As the year 2006 closed we showed in our lessons on Satan, Sin and the Church, from Chapter 13 of Acts, how the Holy Spirit directed the church at Antioch to send out Barnabas and Saul, who was also called Paul, to the work for which they had been called. Their work was to be among the Gentiles (all who were not Jews).

Remember that this was in the age when God was still speaking directly, imparting revelations, to those who were to teach His word and working miraculously to confirm that they spoke His word. When God finished revealing and confirming His word and it was written on the pages of the New Testament, God ended His working among the churches in that manner.

Through the Spirit’s revelations to the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:8 and Ephesians 4:13 God tells us that the miraculous gifts (v. 7) given to those who were to teach His word would end. The miraculous gifts would continue “till” their purpose had been fulfilled, and the unity of the faith delivered to the saints (Jude 3). God confirms the claims of no one today who claims that He does as He did then. That cannot be successfully denied. To do so requires that the claim be confirmed as it was in the 1st century. That is not being done.

From that time, God continued working among His people providentially and having placed in His word bulwarks (walls of protection) the church was safe as long as it did not go beyond those walls. It is when we go beyond or outside those walls of protection that Satan is able to continue doing his destructive work, bringing sin into the church.

The major bulwarks are God’s instructions not to do what He has said not to do, to follow precisely what He has said we are to do, and never act without His authority and do anything He has not said to do. Other major bulwarks are seen in God’s instructions to take all that He has said, not leaving anything out, not adding to His word, not changing it in any way or interpreting it so as to make His word contradict. (Scriptures will be gladly furnished to all who ask).

Those who have disregarded those walls of protection down through the years have created a different system of Christianity than that which we read of in the New Testament. The “modern day Christianity” we see all around us is not the Christianity of the New Testament. If those who profess the name of Christ would only compare what they hear with what God’s word says, more would see this to be a fact.

We invite all who desire to defeat Satan and sin to rely only on the Bible for their final authority in all matters of faith and practice. God challenges us to do so.