Believing In Him - John 3:16

By Oscar M. Baker

"Whosoever believeth in Him ... not perish, but have everlasting life." Note the alternatives. They are perish ... everlasting life.

"He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him" (John 3:36). Again there are alternatives.

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Tape Gems - The Mystery, What and When

By Oscar M. Baker

The mystery includes making something known not only to Gentiles, but a lot further than that, “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God”, Eph. 3:10. You never hear that there’s anybody living there (heavenly places) until you get to Eph., outside of God Himself. So you have here something made known to the heavenly powers. Who are those heavenly powers?

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Tape Gems - The Godly Life

By Oscar M. Baker

Grace trains us to do everything in reference to God. And this doing every thing in reference to God is the godly life. Living a godly life means that God is constantly in our thoughts. And to live a godly life, of course, cuts one off from the world. Also, it separates one from the careless Christian about him, and there are a lot of careless Christians. If you have an opinion that differs from theirs', it will put up a wall as insurmountable as any you can think of – the wall of China or something like that! And so those who persist and choose to live godly also live lonely. And our Lord was an example of that, how lonesome He was.

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Rules and Regulations

By Oscar M. Baker

Not to this and not do that, isn’t a way to be a Christian. But men have all these rules and regulations. Well, God has some rules and regulations – how about the Ten Commandments. We find that Paul, in the dispensation of the Mystery, repeating all those as for today with the exception of one. In Colossians 2:16 there is one of them mentioned that we have no business of observing today, that’s sabbaths, they were a part of Israel’s covenant. And these folks that make a lot of sabbaths never realize, as far as the Bible is concerned, that man never knew about sabbaths until it was revealed to Moses, and he revealed it to the People of Israel. His book wasn’t written until then, and unless there was some special knowledge given to man, revealed to him back in those early times, he knew nothing about it, and there’s no record that they did know.

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Tape Gems - The Knowledge of Him

By Oscar M. Baker

“That I may know Him…” (Ph’p. 3:10). Did Paul know Him? Well here he wants to know Him as well as he can in this life. Can we say Ph’p. 3:8? “Yea doubtless I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…”. Can we say that? We need to if we’re going to be able to say at the end of our lives, “…I know Whom I have believed…” (II Tim. 1:12). Note, no preposition between Paul and His Lord.

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Getting An Understanding - Concerning The Word Salvation

By Joseph L. Watkins

Often, we have endeavored to set forth the truth that a true story of the word of God is a study of “the words of God” - yes, His words - the words of His own choosing; those holy and whole sanctified words that He has set forth to best express his own desires and purpose. Read Psalms 12: 6, 7.

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RD 101 - The Truth Opposed

By Jack Eberle

We have been looking at II Timothy 2:15 in some detail. This is the beginning Scripture for the prospective workman in The Word. This is where it all begins. To learn The Word, one must “straight-cut”, or as it is more popularly known, “Rightly Divide”. There is no way around this admonition of God. Those who rightly divide will be unashamed workmen. Moreover, they will more certainly propagate The Word of Truth.

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Sin #2

By Oscar M. Baker

REDEMPTION (cont’d): The trespass offering had to do with evil acts of sins. The exodus aspect given for us today is in Eph. 1:7. This is being set free from sins. Eph. 2:13 is the eisodus aspect, “But now in Christ Jesus…made nigh…”, as Israel was made nigh to God at Mt. Sinai. Because God is a moral agent, sins cannot be excused, at least in that relationship. Sins cannot be excused because they are a blot on God’s creation; they go into the record in red ink, as we say. To have perfection, those will have to be taken care of. So now here we have God, a great moral Ruler, and man a responsible moral agent, and sin has come in and it can’t be excused. So for that we have such words as ransom, atonement, sanctification, and the like.

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The Change

By Oscar M. Baker

“Be it known therefore to you, that to the Gentiles is sent the salvation of God; and they will hear” (Interlinear Gr. N.T., Acts 28:28). Paul, who is the speaker here, is talking to the Jewish leaders that he’d gathered together for an all day meeting in Rome, shortly after he’d arrived there as a prisoner. And he’s speaking in his own hired house, but bound with a chain. The Roman authorities had been rather lenient with him on that occasion, and probably for the reason that he was a Roman citizen, he was a well educated man, and also the fact that really there was no charge against him. So they were giving him some comfort before his case would come before Caesar, which probably took 2 years. We talk about our courts being slow sometimes in our country, but way back in Rome they were a little slow, too.

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RD 101 - Ordinances, Gospels

By Jack Eberle

The word “ordinances” in our current world has vastly different connotations as it did in the days of Paul. ENTELOWN EN DOGMASIN is the expression found in Ephesians 2:15 translated “commandments in decrees”. DOGMASIN is the word translated “ordinances” in our English versions. We hear of ordinances today as elements of civil law, often in respect to pesky zoning regulations.

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Tape Gems - Two Well Educated Men

By Oscar M. Baker

In Acts 22 Paul is giving his defense before the people (Jews) at Jerusalem, and he says, “‘Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make unto you.’ (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence:…)” (Acts 22:1, 2).

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RD 101 - Law and Grace

By Jack Eberle

In no way will this topic be covered in this short column. We will try to open the door from the dispensational side. “And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before The Lord our God, as He has commanded us” (Deuteronomy 6:25).This is a typical legal passage found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Notice, Moses tells the reader that he can establish his “own” righteousness.

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Sin

By Oscar M. Baker

The good news is found in such verses as 2 Cor. 5:19; I Tim. 1:15 and Eph. 1:7. However, we have to deal with this subject because of that rebellious nature that’s in us, and we always will have that trouble until resurrection. That’s a continual fight in life, and we have to put up with it and face it. We can’t stick our head in the sand and say it doesn’t exist. And so we just can’t overlook sin and pass it by as if it wasn’t anything. It must be accounted for as far as our reward is concerned---not as our salvation, but as our reward.

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RD 101 - Right Division

By Jack Eberle

Some of you may never have heard the term “Right Division”. In this and succeeding lessons, as God leads, we will try to make clear to you just what “Right Division” is.

The term comes from God's own Word. He is telling us how to please God and learn The Holy Scriptures. Truly there is no better way to please God than to work in His Word.

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Points of Right Division

By Oscar M. Baker

When you start to study any portion of Scripture, always look at ‘the address on the envelope’ [referring to whom it is written]. Oh, that will help tremendously in finding out whether a portion is particularly for you or for somebody else. Now, that is one of the first things to do when you’re opening your Bible for study.

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Tape Gems - The Mystery, What and When #2

By Oscar M. Baker

[The material covered in the last article was on, what is the Mystery as found in Eph.3:9&10; Eph.1:9&10, and Eph. 3:6. Then these questions were addressed: When was the Mystery first planned? When was it first announced? When did this Mystery start? Then continuing on…]

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RD 101 - Why Rightly Divide?

By Jack Eberle

Do you remember when you were a youngster, and some friendly church person gave you a red-letter Bible? When did you begin to think how you should estimate your Bible? Did you think that certainly the words of Christ were more important than the rest of The Bible? On the other hand, maybe you puzzled over the fact that the entire Bible was God’s Holy Word. Then, how could you judge the relative importance’s of various portions of the Scriptures? When did you learn that all the Scriptures were written for you, but they were not all written to you? When you learned this important fact, you began to have the key to truly learning The Word – rightly divided. What a breakthrough!

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