Experience: (Jesus is LORD, Messiah)
Husband of a beautiful wife (41-years and counting); Father of three-beautiful children and a handsome grandson
Professional Experience:
---United States Marine Corps 1/1 - 0311 - NCO
---Retired 31-year veteran of the Houston Police Department (Uniformed Patrol/Motorcycle Officer/Commercial Helicopter Police Patrol Pilot
---Education: Master's Degree/University of Houston at Clear Lake
View all posts by RickeyD →
When you are saved by faith in Jesus as your Messiah, the Holy Spirit takes up residence within you (Ephesians 1:13-14) and there is a small, still, voice that resonates as you mature in your faith that verifies in your inner man that you are a child of the Living God. YOU KNOW THAT YOU KNOW…WORDS CAN’T ADEQUATELY EXPRESS THIS ASSURANCE BUT THERE IS JOY AND PEACE IN JESUS.
Your outlook on life changes, you understand the futility of this World while the JOY and peace of Jesus encapsulates your inner being. You desire to honor the Father and do His will for your life as selfishness and temporary irrelevant pursuits, the desire for same, disappear. You are content with and thankful for what the Lord has provided you. You are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) with wisdom, discernment, that was not present before you trusted in Jesus as your Messiah. You intuitively KNOW that your Creator, Jesus our Messiah, and the Holy Spirit within you, “have your back.” You’re good, unshaken, irrespective of what life might throw at you. You have a “friend that sticks closer than a brother” in the Holy Spirit.
Finally, you have a passion, a love for the Scriptures and the knowledge and wisdom they impart.
No one is justified by commandment keeping, if that were possible, Jesus died in vain (Galatians 2:21).
Where you fail in your theological understanding is a lack of knowledge or awareness concerning the transitional reality of the New Testament from Law to Grace. Torah plays a very diminutive role in the New Covenant; Torah simply points its adherents to their need for a divine Intercessor as Torah only condemns void grace.
If you trust in Torah, Law, your adherence to same in order to establish New Covenant relationship with the Father, you will perish in Hell in self-righteousness as NO ONE is justified by Law Keeping (Galatians 2:16). Faith in Jesus as your Messiah is the only Path to righteousness that the Father honors concerning eternal relationship with Him (Acts 4:12).
Does absolutely NOTHING to protect your brain, face, hearing. The last motorcycle wreck I assisted in investigating was a Harley rider who used too much front brake to stop for traffic, the front wheel locked and slid out from under him…face first he hit the rough concrete…I held him in my arms so that he could breathe as we waited for the ambulance to arrive…his face was crushed…his airway partially closed due to facial damage…one big, swollen, eye stared up at me as I was the one who enforced motorcycle NOISE violations in that area…had he been wearing a full face DOT approved helmet…he probably would have walked away or maybe suffered some neck and spinal trauma with hand injuries…but this guy was done for life…at a minimum, if he survived, he required complete facial reconstruction.
These half-shells look cool but they do NOTHING…I was forced to wear one in motorcycle patrol as it was uniform protocol but they do NOTHING to protect you….don’t be fooled…you might look “cool” but you’re brain and cognitive functioning is more important than looking “cool.”
You are teaching false doctrine inspired by religious cults. You are made “alive” in Jesus through New Covenant promise of the indwelling Holy Spirit who takes up residence within those who trust in Jesus as their Messiah (Ephesians 1:13-14). Water does NOTHING but get you wet. Water baptism is a work, an act, of obedience to the Great Commission (Matthew 28) that follows salvation by grace (unmerited favor) through faith-belief-trust in Jesus as the One who died for you to provide you blood atonement for your sin (Romans 4:4-5).
Warning: if you enter baptismal waters with the mindset that your action or effort is supplementing the sufficiency of Jesus to atone for your sin, you are not redeemed, you remain in your sin, you are on the broad road to the second death. Water is NOT causative, it can’t atone for sin nor can your human efforts, only the sinless blood of Jesus is accepted by the Father for the remission of sin not your works, not your water.
18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, 19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
Those who ride LOUDER than OEM factory installed in violation of CFR 40 Part 205 and applicable state muffler laws duplicating the CFR mandates via the Supremacy Clause; these, dishonor Jesus, the Gospel, the edict to obey the laws of the land. When a biker rides LOUD, they destroy daily quality of life for millions; recklessly endanger the health and welfare of the most vulnerable; illegally enter into places of work, worship, education, recreation. It is so very hypocritical to see a LOUD biker with my Lord’s cross as His colors….hypocrites all.
Concerning those redeemed by faith in Jesus as their Messiah,
Reading Scripture with intent is like programming a computer’s hard drive…what you’re inputting into your mind and heart can be accessed by the indwelling Holy Spirit for use at the proper time, maybe many years down the road…but the information is stored and He is faithful to draw upon it when you need it. Reading the Scriptures, even if you don’t understand same at that time…is invaluable. Neglecting the Scriptures is like an operating system void information, it’s useless.
Sin is defined by the spiritual law (Romans 2:14-15) that has been extant within human kind subsequent Day-6 and the spiritual law is the very same law that judged Satan of covetousness and under girded his extrication from the Kingdom. The spiritual law judged both the Adamic and Noahic generations of defilement and judgement in water LONG before Sinai and Moses.
