The Church & Its Practices

Philip preached Christ, cast out devils, healed the lame, and baptized a city — and he could not give the Holy Ghost. Jerusalem had to send apostles. That one limit explains Acts 8, answers Acts 19, and exposes what is being claimed today.

Paul says there is one baptism. The usual answer is that he means one chief baptism among several. This study tests that reading against every place the word one stands in the Bible, and then against the sentence Paul actually wrote.

There is an old way to get rid of a doctrine you cannot answer: go after the man who said it. Scripture answers it plainly. God published His own messengers' failures, kept using them, and never once made a man's record the test of his message. Weigh what was said, not who carried it.

Believers ache for a past that was more moral and more Christian, and grieve a covenant they believe the nation broke. But the remembered age never existed as remembered, no Gentile nation was ever in covenant with God, and Scripture rebukes the longing itself. A look at nostalgia, the Christian nation, and the post God actually gave you.

When Jesus told Peter he would know hereafter, what would Peter come to understand? Rightly divided, the foot washing belongs to Israel's kingdom program — leadership training for the twelve, grasped after Pentecost, not the Pauline mystery. It also shows why foot washing is no ordinance for the Body, and why we take our humility from Paul.

Rome claims to follow Christ, Peter, and Paul — and by right division it follows none of the three. A stand-alone study of the papacy, the Mass, Mary, purgatory, confession, and tradition, showing that Rome, the Eastern churches, and Rome's Reformation daughters share one ancient error: works added to the finished work of Christ.

Matthew stands at the seam of right division. Peter Ruckman hands much of it back to Israel — the Sermon on the Mount, the Disciples' Prayer, conditional forgiveness — then pours the Body of Christ back in through his method of spiritual application. How a book gets wrongly divided even by a man who can see where its parts belong.

The tithe was Israel's law, never laid on the body of Christ — so what replaces it? Paul gives something freer than a percentage: cheerful, purposed, proportionate giving that flows from grace already received. This study shows where grace giving comes from, what governs it, and where the gift goes.