February 2017
The Trumpet
“The trumpet shall sound…and we shall be changed”
(I Corinthians 15:52)
Volume 11 Issue 2
Pastor’s Pen
We are solidly into a new year but with the bulk of 2017 still before us. For some,
resolutions may already be forgotten or given up on. For others, anticipation remains high and successes are being seen concerning personal behavior changes,
abolishment of bad habits, recommitment to church attendance, and rededication
to devotional time and prayer time. I have learned over the years to be guarded in
what I set in my mind, heart and practice as a new year’s resolution. My criterion
is simple: is it going to change me for the better, is it doable with the right amount
of effort, energy, commitment, and tenacity, and does it honor God.
Coming into this year the Lord placed heavy on my heart the following discourse
between Jesus and Peter. “When they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter,
Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me more than these? He said unto him, Yes, Lord;
you know that I love you. He said unto him, Feed my lambs. He said to him again
the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me? He said unto him, Yes, Lord;
you know that I love you. He said unto him, Feed my sheep. He said unto him the
third time, Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said
unto him the third time, do you love me? And he said unto him, Lord, you know all
things; you know that I love you. Jesus said unto him, Feed my sheep.” (John
21:15-17)
My resolution for this year is not new but recurring: I want to be a better preacher
and expositor of the gospel. Every year, for over thirty years now, this has been
one of my resolutions. It must be working. Every Sunday my wife tells me, “That
Inside This Edition
Pastor’s Pen
.
Children's Ministries
page 1
page 2
Putting on Full Armor of God
page 3
Calendar
page 5
Library Report
page 6
Birthdays and Anniversaries
page 7
was some sermon!” Now that I think about it, I not
sure if it’s a compliment or a subliminal message indicating I need improvement. All joking aside, God
will be the judge as to the success of my preaching. I
just want to feed the Lambs, see sinners converted
and remain busy in kingdom growth. Recorded in Our
Daily Bread is the following: The officer in charge of
the royal pew in the chapel at Windsor, England,
noted that King George frequently commented on the
sermon as he left the church. If he had been blessed
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by it, he would say in a cheerful voice, "That will do very well. That will feed
souls!" When the preacher's delivery was cold and his words were lifeless and barren of Gospel teaching, he would shake his head sorrowfully as he left the pew
and mutter under his breath, "That won't do. That just won't feed souls!" The
king's criterion for determining the value of a sermon is…does it feed souls?
That’s what Jesus told Peter to focus on. It is a pretty good criterion to use as the
framework for a pastoral ministry.
Recorded in Moody's Anecdotes, p. 123: John Wesley used to ask his young men
whom he had sent out to preach on probation two questions: "Has anyone been
converted?" and "Did anyone get mad?" If the answer was "No," he told them he
did not think the Lord had called them to preach the Gospel, and sent them about
their business. When the Holy Ghost convicts of sin, people are either converted or
they don't like it, and get mad. Well, I suspect that too is a good criterion.
My goal is to preach the gospel courageously, competently, and without compromise. Hold me up in prayer, that I faithfully accomplish that resolution.
In Christian Love,
Pastor Jim
Children’s Ministries
We’ve planned several activities for children (K through 6th grades) in 2017. They
include both fellowship and ministry projects. Please check the church calendar
and plan now to participate as much as possible before other events come up to
compete. Our kids will be the beneficiaries of that planning. In February please
bake homemade “Cookies for Cops” with your children and bring them on
Sunday, Feb 12th. (continued on page 5)
Operation Christmas Child
Operation Christmas Child is a ministry formed by Franklin Graham that takes Christmas gifts and the Gospel to
underprivileged children all over the world. We are collecting items to fill shoeboxes in November. Each month
we will highlight a different item to bring in. But, please
remember we will take all types of donations at any time! For February please bring in toothbrushes & toothpaste.
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Putting on the Full Armor of God
Apologetics - From Bob Neubauer
The Four Gospels
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the four Gospels contained in our New Testaments. Many outside the Christian faith today and some within question whether
we have the right books. In 1945 other gospels, the Gnostic gospels, were discovered – the most famous of these being the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas is generally
considered to be the first of the Gnostic gospels – early mid second century. The
claim made by the enemies of the faith is that the Gnostic gospels have just as
much of a right to being the true gospels as what we have in the New Testament.
