Contender: A Defense Against False Prophets and Doctrine

By CR Hamilton

By reading Contender, you will learn the way of salvation, the power of love and truth, how to prepare your soul for the second coming of Christ, in addition to growing strong as a disciple of Christ, a prayer warrior, and a spiritual leader.

Contender also teaches you to recognize false prophets and their teachings, how to defeat and overcome the powers of the evil, persecution and doubt. Grow your faith as strong as anything this world could ever offer and live free for God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312153912

Book preview

Contender: A Defense Against False Prophets and Doctrine

CONTENDER

CONTENDER

A Defense Against False Prophets

and Doctrine

By C.R. Hamilton

Copyright © 2001 by C.R. Hamilton

Revised Edition © 2014 by C.R. Hamilton

ISBN #: Softcover 0-7388-6094-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

City Ministry @ [e-mail]

www.cityministry.org/contender

CONTENTS

EpigraphX

INTRODUCTION1

PART I  RECOGNIZE7

1- Christianity for Sale9

Church Capital9

Debt-Free Living in the Church12

Preachers and Profits19

2- All the Power of Grace22

On One Accord22

The Power of Giving26

The Mingling of Law and Grace30

The Tradition of Men32

3-Tithing Fatigue42

The Purpose of Tithes42

The Levitical Priesthood44

The Malachi Theory49

What Jesus says about Tithing55

4-Touching Home61

Fathers, Fatherless, and Widows61

Today's Virtuous Woman66

PART II ESCAPE73

5-The Fall from Grace74

Spiritual Fornication74

The New Testament Backslider79

False Salvation82

Wheat and Tares87

Spirit without Truth88

6-Principles of the Doctrine93

Choose to Live93

How to Read the Bible94

Salvation Revealed100

Repentance104

Water Baptism105

How to Receive the Holy Ghost108

7-Perfecting Self112

Perfection112

Suffering for Christ119

Sanctification is a Must123

8-Heights of Holiness128

Leaving All128

Righteousness132

Judgment135

Mercy137

To all those who love Jesus

EPIGRAPH

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the begin­ning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art nei­ther cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich and increase with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches (Revelation 3:14—22).

INTRODUCTION

Witnessing the abuse of a child is heart wrenching and infuriating and anyone who is a witness to child abuse would perhaps agree that the abuser themselves deserve the same or similar fate. God feels the same way about the people He considers as His chil­dren. Anyone who witnesses the abuse of one of God’s children should feel the same heart wrenching, infuriating way, and judge the abuser as a criminal who should suffer for the crime with the proper punishment. Abusers are usually parents, spouses, or a random offender on the streets, and most of the time these people are of significant authority and or strength and they use these traits to manipulate or threaten their victims. In the world of Christianity, the children of God are abused every day, not physically, but mentally and spiri­tually. In other words, preachers are mistreating God’s children, but those who witness the abuse will not stand up to these abusers because they fear the preacher’s supposed authority or spiritual strength. People who believe in God and who sincerely heed the instructions of His Word do not deserve abuse in either form, mental or spiritual. However, the brave are people who draw the courage to stand up to the abuser, no matter what the consequences so long as the abuse stops. Contender, which acts as a defense against false prophets and doctrine—the actual abusers disguised as God's pastors—comes with the ven­geance of God to protect and deliver His children.

Many would contest by saying vengeance is God’s and that He will repay, and He does, and will. However, if people expect a natural disaster such as lightening strikes or pestilence as the method of vengeance then many people do not understand God. In the Old Testament days when it was time for the vengeance of God, He would occasionally perform a natural disaster or a miracle before His enemy to prove his existence and strength, but in other instances, He would send a chosen prophet. With the Words of God, the prophet would bewail the enemy or pronounce extreme forthcoming punishment until that enemy took heed and dropped to repentance. The Word of God serves as a natural form of correction, not only for enemies, but also for the instruction of His children. The prophets God entrusted to bewail disobedient souls with His Word used the Word wisely with mercy and not heartlessly. The prophets firmly admonished the souls of the wrongs they committed and cautioned them continually to repent. Some would repent and some would not. The Word can also serve as a weapon in the hand (or mouth) of a foolish messenger, and when spoken incorrectly, the hearer dangerously misinterprets the Word. Nevertheless, in a quest for power and recognition, the foolish messenger takes on the nature of an abuser and anyone who stands in his or her way is a target for spiritual murder.

