AN OUTREACH OF IOM AMERICA | INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP OF EXCHANGED LIFE
July 22, 2015 - In This Issue:
INFORMATION ON JIM FOWLER

Jim Fowler has been a pastor at the Neighborhood Church in Fallbrook, California for the last twenty-three years. His wife, Gracie, and their five children (Philip, Charis, Kirsten, Sarah and Sandi) have been very supportive in Jim's teaching, preaching, and writing ministries.

Jim's educational background includes Manhattan Christian College, Friends University, New College-University of Edinburgh, Bethel Theological Seminary, Palomar College, and Jubilee Theological Institute.

In recent years, Jim has spent much of his time writing, as can be viewed within the resources of his website. He is currently researching and writing several other articles and books.

 Feel free to contact him at [email protected] 

 

Practical Studies
"The purpose of Jesus' incarnational advent and His ministry here on earth as a man was not to establish a new religion, nor to inculcate a new teaching, nor to lay down a new morality system. Jesus came to bring Himself, the presence and dynamic of His own divine being, expressed in the humanity of one perfect man, so that He might be expressed as divine, eternal life in the humanity of all men. The gospel that Jesus brought was entirely Christocentric. There is no message of "good news" apart from the ontological reality of the very Being of God in Jesus Christ who is the essence of Christianity. Christianity is Christ!" - Jim

 Learn More About Jim's Studies:
"This book details the primary discussion of this year's World Grace Summit. I considered the discussion of "Dialectic Formatting" to be of the highest priority of dispelling Universalism in its attack on the true Church of Christ."  
"When Christians say the Christ-life is in them, they do not mean simply something mental or moral. When they speak of being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them..." ("Mere Christianity" Macmillan Publishing. 1978. pp.64-65). -C.S. Lewis

HISTORICAL CHRISTIAN BIBLES 
For over a decade now, Jim Fowler has been collecting Bibles for an exhibit that shows "The History of the Christian Scriptures." A new website has been developed to show featured items in this collection. View at www.fowlerbiblecollection.com 

Christianity IS Christ (part 1)
By Jim Fowler

What does it mean to be a Christian?

What is Christianity?

 

Confusion over the meaning of these terms, and misunderstanding of the reality implied by these terms, has resulted in gross misrepres-

entations of the same, even by those who would claim to be Christians engaged in Christianity. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that we re-evaluate the reality of Christianity.

 

Followers of Jesus were "first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). Perhaps it was initially a label of derision or derogation, but King Agrippa seems to have used the term as a neutral designation of one believing in Jesus Christ (Acts 26:28), and Peter employs it as an accepted reference to those identified with the name of Christ (1 Peter 4:16).

  

Immediately thereafter, the overall phenomenon of persons identifying with Jesus Christ was generalized as "Christianity." Ignatius and Polycarp, disciples of the apostle John, used the Greek word christianismos, in the late first or early second century, and later writers used the Latin word christianitas.

 

Semantic variations of meaning have proliferated through the centuries unto the present. "Christianity" is defined as one of the world's religions. It is analyzed historically as the events of its adherents and institutions through the centuries of almost two millennia. "Christianity" is often used synonymously with "Christendom," although the latter term is often used pejoratively of institutionalized Christian religion. In his Attack on Christendom, Kierkegaard complained that everyone in Denmark considered themselves to be "Christians" because they were born into the state church and baptized as infants, concluding that "if everyone is a Christian, then no one is a Christian." Witch-hunts, inquisitions, and political wars have been conducted in the name of "Christian religion." Many have subsequently rejected "Christianity," offended or injured by its multitudinous religious aberrations and injustices. Still others (as we shall do in this study), reserve the term "Christianity" for the spiritual reality of the function of the living Lord Jesus in Christians.

 

The mere usage of terminology is not our objective, though, since language is in constant flux. Rather, the questions are: What was the initial and Biblical understanding of what it meant to be a Christian? What do the Biblical writers imply to be the essence of Christianity?

 

Although the term "Christianity" is not found in the Scriptures, we will consider it to be indicative of everything that Jesus Christ came to be and to do. The entirety of the revelation of God to man is constituted and comprised of the person and work of Jesus Christ. In and by His Son, God enacted everything necessary to restore mankind to His divinely intended function, reinvesting man with the

the spiritual reality of the presence and function of deity within humanity. When Jesus thus dwells and reigns spiritually in those who receive Him by faith, the kingdom that Jesus so often referred to becomes operative. The resurrection-life of Jesus becomes the spiritual empowering of the Christian's life and participation in the ecclesia of the Church. Such a spiritual, gospel reality of "Christianity" can only be defined as... read full article here 

 

 

 


Jim Fowler
P.O. Box 1822
Fallbrook, CA 92088-1822

e-mail address:

[email protected] 



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