Torah’s laws, Moses’ laws, are but a mere fraction of the comprehensive spiritual law that will be used to judge the unredeemed and that same law will be extant in the New Jerusalem as free will remains extant there as well; this, by necessity.
Torah will find relevance in the Millennial Kingdom as Jesus will receive the Kingdom denied Him at His First-Advent and a partial return to Law will manifest there as the Age of Grace will have concluded subsequent the “fullness of the Gentiles” having entered the Kingdom (Romans 11:25).
During this current “Age of Grace”…the New Covenant, as established in the blood of Messiah (Matthew 26:27-29), Torah is not in effect (Romans 6:14) but the redeemed in Jesus are under grace and their obedience is through the indwelling Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14; Romans 7:6) whereby the Spirit produces divine fruit (Galatians 5:16-23) through the redeemed and this fruit fulfills all law; both codified and spiritual (Galatians 5:23) and this fruit actually pleases the Father and proves one to be a disciple of Jesus (John 15:8).
Topic of discussion: It is a distortion of the gospel to emphasize God’s grace heavily while ignoring the need for repentance.
True, actuated, “repentance” is not possible without grace and a relationship with the Father through faith in Jesus as Messiah, why? For one to truly repent and produce divine fruit (Galatians 5:16-23) that validates true repentance, one must possess the indwelling Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14) and allow His anointing to work in their life through obedience via daily Christian sanctification; therefore, one can and should profess a “desire” to repent in conjunction with their statement of faith in Jesus as Messiah, but true, actuated, faith validating, repentance will ONLY manifest subsequent salvation; this, through the production of divine fruit (Galatians 5:16-23) and this fruit fulfills all law (Galatians 5:23); this fruit actually pleases the Father and proves one to be a disciple of Jesus (John 15:8).
Our entire Creation is the resultant of a war initiated by a rebellious cherub in the Kingdom before Time began (Revelation 12; Ezekiel 28:11-15). This temporary Earth is a temporary repository for that Kingdom War as Elohim restores peace and order to the Heavenly Kingdom within the Spiritual Realm.
This is why the first main character introduced subsequent the creation of human kind is Satan (Genesis 3) and this is why a formal declaration of war between Satan and Messiah is proclaimed in Genesis 3:15 and this is why the battle strategy by which Messiah would defeat the works of Satan (death, Hell, the grave) is proclaimed in Genesis 3:21 via the shedding of innocent blood to provide human kind a gifted, imputed, robe of righteousness/covering for sin known as the Gospel of Jesus.
Messiah Jesus fulfilled these prophecies 4000-years later at Golgotha through the shedding of His innocent blood; in fact, the primary reason Messiah entered Time was “to destroy the works of Satan” (1 John 3:8b) via a Gospel that was ordained “before Time began” (2 Timothy 1:8-9).
You were born into this WAR for a purpose and you possess the free will to chose servitude to Jesus as His warrior for good or you can choose Satan as his warrior for evil…not choosing sides is siding with Satan. I sense your anger and hostility toward Christianity…please don’t the fool of Satan and die in Hell in rebellion to our Creator’s will for your life (John 6:29).
You said: “Faith without deeds is dead.” This is true, saving faith will naturally produce good fruit (Matthew 7; Galatians 5:16-23; John 15:8).
James teaches that those who are saved by legitimate faith, having received the indwelling Holy Spirit by “believing” in Jesus as Messiah (Ephesians 1:13-14), they will produce divine fruit (Galatians 5:16-23; Romans 7; John 15:8) that validates their faith; note, this is concerning those who have been saved by faith, alone, in Jesus, alone (Romans 4:4-5); that is, having received the indwelling Holy Spirit as Guarantor and Seal of New Covenant promise (Ephesians 1:13-14); therefore, it is a theological imperative that you understand these deeds/works/obedience don’t precede salvation, these works are NOT “causative,” but they are reactionary; in other words, divine fruit that pleases the Father is only produced SUBSEQUENT salvation by faith in Jesus, alone, and that divine fruit is only possible via the anointing of the indwelling Holy Spirit who is ONLY given as a result of legitimate, saving, faith in Jesus (Ephesians 1:13-14; Galatians 5:16). James does NOT teach a works salvation (James 2:14-26); in fact, James teaches the futility of works as salvation in James 2:10..
Water does NOT wash away sin, sins are washed away only by grace (unmerited favor you cannot earn) through faith, belief, in Jesus as your Messiah as only the sinless “blood” of Jesus atones for sin and fulfills the atonement mandates of Leviticus 17:11 (1 Peter 1:18-19) not water or water baptism. Water baptism is an “act” or “work” of obedience that “follows” salvation by grace through faith as commanded in the Great Commission (Matthew 28).
You belong to a works cult and you have been deceived into believing that your act of entering water has washed away your sin, this is heresy as only the blood of Jesus washes away sin (Matthew 26:27-29). You have denied the sole-sufficiency of Jesus to atone for your sin apart from your works, your input, your own self-righteousness; therefore, you remain in your sin, you are on the “broad road” to the second death in Hell. Jesus warned you about this in Genesis 3:21 (Adam’s attempt to cover his shame with fig leaves) and in Matthew 7:21-23.
Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. 5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness,Innocent substitute. Replaced fig leave of human righteousness.