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It’s Better Than Ever Before

Hello all, your friendly admin here.

Just wanted to let you know that we have totally restructured the www.truthistheword.com website to provide you with an easier, more modern and interactive way to access our resources. Here’s a short video explanation of our new home.

Stay tuned to get some highlights in the upcoming weeks.

Please SHARE this with anyone you think could benefit from our site, it makes a big difference to us and the buttons are right there on the bottom of every post *grin*. Oh, and my apologies for the branding on the video, we are self-supporting so use the tools available.

Until next time, Admin

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A Book that Reveals

Top ImageThe Book of Revelation in the Light of the Stars

It is not often from where I live that I can look up into a clear night sky, but when this is possible I am amazed by the sheer number of stars and planets that exist out there. I wonder how many people have gazed in wonder and awe at the scope and grandeur of God’s creation? Millions upon millions spread over the hundreds and thousands of years all confirming what King David declared when he wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1).

What you may not know is that many of the ancient people saw even more than grandeur and glory in the night sky, they saw a profound story. A story written in the stars? Well, you see, writing only arrived in the biblical lands between 1700 and 1500 BC, so how then did God communicate the story of creation, sin, and redemption before then? The obvious answer is that it was passed on from generation to generation using stories, but just how did these verbal stories stay true to the original and all come together in one grand narrative?

How did Word of Mouth Stay Accurate

The answer that I propose is that the ancients, under God’s direction, drew a series of pictures in the night sky by imagining lines joining prominent stars. Each picture told a sequenced part of the grand narrative and acted as a memory aid to all in every generation initiated into this ‘secret’. These star pictures (constellations) are still used in our day by astronomers to map the heavens.

In my book ‘The Book of Revelation: in the Light of the Stars’, I show how these star pictures can be read to reveal the amazing story of divine redemption.
Interesting as this may be, it doesn’t mean much to us as present-day disciples of the Lord Jesus because we now have all sixty-six books of the bible as our grand narrative of God’s redemptive story. However, these same scriptures contain many references to the ancient star-story and you can find some of them in Job 9:9, 26:13, 38:31-32, and Amos 5:8. However, when we come to the last book of the bible, the Revelation of John, we find that it is rich with references and allusions to the star-story.

What is more, chapters 12,13, and 14 of the book of Revelation are very difficult to understand without reference to the star-story. Not only do these chapters validate the authenticity of the star-story, but we need an understanding of this story to more fully understand them. So, my book is both a commentary on the book of Revelation and a disclosure of the star-story. It is, as far as I know, a unique contribution to evangelical biblical interpretation.

Now Revised and Updated

This book is a revision of what I wrote several years ago under the title ‘Revelation in the Stars: the Sidereal and Written Word’. I have tried to clarify difficult portions and I have also updated where necessary. After a lot of hard work by myself and my daughter Karen the revised edition is now available on Amazon Kindle.

To get an idea of the book’s main themes and contribution, listen to my presentation to the faculty of the South African Theological Seminary AUDIO HERE and have a look at the PowerPoint slides that accompanied it SLIDES HERE.

Please consider reading the entire book as I believe that it will both enlighten and encourage you in living out your Christianity in a world that seems to be winding down into chaos. Oh, and it will encourage you because the story has a happy ending as God wraps up this sin-sick world and creates a new HeavenEarth where He lives forever with His faithful children.

Click HERE to go straight to the Amazon preview of the book, look at its content and introductory pages and hopefully purchase the book.

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Standing together around Jesus

 Standing together around Jesus

If we try to walk alone against a hurricane, it will blow us away. We stand a better chance of keeping our footing if we hold hands with others. However, even the strongest wind will not budge us if we join together around Jesus.

I grew up in the windy city of Port Elizabeth where it blows so often that the pigeons, accustomed to leaning into the wind, fall forward on their beaks when it stops – or so goes the tongue in cheek legend. Physical wind can be destabilising and sometimes lethal, but spiritual winds are no less destructive. In Ephesians 4:14 Paul writes of immature believers who are ‘blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming’.

From time to time, folk request me to write or speak about any number of ‘winds’ blowing into the face of the church. Some of these are obviously ‘ill winds’ and they are easy to identify, but some are not. For instance, Satanism is an unmistakably foul wind, but modern Gnosticism is harder to define yet also noxious.

You might be surprised at some of the things that I regard as malevolent winds blowing into the church. By the way, what makes aberrant teachings so dangerous is that they invariably contain a modicum of truth sufficient to disguise their fatal errors. Here are just some, possibly eyebrow-raising, examples:

  • Calvinism with its fatal confusion of sovereignty with predeterminism – the key assumption that God can only truly be sovereign if He determines all things at all times, and if He does not, then He cannot really be God.
  • Modern Gnosticism that presents a complex form of reincarnation and celestial rankings in the life between earthly lives.
  • Roman Catholicism with its exclusive system of religious orders, rankings, rites, and rituals.
  • Updated dominionism parading under the catchall ‘New Apostolic Reformation’.
  • Extreme Word of Faith’ism together with its bastard child, Hypergrace.
At this point, I need to hold up a hand and say; “Yes I know I am making some radical claims and using complex and loaded language. However, an article like this is just too limiting to develop these ideas. In my TruthTalk podcast Q & A I will elaborate a little, and you are free to email me or comment on this post if you want to take issue with me or seek clarification.”
In this short article, I want to simply make one simple yet bold statement – to stand against the winds of false teaching and practice we need to stand together around the central figure of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul makes a series of connected points:

  1. There is one body and one Spirit— just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all’ Ephesians 4:4-6.
  2. The ascended Jesus has given to the church, ‘some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ’ Ephesians 4:11-13.
  3. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work’ Ephesians 4:14-16.

