As we near the dawn of a new Millennium, and the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot help but notice, the ever-growing mix of philosophy and faith being practiced in the Church world. This we believe is just one of the many ploys of the enemy to weaken and undermine the foundations of Christianity, and pure faith in God. This blend of philosophical fueled intellect is, in its root form hybrid at best, it is not pure, and cannot produce pure faith!

 

Philosophy – comes from the Greek word Philo-Sophia, which means the Love of Wisdom. Put into use it is generally described as, a field of study, in which people question and create theories about reality.

 

 Wisdom is not all bad, but not all wisdom is of God. The Bible encourages the seeking of Godly wisdom, but in the same token warns of the sensual wisdom of this world, which is foolishness to God.

 

PROVERBS 2:1,2

  1     ¶  My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee;

2    So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, [and] apply thine heart to understanding;

 

PROVERBS 3:13

13                      ¶  Happy [is] the man [that] findeth wisdom, and the man [that] getteth understanding.

 

I CORINTHIANS 1:21-23

  21    For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

  22    For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:

23    But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;

 

These things were spoken, so as not to confuse the issue of wisdom, to the believer we would say this, if your wisdom causes you to question God or his word, then your wisdom is not of God, but the world!

 

 So philosophy is the quest for wisdom and understanding of reality, but when we try to mix these things with what we believe is faith it does not produce true Sons and Daughters of God, it cannot! Faith is not just a belief, it is a substance, believing God and his Word is what faith causes us to do. By now some of you are wondering where we are going with this?  Well you see, every Sunday throughout the lands we have multitudes of people fill our pews, well meaning people who in their minds have intellectually figured God out, the modern philosophical approach, one that’s appealing to both self and society. And all the while don’t even know God, Jesus Christ or his Holy Spirit! In their minds figured it out, but still do not know God! How can these things be true? Let us look at faith for a few moments.

 

HEBREWS 11:1

1                  ¶  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

 

 Mankind was created a triune being, comprised of Body, Soul and Spirit. In the Body are five natural senses to help us in this life we live,

The senses of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing, these can be referred to gates or inlets of the body. The soul is the mental or emotional seat of man, the thinking and reasoning part of man, the soul is the nature of the spirit on the inside. Within the soul are five inner senses, conscience, memory, reason, affection and imagination, these can be both a help or hindrance, depending on what is on the inside, down in the spirit of man. For the Spirit of man is where we contact God, and within the spirit of man there is room for either faith or doubt, and this is controlled by the gate of self-will. Faith is like a super-sense, or a sixth sense, it (faith) was given by God to cause all our other senses to believe and line up with God’s Word.

 

HEBREWS 11:6

6             But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

 

HEBREWS 10:38

38         Now the just shall live by faith…

 

 

  So are these things new? No! For even the Bible declares that there is nothing new under the sun, in other words, the nature or the spirit of a thing has existed since the beginning, for man has been influenced by either good or evil, God or Satan. Philosophy has been around for a long time, the Greeks were really into it, Church history bears out the fact that in the first few centuries of the New Testament Church, a philosophical movement called Gnosticism existed also. God is not a theory, thought or idea, he is God, the great I AM, and he is the very essence of Life itself, the creator. When people truly accept Jesus Christ as both Lord and Savior, and enter into a relationship with Him, then God will no longer be distant, but live within the heart of the believer by the Holy Ghost.