Today, the Holy Spirit of God speaks the Word softly to those who re­ceive the Spirit. It gently instructs, rebukes, and corrects God’s children to transform them into servants of God’s son, Jesus Christ. The leaders of Christianity confuse the purpose of the Word of God and of the Holy Spirit, and suppose that the children of God are their own children. Instead of raising Christians for Christ sake, church leaders are raising off-springs of themselves. Compared to what the Bible conveys as proper Christianity, and what the church today as a whole presents as Christianity, today’s display is clearly contrary to the purpose of God in a multitude of ways.

Christianity means to be Christ-like and after the coming of Jesus Christ the New Testament interpretation of the Bible was for that purpose, to transform believers of Jesus Christ into obedient servants and followers. Though successful servitude to Christ comes down to individual sincerity, the Bible refers to the whole of indi­vidual believers as one believer (the church) or as the body of Christ. If the church is as one and represents the person of Jesus Christ, then as one the church should obey and serve Him. The Bible— mostly the New Testament—is instruction on how to transform all believers of Christ into one person; however, surrender to the instructions seem too difficult for believers of Christ to do in these last days even to the point of ignoring the instructions. The church will be victorious in the end, but the evils of society and also religious apathy are capturing and overtaking the souls, and destroying the faith of many potential believers. Because of changes in worship habits, unaware­ness of the truth and misunderstood ethical duties toward hu­manity, sadly, the Christendom world has not transformed into the likeness of Christ but into the persona of society.

There are two kinds of Christians in the Christendom world, true Christians and false Christians. According to the Bible, true worshipers (Christians) worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), therefore, false worshipers apparently worship God in the flesh and in lies. Both attend church faithfully and both try and conduct them­selves as Christians are suppose to, and it gets difficult to distin­guish between the two. Being aware of the difference is vital for any sincere believer because they must know to which side they belong and which path to follow. The road to destruction is wider than the road to eternal life and the devil has organized an army of child abusers and spiritual pedophiles to lead uninformed, unprotected believers astray. These religious infiltra­tors of Satan distort the true mission of Christianity by designing another false Christianity, to teach their own false doctrines of instruction and to worship their own false, anti-Christ god. A thin line separates true believers from false believers, but after a careful severance of the two, we will know who is who by the end of the book.

Many wonder why this work is a work of such serious concern and why not simply preach and teach the kingdom of God and the salvation of Jesus Christ: yet, this is what it is for. Salvation is the basic idea of Christianity so the destiny of a believer’s soul is important to God. Nevertheless, while the devil lurks about, he uses fleshly means in a spiritual battle to destroy potential souls, by distracting people from believing and knowing the truth. This is a continuous war between the entities of good and evil, love and hate, and eternal life and eternal damnation and people have al­ways had basic knowledge of each; however, another set of warring entities that confuse believers has emerged, which is materialism and spiritualism. A preacher can never preach the promise of salva­tion without ever touching on the possibility of evil corrupting the mission of the church; and the most destructive evil in today's church is the prosperity movement, in many, many ways.

The Bible admonishes believers about the spirit of the love of money, the force behind the prosperity movement. The spirit creeps into the church from the world and into the sermons of church leaders then filters down into the behavior of believers and church members, who in turn misrepresent God’s purpose. Contender is the Old Testament prophet behind the admonishment to the church and would not have to persist, but the effect of the spirit of the love of money have touched the very essence and lives of many people, causing confusion about what God expects from them as Christians. Not many, (if any) in an attempt to make known the humility of the gospel, will confront the leaders who infect the church with apostate doctrines of the love of money and prosper­ity. However, with sound biblical doctrine and real life anecdotes, Contender will confront and expose the tactics of false prophets and reveal apostate doctrines, and any other misconceptions that taint the gospel and the reputation of Jesus Christ.

