Jump to content

Justification, Sanctification, and the Holy Spirit: Difference between revisions

No edit summary
(11 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 3: Line 3:


=What William Branham taught=
=What William Branham taught=
==Salvation==


William Branham taught that salvation was made up of Justification, Sanctification and finally the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.  
William Branham taught that salvation was made up of Justification, Sanctification and finally the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.  


====Justification====
===Justification===
William Branham often dismissed justification as a thing of the past, and that anybody can be justified.  His view was that justification (like salvation) is something that you may lose at some point.  The Lutherans had it hundreds of years ago, so it must not be too important.  This of course makes one a borderline believer (like Judas or those who perished in the wilderness) until you make it to the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
William Branham often dismissed justification as a thing of the past, and that anybody can be justified.  His view was that justification (like salvation) is something that you may lose at some point.  The Lutherans had it hundreds of years ago, so it must not be too important.  This of course makes one a borderline believer (like Judas or those who perished in the wilderness) until you make it through the next two stages of being born again.


====Sanctification====
===Sanctification===
William Branham used a boxcar analogy to teach that a person wasn't sealed in (filled with the Holy Ghost or truly born again) until all of the loose stuff in the boxcar was packed tightly (sanctification).  Then, when God sees that you mean business and that your prayer life is right - you don't smoke, wear shorts ( ___________ fill in the blank here with your personal weakness) - then, and only then, can you be born again.  
William Branham used a boxcar analogy to teach that a person wasn't sealed in (filled with the Holy Ghost or truly born again) until all of the loose stuff in the boxcar was packed tightly (sanctification).  Then, when God sees that you mean business and that your prayer life is right - you don't smoke, wear shorts ( ___________ fill in the blank here with your personal weakness) - then, and only then, can you be born again.  


The burden was placed on our shoulders instead of Christ, and essentially makes the cross of non effect, and presents a different gospel.
The burden was placed on our shoulders instead of Christ, and essentially makes the cross of non-effect, and presents a different gospel.
 
This "second work of grace" is something that he took from the Holiness movement and which was clearly laid out in Keswick theology.
 
There are two types of Christians in Keswick teaching. The “average” or “carnal” Christian behaves much like an unbeliever. Keswick conventions were “spiritual clinics” designed to turn the average, carnal Christian into a “normal” or “spiritual” Christian, one who is filled with the Holy Spirit. This transformation from the carnal to the spiritual Christian takes place not by a long struggle but by a simple, single act of faith. The secret to the victorious life is for the Christian to make an unconditioned and absolute surrender to God in faith. One must not strive for spiritual victory; rather one must simply ‘Let go, and let God!’ ” H. C. G. Moule, probably Keswick’s best theologian, described this state of victory for the believer as “a blessed and wakeful Quietism.”
It appears that Keswick teaching was the first to describe the second blessing as surrendering to Christ’s Lordship. <ref>William W. Combs, “The Disjunction Between Justification And Sanctification In Contemporary Evangelical Theology,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume 6 6 (2001): 26.</ref>
 
John Wesley used various terms to describe this second work of grace: Christian perfection, salvation from all [willful] sin, entire sanctification, perfect love (1 John 4:18), holiness, purity of intention, full salvation, second blessing, second rest, and dedicating all the life to God. Its essence is unreserved love for God with one’s whole being and, consequently, love for fellow humans. This complete sanctification occurs instantaneously at a point in time subsequent to one’s justification, but God’s gradual working both precedes and follows it.
 
Wesley’s primary contribution to the doctrine of sanctification is that he is the father of widespread evangelical views that separate justification and sanctification in a way that the Reformed view does not. <ref>Andrew David Naselli, “Keswick Theology: A Survey and Analysis of the Doctrine of Sanctification in the Early Keswick Movement,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume 13 13 (2008): 19–20.</ref>
 
However, the separation of justification from sanctification is effectively a rejection of Christ’s Lordship in conversion because it is only at the time of the believer’s one-time act of dedication ("sanctification") that he submits to the Lordship of Christ.<ref>William W. Combs, “The Disjunction Between Justification And Sanctification In Contemporary Evangelical Theology,” Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal Volume 6 6 (2001): 30.</ref>
 
===Filled with the Holy Spirit===
 
Many early Pentecostals had first been influenced by the Wesleyan Holiness movement, and these people believed that every Christian’s life should include a second crisis experience after conversion itself in which the tendency to sin would be displaced by love for God. They referred to this as "sanctification", or the second blessing, and when they accepted Pentecostalism, such people regarded the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a third experience in the order of salvation.<ref>Edith L. Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister, ed. Mark A. Noll and Nathan O. Hatch, Library of Religious Biography (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 71.</ref>
 
William Branham simply borrowed this concept from the early pentecostal movement.


