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ANOTHER JESUS

 

 

The apostle Paul spoke about another spirit in 2 Corinthians 11. He also warned of another gospel in which there is no salvation, and which those led by another spirit would believe and promote. Significantly, Paul also spoke about another jesus in the same passage (see 2 Cor. 11:4). In a world where religions abound with varied and conflicting doctrines about who God is and how He saves, as well as who Jesus is and the numerous versions of His work of salvation, we learn from the apostle Paul that amongst all the false gods and false messiahs one will hear of in one's lifetime that go by all sorts of strange names, there will be some which will be called by the very name of the true God's only begotten Son: Jesus. This false god will not go by the name of Buddha or the like, but will bear the name ‘Jesus' and, just to add to the confusion, will be attributed with some of the characteristics of the real Jesus. Yet this Jesus, in whom millions have placed their faith, is not the Jesus of the Bible to Whom God gives testimony and Whom His glorious Gospel reveals. This false god is not referred to merely as another god, but another jesus. Of all the false gods in this world, the ones which go by the name ‘Jesus' are the most deceptive. And the sad fact is, there are many millions of professing christians, both on earth and in hell, to prove it. The reason such a vast number are so deceived is the fact that this false god goes by the name ‘Jesus' and has many familiar truths about the real Jesus attributed to him. He is the ultimate wolf in sheep's clothing. These truths are mixed with lies which have, through tradition and the fact that many respected religious leaders have put their names to such erroneous doctrines, become accepted as the truth. False doctrinal descriptions of Jesus have become the norm, and so the counterfeits are seen as the genuine article and the genuine is viewed as fake. For most people, it would appear that as long as you have the name right, then regardless of what you believe about the man behind the name, you have the right God and all is well with your soul. Are these people right? Does it really not matter what a person believes about Jesus, whether they believe the truth about Him or not? Is it enough to believe mostly truth about Jesus whilst holding to some lies as well? And is the person who believes lies about Jesus just as saved as the person who believes the truth about Him? 

 

