Peter Was Never the Rock upon Which the Church of the Bible Was Built

8/26/2017 , 46 Comments


The teaching that Peter was the rock upon which the church was built surely came from either an ignorant mind or a polluted one.


MATTHEW 16:18 
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

I hate to base my explanation on grammar because it is not what I believe as the bastion of truth. But simple grammatical knowledge might help us see the way to logical truth.

If Peter was the rock, then it should have been written ...

1. “Thou art Peter, and upon you I will build my church”; or 
2. “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock, which is you, I will build my church”; or 
3. “I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, a rock, and upon you I will build my church”

Aware of the way the Lord Jesus Christ constructed sentences throughout all His sessions of teaching, we will not, in our wildest dreams, think that the Lord Jesus has a propensity of making ungrammatical and nonsensical statements.

Take for example the Sermon on the Mount:

MATTHEW 5:1-12 
1 And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: 
2 And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, 
3 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
4 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 
5 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 
6 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. 
7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 
8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 
9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. 
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

The foregoing sermon can be considered scholarly constructed with utmost literary style and beauty. 

No learned scholar can accuse the Lord Jesus Christ of speaking nonsensically nor ungrammatically at any instance in the Holy Scriptures!

Biblically speaking, Peter cannot be “the rock upon which the church was built” simply because he was part of the church, built upon the foundation stone who is Christ.

EPHESIANS 2:20-22 
20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; 
21 In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord: 
22 In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.

The apostles (one of whom was Peter) were built upon the foundation: Jesus Christ himself. There is no other foundation than Christ!

I CORINTHIANS 3:11 
For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

An erring human, even an apostle, cannot be a sufficient foundation of the universal institution of divinity — the church. The church must have an unshakable foundation.

Somebody who cannot be affected by sin!

COLOSSIANS 1:23 (MKJV) 
If indeed you continue in the faith grounded and settled, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard and which was proclaimed in all the creation under Heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister,

Something that can be shaken cannot be permanent.

HEBREWS 12:26-27 
26 Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. 
27 And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Peter, as man, is prone to error and mistakes. The doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Pope is the successor of Peter is infallible; ex-cathedra is a great error, even greater error than the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.


When Benedict XVI proclaimed that limbo does not exist, it implied that all his predecessors were lying when they taught that children who were not baptized before death will go to limbo!



Believe in John Paul II and you will deny Benedict XVI, or believe in Benedict XVI and you will deny all the previous authorities of the Catholic Church. But I would rather believe Peter, a true apostle even if he committed mistakes, errors and sins in some of his decisions and actions because he taught only what God wanted him to teach – no more no less!

THE ACTS 5:27-29 
27And when they had brought them, they set them before the council: and the high priest asked them, 
28 Saying, Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man’s blood upon us. 
29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Peter and the other apostles never taught any doctrine coming from their own thinking and inventions!

II PETER 1:16 
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

JOHN 7:17-18 
17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. 
18 He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.

To this, I believe, Peter will say, “TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!!”

AMEN!

46 Comments:

The Glorious Day that Christians Will See Jesus Christ

Coming of Christ in the Last Days

These imaginary idiots are asking:

“How do we explain the fact that Jesus never appeared to you?”


This question was addressed to an intelligent Christian but obviously the one or the group asking this question are not intelligent! Under the law on evidence, the credibility of a witness is determined by considering “whether he is capable of knowing the thing thoroughly about which he testifies.” Let us read the following information on what a credible witness is:

CREDIBLE WITNESS – A credible witness is one who is competent to give evidence, and is worthy of belief. In deciding upon the credibility of a witness, it is always pertinent to consider whether he is capable of knowing the thing thoroughly about which he testifies. 2. Whether he was actually present at the transaction. 3. Whether he paid sufficient attention to qualify himself to be a reporter of it; and 4. Whether he honestly relates the affair fully as he knows it, without any purpose or desire to deceive or suppress or add to the truth.

[Source: http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c328.htm]

These enemies of the Bible cannot be considered as credible witnesses because they are claiming something, which they cannot thoroughly know or prove. How do you know that Jesus never appeared to a Christian? Have you investigated all Christians? Are you omnipresent to know what is happening in the entire world? Where did you get such a lie that Christ never appeared to any Christian? Here is a food for thought for you (if you have any).

The Bible which you use to malign my God has the answer! After His resurrection, He appeared to so many people before ascending into heaven.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:3-8 (RSV) 
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 
4 that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 
5 and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 
6 Then He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 
7 Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 
8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.

In the preceding verses, He appeared to about six hundred people! Before ascending into heaven, He promised the Christians in the first century Church that He will again come at the end of the age to resurrect them and be with Him in paradise.

