4th Man Ministries
Mission Statement
As a ministry (actually it's just me and my wife) our goal is quite simple. We just want to share what we've learned concerning Biblical study and application. We don't consider ourselves the absolute authority on Biblical interpretation but we have learned some pretty important things. We're hoping to keep you from some of the pitfalls we've stumbled into along the way. It is not our intention to belittle or attack any denomination, church, preacher or the like. Our goal is to enable you to learn the truth in God's Word for yourself.
Obviously we believe we're right, but our goal is to show others how to search out the truth in God's Word for themselves, so you don't have to take any one's word for it (including ours). We also hope to enable you the discernment to recognize when someone is preaching less than the truth. It's going to take commitment on your part, learning to "rightly divide the Word of God" (2Ti 2:15) is not necessarily an easy thing. It takes a lot of time to pour through tons of scripture in order to understand it's true meanings. Understand there are no shortcuts, you have to read it for yourself and then study it out.
The second part is revelation knowledge. I'm not talking about a mystical, trance like state or falling on the floor or having someone "prophesy" over you. I mean that as you study, you're having fellowship (hanging out) with God Himself, and during the time you spend with Him, He'll rub off on you. As long as your study time is devoted to drawing out the truth in God's Word, God will begin to reveal to you the depth of His Word. Truly understanding something goes much deeper than book knowledge.
Our goal is to help you learn to do these things and literally prove out the scriptures for yourself. To know when, where and how it applies to our lives. Most church goers will simply accept what the pastor or other church leaders and teachers say. They will attempt to make God's Word fit into what the church says. That should be the other way around, your pastor, church, denomination, etc, needs to fit into what God's Word says. If they don't match, the Bible is always right. God's Word needs to be our final measuring stick, not the church, denomination or pastor.
Even if you're pastor is 100% right every single time (biblically unlikely), simply taking their word for it robs you of the fellowship and revelation from God Himself. The hardest part in all of this seems to be getting people to do the study for themselves, most just want to be told what to do in order to get heaven's windows opened up and get their share of the super-Christian powers advertised. They read popular Christian doctrinal books, listen to popular christian preachers, go to mega churches etc. but they won't do the study for themselves, but when it comes to knowledge, revelation maturity in Christ, there are no shortcuts or substitutes. If Jesus is going to be your PERSONAL savior, they you need to have a PERSONAL relationship with Him, not get to know Him vicariously through televangelists, authors and even preachers.
We firmly believe that if you honestly seek the truth in God's Word you will come to the same conclusions we have. At that point you will no longer need us (or anyone). You will know how to search out the true answer in God's Word for yourself. You'll also gain the insight to know when someone is not preaching the whole Word of God, or is trying to lead you to their conclusion instead of Gods.
Next comes the preparation for actually walking the Christian walk (it's not as easy as some make it sound). Studying out scripture is really the only thing that can get you ready for the battle against flesh and spirit, the one you feed is the one that will win. We want to provide a place where honesty and integrity are actually practiced, not just preached. Unfortunately it seems that you can find more honesty in an AA meeting than you can in most churches. In that vein, we want to provide a safe place for battle weary Christians to hang out.
Many churches today simply do not allow "negative" thoughts or speech. This causes what we call "Testaphonies", no matter what is going on in a persons life, they will lie about it in church. They'll tell you every thing is fine (praise God hallelujah amen), they'll tell you how blessed they are, they'll tell you how they've been delivered from everything under the sun. However, if you see them away from their church, their testimony doesn't hold up very well. It's all a lie to fit in or look good to the church. The truth is sometimes a Christian does get down, they can get tired of the battle and bad things really do happen to good people.
The Bible says that we are comforted by our mutual faith (Rom 1:12). If we just lie to each other and say everything is fine (praise God Hallelujah) and go through all the super Christian posturing we provide no comfort, only confusion and condemnation. We want to let you know that you're not in this battle alone, and there is no one above temptation (even Jesus was tempted). You're not the only Christian plagued with unclean thoughts, anger, addictions, etc. Being a Christian is not easy, just ask the apostles. Take a look through "Fox's Book of Martyrs",
Lying about your condition may get you in good with your church, but it won't get you anywhere with God. We desire to provide a place where battle weary Christians can be truthful about what is going on in their lives. A place where you can be honest without getting the speeches, finger shaking, condemnation and accusations. A place where you can work through your addictions or deal with that "sin that so easily besets us" (Heb 12:1)
It's not really easy to sum up our lives work and goal in a few paragraphs, but this is what we do and why we're here.