Everyone who names the name of ‘Jesus' believes in their heart of hearts that they are calling upon the true Jesus, for no one would ever knowingly believe in a Jesus unless they weren't totally convinced they had the real Jesus. But how can everyone who names the name of Jesus have the same Jesus, what's more the true and only Jesus, when the doctrines they teach and believe about him which detail what their Jesus is like and what he did, are contradictory and in many cases diametrically opposed? Some people's Jesus did one thing whilst the Jesus of others didn't do it at all! How can everyone have the same Jesus, let alone the true one, when what one individual believes about his Jesus conflicts with what another person believes about his Jesus? What exactly is going on here? Does doctrine not matter any more? Does what a person believe not matter any more? Are we to conclude that what a person believes about Jesus is unimportant or even irrelevant, that it has no bearing on the issue of salvation, so long as they have the name right? Is a person saved regardless of what they believe one must believe in order to show they are among the saved of God? Is believing any gospel the same as savingly believing God's only Gospel? Is believing in another Jesus the same as believing in God's Jesus? Must the truth, and the consequences of not believing it, take a back seat as long as a man has an opinion of what it is? Is a man's answer, or his opinion of what the answer may be, more important than the answer itself? Should the truth ever take second place to what a man believes it to be? Well, it appears that for many people, when it comes to believing who Jesus is and what He has done, it does! What the truth is about Who Jesus is and what He has actually done has become secondary, it has taken a back seat to what a man's opinion, view or traditional belief about Him is. There is no longer ONE Jesus to believe in for salvation, because according to many so-called Christian leaders and those gullible enough to believe what they say, people can have varying and differing beliefs about Who Jesus is and what He has done and still ALL be worshipping, not only the same Jesus, but the true Jesus!! The Buddhist would laugh at you if you claimed to be a true follower of Buddha, but believed things about him which conflicted with what their ‘holy' writings say about him. So, too, the Mormon and the Seventh-Day Adventist, the Christadelphian and the ‘Jehovah's Witness', would all scoff at those who believe differently to what their particular faiths teach and how they define Jesus, and yet claimed to be of their faith, a follower of their particular jesus. How can you be a Mormon if you are not following Mormon doctrine? How can you be following the Mormon jesus if you do not believe Mormon doctrine about him? How can your doctrine be describing the Mormon jesus if it is not Mormon doctrine!?! And so we must ask the question, ‘How can anyone be following the true Christ if it is not the true Christ's doctrine they are believing?' How can anyone be believing in the true Jesus when what they are believing describes another jesus? How can one person be described by the characteristics of another?' How can a person be headed towards their intended destination if they are not following the right directions? IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT DIRECTIONS, YOU WILL ALWAYS END UP ANYWHERE BUT YOUR INTENDED DESTINATION. Your intention to drive to Sydney is not enough to get you there. You must have the right directions and then follow those particular directions if you are serious about seeing your intentions realised. Shouldn't a person who claims to be a follower of a particular god/God be recognised, identified, by the fact that they believe the ‘TRUTH' concerning the god/God in question and not lies? Shouldn't they believe the very things that identify their god/God? After all, don't we judge a person to be a Mormon based on their belief of Mormon doctrine and not simply because they are family oriented? Since when has anyone ever judged a person to be a Mormon who believes in the jesus of the ‘Jehovah's Witnesses'? If a person shows no faith in Mormon doctrine, by either not believing it or by believing it incorrectly, how can they possibly by recognised as a Mormon? ON WHAT BASIS WOULD SUCH A JUDGEMENT BE MADE? Isn't a person recognised as a Mormon, a Seventh-Day Adventist or a Roman Catholic, etc., by what they believes? Of course they are. So what makes anyone think they can rightly be described as a Christian—a disciple of Jesus Christ, an abider in HIS doctrine—when they do not believe the teachings about Him or believe things which are not true about Him? Isn't a person recognised as being correct only if they have the right answer and not a wrong one? How silly would it be for anyone to judge a person's answer to a mathematical equation as correct when it differs, even to the slightest degree, with what the right answer is! So why do so many people who consider themselves to be Christians pay scant regard to the true doctrines of Jesus Christ, and think that one can just about believe anything about Him and be saved? How can such people consider themselves and others as Christians, believers in the true Jesus, regardless of the fact that their beliefs portray a jesus who is in contrast with the Scriptures? And how can such people be automatically accepted as Christians simply because they name the name of Jesus? 

 