====Filled with the Holy Spirit====
I found the concept of "three salvations" in the message interesting: first there is basic salvation; then there is sanctification; finally there is receiving the New Birth/Holy Ghost. It's like a loophole so that there might possibly be salvation for people outside the message, yet Message Believers feel that the baptism of the Holy Ghost is only for those who follow the teachings of William Branham (with his "special revelations".) . In fact, the evidence one is filled with the Holy Spirit is that you follow William Branham's teaching.
I found the concept of "two salvations" in the message interesting: first there is basic salvation and then there is receiving the New Birth/Holy Ghost. It's like a loophole so that there might possibly be salvation for people outside the message, yet Message Believers feel that the baptism of the Holy Ghost is only for those who follow the teachings of William Branham (with his "special revelations".)


His analogy was that you are a dirty glass, and that you have to be cleaned and polished without a spot and set aside for service. Then when you're perfect, the Holy Spirit can be poured into you.  What he missed is that it is the Holy Spirit that makes us clean.  
His analogy was that you are a dirty glass, and that you have to be cleaned and polished without a spot and set aside for service. Then when you're perfect, the Holy Spirit can be poured into you.  What he missed is that it is the Holy Spirit that makes us clean.  


The Kicker is....once you finally get good enough to be born again THEN you have faith: which is the bottom platform of the Pyramid (as William Branham taught) of the "stature of the perfect man".  This means you have to start to work your way into the new birth, which is the climb up the "pyramid" by adding to your faith (or new birth) the virtues Peter mentions. Then, after you do that then you can receive the "True Baptism of the Holy Ghost" and God "caps off the pyramid of your life". This is when you can finally use the third pull and speak stuff into existence.
The Kicker is....once you finally get good enough to be born again THEN you have faith: which is the bottom platform of the Pyramid (as William Branham taught) of the "stature of the perfect man".  This means you have to start to work your way into the new birth, which is climbing up the "pyramid" by adding to your faith (or new birth) the virtues Peter mentions. Then, after you do that then you can receive the "True Baptism of the Holy Ghost" and God "caps off the pyramid of your life". This is when you can finally use the third pull and speak stuff into existence.


==Quotes and questions==
==Quotes and questions==
Line 45: Line 59:
The purpose of the gospel is to get you to walk into the presence of God knowing that you’re not liable, knowing that he finds you blameless. If you don’t have something that enables you to look God in the eye, to stand on your feet and look him in the face in his presence, you still haven’t gotten the gospel. You may have religion, you may have morality, but you don’t have Christianity.  
The purpose of the gospel is to get you to walk into the presence of God knowing that you’re not liable, knowing that he finds you blameless. If you don’t have something that enables you to look God in the eye, to stand on your feet and look him in the face in his presence, you still haven’t gotten the gospel. You may have religion, you may have morality, but you don’t have Christianity.  


===Imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness===
==Imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness==


The Scripture always talks about two kinds of righteousness. There’s imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness.
The Scripture always talks about two kinds of righteousness. There’s imputed righteousness and imparted righteousness.
Line 59: Line 73:
A Christian has this great desire for holiness because he’s afraid of grieving the person who would never reject him. A non-Christian, or a moralist, a religious person, has to repent because he’s afraid he will be rejected. Utterly different.<ref>Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).</ref>
A Christian has this great desire for holiness because he’s afraid of grieving the person who would never reject him. A non-Christian, or a moralist, a religious person, has to repent because he’s afraid he will be rejected. Utterly different.<ref>Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).</ref>


==More quotes of William Branham==
 
==Because you are justified, you are sanctified==
 
'''Why do we stand against the message, people have asked us. Why didn't you just go away quietly?'''
 
In the New Testament, justification (the acceptance of believers as righteous in the sight of God) and sanctification (progress in actual holiness in our lives) are closely intertwined. '''Justification is God’s acceptance of us. Sanctification is our actual holy life.''' The gospel, the heart of the gospel, the essence of the gospel is the order.
 