Put in the simplest possible terms – Jesus is the source of truth and the central pillar of the church around which we gather like flesh around the skeleton of a living body. If we centre ourselves on Jesus – what He said, what He did, and who He is – then TOGETHER we will become mature enough to withstand even the strongest winds of deceitful false teaching.

I am always reluctant to write or speak about ill winds because I know that to withstand them we need to know Jesus and the communal strength of His church rather than know about the foulness of the winds.

Focus on Jesus. Be part of His church and benefit from the gifts He has given to us as members of His ‘body’. This is how we stand against even the strongest gales of deception.

 

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Nothing new under the sun

In the first few years of our Christian life my wife and I were part of a small Methodist church in Port Elizabeth. Our congregation did not have our own resident minister and so we relied a lot on visiting lay preachers to take our Sunday services. One particular Sunday one of these men visited us and preached from Ecclesiastes 1:9-10; ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? The sermon lived up to its title and really was quite forgettable. The preacher himself must have thought so too because a few months later he again preached at our church and started his sermon with the words, “The title of my sermon today is ‘There is nothing new under the sun’.  He then proceeded to repeat his earlier message word for word!

This is the season when we usually make plans for the year that lies ahead. If we are particularly conscientious we also produce a budget to give us some idea of what our plans and aspirations are going to cost. Some people are boldly imaginative and plan new and different things, but for most folk the process of planning and budgeting is more an exercise in extrapolation. We infer the unknown from the known. We use the past as the pattern for the future. We might stretch ourselves a little, but in the main our plans and budgets look much like last years plus a little extra for inflation – ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again’.

I have had several conversations with investment consultants who point to the past growth of equities as the evidence of their suitability as a future investment. Ok, but what if everything changes? What if something happens in the world or in our country that changes the rules of the investment game? How well will equities perform then? It is a disturbing thought to many, but we are now living in an age where the past is no longer the best predictor of the future. “Look! This is something new” is a phrase that constantly rings in our 21st century ears. So, scenario planning is now in vogue. The new way of planning is to identify a number of possible future scenarios, allocate each a probability, and then to plan accordingly.

There is a current line of reasoning in educational circles which holds that we need to be teaching our children to think imaginatively. The idea is to prepare them to face a rapidly changing world with a nimble mind and a set of creative and critical thinking skills. Just having a head full of facts derived from past reality is just not good enough anymore.

Having said all this, here is another scripture to consider; Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19) The world is changing like a chameleon on steroids, but God is ahead of the game and He wants us to see what He is doing so we can get into line with His plans and purposes. If we listen carefully to the Holy Spirit, and keep alert to what He is causing to ‘spring up’, then we will not be swamped by the storm of change that is flooding the world. With God, planning can be an exhilarating visionary experience and not a futile extrapolation of the past. We don’t need to be frustrated by the failure of our traditional planning techniques, and nor do we need to be afraid of the uncertainty of the age. Rather, what we need to do is to align ourselves as best we can with the greatest change-agent of all, Almighty God, and to step boldly with Him into an exhilarating future.

Yesterday, today, forever,
Jesus is the same,
All may change, but Jesus never!
Glory to His name,
Glory to His name,
Glory to His name;
All may change, but Jesus never!
Glory to His name.

 

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Be Blessed in 2016

Be Blessed in 2017

Be Blessed in 2017

As we get to the end of 2016 I want to take this opportunity to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who, having gained something from what I have written this year, have let me know; it is a great encouragement. Please continue to interact with me via email, or comments.

Chris SantaNow is a good time for everyone to re-group, re-prioritise, catch-up and generally “chill out”, so you might like to catch up on any sermons, podcasts, videos, posts and articles you may have missed over the year.

If you would like to listen to SERMONS then go to my Sermons page by CLICKING HERE where you will also find the sermon notes

To listen to my TruthTalks PODCASTS (audio talks) then go HERE where you will find them in the TruthMedia section of www.truthistheword.com

To WATCH some video’s then HERE is the place

An archive of all my POSTS can be found in the blog section of TruthIsTheWord or by clicking HERE

For ARTICLES I’ve written, click HERE

God Bless you, and here’s to a Christ-filled 2017!

 

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About Me

My name is Christopher Peppler and I was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1947. While working in the financial sector I achieved a number of business qualifications from the Institute of Bankers, Damelin Management School, and The University of the Witwatersrand Business School. After over 20 years as a banker, I followed God’s calling and joined the ministry full time. After becoming a pastor of what is now a quite considerable church, I  earned an undergraduate theological qualification from the Baptist Theological College of Southern Africa and post-graduate degrees from two United States institutions. I was also awarded the Doctor of Theology in Systematic Theology from the University of Zululand in 2000.

Four years before that I established the South African Theological Seminary (SATS), which today is represented in over 70 countries and has more than 2 500 active students enrolled with it. I presently play an role supervising Masters and Doctoral students.

I am a passionate champion of the Christocentric or Christ-centred Principle, an approach to biblical interpretation and theological construction that emphasises the centrality of Jesus

I have been happily married to Patricia since the age of 20, have two children, Lance and Karen, a daughter-in-law Tracey, and granddaughters Jessica and Kirsten. I have now retired from both church and seminary leadership and devote my time to writing, discipling, and the classical guitar.

If you would like to read my testimony to Jesus then click HERE.