Good morning, Saints. 

 

In 1996, I discovered the inspired order of Paul's message to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:4: "Expose, rebuke and entreat." Or I should say: God inspired me to note the importance of the word order here. It was not random. Oftentimes, I would hear teachers trying to entreat people to believe the truth. But the people to whom they were speaking were so entrenched in Christian lies that they could not even hear what the teacher was saying; the teacher was wasting his words in that the words of positive exhortation could not penetrate the mainstream erroneous defenses of the potential believer.

 

It would be like trying to pave a road covered with trash and dead animal carcasses. Wouldn't one need to clean the road before paving?

 

Then I saw it: Without first exposing another's false belief, the truth has no soft soil on which to land and potentially grow. It is true that exposing another person's false belief will probably shock and anger the potential believer. Good. That's the first step. Now he or she is awake. 

 

People must be woken up to the error of their belief system before they can hear truth. Otherwise, they are only half-listening. 

 

Next step: whomever taught the potential believer to believe lies, must be rebuked. They should be called a derogatory name of some kind. This is the pattern of Jesus and Paul. I employ it all the time. It works like magic.

 

Now the field has been plowed and the seed is ready for planting. 

 

When I first began to teach this truth, many people disregarded it. Worse, they left me. They didn't want to learn from me anymore. Why? Because I was "mean," "unfeeling," "rude," "impatient," "arrogant," "unloving"—among many other non-compliments. In the meantime, over the next 14 years, God used me to brings hundreds if not thousands of people into a realization of the truth of their membership in the body of Christ. 

 

I am a successful herald, not because I'm a genius, but because I'm the only one I know of who follows the formula of 2 Timothy 4:12. It takes guts to do it, let me tell you. You have to not care about what other believers might think of you. At the same time, you must care deeply about reaching those who have never heard. 

 

This is not a popularity contest. It is—if you will—a "heralding contest."

 

Run so as to win. 

 

Yours from the peninsula, 

 

Martin