They will say that it is just our branch of Christianity that happened to win out,
but not because it was the true faith. Is there any merit to these claims?
Our first response is that the New Testament Gospels were all written in the first
century. There is virtually unanimous agreement on this in the scholarly community, by both believing and unbelieving scholars. From the beginning Christians
rejected everything not written in the first century as being part of the cannon
whether it was orthodox or not, because it was not written either by an apostle or
an associate of an apostle (such as Mark and Luke). So, the obvious question is:
how many of the Gnostic Gospels were written in the first century? None! All of
the Gnostic Gospels were all written in the second century or later.
Second, the canonical gospels were written between 50 and 90 A.D. These means
that there were still many people living who were witnesses to the events described in the gospels. So, if there were errors in the four gospels people could
have and would have raised objections to them – which would have at least
greatly limited the growth of the faith. But just the opposite happened. The Christian faith flourished despite being a persecuted illegal religion.
The early Christians recognized the same four Gospels we still recognize today.
How strong was the approval of Christians for these books? There are a lot of copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, more than 2500 copies. As an aside there
are more copies of John than the other Gospels. So it is interesting that it was the
apostle John who wrote against Proto-Gnosticism in the first of his three epistles.
One of the Gnostic beliefs was a denial of the humanity of Jesus. Gnosticism saw
the physical as evil and the spiritual as good. John wrote, “By this you know the
Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is
from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is
the spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world” (I John 4:2-3). Today it is common for unbelievers to deny
Christ’s deity. But, in the early church it was the denial of His humanity that was
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the common heretical belief. The four canonical Gospels present a balanced picture of both Christ’s deity and humanity.
How about the Gnostic gospels? Do we have a lot of those manuscripts? We have
three copies of the gospel of Thomas – just three. And even those three are fragmentary. So, history tells us that the people who were living when these “gospels”
were written did not value them anything like how Christians valued the four canonical Gospels.
Another way the enemies of the faith attack the canonical Gospels is to question
the authorship. How do we know that Matthew wrote Matthew and John wrote
John? One reason we trust the traditional authorship is because the people living
when they were produced and those living close to that time believed they were
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Irenaeus (130 – 202 A.D.) was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the apostle John. He tells us in his writings
that the Gospel of John was called the Gospel of John because it was written by
John! The speculations on authorship by someone who lived 1900 plus years after
John was written hardly carry the weight of the testimony of Irenaeus. Near the
end of his life Irenaeus talks about knowing the man (Polycarp) who knew the
man (John) who knew Jesus. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take his word any
day over that of some reprobate trying to disprove the Bible. And by contrast since
the earliest of the Gnostic gospels was not written until almost the middle of the
second century none of them could have been written by an apostle because all the
apostles were dead. They were titled with the names of apostles to try and give
them credibility.
The canonical Gospels ring true; they lack the legendary embellishments of the
Gnostic gospels. Our Gospels tell their stories in a matter of fact way. They don’t
sensationalize the events. The resurrection, the most important event in the Gospels, the most important event in history, is never actually described. The women
and the apostles show up at the tomb after the resurrection. But, though they do
see the resurrected Jesus, they do not see the actual resurrection. The Biblical
Gospels tell us almost nothing about Jesus growing up, just one story of Jesus in
the temple. By contrast, the Gnostic gospels give us wild embellishments. The gospel of Peter shows the resurrection, but Jesus is sixty feet tall and flanked by angels. Following Jesus out of the tomb is the cross itself. Then the cross starts talking. What this “gospel” is trying to do is fill in the gaps in the life of Jesus in the
canonical Gospels. The Infancy gospel of Thomas (different from the gospel of Thomas) has Jesus as a boy causing all kinds of havoc including killing another child.
Read these “gospels” for yourself and compare them with the canonical Gospels.
Do you really want to know who Jesus was? The answer to that critical question is
found only in the four canonical Gospels.
