A HALLELUJAH MOMENT! Alleluia Prints is a worldwide evangelical printing ministry out of India. They recently sent over a representative, Aldrin Roy, for a special fews days of intense discussions concerning the printing and distribution of my writings. We covered the following printing and distribution of what they consider important articles of Christian literature:
* Printing and distribution of the Encyclopedic Bible Study Guide. * Printing of a special Bookito for Ukraine. * Printing of Dickson Diaries. * Printing of and worldwide distribution a special paperback edition of the Biblical Research Library. * Printing and distribution of the International King James Verson, which they have already started through the Asian Bible Society. * We may be printing for a worldwide audience the Bookito series.
And, we discussed just about everything concerning how to print and distribute my past writings through the evangelical ministry of Alleluia Prints. Their representative, Aldrin Roy, and I are on the same page in reference to the printing and distribution of Bibles and Bible materials. There will be subsequent forthcoming offers in 2023. So, WATCH THIS SPACE, where anyone worldwide can order materials from the printing company of very dedicated and spiritually minded people.
CHALLENGED! If you allow your religious traditions, or even traditional doctrinal understanding of the Bible, to be the foundation of your faith, then you might want to read this book. It is not wrong to have religious traditions. And certainly it is not wrong to belief in doctrines that are founded upon the world of God. But if either our religious traditions, or doctrinal beliefs, are misguided, or lacking in a biblical foundation, then it is time to allow ourselves to be challenged. This book will certainly challenge your understanding of what a Christian truly is, and then how we should view the church of Christians that Jesus built.
If you like what you read, then pass this book on to your friends around the world.
RESTORING THE BIBLE AS A FOUNDATION OF FAITH One of the universal frustrations that Bible-loving and Bible-believing disciples of Christ have communicated to us over the years is that the world of religion, to a great extent, no longer has a desire to read the Bible. Unfortunately, this is the inherent curse of religion. Religion moves one to look inwardly, not outwardly, for some validation of faith. People have not become irreligious in this move away from the word of God. They have simply extracted Bible reading from their faith. This is always the end result of religious people who seek to validate their faith on the foundation of their own intuitions and emotional experiences.
So we would call for a restoration in the lives of everyone who believes in Jesus. This is the purpose behind our efforts to establish the INTERNATIONAL BIBLE READING SCHOOL in every nation of the world. And, WE CAN DO THIS!
You will hear much about this school in the months to come because this Bible-reading restoration has already begun in South Africa. With the partnership of thousands of Bible lovers throughout the world, we plan to expand this restoration worldwide in the years to come. Those who are concerned about the lack of Bible reading among religious people in their nation can start a IBR School restoration in their own nation. If you desire to establish an IBR School in your nation, then please stay in touch with what is happening in South Africa. We will soon have all the information for establishing an IBR School on the following website:
You can help in this worldwide restoration. First, you can inform others about the the IBR Schools news that will regularly be posted on this Facebook site. Second, you can let others letting know that they can access information about the IBR School on the website, once it is all uploaded in a week or so. This is an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a worldwide explosion to restore again the Bible as the foundation of our faith.
BREAKING NEWS! NEWLY FORMATTED COMMENTARY FOR SMARTPHONES From 75% to 80% of those who download from the website www.roger–e–dickson.org do so with mobile phones (smartphones). Since we have been in the process of reformatting, revising and adding new material to the forthcoming Teacher’s Bible Commentary, we thought it necessary to reformat the material also for smartphones. We have now done the commentary on MATTHEW, which has been added to the Teacher’s Bible section of the website. We would appreciate it if you would download this newly formatted edition of the commentary and give us some comments and suggestions. We have changed the font and have reformatted the layout to be more compatible with smartphones. Please send your suggestions to rdickson@mweb.co.za
If we as a Christian were to enter the city of Antioch of Syria about ten years after the Passover/Pentecost of Acts 2, and go looking for a Christian, our task would be somewhat different than today. If we were to go searching for a Christian in Antioch, we would go searching around for an individual with a like-minded faith as ours.
