Whitehall MT Church of Christ

Whitehall MT Church of Christ A church that will always praise God and search His truth. Come let us reason together with God.

03/30/2026

Mar.27. Last text was Mar.18, concluding the 4 proceedures which were in place before the end of the 1st century which codified the N.T. Canon, long before any "church councils decided" what books should be in your Bibles.
John C. has been accepted into the VA facility in Butte, freeing us up from his month long 24/7 care.
Dave Fike is home recovering from his heart surgery & still requires some oversight.
So, we are getting our lives back. Some in the community have seen how Jesus' chruch cared for a friend & God was glorified.
Before you & I get back to working together in First John, there is one element of determining Inspiration, Text, and Canon that fits right in here.
It's called 'The Acid Test' for verifying the validity of an hostorical document of antiquity, like the books of the Bible.
Quickly, it's taking note if the original document was circulated among those who were present at the scene of the events recorded within the document.
Easiest to see is probably found in 1Cor.15:1-8 (see now, please) where Paul presents evidence for Jesus's resurrection. Most notable for this acid test discussion is in v.6.
Paul appeals to those with doubts about the resurrection to contact witnesses other than just him.
Here Paul records that Jesus appeared to over 500 people at once, "most of whom are still alive".
"Most" of 500 is 251, so these people were alive when this epistle was written to the church of Christ at Corinth, were witnesses of the resurrected Christ, & could be consulted. See that?
That's an example of what's meant by the acid test of an historical document.
Likewise, any spurious account would be labeled as such by people who were present when the alleged event is said to have occurred.
Jesus' resurrection, therefore, passes the historical acid test with flying colors.
Cool, huh?

03/19/2026

Mar.18. Inspiration, Text, & Canon (con't).
The 4th element present in authenticating completion of the New Testament canon is the COLLECTION proceedure.
Circulation of apostolic and prophetic documents, which was #3 above, leads to collecting them together (which is what a 'canon' is, right?)
See 2nd Peter 5:8 where careful reading has Peter certifying Paul's writings as being Scripture. (He says that the "untaught & unstable distort as they do THE REST OF the Scriptures". So Paul's writings are Scripture, see?)
So Peter endorses Paul's writings as being on a par with Old Testament Scripture & New Testament writings as well. Cf. 2Tim. 3:16f now for attributes & value of Scripture. The same can NOT be said of the apocryphal or pseudoepigraphical books.
(Paul identifies Luke's writing as inspired too, in nearly the same way in 1Tim.5:18 -see.)
There are many more factors to consider than in this brief overview of Inspiration, Text & Canon, but just these 4 alone give the lie to the idea that the councils of Trent or Nicea "wrote" the genuine Biblical canon.
God had already taken care of that.
We nearly need to Amen it.

03/19/2026

Mar.17. Inspiration, Text, & Canon, (cont'.)
#1, the SELECTING proceedure, (con't.)
In reading Luke 1:1-4, we have another example of the selecting proceedure: there he says that "many have undertaken to compile an account", but he is choosing to include only the eyewitness accounts. So while he has sources availaible regarding the life of Christ, he selects the eyewitness reports to pass on to Theophilus so that he "might know the EXACT truth" of the things he had been taught. (Luke also chooses to relate these facts in CHRONOLIGICAL order, which helps us collate data from all the gospel accounts, yeh?)
There are several references of authority to oral apostolic testimonies (cf. 1Thess. 2:13; 1 Cor. 11:2, etc.).
John corrects an improper belief held by DISCIPLES about his death in Jn.21:23f, again, 'selecting' Divine truth over speculation & passing on only those truths to his readers.
#2, A READING proceedure: another indication within the New Testament that a canon of Scripture was already being formed in the first century is the repeated injunction to read the books to the churches: 1Thess. 5:27; and Rev.1:3 promised a blessing to who "read & heed" (cf. Rev.3:3, 11).
#3, is the CIRCULATION proceedure. Those writings which were read as authorative were circulated among the churches. The book of Revelation circulated among the 7 churches in Asia Minor, as John was told to "Write what you see in a book & send it to the seven churches", Rev. 1:11.
Paul commanded the Colossians, when they had received & read his letter, to pass it on to the Laodicians &, then to read the letter sent to Laodicea (quite likely the letter which we call "Ephesians", but that's not a certainty). In any case, Col.4:16 is a crucial passage as it indicates that the authority of one epistle included a larger audience than simply the one to which it was delivered.
We'll look at #4, the COLLECTING proceedure next time.

