THE GREAT DEPARTURE FROM HEBREWS 6

Not too long ago in nearly every church we ministered in I did a little survey and asked the pastors what their new converts classes or early teachings consisted of. Their answers varied but hardly anyone mentioned the elementary principles of the doctrine of Christ.

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1-2)

I dedicated one long chapter in a recent book I wrote to these six principles of Christ The Coming Restoration and my brother and I are collaborating on a shorter book devoted to just these Hebrews 6 doctrines that should be published later this year. We are excited to make these available to the body of Christ. I'm also making available a series of broadcasts we produced for the Arabic world several years ago on these principles, which are now on our Holy Fire Ministries YouTube channel. There was great conviction on these programs which is what we are in dire need of in our day. We have too much casual and and not enough conviction. The Holy Spirit convicts people when the true gospel is preached.

"For our [preaching of the] glad tidings (the Gospel) came to you not only in word, but also in [its own inherent] power and in the Holy Spirit and with great conviction and absolute certainty [on our part].

These principles are called the milk of the Word.

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)

These early Jewish Christians were receiving a mild rebuke here because by now they should've reached some level of maturity and been teaching others, but they were still unskilled in the word of righteousness and had no discernment. They couldn't handle solid food or spiritual meat, but still had need for the milk of the word. They had forsaken their foundations.

Isn't this what we are seeing repeated today? Christians who claim such knowledge of the word remain so gullible with little spiritual discernment, and so as a result, are tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting (Ephesians 4:12). Due to the increased Bible knowledge that is being dispersed from the multitude of teachers we have today, some good, many not so good, it is appalling to see so many extremes, excesses, and abuses of doctrine and the many fads and trends that float around in Christendom.

From the hyper-prophetic to the faulty apostolic to the flimsy teaching, the body of Christ has had its fill of excesses, extremes, and abuses of Christian teaching in the past two or three decades. We are in great need of re-laying these elementary principles of the doctrine of Christ in our churches and solidifying our foundations. Even some of the big name celebrity preachers and teachers have contributed greatly to some of the imbalances I am seeing today in the body of Christ. Remember that every new generation mimics what they learn from the older in both doctrine and practice. There is much "learned" behavior today that has no foundation in Scripture. Did you ever notice how many preachers today sound the same? They have the same voice inflection -- same phrases, cute sounding cliches, flowery speech, same hyper-grace hyperbole, and lovey-dovey gobbledygook. It's actually become easier to spot a lack of authenticity in many of our preachers today. We not only need more fathers in the faith now, but grandfathers.

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