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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. --1 Peter 1:3 Christian recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman once wrote a song entitled “Heaven in the Real World,” in which one of the repeated lines is, “Where is the hope? Where is the peace?” Those are great questions because I think those are the questions many people are asking every day. How I praise God that we have the answer! There is hope and there is peace for this world.  But that hope and peace is found only in Jesus Christ. You see, when you and I accepted Christ, we were born again to what the Bible in the verse above calls a “living hope,”…a hope that is not wishful thinking, but a hope that is based on the reality of God Himself evidenced in the power of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. This living hope means we can persevere through trials, rough spots, and even pain. This living hope means we may stumble and fall, but we will not falter completely because we are in Jesus Christ. And this living hope means we have a future that is sure and that we aren’t alone today. The peace God gives us when we accept Jesus is a peace that the world could never know.  It means that we can enjoy serenity of heart no matter what happens to us.  Why?  Well, Jesus said it best in John 16:33, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." Where is the hope? Where is the peace? In Christ! My prayer is that you will experience that hope and peace in your heart today…and everyday.   IN CHRIST, YOU HAVE THE HOPE AND PEACE THAT CAN ENDURE ANY STORM.

Counterfeit Copies

Monday, April 08, 2019

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.”

2 Corinthians 11:2–4

In the final years of his life, after decades of highly praised work in the scientific field, Isaac Newton was appointed Master of the Royal Mint in London. Though the post had largely been symbolic in the past, Newton took the responsibilities of the post seriously, especially with the rise in counterfeiting coins that was undermining people’s confidence in the government and the economy. Newton instituted new guidelines, including placing ridges around the edge of coins to make them hard to copy. He gave people confidence that the money in circulation was good.

Just as many people have made fake copies of money over the years, Satan offers many false counterfeits of Christ to deceive people. He does not care what people believe or how sincerely they believe it as long as they are believing a lie. In fact, the more sincerely people believe something that is false, the better the devil likes it. Since the Garden of Eden, his main tactic has been to undermine people’s faith and confidence in what God has spoken.

Just as with counterfeit money, the best tool to detect false doctrine is a close familiarity with the truth. The more we know about what is real, the easier it is for us to detect what is false. It should not be any surprise to us when we encounter false doctrine.

Today's Growth Principle: 

The only sure judge of authenticity is not our feelings but the unfailing Word of God.