Scripture Advocate Summary Pages

Encouraging Life Seminar Chapters by Todd Elder.

Risk of Destruction

Reaching for Higher Ground

A few basic truths will answer a thousand other questions regarding life, morality, forgiveness, eternity, and honor while falsehood will produce a set of philosophies, beliefs, and worldviews on a physical base lacking any depth. Truth is a pre-requisite for purity and righteousness while falsehood wastes our resources, relationships, and respect. The truth of the Kingdom of Heaven will bring salvation, wisdom, hope, blessing, and miracles while lies will destroy our faith, promote foolishness, and move us in the wrong direction. Truth will reveal how corrupt, sinful, wicked, and post-truth the world really is and expose what we genuinely treasure for this life and the next as well as what we are willing to work for. There are many battlefields, but sharing how to discern truth and falsehood will shield believers from harm and restore justice to their lives.

Role of Defending Life

When life is attacked either physically or spiritually, it must be defended from the enemy that would destroy, corrupt, or enslave. Within the war, facts and evidence will reveal the truth and the resulting benefits to life while the enemy will hide how falsehood harms life through deception, conspiracy, consensus, suppression of truth, and other dishonorable tactics and weapons that appeal to pride and the lusts of the flesh. The training is not merely learning how to recognize and fight the endless individual enemies and problems; it is becoming part of the long-term resistance to false mainstream ideas and concepts that are a core part of the enemies tactics. Wearing the armor of light is not just an academic exercise, but instead requires a high standard of living out what each piece of armor represents, knowing that your example will be hated by those who love, favor, and enjoy falsehood.

Relationship With the King

We must humble ourselves and submit to Elohim's authority. The Bible, as the word of Elohim, is the accurate and authoritative description of both the physical and spiritual aspects of life and we must greatly know and understand it so we can act rightly and not be deceived by the enemy through inaccurate doctrine, twisting of Scripture, or false prophets. There is nothing more powerful than an active relationship with the Eternal for it is He who is Creator, Lawgiver, and Redeemer and it is He who is worthy of our worship while the enemy is a pride driven fraud who promotes idolatry and fear to steal and take what does not belong to him. Perhaps the most important and foundational truth is that of salvation; the availability of forgiveness of sin and the opportunity to be a child of Elohim in the Kingdom of Heaven throughout eternity which can motivate us to withstand anything the enemy can throw at us from this world.

Reality of the Kingdom of Heaven

We learn from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that what is true brings goodness, benefit, love, and closeness to Elohim while false brings separation, cursing, darkness, and destruction. The opening concepts of Genesis are foundational to the relationship of the physical to the spiritual and gives meaning to both life and death - so it is little wonder that the enemy would attack this topic with great deceptions and unfair tactics in both theology and science. Our physical health depends heavily on our environment, food, and activity which were designed for our benefit; therefore, it should not surprise us that artificially made environments, food, and laziness will lead to an unhealthy life. It should not surprise us that greed and the desire for power will be careless about destroying the natural and created order of things. Understanding how the spiritual impacts the physical is one of the most profound and far reaching concepts within the Kingdom of Heaven allowing for genuine blessing and cursing as well as miracles; therefore, false concepts of spirituality and the absolute denial of it's existence are major battle tactics of the enemy. While truth does not give you eternal life, it will lead you to the Savior by exposing sin and righteousness or discerning good and evil while falsehood will lead you away from His protection towards death, disease, sin, misery, and fear.

Responsibility In the Covenant

When man kind was created, he started in purity and was told there is a path to life and a path to death; once transgressed, he lost that purity and getting back to life would be impossible on his own. Man kind had it perfect until the fall; after that, he knew that no matter what was true, honorable, and righteous he could choose to do something different and go the way of pride, selfishness, and evil. The Eternal has offered a series of covenants to restore relationship with man kind and offer new life, but the person must choose to leave the false, sinful, and abominable ways of the secular world and move towards obedience in His kingdom of truth, mercy, and forgiveness. Both during this life and after, we will be given judgement including blessing and cursing now and eternal life or death; therefore, discerning and deciding on truth and righteousness is in our own best interest rather than acting blind, using fuzzy vision, or guessing at these realities. Our trust in His kingdom, commandments, and effects of the spiritual will not only protect us with peace, hope, joy and love but will shield us from the negative effects and influences from a world full of ulterior motives, slavery, greed, and the lusts of the flesh.