The apostle Paul's language was clear when he solemnly warned the Corinthian believers about another jesus. Just as he had warned them of another spirit—able to be distinguished by the fact this spirit did not guide people to the truth—and just as Paul had sounded a clear warning concerning another gospel—able to be distinguished by the differences in content with the one the Lord gave him and which he in turn preached to others—Paul also warned of another jesus who was not the Jesus depicted by the particular doctrines of the Gospel of God. What better way to fool those who desire to be Christians than by presenting them with a false god but naming him ‘Jesus' and passing off false doctrine as true? In light of these warnings, one cannot continue to rest comfortably in the belief that one has the true Jesus simply because one has His name correct and acknowledges some basic doctrines about Him, but one must know Him as He is revealed in the Gospel of God. Only GOD'S Jesus is the real Jesus, and any who conflict with God's Jesus is another jesus whom God does not know and who cannot save. Just as none can call on God who do not know God, so too, none can call on or believe in Jesus if they do not know Him, if He has not been revealed to them, and therefore none can believe on Him if they have not heard of Him. "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14). How can a person believing in another jesus be calling on the true Jesus when He is not the one they are believing in? How can I claim to believe in some obscure god of a small, little known, African tribe if I know nothing about him, or if what I do know is wrong? My intention to believe in him may be present, but if what I believe is not a right description of this god then I cannot in reality be believing in him. TRUE DOCTRINE IS GOD'S ROAD MAP TO CHRIST. Doctrine always paints a picture. Doctrine is the verbal or written version of the brush strokes and colors which combine to paint a particular picture. False doctrine can never portray an accurate image of its intended subject. No matter how brilliant an artist's painting of a person may be, it will never be an accurate portrayal of the person if the facial features of the person intended to be portrayed are not accurately presented. Wrong doctrine is misleading doctrine and will always portray a god other than the true God. To hear of the true God is not merely to hear His name but to hear the specific doctrines, or teachings, which accurately describe Who God is and what God is like. God has said: "...I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like Me" (Isa. 46:9), so to believe in anything but the truth about Him is to believe in another god and not the true God. God speaks of those who hold to false doctrines, and as a consequence worship other gods, as follows: "...they have no knowledge...and pray unto a god that cannot save" (Isa. 45:20). To pray unto the true God you must have knowledge of the true God as He has revealed Himself. Those who do not have the knowledge of the truth about God do indeed pray to a god, but it is not a god that can save. To truly believe in God, one must believe in every doctrine which sets Him apart from EVERY false god. For your faith to be distinguished as true saving faith, the only faith which is God-given, you must believe in the true God, AND turn from every false god and the fallacious concept that one is just as saved believing them as one is believing the true God. Yet at the same time, to know the true God is not about some intellectual challenge which only educated people are qualified to meet, for knowing God is all about God revealing Himself to whomsoever He wills (Matt. 11:27). A man is saved by revelation and not education. Of course a man must be taught of God, he must be taught God's Gospel, he must be preached God's Gospel, but no amount of teaching and preaching is going to get anyone saved if God does not open the eyes, if He does not grant the only faith which will recognise and savingly believe the truth about Him and reject the false. A man is saved by a work of God upon him. All those who come to Jesus do so because they are taught of the Father, and the Father would never teach another jesus to His children. Jesus said: "No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him...and they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me" (Jn. 6:44,45). According to the Lord Jesus, no man can come to Him, the true Jesus, unless God the Father draws him. Now it stands to reason that if a man believes in lies about Jesus, or in a mixture of truth and lies to do with His Person and saving Work, such a person could not have been drawn by the Father, they could not possibly have learned such teachings from the Father, and so the jesus they have come to could in no way be God's only Jesus. Only those men whom the Father has taught come to the true Jesus. Only those whom the Father has taught will always recognize, and therefore never accept, another jesus. Obviously then, all those who believe in lies about Jesus Christ have NOT been taught of the Father, they are not amongst those who have learned of Him, and therefore have yet to come to Christ. They have not been given His faith to believe with, hence their failure in discerning and coming to the TRUE Jesus, the one the Father teaches all HIS children about. 

 

Those who believe in false gods all claim to believe in the true and only God, but what they believe about their gods reveals instantly that none of their gods is THE God of the Bible, because their beliefs contradict with what the Scriptures teach, with what the Father teaches His children and the truth that the Holy Spirit guides them all to, thereby revealing their faith, far from being God-given, as that which is natural to man. How can one know the true Jesus by believing in a mixture of true doctrines and false concerning Him? In other words how can one have, or abide in the true Christ, if all one has is a false gospel? False gospels are quite deceiving but are often not made up simply of lies. They are far more insidious when they are a subtle combination of lies and truths. Truth when mixed with lies lends credibility to the lies but profits no man because the lies always cancel out the truth. For example, believing 2 +2 = 4½ will always brand you as a believer in error because even though your answer is comprised of the truth it is the extra bit—that which is foreign to the truth, the true answer—that reveals your answer as wrong. As poison mixed in with good food goes unnoticed its deadly effect is in no way diminished by the good food it is mixed in with, or by the ignorance of those who partake of it. Just as ignorance offers no protection in such cases but is a contributing factor to one's indulging in the poison-laced meal, ignorance of the true Jesus in no way lessens the consequences of believing a false jesus. Lies when mixed with truth are seldom seen for what they are but this in no way reduces or alleviates the consequences of believing them. Like poison, lies are often colorless and tasteless when mixed in with the truth and yet deadly to all who partake of them. How can one be said to follow the right recipe for a specific meal if one has been given the wrong recipe or if one adds a few ingredients of their own? In his warning about another jesus, the apostle Paul was saying that there is a jesus out there who, though going by the name of the true Jesus and having perhaps several characteristics of the true Jesus, is anyone but the true Jesus. A FALSE JESUS IS RECOGNIZED BY ANY FALSE TEACHING ABOUT THE TRUE JESUS. He is a deadly counterfeit, though by all appearances looks like the very Savior of the world. Put simply, if it is not the true Jesus then it is another jesus, and seeing that only the true Jesus saves, any other jesus must be a false savior. And the way to recognise these false jesuses is by the doctrines which describe them and simultaneously identify them as anyone but the true Savior.

