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William Branham and the Atonement: Difference between revisions
→“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
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The real question is - Why didn't William Branham understand this? | The real question is - Why didn't William Branham understand this? | ||
==For God was so filled with wrath against the world== | |||
Ever since I was a kid, I was told that God saw me as a wretched sinner, worthy of death. The reason Jesus had to die was so that God would see him... and not me. God can’t look on us because of our sin. He can only look at us through the blood of his son. | |||
Keith Giles suggested that much of the evangelical church believes John 3:16 different than it actually reads: | |||
“For God was so filled with wrath against the world, that he sent his only begotten son to take the beating that we all deserved. That if anyone would want to escape eternal suffering, and would raise their hand and repeat this prayer after me, they would escape this horrible wrath. For the son was not sent into the world to change our minds about God, but to change God’s mind about us. So now that Jesus has taken the punishment for us, God can now finally love us, and forgive us.” (Keith Giles) | |||
But of course, that is not what John tells us… “For God so loved the world.” The object of God’s love is people, the world, us. | |||
One of the most successful evangelists of the 19th century was D.L. Moody. While revivalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used descriptions of the torments of hell as a basic tool of their trade, hell was seldom mentioned in Moody’s sermons. It was not because he did not believe in hell, but rather, he understood that God wanted to draw people to himself by love and not to attract slaves by fear. Moody had grasped that to manipulate crowds by appeals to fear was out of character with God and did not produce the results that God desired. | |||
Moody stated, “I know of no truth in the whole Bible that ought to come home to us with such power and tenderness as that of the love of God.” (D. L. Moody) | |||
Moody’s approach was love-based evangelism. Love should be our primary motivation in evangelism, and love for the world should compel us to share the good news. | |||
Research by the Barna Group indicates that fear of giving offence or being rejected is one of the primary barriers for many Christians when it comes to talking about their faith. Fear silences them. | |||
Love and fear are opposites. John tells us that perfect love drives out fear. Why? Because love is sacrificing your interest for the good of others. Love is focused on the other person, while fear is self-focused. | |||
What will people think of me? | |||
When we love someone, we are interested in their welfare above our own. When we fear, we are generally driven by a concern of what will happen to us. | |||
The primary evidence that we love God is our love for those around us. As John tells us, “If we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” | |||
Sharing the Gospel with those around us is a sign that we love them and that we love God. Love in our horizontal relationships is the best evidence of love in our vertical relationship. | |||
Our evangelism should be love-based. Love should colour everything we do. As we read in 1 John, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters… In this world, we are like Jesus.” (1 John 3:17, 4:17 - NIV) | |||
=Quotes of William Branham= | =Quotes of William Branham= | ||