JOHN 14:1-3 
1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 
2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

When will He be coming to resurrect the Christians?

JOHN 6:44 
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

He will be coming at the last day! That day, He will appear!

TITUS 2:13 
Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ;

The first century Christians and Christians nowadays know fully well that the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ will happen at the last day. No intelligent Christian now will ask Christ to appear to him NOW. He understands the Scriptures that the appearing is yet to come and no Christian will ask the untimely appearing of his Lord!

2 PETER 3:9 
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

Above this, the Lord Jesus Christ, before ascending into heaven, has warned Christians not to believe to impostors that will claim that they are the Christ!

MATTHEW 24:23-27 
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. 
25 Behold, I have told you before. 
26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. 
27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

These stern warnings are understood by an intelligent Christian. He will not expect Christ to appear to him before the appointed day. The coming of Christ at the last day will be seen by all eyes:

REVELATIONS 1:7 
Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

It will be an event that will not be done in secret. It will be known. It will be noticed, and that day will mark the end of this age!

Do you realize how foolish these imaginary people are?

It is up to you to decide.

God Bless,

Bro. Eli Soriano

47 Comments:

Can We Really See the Future?

8/12/2017 47 Comments

No man can see the future

Bro. Eli,

I have this mysterious question in my mind. I only realized I have proven this ability to foresee things to happen exactly as they are even before year 2004-2005. But it happened so often only lately that I realized what I was foreseeing before has come true. I never had confidence or trust in myself whenever I foresee things that will happen. I would only realize that those thoughts and visions were real after they occurred exactly. One example was 3 years ago every time I pass by a tower I could see myself working there and wishing and praying it will come true and it happened. Another was last week, I heard several compliments of my skin and I foresee I will suffer terrible skin allergies, and after a few days I woke up exactly what I’m seeing has occurred. This afternoon, while I was cooking I said to myself the stove will run out of gas, then after a few minutes I checked the stove and it has no fire anymore. Another was last few weeks ago. I was having thoughts that one of my officemates will be terminated, after one week it happened. These are only some instances among which I have experienced. I would like to know why I am having this. I don’t believe in them at all until they happened. I am not even worthy as like those who have gifts like the prophets. I appreciate that your answer will grant me peace. Thanks and God bless!

Aplgreenlass

aplgreenlass@hotmail.com

Dear Aplgreenlass, 

Generally and biblically speaking, no human being has the capacity to see what exactly will happen in the nearest future. Of course, the nearest future is tomorrow.

PROVERBS 27:1 (MKJV) 
Do not boast yourself of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

In fact, tomorrow can outlive us.

JAMES 4:13-14
13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 
14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

As one saying goes: “There is no rule without an exception.” Prophets and seers in the Bible, through God’s spirit, were able to see dreams and visions foretelling exactly things that will happen in the farthest future. In the Bible, the end of everything was predicted.

1 SAMUEL 9:9 
Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.

REVELATION 1:19 
Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;

Other people claim that they have the power to foresee a forthcoming event because of ‘ESP’ or “extrasensory perception”; but most of the times, things happen because of mere coincidence.

May I ask you something? And I hope you will be honest to yourself in answering my question.

Have all the things which you have foreseen happen exactly without fail? If your answer is yes — and since only God knows the details without amiss of all things that will happen in the future — then, maybe, you are being inspired of God. But if your honest answer is that not all that you predicted happened 100 percent, then, there is no special calling on you. Instead, what is happening is subnormal but not supernatural; and you must not bother yourself thinking about this.

Did you know that sometimes even the predictions of false prophets happen? God allows them to happen to test if we love Him and believe in Him with all our hearts and soul.

DEUTERONOMY 13:1-3 
1 If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, 
2 And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; 
3 Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Hence, we can conclude that not because something perceived did happen we will already assume it has any supernatural importance.

The devil’s agenda is always, and will ever be, to mislead people in their belief about the Almighty God. We must be completely aware that satan is the archenemy of God. He is the cause of all confusions in this present world. God is not a god of confusion. So, it is satan that causes them.

1 CORINTHIANS 14:33 
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

The devil or satan can pollute the minds of people.

2 CORINTHIANS 11:3 
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Satan also has the power to perceive what might happen in the future. He has long been with mankind, and has mastered the ways of men, and can even mathematically compute what will happen in the near future. satan can be a possible perpetrator in the minds of people to perceive what may happen and then mislead people from their belief and trust in the true, faithful God. Remember, the Bible tells us of the subtlety of satan the serpent.

GENESIS 3:1 
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

REVELATION 12:9 
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

A person’s mind may think of something which is not proper for him to think, thus, the Apostle Paul admonished the Christians and the first century Church to think soberly.

