Recently a friend who wants to learn more about theology asked me to recommend a good book. Here is my response:

Lemme think about this for a bit. Really depends on what you want to learn about. Seriously, I'd start trying to read a chapter or two of the Bible each night, starting with Genesis. I use the King James Version because the "thou"s and "hath"s and what not remind me that I'm reading Scripture, but you may like New King James, New Living, New International, or Amplified to name a few. The one I have has notes from Dr. Henry Morris, a creationist, and it really works for me if you may have guessed :-). A chapter is usually very short. I've been trying to read the Bible every night since early Summer and I'm only in the 40th Chapter of Genesis :-). About a month ago I decided to stop reading books about the Bible, and start reading the Bible first. I've also read a great book on Catholocism called A Woman Rides the Beast (get your mind out of the gutter!) which is awesome - the Bible actually fortells of AntiChrist (the beast) using, and subsequently devouring, a Woman in the end times to propel his way into becoming AntiChrist and secure the one world religion after the rapture. That woman is Roman Catholocism. I am almost done reading Judgement Day (subtitled Islam, Israel and the Nations) which is fantastic. I recently bought a book for my dad called When Will Jesus Come (subtitled Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ) which is equally fascinating. An olllllld friend just loaned me an old textbook titled A Survey of Israel's History. I also like the Seduction of Christianity (again, get your mind out of the gutter!) about how the church has succumed to New Age ideas and needs to get back to God's Word. Basically, all of these books really go along with [our pastor's name]'s idea of seriously getting into the Word and His will while at the same time trying to be like Christ. Our pastor is really right on target.

Replacement Theology is something that a lot of Christians believe in, and states that the church has replaced Israel because Israel rejected Jesus.

To critique Replacement Theology, one need only examine prophecy, which is often sorely overlooked. Within Israel, above thousands of more beautiful and bountiful cities, God chose Jerusalem, and said, "I will put my name [there] for ever" (2 Ki 21:7; 2 Chr 33:7). God also declared that in the last days He would cause Jerusalem to be "a burdensome stone for all people" (Zec 12:3). And indeed it has -- The UN formed and vote Israel back into existence after 1,800 years of destruction and dispersion. And, in accord with prophesy, Jerusalem has become such a burden that the UN has spent 1/3 of its time debating (and condemning) Israel, a miniscule nation that represents merely one one-thousandth of earth's population. In the "end" (or is it the beginning?) World War 3 will be fought over Jerusalem as Antichrist's armies seek to frustrate Gods plans for her and to accomplish at last Hitlers "final solution to the Jewish problem" with the destruction of Israel and all Jews worldwide.

Two times in the Bible, Jerusalem is called "the city of our God" (Ps 48:1, 8), two times the "city of God" (Ps 46:4; 87:3), 8 times "the holy city" (Is 48:2; 52:1; Neh 11:1; Mt 4:5, etc.), and once "the city of the LORD of hosts" (Ps 48:8). It is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. It's entire history, including its destruction and ultimate restoration in the "last days," was prophesied by the prophets and by Jesus Christ.

Why do I cite all of this?

The fact that Israel still exists in the face of fierce opposition from the world and Satan is the greatest proof God gives of His existence and that the Bible is His infallible Word - a vital proof that replacement theology rejects.

A friend and I are having an ongoing discussion regarding the question of whether or not when you ask Christ to be your Lord and Savior, whether you are "always saved" from that point onward. I am not a theologian or biblical scholar, but by searching the scriptures, this is what I come up with.

Once you ask the Holy Spirit in your heart, I don't see how you could ever reject Him, but if you look to the scriptures, you can see several examples showing that you could. These have been provided by my pastor:

[We can define] sin as "a willful transgression against a known law of God." With that definition we wouldn't call every time we fall short of the glory of God a sin. There are misjudgments, errors we make, that definitely fall short of the glory of God, but it's not willful rebellion against God. Sin would be those things where we know what God wants and we willfully choose not to do it, or willfully choose to do what He says not to do.

With that understanding of sin, we leave intact free will, and with that we conclude, as much as it doesn't seem anyone would ever want to, there will be those that will choose to be involved in sin and thus choose to walk away from their salvation, the same way the prodigal son walked away from his father.

One of the very strong passages of Scripture that shows a person can decide to walk away from Christ is II Peter 2:20-22. It states, "If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (that sounds like a "saved" person to me) and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: "A dog returns to its vomit," and " A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud."

That brings us to the question of Charles Templeton, who was once a bigger evangelist than Billy Graham. (You'll see how this all ties in in a minute.) He rejected Christianity outright and wrote a book called "Farewell to God" which is sold by many humanist and atheistic organizations. In it, Templeton writes:

Why does God's grand design require creatures with teeth designed to crush spines or rend flesh, claws fashioned to seize and tear, venom to paralyze, mouths to suck blood, coils to constrict and smother - even expandable jaws so that prey may be swallowed whole and alive? & Nature is in Tennyson's vivid phrase, "red in tooth and claw," and life is a carnival of blood.

Templeton then concludes:

How could a loving and omnipotent God create such horrors as we have been contemplating?

Templeton misses the whole foundational message in Genesis, wherein we are told God made a perfect world, but now it is cursed and marred by sin, whereby death is the consequence. The Bible tells us that everything, even the ground, was cursed, and that the plants grew thorns! So rather than blaming ourselves for our original sin, Templeton blames God, when he is not to blame.

Templeton was attending Princeton and was swayed by millions of years mentality and eventually lost his religion outright. So was he ever "saved" at all? How many people will not see salvation because of his teachings? And just how important is the issue of Genesis? Well, let's take a look at one more quote to drive the point home. In a letter to Billy Graham, he wrote:

But, Billy, it's simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world wasn't created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It's not a matter of speculation; it's demonstrable fact.

And the door to Biblical inaccuracy was opened, and eventually, over a period of millions of seconds, Charles Templeton, like Charles Darwin, Ted Turner and countless others, abandoned their Christianity on the basis of first abandoning the foundation it rests upon.

This is not the first time I've heard this angle taken by a Christian leader (whose intentions are good). When dealing with a political issue that affects a nation's moral code, it has been suggested that the arguments be fashioned on the merits of its social benefits. This is OK, as God's will is perfect and will have positive social outcomes, but a key component is missing. Here's a quote from a prominent Christian leader:

Let me make one caution to those of you who are going to be carrying this fight forward through our neighborhoods and through our civic associations and through our communities and through our churchesand eventually to the halls of political power in America.

The Bible is all truth, it is God's truth, it is revealed propositional truth without error. But you can't argue from that when you're arguing the question of marriage in society....

I would say that anyone looking at what's just for society says we've got to first do what is best due for those kids. So, make the argument with your secular neighbors and with politicians on the basis of what is good and just and right for society as a whole.

What this speaker just said is that we cannot use the Bible to defend our beliefs. Well, if we cannot use the Bible, upon what ground do we stand? We're just arguing our opinions based on just that - opinions, and try to back them up with facts, which is exactly what the other side is doing. So who then is right? We cannot allow our foundation of determining what is right to be knocked out from under us, and from a Christian leader no less.

If the gay marriage is lost just as the abortion issue was lost, then it will be because we are not going the extra mile and taking the extra time to explain the fundamental motives for our actions at a personal level and basing our battles on the Word of God. The battle will be lost because the culture is increasingly rejecting God's word, and the Christian Leaders' instructions are essentially the same. Unless one accepts the Word of God as the basis of one's thinking, one is standing on sand. Culture thinks that any one religion is just as good as another, and so Christians are sidelined unless this changes. And the change needs to begin in the Church.