everything they’d been doing, worshiping idols and all of the moral things that were anti-God and still received … be received by God on an equal basis, it didn’t seem fair.

They could see the threat of a whole Gentile church just drowning out Jewish significance.

They wanted the Gentiles to become Jews first. You know it was as if the door of salvation was opened by grace, but the screen door was legalism, or Judaism.

Some of you have been through all of that. Well that’s exactly what they were trying to impose upon these Gentiles. That the door to Judaism was the door to get you to Christianity. get to the door was Judaism, that Judaism was the four

The issue was, how do you get saved? And it is still the main issue.

That is the thing the church has always dealt with, somebody taking basic grace and attaching something else to it.

There was a disagreement

Acts 15:1 “Certain men who came down from Judaea taught the brethren,” that sounds all right, but you know there had been in the church, for a long time and always will be, false teachers.

Second Peter 2:1, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who secretly shall bring in (damnable or) destructive heresies,”

Peter says there have always been, there always will be false teachers. They will be the angels of light, emissaries from Satan to infiltrate the church with false doctrine, damnable heresies.

Heresies that damn people, heresies that destroy. And one of those heresies is the heresy of salvation by grace, through faith plus works.

That is was is dealt with here. So some false teachers arrive, and it is possible that they may well have been Christians, which is amazing.

“Certain men who came down from Judaea taught the brethren, and said, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you can’t be saved.”

These men self-appointed guardians of legalism, now is just Ceremony.

Galatians was written, before the Jerusalem council, between the close of the first journey and the Jerusalem council, somewhere between chapter 14 and 15 Galatians was written. And it was written back to those churches that they had visited, to straighten out this very heresy.

Galatians 5:1 “Don’t be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” We’ve been set free, remain free. He was liberated.

Galatians 2:6“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law.” He says to them just as clearly as possible that a man is not justified by the works of the law, “But by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of

In 3:11, “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident because,” even in Habakkuk, in the Old Testament it says, “The just shall live by faith.

Galatians 5:6, this is a clear statement, “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but “Faith.”
If righteousness is ours through law, then we don’t need grace.

Peter had been guilty of this nonsense once. He was playing, politics, he was afraid that some of the real tight narrow circumcision guys would get upset with Peter for eating with Gentiles, so as soon as the Jewish people arrived in town, he separated himself.

He confused the issue, because, “The other Jews dissembled in the like manner with him, insomuch that Barnabas was carried away with that kind of hypocrisy.” But Paul called him out on it and got him straight.

Pharisees were literalists. for a Pharisee to be a Christian, it was impossible for a Sadducee to be a Christian.

They were the liberals, they didn’t believe in resurrection or angels. Their command was to keep the law of Moses.” In other words, they couldn’t just be saved by faith,. They were still unable to disconnect themselves from Judaism, so in 70 A.D. the Lord just let Titus come in and flatten Jerusalem. That broke off of lot of legalism, because there was no longer a temple that they could tie of this ritual to.

The discussion

15:2 “And the apostles and elders came together to consider of this matter.”

Peter is identified all along with Judaism, at its very heart and he is the guy who stands up and says, ten years ago God settled this issue. Because Cornelius didn’t have to do anything it was
verse 7, “And when there had been much disputing,” and the word doesn’t really mean fighting, it really means discussing, back and forth, “

Peter rose up,” now here you have the first of three speeches, given at the council. Peter, Paul and Barnabas and James.
First point, Salvation by grace is proven by past revelation, past revelation.

Second proof, and this is powerful, the second proof is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Peter covers that, “And God who knoweth the hearts.” man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” Unsaved people don’t have the Spirit, turn it around, anybody who has the Spirit is His, anybody who’s His has The Spirit. And so believers receive the Holy Spirit,

verse 9, “Purifying their hearts by faith.” Here again Peter says, look, if it’s not enough that you’ve seen past revelation, God didn’t require circumcision or legalism, if it’s not enough that they got the gift of the Holy Spirit, how about this for truth.

They were cleansed from sin.

Peter says, “Now therefore, why put God to the test, or put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?” Are you goin’ unload law on them which couldn’t help us?

And they were trying to put a burden back on the Gentiles that they couldn’t even bear themselves.

Verse 12, well by this time, “All the multitude kept silence,” tough to argue with that speech,

They Decided the Salvation Issue

“Therefore it is my judgment that we do not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.

The evidence for salvation by grace presented during the speeches was conclusive.

The Council’s decision needed to be communicated to the church at Antioch, the center of Gentile Christianity. That the apostles and the elders, with the whole church agreed was yet another manifestation of the unity that marked the early church (cf. Acts 6:5).

It was necessary to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, or else the Judaizers would surely have accused the two missionaries of giving a biased account of the proceedings.

Another indication of how seriously the church leaders viewed the situation is that they sent a letter along with the delegation. They said we will put it in writing as well.

The Results

The apostolic church thus survived the greatest challenge it had faced and established the doctrine of salvation by grace. Satan’s attempt to inject heretical teaching was stopped.

Satan’s attempt to split the church along racial and cultural lines was also stopped.

The church is still in that fight today concerning how one is saved. There are false prophets everywhere that confuse and mislead people concerning their eternal destiny. We must continue to tell the truth as Paul stated in Ephesians. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).