 

The Scripture which informs us that there is no other name under heaven by which a man is saved, the name of Jesus, is telling us much more than many might think. There is no use nor sense, nor has anyone the right to believe that they have the true Jesus simply based on the fact that one has His name right, or says they believe in the Jesus of the Bible. Everyone believes they believe in the Jesus of the Bible, but the proof of the pudding is seen in what they believe about Him. When Luke wrote in Acts 4 that "...there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12), he was saying, ‘There is no other person other than the Person Jesus Christ by which a man is saved. There is no faith in any other person other than the Person Jesus Christ, or in anything which He has not done to save His people, by which a man is saved.' In other words, its not just the name we must have right but we must know the person behind the name, the person to which the name fits. Just because you know the name, or just because your intention is to believe in the Jesus of the Bible, does not automatically mean you know the man behind the name. Everyone believes they believe in the Jesus of the Bible but just because the true Jesus is taught in the pages of God's Word, this can in no way be used as evidence that the jesus you believe in is automatically that Jesus found in the Scriptures. How could it be if you have been taught a wrong interpretation of those Scriptures? It is what you believe about Jesus that will show whether you have the real Jesus or another jesus. What a person believes about his god/God identifies the god/God he believes in. If you believe what the Mormons say about Jesus then you have the Mormon jesus. If you believe what the Arminians say about Jesus then your jesus is the false jesus of Arminianism and not the Jesus of the Bible. Either way you cannot be a Christian, for how can you be a follower of Christ and yet believe in false doctrine about Him and which only leads to further false doctrine? For it is of a surety that if you believe in false doctrines about Jesus you will invariably believe false doctrines about the Father and the Holy Spirit as well as the glorious plan of salvation. How can you be following the true Jesus when the doctrines you believe have not led you to Him? For example, the ‘Jehovah's Witnesses' have His name right, they claim to believe in the Jesus of the Bible, but in saying that Jesus is not God it becomes patently obvious that their jesus is indeed another jesus. Only if you believe WHAT GOD SAYS about Jesus is your faith in the true Jesus!! And GOD'S only Jesus is revealed in GOD'S only Gospel. Simply because you have boarded a bus which looks like the one you've been told to take is no guarantee that it is headed to your intended destination. You need to distinguish it from other buses by taking notice of the destination displayed on the front of the bus. It is a sad fact that many people pay more attention to the destination displayed on the front of an approaching bus than what they believe about Jesus and comparing it with what God has displayed in His Holy Word. 

