To Encourage You

James 1:17 “ Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

Do you know God?  What do people say about Him? What do you think about Him?  Whatever you think, why do you think that about Him? Where did you hear it and how did you arrive at that opinion?  It seems there is always something new in this world concerning this issue.  Someone is always coming up with a new notion, or a new secret understanding that the poor people who came before them just didn’t understand.  

Joseph Smith is an example of this. The founder of the Mormons was perplexed by what he had heard and learned about God, and then he had a new revelation that he then propagated as the truth.  Things no one had ever heard before, from an angel that no one had ever heard or seen before, about a civilization that lived in the Americas for which there was no actual physical evidence (and there still isn’t!), were all written about by him and subsequently believed by millions.  Seems that people are always clamoring for the next new thing, be it clothing fashions, hair styles, or religious beliefs and concepts about God.  So how do we know if these new concepts about God, new views on the commands of the Scriptures, or new ideas on morality are legitimate and to be believed?  

One of the most fundamental teachings of the Bible concerning God and his Son Jesus Christ, is that of immutability.  This means that God never changes.  He is the same today as He has been from all eternity. The one that Adam walked with in the Garden, that Abraham believed by faith, that Moses spoke with on Sinai, and that Paul met on the road to Damascus is the same God Who lives and works in the world today.  If a teaching today about God, His Law, His Son, His Spirit, or anything else about Him is fundamentally different from that found in the Scriptures, it is a violation and at odds with God’s immutable character.  In other words, while “new” teachings may be sincerely believed by those who teach them, if they are indeed new in what they tell us about the God spoken about in the Bible, they are indeed not about the true God but are something else infinitely less than Him.  

May God help us to avoid the new twists, new ideas, and new concepts about Him that are nothing more than lies and deceptions about His true character that will lead us anywhere but someplace good.