Part one reveals the tactics of false prophets to help people who are bound by apostate churches and religious movements to see the evils that hold them. Since the love of money is the root of all evil, then everything stemming from the root is evil. Regardless of how false prophets disguise the roots of covetousness and lust for material gain, whether as an excuse to maintain the church or for support of the members, money is always an underlying motive in many sermons. Whatever topic they choose to preach about, be it faith, family, education, or trusting God, many times the moral of the lesson is centered on money, whether giving it, receiving it, or sowing for it, money is at the root. To practice what false prophets preach, church members have to sacrifice some area of their personal finances to comply with the preacher’s definition of what is acceptable to God. People go to church seeking deliverance and refuge from the pressures of daily life only to find the church’s approach to the problems are no different from the world they seek to escape. Moreover, people seek relief from the stress of monthly bills and debt only to face the stringency of financial faithfulness to the church. This should not have to be. The gospel of Jesus Christ is free to all and He never once put a price on the promise of eternal life, but listening to preachers today, some would think there is a cover charge to get into heaven.

Part two focuses on the doctrines false prophets use to manipulate believers and then part two combats the doctrines with what the Word says. In a hurried attempt to fill mega-churches, (churches with membership over 5000 and up to 20,000) preachers water-down the correct ways of salvation and teach false and blasphemous theories that they have contrived. People also attend church seeking salvation but are deceived and misled down the wide road to hell and destruction. Instead of learning and practicing Christian righteousness, today’s Christians are brainwashed by leaders to believe that material gain is a direct blessing for obedience to God, with no emphasis on the true rewards for Christian righteousness. In other words, many church members walk through life believing they are saved and that the more they possess materially, the more God favors them, and they walk in the realm of arrogance instead of Christian humility. As stated earlier, the purpose of Christianity, in any aspect—whether righteousness, goodwill, faith, or truth—has taken a one hundred eighty-degree turn from what God requires. Shown through church priorities, covetousness in the church has increased and become blatantly obvious.

From the confines of Contender, people will understand that the biggest mistake the church is making whereby false prophets lead them astray is that they do not read the Bible and read it fervently. They accept what the preacher says as true and move on. Trusting in pretentious preachers and not reading the Bible catechizes the believer in the doctrine of the preacher and not the Bible: for, not all men who profess to be of God, are God sent, nor is what they teach absolute. Simply because a preacher has preached for many years or has the status of a theological title, and his church has seen substantial member growth in the past few years, does not mean that God appointed him to preach His word, nor that the preacher has done everything right. It only means the preacher has chanced upon a system that is successful in gaining followers. The church must learn to be aware of which preachers are counterfeit and which are true, and Contender will teach them how.

The church must worship God in both Spirit and in truth, (which is the Word) as the Bible says. Not in spirit and tradition alone, but in what is true in every area of life. When the church worships the right way, they will know the ways of false prophets more easily. The church’s duty now, in these last days, is to help deliver and save as many souls as possible from the grip of Satan’s army of false preachers and teachers in his diabolical scheme to deceive the innocent and own their souls. To do this, faithful believers, strong in the truth of the Word and who are willing to fight the battle, must identify and contend with false prophets. When a believer loves God, they love their brethren and all potential believers, and hate to see others, even enemies, deceived and bound for hell. Those who excuse the hype of false prophets are not altogether ignorant of the deception going forth, they are just too afraid to confront the false prophets and the backlash that comes with it, and also because they do have the tools and knowledge to take a stand.

Preachers insist the Bible is not for arguing or debate but the Bible says that a believer should earnestly contend for the faith. The apostles of the early church disputed issues and doctrines of the Word to clarify what Jesus taught while He was here on earth. The truth offends people when it contradicts what they have learned even if what they have learned is untrue. Some even refuse to obey plain biblical instruction and instead do what they feel is right or what everyone else is doing, and they do it ignorantly and without regard for the consequences. Nevertheless, this work is to clarify many misinterpreted and misquoted passages of the Scriptures using the concepts of the Scriptures, which are indisputable to anyone who believes.

The Bible says that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils (1 Tim. 4:1). To deny that these seducing spirits and doctrines of devils are affecting the church is careless and harmful to many souls, and Christianity’s most prominent church leaders assist in the process of this destruction by acting as a barrier to God’s purpose. Church leaders and the thousands of church members they lead, walk the exact opposite way of the way the Bible instructs them to walk. They ignore simple righteous and godly values and absorb the evils of the world then justify the evils (using the Bible) as substi­tutes for true righteousness. In an effort to become as the world in order to win the world, the church has conformed to the ways and mentalities of the world, thus falling short of the Christian mis­sion. Nevertheless, many remain faithful and true to the work of God, and the lies of the Devil will not go unchallenged, so for anyone to think this work is a work of cynicism they are wrong, it is a work of love because only by love, will anyone give and receive the truth.

