Various

This lecture was delivered on July 14, 2022 at the beginning of a series of lessons on some Bible basics for Christians. In this lesson, we look at three ideas: How a Christian Should Dress All the Time (put on Christ), How a Christian Should Dress at Church, and How a Christian Should Dress in the World (modesty).

When Christians start talking about politics, especially through social media, we find ourselves falling into some traps that Satan uses to bring us down. In this class we look at some of these problems and what we need to watch for in what we say.

In this class, we look at how to think about our traditions, whether cultural or religious (or both) and try to understand some basic principles in how to evaluate them.

There are many ideas about the Holy Spirit and His work that are widely believed but not taught in the scriptures. We want to look at some of the most common of these ideas, examine the scriptures that are used to support them, and see why those verses are taken out of context. We will also look at other passages that teach things that are incompatible with these false ideas about the Holy Spirit.

In the last class, we started talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. Today, we want to finish this study, looking His role in our sanctification and the way He is working with Christians today.

We want to take a look at some of the many scriptures that teach us about the Holy Spirit. There is a lot of misunderstanding regarding who He is and what He does. We want to begin by looking at just a small part of what the Bible says about Him.

Today, we continue our look at the history of some departures from the way of Christ and attempts to return to His way. We are looking at much more modern history that more directly affects some of us and our thinking today. We will pay special attention to what has caused division among those who on some level agree about the need to follow Christ rather than men.

We are looking at history of “the church” in the sense of those who claim to be following Christ but there are many departures from the way of Christ as well as some attempts to get back to His way. This history shapes the thinking of the world regarding the church and also affects our thinking, so it is useful to know.

There are a number of techniques people use to keep from repenting from their sins. We want to look at some of those today and see how easy it is to excuse our behaviour and keep on sinning against our holy God.

The Bible teaches us that we should not give a cause for offense to anyone. But what does that mean? How does a Christian stand for truth and not give a cause for offense? Let’s talk about it together.

What are demons? How do they affect people? Can we still be troubled by demons today? We want to examine these questions.

We looked last time at the “Day of the Lord” in the book of Joel and saw that very similar language can be used to describe various judgments of God. Today, we look at a specific description of judgment in Matthew 24 and see which judgment it is. We will examine a couple of different ideas about it.

The book of Joel is quite short but uses the phrase “day of the Lord” repeatedly throughout the prophecy. What is meant by this phrase that is used here but also around 30 times throughout the Old and New Testaments? We hope to get a better idea of that in this class.

Fasting is something that we find done fairly frequently in some circles of the denominational world. Most brethren I know don’t spend a lot of time discussing fasting in much detail. In this class we hope to shed some light on the purpose of fasting as seen in the Bible and see that it is still useful for God’s people today.

So-called “main-line churches of Christ” band together as organisations of churches through sponsoring churches or separate organisations that the churches operate or support. In this class we look at how to view these things and apply some principles we have seen about necessary conclusions and the difference between what Christ expects from a local church and an individual Christian.

Sometimes the argument is made that since the church is the people, anything Christ wants the people to do, the church can do. We want to examine the different uses of the word “church” in the Bible and then focus on a particular usage (the local church) in seeing that it is not just the sum of the people that are its members.

In this class, we examine some arguments that are made to justify fellowship meals–common meals eaten as a church.

In this class, we look at how to properly use necessary conclusions (also known as necessary inference) and see the difference between this and how we sometimes draw conclusions that are not necessary and even some that are impossible to be true. We spend most of the time applying this to the question of who must do the baptising for someone to be saved.