GRACE VS. LAW    8/11/77  DFO 635

         1. THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS IS FAITH; faith in God and His Word and obedience to the Lord. That's what counts! Not whether you are circumcised. Not whether you are sleeping with the right woman or the wrong woman.

         2. Are you obeying the Lord?--That's what counts!--If you've got the Faith and the Truth and the Word and obey!--That's what counts!

         3. THERE ARE QUITE A FEW THINGS I DON'T AGREE WITH THE APOSTLE PAUL ON, and I think I have as much right to my opinion as he had to his.

         4. But what if you take Paul's word as law, like the Church does? Everything Paul said is total absolute law, they claim, and that's it! Even if he says, "This speak I, not the Lord" (1Cor.7:12), it still came from Paul so they think it is right. What he said about women in the Church (1Cor.14:34,35) and all that, was totally contradictory to what the Holy Ghost said through the mouth of Peter right in the second chapter of Acts. (Ac.2:17-18) How are they going to keep silence in the church if they are going to prophesy, or how are they going to prophesy if they are going to keep silence in the church?
         5. So some of those old-time churchy Paul worshippers are apt to have quite a few doubts and questions about the things I say.

         6. SO YOU HAVE GOT TO BELIEVE IN THE LORD AND IN ME, that I am a new prophet of a new day of a whole lot of new things that Paul never even thought about!
         7. A lot of things that Paul said were right for his time and his day, but they don't necessarily bind us today. If God has spoken at all and shown me these things at all, if it's the Lord at all, it is His Words for today and it supersedes anything else that has ever been given, if it is different, if it is a change. That's what the Christian era did to the Mosaic era.
         8. The Christian era was a total change, and it totally outdated, outmoded and overthrew the whole works. That's the fight that Paul was having!
         9. If the early Christians had said, "Now wait, we have to check all of this out with the Mosaic Law and we still have to keep the law.--It's got to check out with the Scriptures, it's got to check out with the law!" they never would have broken away from the Mosaic Law.
         10. Our Revolution has almost been as big a break with the past as the coming of Christ and His message was with the legalism of the past of the Mosaic era. It's been like a whole new dispensation of grace.

         11. YOU SEE, WHEN PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO OBEY THE GRACE THEY ALWAYS RETURN TO THEIR LEGALISM in self-defense, they always go back to the law to prove their point.
         12. When people are not willing to receive the revelations grace gives, the freedom that grace gives and the new wine that grace gives, they always turn back to their legalism and the law to prove their points, that it is not according to the law, not according to Moses, not according to the Bible, not according to Paul.--See, when they are not willing to receive the new wine that grace gives and the new truth, they go back to their law and their self-righteousness and their old rules, "back to the Book!"

         13. When these people start going back to these old legalistic Scriptures, even some of the legalism of Paul, then they are turning their backs on the freedom of grace and the liberty which the lord has given us and the new wine and the new truth and new revelations which are for us today, here and now, and not for Paul and his day, much less Moses and his day!
         14. If they go back to the law even on one point they are obligated to keep the whole law. (See Galatians 3:10.) See, if they will surrender even one point and feel that in any one point that they have got to be bound by the law and it contradicts what the Lord has shown, then they are going to go back to the whole works and there is no stopping place!
         15. You've either got to go all the way by grace or you've got to go all the way by law. (See Rom.11:6.) "But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, the just shall live by faith." (Gal.3:11,12)
         16. "And the law is not of faith." (Gal.3:12) Now that's a pretty strong statement, "the law is not of faith"! Whew, that must have been a slap in the face for those old Jews, and I mean it still is today for any of our people who feel more bound by the old laws and the old words.
         17. If you are going by last year's instructions, then you are way behind, because we are getting new things all the time and ever changing.

         18. "FOR IF THE INHERITANCE BE OF THE LAW, IT IS NO MORE OF PROMISE: but God gave it to Abraham by promise."--(430 years before He gave the law to Moses!) (Gal.3:18) Grace, grace, grace! "Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of the mediator." (Gal.3:19)
         19. The Lord really preferred the whole thing by grace and faith to begin with, that was His original plan, but He had to crack down with the rules because they didn't follow grace and faith and love. But keeping the rules didn't save them, they only showed them where they were wrong.


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