It’s not just this and this and this and all these things are part of the Christian life. It’s the order, the logic. Which is the primary and which is the result? Which is the cause and which is the effect? That’s everything in Christianity. It utterly changes your view of yourself, the world, God, everything, if you get the cause and the effect mixed up.
 
Justification and sanctification - which is the cause and which is the effect? That’s everything in Christianity. Because you’re justified, the effect is you’re sanctified. Because you are justified through grace, because of what Jesus has done, you’ve been totally accepted. Now you’re living a life without fear, in gratitude to God.
However, that’s not the way it works in the message, not at all. In their day-to-day existence, message churches rely on their sanctification for their justification. They have it reversed... drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.
Christians who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons because they have too much light to rest easily under the constant bulletins they receive from their message environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have.
 
Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other churches in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.
 
They cling desperately to legal, pharisaical righteousness, but envy, jealousy and other branches on the tree of sin grow out of their fundamental insecurity.
 
In message churches, what do you have? You have lives that through willpower have been changed in the sense of, “I don’t cuss anymore. I read message books. I get to church all the time. I dress differently. I don’t hang out with the world anymore. I’m doing all these right things.”
 
That’s not a changed life.
 
In message churches, there’s a tremendous amount of insecurity, of defensive criticism of others, of Phariseeism, of legalism, of condescending, condemning attitudes toward anybody who isn’t in the message: baptism, dress, conduct. They’re down on everybody.
 
Why? There hasn’t been that change on the inside. They’ve utterly reversed the gospel.
 
Instead of sanctification based on their justification, it’s justification based on their sanctification. Don’t you see the difference? What is the motivation behind the second kind? Fear, being frightened, always looking around to make sure, and you’re never sure you’re being good enough. You never know if you repented enough if you think it’s your repentance that makes you saved. You never know that you are submitted enough, surrendered enough, purified …
You never know, so you have to look around all the time, and you cannot handle criticism. In fact, you have to criticize other people so you feel like, “I’m a pretty good person.”
 
Don’t you see that to lose the gospel at all is to lose it entirely? To change it a little bit? '''Any other gospel is no gospel.'''
 
And if the gospel is at stake, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, “''You must not go quietly into the night. You must raise your voice against the dying of the light''.”
'''That's why we have raised our voices against the message. The Gospel is at stake. We can't go away quietly...'''<ref>Adapted from Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).</ref>
 
=More quotes of William Branham=
:''The first thing, there's a glass laying out in the hog pen, chicken yard, whatever it is. You want to use it. The first thing, you pick it up. That's justification. You've got it in your hand. You can't use it yet; it needs to be cleansed. Then you take it in; you wash it, sterilize it, boil it, and takes all the germs and the--out of it. That's what God does through sanctification: takes all the desire of sin out of your heart, cleans you up. And then you are a candidate for the filling of the Holy Spirit. See? Then the word "sanctify" means "to be cleansed and set aside for service." That's the Old Testament: the altar sanctified the vessels. And cleansed and set aside for service is not "in service." It's "set aside for service." And when it's "in service," "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." The Holy Spirit comes in and fills up that vessel till running over, bubbling over, and then you're "in" the service of the Lord.<ref>54-0404M EARNESTLY.CONTENDING.FOR.THE.FAITH LOUISVILLE.KY</ref>
:''The first thing, there's a glass laying out in the hog pen, chicken yard, whatever it is. You want to use it. The first thing, you pick it up. That's justification. You've got it in your hand. You can't use it yet; it needs to be cleansed. Then you take it in; you wash it, sterilize it, boil it, and takes all the germs and the--out of it. That's what God does through sanctification: takes all the desire of sin out of your heart, cleans you up. And then you are a candidate for the filling of the Holy Spirit. See? Then the word "sanctify" means "to be cleansed and set aside for service." That's the Old Testament: the altar sanctified the vessels. And cleansed and set aside for service is not "in service." It's "set aside for service." And when it's "in service," "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled." The Holy Spirit comes in and fills up that vessel till running over, bubbling over, and then you're "in" the service of the Lord.<ref>54-0404M EARNESTLY.CONTENDING.FOR.THE.FAITH LOUISVILLE.KY</ref>


Line 74: Line 122:


{{Bottom of Page}}
{{Bottom of Page}}
[[Category:Doctrines]]
[[Category: Unfinished articles]]