Obviously we believe we're right, but our goal is to show others how to search out the truth in God's Word for themselves, so you don't have to take any one's word for it (including ours). We also hope to enable you the discernment to recognize when someone is preaching less than the truth. It's going to take commitment on your part, learning to "rightly divide the Word of God" (2Ti 2:15) is not necessarily an easy thing. It takes a lot of time to pour through tons of scripture in order to understand it's true meanings. Understand there are no shortcuts, you have to read it for yourself and then study it out.
The reason for this is because truly learning (experiencing) God's will is really twofold, usually knowledge comes first, then revelation. It's a time consuming activity. Take the word "faith" for instance, if you look in "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" you'll find that the word faith occurs 247 times in the King James translation of the Bible. That number is actually larger, because sometimes the root word in Greek or Hebrew is translated into more that one word. (i.e. faith, faithful, trust, trusty, trusting, etc. and that's only from the first reference in Deuteronomy). By the same token, sometimes the word you're studying may be translated from several different words in the original language. This is not a quick task, just looking up every reference can take a lot of time. Now add looking them up in context and the amount of study time for a single word can be staggering. What makes it all worth it is that I can pretty much guarantee that if you take the time to study it all out, read it all in context and seek the truth, you will come away with a much deeper understanding of God's idea of faith (even without the second part). That's the point to all of this, learning God's true meaning.
The second part is revelation knowledge. I'm not talking about a mystical, trance like state or falling on the floor or having someone "prophesy" over you. I mean that as you study, you're having fellowship (hanging out) with God Himself, and during the time you spend with Him, He'll rub off on you. As long as your study time is devoted to drawing out the truth in God's Word, God will begin to reveal to you the depth of His Word. Truly understanding something goes much deeper than book knowledge.
Our goal is to help you learn to do these things and literally prove out the scriptures for yourself. To know when, where and how it applies to our lives. Most church goers will simply accept what the pastor or other church leaders and teachers say. They will attempt to make God's Word fit into what the church says. That should be the other way around, your pastor, church, denomination, etc, needs to fit into what God's Word says. If they don't match, the Bible is always right. God's Word needs to be our final measuring stick, not the church, denomination or pastor.
Even if you're pastor is 100% right every single time (biblically unlikely), simply taking their word for it robs you of the fellowship and revelation from God Himself. The hardest part in all of this seems to be getting people to do the study for themselves, most just want to be told what to do in order to get heaven's windows opened up and get their share of the super-Christian powers advertised. They read popular Christian doctrinal books, listen to popular christian preachers, go to mega churches etc. but they won't do the study for themselves, but when it comes to knowledge, revelation maturity in Christ, there are no shortcuts or substitutes. If Jesus is going to be your PERSONAL savior, they you need to have a PERSONAL relationship with Him, not get to know Him vicariously through televangelists, authors and even preachers.
We firmly believe that if you honestly seek the truth in God's Word you will come to the same conclusions we have. At that point you will no longer need us (or anyone). You will know how to search out the true answer in God's Word for yourself. You'll also gain the insight to know when someone is not preaching the whole Word of God, or is trying to lead you to their conclusion instead of Gods.
Next comes the preparation for actually walking the Christian walk (it's not as easy as some make it sound). Studying out scripture is really the only thing that can get you ready for the battle against flesh and spirit, the one you feed is the one that will win. We want to provide a place where honesty and integrity are actually practiced, not just preached. Unfortunately it seems that you can find more honesty in an AA meeting than you can in most churches. In that vein, we want to provide a safe place for battle weary Christians to hang out.
Many churches today simply do not allow "negative" thoughts or speech. This causes what we call "Testaphonies", no matter what is going on in a persons life, they will lie about it in church. They'll tell you every thing is fine (praise God hallelujah amen), they'll tell you how blessed they are, they'll tell you how they've been delivered from everything under the sun. However, if you see them away from their church, their testimony doesn't hold up very well. It's all a lie to fit in or look good to the church. The truth is sometimes a Christian does get down, they can get tired of the battle and bad things really do happen to good people.
The Bible says that we are comforted by our mutual faith (Rom 1:12). If we just lie to each other and say everything is fine (praise God Hallelujah) and go through all the super Christian posturing we provide no comfort, only confusion and condemnation. We want to let you know that you're not in this battle alone, and there is no one above temptation (even Jesus was tempted). You're not the only Christian plagued with unclean thoughts, anger, addictions, etc. Being a Christian is not easy, just ask the apostles. Take a look through "Fox's Book of Martyrs",
Lying about your condition may get you in good with your church, but it won't get you anywhere with God. We desire to provide a place where battle weary Christians can be truthful about what is going on in their lives. A place where you can be honest without getting the speeches, finger shaking, condemnation and accusations. A place where you can work through your addictions or deal with that "sin that so easily besets us" (Heb 12:1)
It's not really easy to sum up our lives work and goal in a few paragraphs, but this is what we do and why we're here.
