Nehemiah,
I personally have no center stage high profile teachers that I read or pay attention to in any great way...I have a small fellowship group and it is the best move I ever made. The humble and the meek have tremendous insight.
Now, I do not mind some parts of Prince's devotional but I do agree sometimes what he says is very vague and I am not sure where how he gets from point A to point B, and sometimes he is way out there, especially when I heard him say that Communion has healing benefits.
Having said that, I am more inclined to read a devotional from a preacher who promotes God loves all and does not condemn some to hell by not choosing them to be saved, I am completely and utterly opposed to that doctrine.
Okay my comment is that the Gospel is to the Jew first.....when John the Baptist was preaching the message of repentance to his people was he was telling them to change their mind about the
plan of salvation.
They believed that by being the physical descendants of Abraham was enough to save them as children of God, so they needed a
change of mind and as we know a limited number were able to change their minds and believe upon Jesus as Saviour.
Metanoia means to change our mind, in the context of scripture, it means to stop believing
we can save ourselves and agree with God we are completely incapable of being good enough. We change our minds and believe upon Christ Jesus and Hs efficacious work on the cross on our behalf.
Is this this not the case of the Jews of Jesus time, they could not make this change in thought?
Convincing people they are sinners is not the difficulty, the problem I encounter is most people believe they are good enough.
Some have sorrow for their sins, but the cling to self righteous works thinking they have repented and stopped sinning, changing our minds about our own self-effort and turning towards Christ as Saviour and His work on the cross on our behalf is how we are saved.
Jesus does not save those who are trying to save themselves, we come empty, this is the hard truth most people cannot get to...they will not change their minds about their total inability to save themselves.
I can feel all manner of sorrow and contrition for my sin, but where is Jesus in that...I make it about me and not Him and His Work
This is why the gate is narrow.
I have not taken the time to find the scriptures but I can ....for some reason I have been all day on CC..not good.
I would be glad to hear your thoughts on what I have said.
It is not about Jews and Gentiles but about evildoers changing their mind about sin. Spurgeon said that repentance is changing the mind about sin (among other things), so joaniemarie needs to tell us exactly what that entails in relation to the Gospel. What has happened recently that some people have been promoting the idea that repentance is merely "a change of mind". So let's see what someone under the influence of Joseph Prince has to say about this.