It seems that the unbelievers of the city of Antioch would have already made our search easy. They had already nick-named those individuals who believed in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. They derogatorily referred to them as “Christians.” About twenty years after the unbelievers of Antioch came up with this reference to those who followed Christ, Luke, the historian, wrote, “And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (At 11:26). They were called “Chrstians,” not by Christians, but by those who did not follow Christ.
Now suppose for a moment. Since we would have been looking in Antioch for people who were disciples of Christ, then the unbelievers of the city had already made our search easy. All we had to do is inquire around for any individual who was ridiculed by the idolatrous unbelievers, or even Jewish unbelievers, to be a follower of Christ, and thus a “Christian.” We might have inquired at the local market, “Do you know of any individuals in town who are called ‘Christians’”? The unbelievers would possibly have responded, “Oh, those Christians! There is one of them working at the fruit stand on the other side of the street.” And so, our search would have ended with a particular individual who believed and behaved as a disciple of Christ. From that individual we would have been successful in finding other “Christians.”
In order to be successful in our search, we would not have been able to find for some “church house” full of Christians on Fifth and Main. Neither would we have satisfied our search in finding some assembly of disciples in someone’s house. Our search would have been for individuals, for people who followed Christ.
So in our search today, we too seek for people who are so different in their beliefs and behavior that they are identified in the community as “Christians.” Our search must first be for people who believe and behave as Christ, and thus, are His church (assembly) of disciples (followers) in any city. Therefore, if we could have entered the city of Antioch over two thousands years ago in order to find a disciple of Christ, we would have gone looking for individuals who believed and behaved after the manner Christ. And so is our search today.
CHURCH: PEOPLE, NOT PROPERTY It was not without purpose that Jesus chose the Greek word ekklesia to describe what was coming in the near future in reference to His gospel actions that would find reality on an old rugged cross. Therefore, upon the rock that He was the Christ (Messiah) and Son of God, He promised His inner circle of Jewish disciples, “I will build My ekklesia [church]” (Mt 16:18).
Those Jewish disciples to whom Jesus made this statement knew exactly what an ekklesia was in the town culture of their day. When the Jews came to the synagogue they came as a people to the ekklesia (At 13:43). When idol worshipers in Ephesus came together into their temple of Artemis, they, too, came as a gathering of people to the ekklesia (At 19:30). On this occasion when Paul was preaching the gospel in Ephesus, the ekklesia (people) in the temple became quite confused in reaction to what Paul preached (At 19:32). It was the people, the ekklesia, who were confused, not the temple structure itself. The word ekklesia was never used in the culture of the time to refer to physical structures.
So when Jesus promised He would build His ekklesia, the Jewish disciples to whom He spoke these words knew that He was referring to people, not to “church houses.” But the Jewish apostles to whom Jesus promised that He would build his ekklesia of people could go further back in their history as the people of God. It was to this nation of people (the Jewish people) to whom Stephen referred when he confirmed that before His incarnation, the Son of God “was in the ekklesia [church] in the wilderness” (At 7:38). It was this ekklesia who “were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the [Red] Sea” (1 Co 10:2). This ekklesia of people was delivered out of the bondage of Egypt because they followed the prophet Moses. They were, as a people, baptized into Moses. Jesus Christ was the Prophet to whom Moses promised would replace him as the leader of the ekklesia (See Dt 18:15-22).
Since Jesus was the Prophet about whom Moses prophesied would come after him, then people today can be baptized into the name of this Prophet, the name of Christ (At 2:38; Rm 6:3-6; Gl 3:27). Therefore, in order to replace the ekklesia of people who followed Moses out of Egyptian bondage, the ekklesia (people) of Christ is composed today of those people who have followed Christ out of the bondage of sin. The identity of the church, therefore, is first identified as people, a people who have believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and incarnate Son of God, just as Jesus had promised His Jewish disciples in Matthew 16:18:
As people believed in Moses, and subsequently were baptized unto Moses in the Red Sea, so people today believe in Christ and are baptized unto Him in order to be delivered from the bondage of sin.
