Good Sunday morning. Do
not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from
God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. I've told you
before about there being groups of so-called apostles and prophets. 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 the Antichrist, of which you have heard
that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. Here again John is
fighting the beginnings of Gnosticism. They did not believe that Jesus came in
the flesh. At water baptism He came in the Spirit upon the man Jesus, and then
left Him when He was on the cross. And then a verse we all love: you are from
God and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is
in the world. We are overcomers – not because of anything we did; but because
of everything He did. Sadly we do not act that way. In fact we find it all too
easy to act as losers not as overcomers. It's like when you get hurt, and it's
hard to think of yourself as anything but being hurt. Father thank You that the
reader is an overcomer and knows when You are speaking to him/her.
Merry Christmas!
Good morning, and Merry Christmas! We are going to digress and look at the first Christmas. This was something that had been foretold centuries before; and yet people still did not understand what was going to happen. They were thinking that the Messiah was going to come as an adult and was going to re-establish the nation of Israel above all other nations. They were not expecting Him to come as a baby, supposedly born to a carpenter and placed in a manger. Many things had to happen at precisely the right time. You had to have the right person to be His mother and the right person to be His supposed father. You had to have a reason for them to be in Bethlehem on the night He was born – the census. It had to be when shepherds would be in the field near Bethlehem watching their flocks. And just at the right time – an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them...
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