<TITLE>05. Par 6-10</TITLE>L-6 Now, let's look what they had back there, what that Church contended for, what they had lost. Now, just thirty-three years after the beginning of the Church...
Now, you know Jude wouldn't be talking about back in the Old Testament under the Levitical laws. See? 'Cause they were... this... He's a Christian. He was talking about when the first Church was set in order, was inaugurated on the day of Pentecost.
And now, we'll notice what kind of a faith that they had. They had a faith in a resurrected living Christ, someone who'd rose from the dead and was living among them, just the same as He was before He ever died. Now, that... See, they wasn't contending for some historical affair, but they were contending for a--a living Christ, a resurrected One Who was in their midst.

L-7 Now, when He rose from the dead, He done the same things after He rose from the dead, through the apostles, that He did before He died, even greater and more of it.
Now, "Yet a little while," He said, "and the world seeth Me no more, yet ye shall see Me (the Church, the believer), for I'll be with you, even in you, to the end of the world." Now, that was what the apostles believed. And they believed that what He was in the flesh, He was also, and more, in the Spirit. And that's what they taught. That's what they believed. And that's what they practiced, and that's what God confirmed.
But during this time, this thirty-three years of lapse, there become many false brethren who'd raised up, and had brought in heresies, and brought people off to theology, and--and different things like that.

L-8 And as Paul, I think of him laying there, when they come and told him, this little Jew with his little hook nose, laying down there in prison, the chains around him and around his ankles and so forth, and said, "Well, some is preaching Christ for gain and some is turning other disciples aside." There it begin to organize and got great organizations and so forth.
He said, here was his credentials, "How..." said, "I have so many marks on my body that was put there. I've been in perils upon the sea. I've been in perils among false brethren." All these different things he showed as marks, his credentials before God, that he'd suffered for the cause that Christ died for.

L-9 God help us to have that type of a credential today. And let's contend for the faith, the true faith that was once delivered to the saints. The saints believed in the death, burial, resurrection. They believed in the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The early Church believed it. You believe it? Then let's contend for it.
Now, they believed in signs and wonders following the believer. Now, they begin to fall away. The... Now, Jude said that men of old was foreordained to do this. Now, God's sovereign. Of course, He--He knows, "He is not willing that any should perish but all might come to repentance." But in order to be God, He has to know, and He does know before the thing ever come to pass, who would be saved and who would not be saved. That's right.

L-10 So there is some people that will not, and God knew it in the beginning they would not. And He even raised up Pharaoh and hardened his heart for that very cause, that He might show His power. And Esau and Jacob, to show the election of God might stand sure... Before either child was--when they were born, 'fore they were born, God said, "I love Jacob and hate Esau." That's right. Before...
See, you're a Christian because God has ordained that you must be a Christian. Now, you can turn it aside. Some... God will set somebody in your place. But your place is setting there. If God calls you, go take it and stay with it.


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