PART I

RECOGNIZE

1—CHRISTIANITY FOR SALE

Church Capital

One day Jesus walked into the temple of God and noticed the exchange of goods for money in progress and people selling doves and other commodities from within the church. This obviously angered Him because He at once turned over the tables they used and the seats they sat in; And he said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves (Matt. 21:13). This message is not difficult to neither un­derstand nor interpret. The church is not for operating business ventures but for worshiping God only. Yet, this did not stop the moneychangers from profiting off the goods of the house of God. The things they sold were necessary for the operation of the sanc­tuary such as doves and other sacrificial goods and animals—for the offering of sins—and the leaders knew people needed these things for regular sacrifices. However, this is the equivalent of a car salesman selling the steering wheel and tires only after someone bought the car. Though it was lawful to sell sacrificial goods in the open market, the moneychangers sold them from within and out of the church, which was unethical and a huge mistake.

In today’s society, the only item a believer needs for church worship is a bible, but not according to today’s preachers. Many churches have bookstores that sell bibles and other Christian books, along with the pastor’s past sermons in audio and video format. Some churches sell prayer cloths and trinkets of jewelry, holy water, bible covers, bumper stickers, head coverings, and some clothing. How is this act of selling goods from within and out of the church today different from what the moneychangers were doing then and why should not a believer, as Jesus did, get upset at this display of religious capitalism? There is no difference and believers should. Yet, preachers will attempt to justify this act with philosophical preliminaries and bible loopholes, such as the actual sells are not taking place inside the sanctuary, but outside in the corridor. This is equal to determining what the definition of sales is.

Selling from within the church is an outright defiance of the message Jesus sent in St. Matthew 21:12, 13, which is that the church of God is sacred and for worshiping God only, not for capitalizing on His words, gifts, and concepts. False prophets have no fear or consideration for God and His Word because they con­tinue to sell from within the church even today. They are only concerned for themselves and with succeeding in convincing be­lievers that selling and buying in the church is ok, biblically justi­fiable, and condoned by God. Believers today will not stand up against such evil and do what Jesus did by turning over the tables and throwing the moneychangers out of the church. If a believer did, the church administration would be instructed to call security or the local police. Afterward, the believer would be regarded as disruptive and 'full of the Devil.' Yet, what Jesus did was not devilish; it was out of a love and respect for His father’s house.

Today, in the lobbies of many of America’s largest churches are display booths of the pastor’s sermons in audio and video format; his recent books and his wife’s books, and registration forms for the costly up-coming conference. There are enrollment forms for the church bible college, day care, aerobics class, gym membership, and many other so-called church ministries supposedly ordained of God, and neither of these amenities are not without price. A full-fledged bookstore within the church sells collections of audio and videotape series of other renowned preachers, costing from five to $300 and for the religious bureaucrats and likely voters there is a voter registration booth. These type enterprises are growing faster in America’s churches and considered acceptable, but where is the money going?

According to false prophets, the money is to continue the work of God. The truth is they need money to pay church administration, advertising cost, marketing cost, and building mortgages. So, not only have preachers managed ways of earning from and capitalizing off the concepts and goods of God, but they must now act as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), expert entrepreneurs, and tax collectors (or tithe collectors) for the church body. Therefore, enforcing the deed of tithing has become a biblical form of a RIRS (Religious Internal Revenue Service). To maintain this new religious form of capitalism, preachers must teach believers how to receive and manage the money they supposedly receive as blessings from God. As a result, the actual purpose of the gospel goes out the windows of the church and the prosperity doctrine begins to seep in. Soon, spiritually deprived, yet prosperous Christians, who have an abundance of material possessions, make up the church congregation. They know nothing about faith, love, or righteousness, but they are wise in receiving material blessings from God: Now, people only come to church for prosperity. Thus, the mentality Jesus spoke of in St. John 6:26 is fulfilled, which says . . . Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

The church today reaps the fruit of the American economy, as many other businesses and people are doing. America is a nation based on the economic theory of capitalism, which springs from production, growth, value, and distribution of goods and or services run by private owned businesses. Large businesses