ROMANS 12:3 
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

Human mind is far reaching, and may even think of things which is not reachable and achievable by the human body. Perhaps, this is the reason why there are those who call themselves ‘free thinkers’. Maybe, they have an uncontrollable mind so God said that the minds and the thinking of men are vain and nothing.

PSALMS 94:11 
The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

I pray that you may put your trust in the power of God, and ask for His guidance that you may perceive and see the truth.

God Bless,

Bro. Eli Soriano

47 Comments:

God is Not the Author of Confusion

8/05/2017 40 Comments


1 CORINTHIANS 14:33 
For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

Would you believe that in order to execute God’s will for mankind to populate, fill, and subdue the earth, God ‘confused’ the only one language of people living on earth in those times? This is how the story goes —

GENESIS 11:1-8 
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 
5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. 
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

God’s command to the family of Noah to repopulate or replenish the earth is ecologically sound. People must not only inhabit a particular place and let the other places of the earth become dominated by beasts and wild animals. Humankind, not beast, must subdue the earth.

EZEKIEL 14:13, 15 
13 Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it: 
15 If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts…

Due to their apparent resistance to God’s will, God confused their language. This event that happened in the Tower of Babel saw the birth of different nations and languages in the human family. The rest is history.

Historically, there are four groups of ancient languages.

QUICK FACTS

Linguists divide the Semitic languages into four groups. The North Peripheral group is represented by the Assyro-Babylonian language, or Akkadian. The oldest attested Semitic language, with the oldest Semitic literature, Akkadian was spoken in Mesopotamia between about 3000 B.C. and 600-400 B.C. and used as a literary language until the 1st century ad.

The North Central group includes the ancient and modern Hebrew language; ancient tongues such as Ugaritic and Phoenician; and the Aramaic language, including Syriac, or Christian Aramaic.

The South Central group consists of literary or Standard Arabic and the modern spoken Arabic dialects (see Arabic Language). Maltese, an offshoot of Arabic, is spoken on the island of Malta and, because of its location, has been heavily influenced by Italian.

The South Peripheral group consists of the South Arabic dialects, now spoken in parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula (and in ancient times by peoples such as the Minaeans and Sabaeans); and the languages of Ethiopia. The latter include Ge’ez, or classical Ethiopic, now surviving only as a literary and liturgical language; Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia; and regional Ethiopian languages such as Tigré, Tigrinya, and Gurage.

Source: Encarta 2007

Because of the confusion that happened, the human race were forced to scatter in all the habitable face of the earth. As a result, a group that does not understand the language or the speech of another group was forced to depart and separate from the other groups.

But there is another question that emerges: If humankind came from only one family, why do people differ in terms of color, physical features, etc.?

The Bible tells us the root-cause and not necessarily the results. The results can be obtained in reality. Apparent reality can be traced back to the root-cause.

Mathematically, the more than seven billion people that now populate the entire earth came from a much smaller stock in the early 19th century, about six hundred million, and further, from eight souls that survived the great flood.

1 PETER 3:20 
Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Is there, by chance, a possibility that a family may grow up to a huge global population of different colors, breeds, cultures, and physical features? The answer is, reality; but how?

The color of the skin is influenced by the environment. In places where there is an abundance of scorching sunlight, the skin of the people there can turn darker.

SONGS OF SOLOMON 1:6 
Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

It may take a thousand years for the skin of particular race to achieve a complete blackening of the skin. No wonder we have dark-colored people because the human family have existed on earth for many thousands of years.

QUICK FACTS

Jablonski and Chaplin proposed an explanation for the observed variation of untanned human skin with annual UV exposure. By Jablonski and Chaplin’s explanation, there are two competing forces affecting human skin tone:

1. The melanin that produces the darker tones of human skin serves as a light filter to protect against too much UV light getting under the human skin where too much UV causes sunburn and disrupts the synthesis of precursors necessary to make human DNA;

versus

2. Humans need at least a minimum threshold of UV light to get deep under human skin to produce vitamin D, which is essential for building and maintaining the bones of the human skeleton.

Jablonski and Chaplin note that when human indigenous peoples have migrated, they have carried with them a sufficient gene pool so that within a thousand years, the skin of their descendants living today has turned dark or turned light to adapt to fit the formula given above – with the notable exception of dark-skinned peoples moving north, such as to populate the seacoast of Greenland, to live where they have a year-round supply of food rich in vitamin D, such as fish, so that there was no necessity for their skin to lighten to let enough UV under their skin to synthesize the vitamin D that humans need for healthy bones.

Source: https://humanskin.wordpress.com/healthy-bones/

The question about the different skin colors of mankind can biblically and scientifically be explained; but what about the different physical feature? To learn more, read: The Origin of Humankind.

Sincerely in Christ,

Bro. Eli Soriano

40 Comments: