Upcoming Event: What Every Christian Should Know About: The Bible - November 3rd, 10th, and 17th

What Every Christian Should Know About:

The Bible

What is the Bible?  How can I understand and apply it?

A three-part educational discourse created by Pastor Randy Powell

At First Baptist Church of Franklin

1041 Liberty St.   Franklin, PA 16323

6-8 PM

Sunday, November 3^rd, 10^th, and 17^th

Will include segments on: Revelation, Inspiration, Inerrancy, Composition, Organization, Literary Genres, Interpretation, and Application

This event is free and open to the public, no reservations necessary, and will include time for Q&A

For more information, please call 432-8061

Sermon Video: "God is really among you!" 1 Corinthians 14:20-28

While the people of the Church might long for signs and wonders, for flashy manifestations of the presence of God among us, the Apostle Paul instructs the church at Corinth that such things are not what convinces the Lost of their need to accept the Gospel.  Signs might get people's attention (as it did at Pentecost) but it is the preaching/teaching/sharing of the Word of God that illuminates for people their need for repentance.  And while it church services will seem odd or confusing to non church goers who happen to visit, Paul cautions us that our activities cannot afford to appear crazy (for example through people being "slain in the Spirit" or wild predictions about the future or conspiracy theories), lest the Lost be repulsed by us, and not hear the Gospel.  Instead, our church services ought to be thoughtful, organized, and useful.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: The Gospel, simply - John 3:16

Life is complicated, problems and their solutions are often difficult to understand.  Thankfully, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not complicated.  The message itself can be contained in one sentence, and even though entire books can hardly contain all of its implications, the Gospel can be readily understood by ordinary people, including children.  What then is the Gospel?  As John so eloquently summarizes it in John 3:16, it includes the following: (1) The existence of God as Creator and Judge, (2) the love of God for humanity {the world}, (3) the sacrifice on our behalf of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, (4) our needed response, "believe in him", (5) and lastly, the result, eternal life. 
John 3:16 New International Version (NIV)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
This is the Gospel, the Good News about Jesus, simply.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: Intelligible words in the Church - 1 Corinthians 14:13-19

Having established the priority of building up the Church when ranking the desirability of spiritual gifts, the Apostle Paul continues the theme by explaining that even 10,000 words given in a language unknown to the hearer(s) are worth less than 5 intelligible words whose meaning can be grasped.  In stating this, Paul asserts that our minds needs to be engaged in prayer and worship, not just our emotions, and that our end goal, edification, requires understanding (on the part of the recipient) in order to be fruitful.  Illustrations utilized: the Western Church's use of the Latin Mass (a barrier to understanding), the dense verbiage of Martin Buber's I and Thou (verses the accessibility of Max Lucado's Just like Jesus), and the unnecessary barrier of teaching English to non-speakers envisioned by Sam Gipp's KJV Only position.  In the end, it is incumbent upon us that we make a serious effort, in both evangelism and apologetics, to share, explain, and defend God's Word with both intelligibility and clarity.

To watch the video, click on the link below:  As a bonus, the introduction features the story of my preaching in Guatemala in 1997 through an interpreter, as well as my fumbling my way through a lesson in Spanish (not a pretty picture).

The insanity of a pastor warning of Civil War to protect a politician

The American Civil War cost 600,000 lives.  It should surprise nobody who is paying attention that America in the 21st century is deeply divided along cultural, political, geographic lines.  Are we truly on the verge of a nation-wide conflagration, a tinder box akin to America in 1860 on the verge of the election of Abraham Lincoln?  The answer to that question, while truly horrifying if it were anywhere near 'yes' {and it is not}, ought to be one of deep concern to politicians, law enforcement, and the U.S. military.  In this case, the threat of a coming Civil War was instead the rationale of Pastor Robert Jeffress, the pastor of 14,000 member First Baptist Church of Dallas, in his effort to protect a politician from scandal.  In other words, a Christian pastor has decided that the fortunes of a particular politician, from a particular party, is important enough to him to stoke the fires of internecine violence.
{To watch Pastor Jeffress make this claim, watch the following clip from Fox and Friends, the quote is at the 2:31 mark.  As always, my point is not the larger political issue; my objection is to a pastor who represents the Church choosing to act in this manner.  Whether you agree with him or not on the political issue ought to be beside the point (that it isn't for many is a further symptom of the sickness)}
To those who study history, the danger of equating the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the realms of men, ought to be apparent.  This is not the first time that the very public profile of Pastor Jeffress has raised red flags {two of those previous episodes were written about here: Commercialism and Politics interrupt worship at a Baptist Church and Assassinations, Pastor Jeffress, and Romans 13 }  It doesn't matter which politician is being defended, nor which party is being supported, because the long-term entanglement of Church and State is always an unequal marriage.  Also, the role of a pastor, a sacred trust requiring the utmost integrity, cannot withstand being utilized as a prop to achieve ends outside of the Church. 
And now we have Pastor Jeffress, who is on TV regularly defending his chosen politician {just as other pastors who chose other politicians in the past, equally disastrously, and equally offensive to the Church}, choosing to up the ante by feeding into the fringe element in the country who would welcome a violent confrontation with their political enemies.  It is dangerous, it is reckless, and it is far beneath the dignity that ought to be connected with being a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.