(continued from last week…)

Mercy and Grace

For many years as a believer, I had considered mercy and grace to be the same thing. But I discovered one day that "mercy" referred primarily to the forgiveness of sins, whereas "grace" referred to the power that God gave us to overcome sin and the trials of life (Hebrews 4:16; Romans 6:14; 2 Corinthians 12:9). And this 'grace' came through Christ (John 1:17) and became available only after the Holy Spirit came to indwell man on the day of Pentecost. This also became a major part of my message.

The Humanity of Christ

While all Christians worshipped Christ as God very few emphasized that He was also a Man whose example we could follow. Some who did emphasize His humanity denied that He was God when He was on earth. It was rare to find Christians who proclaimed the balanced Scriptural view that Christ was fully God and fully Man. But I saw that "the secret of living a godly life" lay in seeing Christ having overcome sin as a Man (1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 4:15, 16). This too became a major emphasis in my preaching.

Money

When we started our work in 1975, the prosperity gospel (that we hear so much of today) was not in vogue. But Christians still loved money just as they do today. Jesus taught that those who loved money hated God (Luke 16:13). But I never heard a single preacher preach this message. Most churches only taught their members to pay their tithes. But tithing was part of the old-covenant law that had been abolished in Christ. I preached the liberating new covenant message of giving joyfully, secretly and voluntarily to the Lord. Another thing I saw was that hardly any church in India (that I knew of) preached strongly against the evil practice of asking for a dowry in marriages - a practice that degraded women all over India. I preached strongly against this evil practice; and when conducting weddings, took signed certificates from both the bride and the bridegroom that stated that no money had been exchanged between them or between their parents. 

Soul and Spirit

This was another subject that was not being preached. In Old Testament times, there was no clear revelation on the difference between man's soul and his spirit. But the New Testament makes a clear distinction between the two (Hebrews 4:12). Since most Christians did not know this distinction clearly, they were being deceived by the psychological gimmicks of clever preachers and by emotional counterfeits of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. So I taught people the difference between what is truly spiritual; and what is merely soulish.

 The Local Body of Christ

I saw clearly that the final goal of God was to make all His children into one Body in Christ. The New Testament church was to be a Body and not a congregation. In a Body (as in the human body), every member would be connected to the other members and each would have a unique function. Christ alone would be the Head and all the others would be equal members. I saw that this was the type of church that God wanted to see in every locality on earth. And so I decided to spend my life building such expressions of Christ's Body wherever possible on earth. 

The New Covenant

All these truths were related to the new covenant that God had made with man through the death and resurrection of Christ. I saw that the greatest need among believers was for their eyes to be opened to see the greater glory of the new covenant compared to the old covenant. This therefore became the major thrust of all my preaching - and it continues to be so. These were some of the major truths that God showed me that I sought to proclaim by every possible means - preaching, books, tapes, etc. - to my fellow-believers. My burden was to spread these truths all over India. But God saw fit to spread these messages even further - to people in many other countries as well. 

All glory be to His Name alone.