CENTRAL GRACE BULLETIN

Central Grace Church

3596 Franklin Street Rocky Mount, Virginia

Website: www.centralgracechurch.com Email: [email protected]

September 12^th 2021

9:30 am Bible Study / 10:00 am Message-----------------------------Messages by brother Cody Henson

*** NO WEDNESDAY NIGHT SERVICE THIS WEEK

Welcome brother Cody Henson. We welcome brother Cody Henson back to the pulpit. For any visitors, brother Cody is from Kingsport Sovereign Grace Church, Kingsport, Tennessee. It is good to have him back with us.

Listen to live audio of services on: www.mixlr.com/centralgracechurch

Listen to: WYTI Radio – Rocky Mount, VA - 8:00 AM – Sundays -- 1570 AM / 104.5 FM,

Six Stubborn Statements – by Henry Mahan

I realize, as much as any of you, that we are out of step with the great parade of religion today. I realize we are putting a question mark on some very successful religious organizations, and in conflict with all the major denominations. I realize that we are charging some popular, recognized, powerful, and hard-working preachers and religious leaders with failure to preach the true gospel of God’s glory and grace. We are charging them with the crime of preaching “another gospel.” This is serious; for Paul said, “If any man preach any other gospel, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). I realize that we are a very small minority compared with the vast religious movement of this day. But, to me, the issues are as clear as the sun!

1. God is infinitely sovereign in all things, including salvation; or he isn’t sovereign at all.

2. Man, in the fall, was rendered spiritually dead, without hope, without God, without Christ, and is shut up to the power of God to give him life; or he is not dead at all.

3. God either elected a people to eternal salvation according to the good pleasure of his sovereign will, or he did not choose anyone, and has left the success of his purpose to save totally in the hands of the creature.

4. Christ either sufficiently, effectually, and eternally saved those for whom he died, by his obedience and death, or he actually saved no one! The ransom was no ransom at all, only an offer.

5. The eternal Spirit of God either effectually and powerfully quickens, regenerates, and calls the elect to repentance toward God and to faith in Christ, or extends an offer to all sinners to regenerate themselves. We must go back to the question, “Is man dead?”

6. All the elect of God will be preserved by his grace and will persevere in the faith of Christ; or none will. For, if left to ourselves, we shall eventually fall as all creatures have.

Not the Amount of Faith, but the Reality of Faith

"For the Scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." Romans 10:11

A child of God may be often deeply exercised whether he has any faith at all; for when he reads what faith has done and can do, and sees and feels how little it has done for him, he is seized with doubts and fears whether he has ever been blessed with the faith of God's elect. This makes him often say, "Oh, do I indeed possess one grain of saving faith?" But he does possess it: nay, it is his very faith which makes him so anxiously ask himself the question, as well as see and feel the nature and amount of his unbelief. It is the very light of God shining into his soul that shews him his sins, their nature and number; convinces him of their guilt and enormity; lays the burden of them upon his conscience; and discovers to him the workings of an unbelieving heart. But besides this, if he had no faith at all he could not hear the voice of God speaking in the gospel, nor receive it as a message of mercy; so that he has faith, though he has not its witnessing evidence, or its abounding comfort. This faith will save his soul; for "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance;" that is, God never repents of any gift that he bestows or of any calling which he has granted. If, then, he has ever blessed you with faith, however small that faith may be in itself or in your own view of it, he will never take it away out of your heart, but rather fan the smoking flax until it burst forth into a flame. He will never forsake the work of his own hands, for he which "hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." If ever, then, if but once in your life, you have felt the gospel to be the power of God unto salvation; if you have ever had one view of Christ by living faith; if but once only, under the influence of his blessed Spirit on your heart, you have laid hold of him and felt even for a few minutes that he was yours, your soul is as safe as though it were continually bathing in the river which maketh glad the city of God, continually drinking of the honey and milk of the, gospel, and walking all day long in the full light of his most gracious countenance. Not that a man should be satisfied with living at a poor, cold, dying rate; I mean not that, but merely to lay it down as a part of God's truth that as regards salvation, it is not the amount, but the reality of faith that saves the soul. – J.C. Philpot