 

If one believes in false doctrine, or a mixture of false doctrine and true about God, then according to the Word of God one has a false god (see Gal. 5:9). For God's Gospel cannot contain any false doctrine about His Son. So then, if God's Gospel cannot contain any error about His Son God's people cannot believe error about His Son for the faith they have all been given is given by God so that they will all believe God's testimony about Who His Son is and what His Son has done. If God's Gospel does not contain error; if a true description of Jesus Christ cannot contain error, then what makes anyone think that believing in error about Him can save? When you see the word error read FALSE. An erroneous gospel is a false gospel. Erroneous doctrines about Jesus will always reveal a false jesus and those who believe them as false believers. There is no other way to identify a false god than by the false doctrines of the false gospel that promotes him. What separates the true God from all false gods is doctrine. Believing in the true God is not primarily about emotion or sincerity or even genuineness of heart but believing in the only doctrine that reveals Him. Sincerity and genuineness of heart and all the emotion, the passion that accompanies such things, will do a man no good at all if it is not accompanied by the love of the truth (see 2 Thess. 2:10). The Scriptures say, "Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve Him in sincerity AND in truth..." (Josh. 24:14); and, "...God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit AND belief of the TRUTH" (2 Thess. 2:13), not denial of the truth, not ignorance of the truth or rejection of the truth, but through BELIEF of the truth!! It is not through sincerity alone, it is not through sanctification of the Spirit alone, but also, and of necessity, through belief of the truth. Importantly, this belief of the truth does not come years or even days after one is saved, but upon one's salvation. Just as none are sanctified without the Holy Spirit, so too, none are saved without the belief of the truth. How can one be in a saved state without the truth, without knowing and believing the truth about God and His Son, when the Scriptures teach that Christ will not save but rather take "...vengeance on them that know not God, and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thess. 1:8). This single verse alone shows conclusively that no one can be a Christian without knowledge of, and belief in, the glorious Gospel (truth) of Jesus Christ, otherwise we would have the absurd situation of Christ taking vengeance on Christians who do not know, and therefore cannot obey, the Gospel!

 

Doctrine does not merely draw the line, IT IS the line between the true and the false. Doctrine identifies, doctrine defines and doctrine distinguishes between the true God and all false gods. God would never honor or answer to a man's faith which believes lies about Him, for lies about God are the nucleus of every false gospel. And of a surety God would never save anyone who believed for one moment that one can be saved by believing in a false gospel—believing in a salvation plan that is not God's—instead of, or as well as, the true Gospel. This would amount to God saving someone who does not believe in Him, in what HE has said, but in a lying god that cannot save! Can anyone recall even one of God's people in the Bible believing, preaching or promoting a false gospel about a false jesus? So what makes anyone think that people today are saved even though they believe and promote a false jesus? And since when did ignorance of the truth, God's truth no less, suddenly become a pass key to Heaven? And just when did intention to believe God's truth override, or be just as good as, actually believing it? Ignorance of God—the truth about God and how He saves—is what a saved man is saved from, it is what he is brought out of, for how can one be saved if one maintains a belief in false doctrines which present not the true Jesus, but another jesus (see 2 Cor. 4:3-6). How can a man who believes in lies about Jesus be one to whom the true Jesus has revealed Himself? Doesn't it stand to reason that if the true Jesus has revealed Himself to you, and given you His faith to believe with, you will believe the truth about Him and not lies? What would be the reason for Jesus the Lord revealing Himself to a person if they remain believers in a false jesus? How can a person who believes false doctrines about the true Jesus claim to have been brought out of doctrinal darkness and into the glorious light of the Gospel of Christ? How can a person be saved when they believe that they or others were saved BEFORE coming to the truth? And how can one be said to be in the truth when one has yet to repent of the false? To be in the truth is to believe the truth about God and how He saves, as revealed in His Gospel. To believe the truth is to only believe the truth AND to reject the counterfeit. The only way one can abide in the doctrine of Christ is to BELIEVE the doctrine of Christ. To be in one house is to not be in ANY OTHER!!! How can one believe in the truth if one also holds to lies concerning things about which believing the truth is ESSENTIAL? How can one be in the truth, in a saved state, while believing ANY error about God and how He saves, which includes what Jesus has done and for whom He has done it? By no means is it enough to have intended to believe the truth, one must actually BELIEVE the truth to show that one is saved. The prime question to be asked concerning all this is, ‘Where do the Scriptures say a man is saved who has not been brought to the truth?' You cannot look in one direction if you have not turned your back on the opposite direction. The fact of the matter is a man remains lost in darkness, the domain of every person who does not have the love of the truth, who does not believe in the true Jesus of the true Gospel. No Scripture exists that will confirm the salvation of any who are in darkness, who do not know, and whose faith is not in, the true Jesus. It is only those who have been brought out of darkness and into the glorious light of the Gospel of Christ and who have the love of the truth contained therein, who are saved and no other.