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Ministry Opportunities at FSBC
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Ladies’ Bible Study (9:30 a.m. & 7:00 p.m.)
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Ladies’ First Saturday Workshop (10:00 a.m.)
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Pot Luck Fellowship (12:30 p.m.)
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Ladies’ Leadership Team Meeting (6:30 p.m.)
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Awana Bible Quiz
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Deacons’ Meeting (7:00 p.m.)
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The Lord’s Supper (11:00 a.m.)
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Presidents Day - Offices Closed - No MDO
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TVSBA Executive Board Meeting
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Business Meeting (5:30 p.m.)
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Sunday School Teachers’ Training (6:30 p.m.)
Every Week
Sunday
Sunday School (9:30 a.m.)
Worship Service (11:00 a.m.)
Discipleship Training (5:30 p.m.)
Wednesday
Prayer Meeting (6:30 p.m.)
Children’s Ministries continued from page 2)
We’ll package them up and make cards that Sunday
during Children’s Church. Michele and I will deliver
them during the day on Monday for Valentines’ Day
to show our appreciation for their service to our community. We’ll be delivering to other city/county offices as well.
John Ring
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Library Report
We live in a time when the Christian faith is under attack from our culture. The
attacks are almost constant from individuals and institutions. But, most believers
today are woefully undereducated in the faith. This means that many are unable
to defend their faith and their witnessing is less effective. No longer can we tell
people “the Bible says,” and expect them to accept what we say as previous generations could.
The Reformation of the church in the 16th century was brought about through
reading. In fact, it was the printing of Luther’s 95 theses that launched that desperately needed revival. Our culture today has abandoned reading as the way information is transmitted. Instead of thorough examination of issues we have
‘sound bites’. Most things cannot be adequately communicated in a single sentence. Pastors spend hours preparing messages that give us an in depth understanding of the Bible. Our obligation in response is to well consider what they say.
When a question arises in our minds about what the Pastor has said we should
pursue the answer. One of the reasons for the library at First Southern is to enable the church to do that. We have several sets of commentaries on scripture that
can help. But they can only help if we make use of them.
As Christian we are all grateful for what God has done for us. One way of expressing our gratitude is by continuing to learn our faith. All of us want to have a significant part in a significant enterprise. In learning our faith, in communicating
our faith we can all have a part in the most significant enterprise there is. On the
judgment day in eternity we want to hear our Savior say, “Well done thou good
and faithful servant.” Making use of our library can help make you one of those
who hear those words from Jesus.
By the way, did you know that unlike what we often see depicted, the New Testament was not copied on scrolls. For perhaps the only time in history Christians
were ahead on the technological curve. Copies of the New Testament were always
made on what was called a ‘codex’, what we call a book. The earliest fragment of
the New Testament is P52, a credit card size papyrus from the Gospel of John.
The writing is on both sides of the papyrus as are all hand copied manuscripts of
the New Testament. In the early centuries of the church the general culture often
still used scrolls and Christians would also - except for the Bible. It is likely that the cost of paper was a contributing factor,
but for whatever reasons, Christians have always been the people of the “book”!
Bob Neubauer - Librarian
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Joke of the Month
(Comedy) Corner
1. To write with a broken pencil in pointless.
2. When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
3. A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
4. When the smog lifts in Los Angeles U. C. L. A.
5. The professor discovered that his theory on earth-
quakes was on shaky ground.
February Birthdays and Anniversaries
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2
4
6
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9
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10
10
10
14
Annabelle Brooks
Adam Case
Mark Barnes
Jayden Keith
Doug Croyle
Jaydin Blair
Daniel Kelley
Gavriel Nagel
Don Nesbitt
Jackson Grinnell
Vern Sanders
1
5
Bob & Rose Pursell
Greg & Randi Tenhagen
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14
17
19
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23
24
24
28
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Amber Blair
Alexis McNair
Patrick Holt
Emilia Hall
Vincent Brooks
Margaret Berry
John Sanders
Misty McClaskey
Jean Mouser
Michele Ring
19 John & Shannon Crowe
If you do not see your name here and would like to:
please contact the church office at 587-3828 and let us know your birthday
and/or anniversary.