Righteousness in the Savior

If you ignore the spiritual aspects of life and the fallen nature of man kind, then you will not see the need for a Savior and all the work, effort, and struggles of your life will be wasted and come to nothing. Ultimately, the only way to defeat death and return to purity and eternal life is through humbling oneself, admitting one's sin, and accepting the substitutionary sacrifice and atonement offered through the Messiah. From the beginning, the accounts of Scripture picture and foreshadow the eventual return of man kind unto a close and loving relationship with the Eternal as it was meant to be and free from the evil of this current age. The logic and philosophies of this world, and any sense of morality or right and wrong they can produce, are far inferior and inadequate in their abilities to protect life compared to the righteousness, justice, and mercy of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Resisting Evil in the World

Discerning truth from fiction and right from wrong are necessary tools when the enemy will mask and misrepresent things to lead one astray, bring hate, destruction, death, and cause any abomination possible. The Deceiver is more than our enemy, he is the leader of the demonic rebellion and his schemes to desensitize us to evil and the value of life work through darkness, mysticism, and falsehood. Man Made religious traditions, that often masquerade as commandments, place a person under the authority and the potential cult-like leadership of the one's making the traditions and essentially state that the Eternal's ways are not accurate or good enough with the end result of people being led astray and often a water-downed, weak, or insufficient version of the Messiah as Savior. Truth, humility, and understanding one's genuine place in life are the ways to resist the temptations, weaknesses, and fantasies caused by the flesh and pride and offered by the secular world. The words and wisdom of the Kingdom of Heaven bring peace to the soul while the world seeks the pleasures and happiness of the body even to their own harm.

Remembering My Testimony

After being suicidal from growing up in a secular and fiction loving society giving little or no meaning to life, I began seeking meaning to life which has led me to explore reality, understand truth, and ultimately find the Kingdom of Heaven. Logic, and all of the philosophical ideas about life, pleasure, morality, and beauty, is based on incomplete / physical concepts and can only produce a lifestyle whereas faith builds upon a more complete / spiritual understanding and brings true life. Sharing the proper answers to the great questions of life, including the concepts of righteousness, truth, and purity, can help people understand the value of life, have peace, and grow in His kingdom as well as fight the wickedness found in a post-truth world.

Ready for Action

Watching the effects of personal choices makes it obvious that one of the most important battles in life is to make a conscious effort to fight for and to defend righteousness, truth, and purity while living in a world full of sin, falsehood, and evil which is defended by enemies and pseudo-enemies. It is not until one pursues purity that one recognizes the amount of corruption in the world and how much the world, and even believers, do not want to hear or are scared of truth but would prefer a fictional world. When we oppose evil by standing for truth, honesty, and correction, persecution can follow in many possible forms including the loss of friends, slander, restrictions, oppression, and, at the extreme, death. It can be a test of courage and endurance, but to surrender and even ignore falsehood and evil is not an option, because accepting a lie will bring the consequences of a lie just as fighting for truth will bring the consequences of truth.

Reviving the Soul

As we repent of past sinful ways and grow in sanctification, we should become shining examples of truth and honesty in a world filled with deception. As created beings, making the choice for truth is a choice for something better and it is powerful because it effects every decision a person makes and can improve life by showing the way of eternal life, peace, and a relationship with the Eternal. We should make Scripture our friend for it is beautiful, has hope, can bring honor, answer the great questions of life, and lead us to the Savior while fiction is shallow, causes problems, and indulges in both pride and the lusts of the flesh.

Reward of Life

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