 

Is there salvation by following any spirit other than the Holy Spirit of God? Of course not for only the Holy Spirit of God is said by Scripture to be the Spirit of truth (see Jn. 14:17;15:26; 16:13). Is there salvation in believing any gospel other than the Gospel of God? How could there be when it is only the Gospel of God which man is commanded to believe in order to be saved (see Mk. 16:15,16). And so, could there be salvation in believing any other jesus as well as, or other than, the true Jesus? OF COURSE NOT!! Is a man's continued belief in lies about the Savior the evidence such a man is in a saved state? Is the fact that a man has faithfully believed such lies for over 20 years, proof that he has the true Jesus and stands a saved man? How could it be, when believing lies, untruths, about the Savior and consequently salvation, is precisely that which reveals a man to be in a lost state, whether he has believed it for one year or a hundred and one years, and is what an elect man is saved out of! What kind of empty evidence is this longevity of belief upon which people are assuring themselves they are saved and have the right God? Scripture says, "...preach THE GOSPEL to every creature. He that BELIEVETH and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mk. 16:15,16). Notice here that the apostles are commanded to preach THE Gospel and only those that believe THE Gospel are saved, revealing that there is only one Gospel that is "...the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth..." (Rom. 1:16), and not several gospels. Those who do not believe the Gospel Jesus was speaking about will be damned! Those who do not believe in the Jesus revealed in that Gospel will be damned! There is clearly and simply no room here in the words of Jesus found in Mark 16 to support or justify a belief in anything but His Gospel as that which saves a man. On the contrary, any belief in anything but His Gospel will damn a man forever. When one does not believe the truth, as it is revealed by God to His people, how can one be said to be in a saved state? Just as salvation is a work of God, so too, a man's believing the truth is also a work of God. Believing the truth is not something that is left to each person to work out and as long as people believe a truth it will be sufficient to save them. Believing the truth is not something that is left up to man but is a gift given by the Living God. Salvation is a work of God. He does not save some by the instrumentality of truth and others by the instrumentality of lies. All God's people are saved through the instrumentality of truth for none can be in a saved state without it. Throughout the Scriptures one can see that believing the truth is an integral part of being saved. How can any be part of that people of God if they have not had His truth revealed to them? One needs to believe the Gospel, which includes THE TRUTH ABOUT JESUS, to reveal a saved state. When the jailer in Acts 16 asked "...what must I do to be saved?" the response he heard was "...BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved..." (Acts 16:30,31). Believe on THE Lord Jesus Christ and not on any jesus. Believe nothing short of the truth about Jesus and not in lies. Believe only in the only Jesus God gives testimony to for no other can save. The only way that jailer, or anyone for that matter, could believe in THE Lord Jesus Christ was to hear THE Gospel. God's elect are not only told to believe in the true Jesus they are taught who that Jesus is and what He has done. All those who fail to believe the Gospel, HIS Gospel, shall perish. They are not elect, they are not of His sheep and so do not believe in His Gospel (Jn. 10:26). So in light of this can there be salvation in believing lies—erroneous doctrines—doctrines which do not emanate from God about the true Jesus? Can there be salvation in believing anything less than, anything which falls short of, or anything apart from or in addition to, what God calls His Gospel? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Otherwise we would have the ridiculous situation where not only would believing the truth about Jesus be the evidence of a saved state but believing lies about Him would also be the evidence of a saved state! BELIEVING WHAT GOD HAS SAID AND BELIEVING WHAT GOD HAS NOT SAID WOULD AMOUNT TO THE SAME THING!! What blasphemy! There would be no difference between right and wrong, true and false. No difference between the true God and every false god. No difference between what God says the truth is and what a man believes it to be. Truth would simply not matter, it would become that which man believed it to be, a purely subjective thing. In fact, the only thing which