Skip to main content

The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down

by David Bercot


I’ll never forget the first time I ever saw a book by David Bercot. I was in a book store in Germany outside of a U.S. Army/Air Force base and had recently been converted. Newly awakened, the Scriptures were coming more alive every day. However, I had found that trying to implement and live out what I was learning in the Word of God was growing more and more difficult. The literal teachings of Jesus, as well as the apostle’s teachings on issues such as nonresistance, materialism, modesty and holiness seemed clear to me, but I knew of no group of Christians that believed or practiced any of them. I thank the Lord that He then led me to David Bercot’s first book, “Will the Real Heretic Please Stand Up.” This challenging and insightful book high-lights the beliefs and practices of the early church, examining their historical testimony in the light of God’s Word. What an encouragement it was to see that the early church had believed and practiced much of what the Holy Spirit had been revealing to my heart!

Read more: The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down

Plain Speaking

by David Bercot

Most professing Christians today have the mistaken notion that a man needs to go to seminary in order to be an effective preacher. However, the New Testament Christians had no seminaries. Yet, they raised up effective preachers and teachers all the same. As David Bercot argues in his most recent book, Plain Speaking, the Holy Spirit can use ordinary Christian men today to preach and teach—just as He did back in the first century.

Bercot attends a church that has no seminary-trained ministers, just as do many of our readers. Yet Bercot believes that the quality of preaching in churches like ours should not be one bit inferior to that of conventional churches with professionally trained ministers. If anything, it should be better.

However, if we are honest, I think we would all have to admit that too often this isn’t the case. We’ve all heard many excellent sermons and devotionals in our churches. But, we have also heard many rambling messages with no clear theme or goal, delivered in unenthusiastic, monotone voices.

Read more: Plain Speaking

The Cause of Division ... and the Cure

In A.D. 449, in the famous New Testament city of Ephesus, bishops from all over the world gathered to discuss what they saw as a life-or-death point of theology. The issue? They wanted to nail down just how the two natures of Christ coexisted in the person of Jesus. Fully divine and fully human, they all agreed. But that wasn’t enough. Precisely how those two natures existed in the person of Jesus was the debate. At first glance you would probably think that this must have been some fine point of theology reserved only for the elite theologians. But no … this got big.

Read more: The Cause of Division... and the Cure

The Burger King Church

I think one can sum up one of the root problems of the modern Evangelical concept of the church with a single trip to Burger King. I’m envisioning the one off the turnpike on the way to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It’s a big one. It is made of big stones and has a nice, high, cathedral-like ceiling. If it’s your misfortune to eat there, after you pay your small fortune and sit down with your family at one of those little tables, take a minute and look around. It kind of reminds me of a modern American church.

Read more: The Burger King Church

Will The Real Pagan Please Stand Up?

The Open ChurchWhen I walked up to the display booth, I noticed amongst the line of onlookers that a news reporter from Trinity Broadcasting was interviewing the author. Trinity broadcasting, a large international charismatic television network, was asking James Rutz, “—So you’re saying that in the early church there were no elders or pastors to make decisions, or to say where the money was going?” “That’s right,” answered James Rutz, the writer of the new book The Open Church. As they kept talking, I mulled around the display racks looking at their latest books. It was the 1992 Christian Book Sellers’ Convention, and I was there representing new books for Scroll Publishing Co. The first day of the convention I received a booklet by James Rutz that had rendered the first few chapters of his new book.

Read more: Will The Real Pagan Please Stand Up?

From Whence Come Wars and Fightings Among You?

Battle

With the ever increasing occurrence of wars, terrorist attacks, and political corruption, even the secular world is beginning to ask the question—what’s going on? Not that war and corruption are anything new, but more and more, many are beginning to notice an exponential increase.

Compounding this anxiety is the fact that modern society is finding fewer areas to place the blame. In the past, the church took the blame; but as America moves farther and farther away from Biblical-based principles of right and wrong, and deeper into a neo-Christian, humanist-based secular society, the only ones they have left to blame are themselves.

Read more: From Whence Come Wars and Fightings Among You?

Judgment Day Is Not a Theology Test

Judgment Day

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. (2 Co. 5:10)

What’s the boldest example of evangelism that you have ever seen? For me, it was when I was fresh out of anesthesia school. I was working in a hospital that employed a lot of foreign medical students and residents. Because of all the students, the operating rooms there were usually bustling with all kinds of people—not just the surgeons and their residents, but the X-ray people had their trainees, the scrub techs had their trainees, the lab techs had theirs, etc … I guess you get the idea—the operating rooms were packed!

Read more: Judgment Day Is Not a Theology Test

Broken Clock Salvation

Let no man deceive you with vain words. Ephesians 5:6
Certain men crept in unawares . . . turning the grace of God into lasciviousness. Jude 4


The funny thing about a broken clock is that it is perfectly right twice a day. Think about it … that old clock might have been dead for years, but nonetheless, two times a day its little rusty hands proudly proclaim the time as accurately as the space program’s best atomic clock. However, despite this brief momentary accuracy, for all practical purposes a broken clock is still worthless. And that’s a bit the way that salvation is commonly taught and preached these days. It’s often completely right for a moment...but by and large it is still broken.

Read more: Broken Clock Salvation