"Entering the Lord’s rest"

A Critical Analysis of the RFI Devotion Guide
Post Reply
Dante
Site Admin
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue May 23, 2017 6:23 pm
Contact:

"Entering the Lord’s rest"

Post by Dante »

We know that not every Christian who experiences distress in the midst of their suffering enters the Lord’s rest. In this regard, Paul reminds us of the example of the children of Israel. In the day of their trial and fear, they would not receive the word of Moses, nor the testimony of Caleb and Joshua, the Lord’s messengers. Instead of becoming poor in spirit and mixing the word with faith, they wanted to return to Egypt. They even called the context of their former slavery, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’. Therefore, the Lord swore in His wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest’.
RFI's true pastoral approach is laid bare here...... if you have any struggle with the path ahead of you, your treatment, or the duplicity of the 'messenger', the Lord's wrath is kindled against you! There is no kindness, understanding, or compassion.... only a judicial statement that your struggle is your own fault!

I am sure that the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-5) is better than that!!

D.
User avatar
Dexter
Posts: 164
Joined: Wed May 03, 2023 10:49 pm
Contact:

Re: "Entering the Lord’s rest"

Post by Dexter »

Hi Dante,

After some years of being out of the RFI archipelago (as I now like to call it), I began to realise that a lot of their in-house doctrine uses the logical fallacy of begging the question, or assuming the conclusion. I think the above quote is a good example.

In the excerpt you quoted, they are indirectly claiming to be the new Moses, Caleb and Joshua—i.e. exclusive messengers to the new, global, spiritual Israel—and they expect the reader to take their word for it. The reality is that they haven't actually proven or demonstrated their assertion. A cursory fruit-test throughout the congregations should reveal this. "But they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise." (2 Corinthians 10:12, New King James Version).

Most of us here are no doubt familiar with the scripture, "Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true." (Acts 17:11, Berean Standard Bible, of course). I recall Vic Hall (VH) once say while preaching, that we were to "examine the Scriptures ... to see that his (VH's) teachings were true". There's a subtle but critical difference. The inference was that if we examined the Scriptures and found any error in VH's teaching, we were clearly not noble-minded like the Bereans and were worthy of the 'left boot of fellowship'.

I grew up in the system and regrettably allowed my mind to grow dull to the incongruities that I saw between the preached message and the reality of life. I suspect that I also developed a few mental deficiencies in order to cope with my own cognitive dissonance. For example, I learned to accept that the less sense something made, the more sense it made... which doesn't make sense. :lol:

I could go on, but I'll save it for another time.
👋 :ugeek:
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 14 guests