would matter would be a man's sincerity in believing whatever he chose to believe in, whatever he believed the truth to be. Imagine taking this line of thought into the world of mathematics, for instance. Whether one had the right answer to an equation or not would pale into insignificance so long as a person just had an answer. Whether the answer was wrong or not would be inconsequential, and mean nothing. Merely the fact that a man had an answer would deem him correct!! Parents, how would you like to send your child to a school that based its judgement on its students at exam time on such nonsense? How would you like it if your child was taught that believing right or wrong did not matter as long as the child believed something, as long as he had an opinion no matter what that opinion was based on or how it was reached? The truth of God about Jesus is not some free-for-all, it is not up to man to decide what it is but simply to believe what God has declared it to be. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that though a person believes in wrong doctrine—the traditions of men rather than the Word of God alone—about the true Jesus, a man is nonetheless saved purely and simply because he has the name right, or he has enough of the truth right but still believes in some lies about Him, or that he just simply has a faith. How silly to judge a man right because of his loyalty to a set of doctrines if those doctrines are not right! How absurd would it be for a man to be considered correct if his 6-digit answer to a mathematical problem is correct but for one digit! Just because the man has 5 numbers right but only one wrong is not enough to deem his answer correct, and it never will be. No matter how close a man may be to the true answer so long as he does not have the true answer he will always be WRONG!! And how irresponsible would it be for anyone who knows what the right answer is to tell the man who has a wrong answer that he is right? And how for that matter can it be proper to judge a man ‘right enough' when it comes to what the truth is? What on earth does right enough mean when it comes to believing the truth!?! Doesn't right enough effectively cancel out what it means to be right? And significantly, if there exists a right enough then there must also be a wrong enough! Try defining what right enough and what wrong enough are and then separating the two. How could you ever distinguish between right enough and wrong enough? What one person deems is right enough may just as easily be what another person deems as wrong enough! How wrong could a person be and still be considered right enough, and how right would a person be to be considered wrong enough? One can see the obvious dilemma that such a line of reasoning brings. Imagine saying that a woman was pregnant enough or not pregnant enough!! Both statements are wrong. Every woman on this earth at this very moment is either pregnant or not pregnant. The truth is either this or that, it cannot be both and it cannot be a mixture of both. Black is black and white is white, white is not black and black is not white and mixing the two will only leave you with an ugly grey hybrid!! How ludicrous would it be for anyone to accept a man's answer as correct because he has enough of it right, or if he is close enough to the correct answer!! Do you think God would have been pleased with the apostle Paul when, after having revealed the true Gospel to him, the apostle proceeded to preach it inaccurately? â€˜That's O.K. Paul, even though the gospel you are preaching is not the one I revealed to you, it's close enough.' How crazy is that!! So in light of this, how can anyone believe that believing a gospel that is close enough to God's only Gospel, or right enough, is O.K. with God? Can you imagine God saying to a person who believes in a false gospel, â€˜Well, the gospel you believe is not MY Gospel, the jesus you have placed your faith in is not MY Jesus, but what you believe is close enough to the truth, enter thou into the joy of the Lord'? CLOSE ENOUGH IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH! If God's Word commands that we believe THE Gospel, HIS Gospel, then THAT is what we must believe. Anything short of that is failure to fulfil the command. Just as all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, so too, any who believe in a gospel or in a jesus that falls short of the True, falls short of salvation. To believe in the name of Jesus is to correctly believe in Who He is and What He has done. To not rightly and savingly believe in His name is to not believe the truth about Him and to be condemned already (see Jn. 3:18).

 

 

 

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