03/17/2026

Began crafting this response on Mar.3. Being sent out March 16.
Michelle (and the rest of you, too), it seems a lot of people have questions about the Books of Enoch (3 of them, but most discussion is about the first). It is extrabiblical, of course, but so are a lot of other works part of the "apocryphal books", those written between the end of Malachi & the beginning of Matthew, the 400-450 years where Israel was "without a prophet".
A "canon" is a compiled work (the "canon" of Bill Shakespeare; "canon" of medical tomes; canon of Scripture, etc.).
The books & letters included in the canon of the Bible were not 'voted upon', as many people seem to think, but were decided by heaven, long before any 'church council' believed that THEY had the horsepower to decide such things.
There are 4 proceedures common to all 27 inspired writings in the New Testament. These are also present in the 24 Old Testament writings as well, but are most clearly seen in the N.T. works, so we'll look at those for now.
(These 4 proceedures are important enough, & are so frequently needed to help folk understand the topics of Inspiration, Text, and Canon that I'd strongly suggest each of the faithful WRITE these & their citations IN their Bibles. The blank page between Malachi & Matthew is perfect for various notes you want to keep. (2 suggestions for you here: write SMALL, and write in CAPITAL letters only, as they differ enough from each other so as to be easy to read even when written small.)
#1) SELECTING PROCEEDURE. The apostles & prophets selected what they would record in their writings. This was completed by the end of the first century.
THEY did that; we should not presume to. They were inspired, you & I are not.
John 20:30, (see) "many OTHER signs...which are NOT written in this book".
So, John was SELECTING, wasn't he?
John 21:25, (see), "And there also many OTHER miracles Jesus did...", again, John was involved in a selecting proceedure.

03/01/2026

Feb.28. Comparisons of mainstream gnostic errors which John corrects, con't. :
The Ascetic gnostic built monasteries (homes for u***d fathers?...sorry), so their view of things was also called 'Monastic gnosticism'.
Idea was, if we build walls high enough & live inside them, the temptations of the flesh can't reach us. By denying our bodies physical delights, we will be sinless, holy, & acceptable to God. These are those John has in mind in 1:8.
3rd type we'll note is Docetic gnosticism (Docetism). Comes from the Gk. word 'dokeo', meaning 'to seem'. These teachers denied the actual humanity of Jesus, saying that He only 'seemed' to suffer. In
1Jn.4:3, John says these "have the spirit of the antichrist". So, Jesus was a holigram.
The last we'll touch on is Cerinthian (or, Adoptionist) gnosticism.
Cerinthus (a contemporary of John) taught that Jesus was the natural son of Joseph & Mary and that His body was USED BY (adopted by) the Christ for c.3-1/2 years between His baptism & the cross - that He was not really God in the flesh, born of a virgin.
They held that Jesus, a simple builder, at the moment of His baptism, was taken over by God (like a puppet) & His next concious thought, upon snapping out of it, was upon a Roman cross being crucified, and the shock killed Him. John deals with this apostacy in 5:6-8.
(Don't laugh. There are religious groups today who hold to the idea of adoptionism, one a very large one. In fact ALL of these errors can be found in some modern denominations, perhaps in some form or other, in yours. Which is why I am belaboring these points & why you & I must listen to God & not men.)
Bottom line here is that these all have in common what we started with: Dualism. That a good god created the spiritual & that a bad god created the flesh, & that spirit & flesh cannot coexist.
The very personage of Jesus proves that thinking is wrong & John affirms Jesus as both God AND man, and so rejects these human idiations.

02/26/2026

Feb.25. Brief look into the gnosticism John corrects specifically in 1st Jn.
These are quick definitions & you should save these somehow to refer to, so we need not keep repeating ourselves.
Keep foremost in your minds that the founding principle of ALL the various types is that 'flesh is bad & spirit is good'.
*ANTINOMIANISM. (Anti = against; Nomos = law; Ism = the practice) so antinomian gnosticism means "no law". In practice, this means that ones' soul is not held back, nor affected by, & is not responsible for things that the body does.
Once the soul (spirit) is saved, the body can do whatever it pleases & even evil actions do not affect the soul's standing before God.
Once saved, the person may indulge the flesh without restraint (immorality of any sort) & will still maintain it's saved status. Hence, there really is no-law to which a saved person is accountable.
Today, this thinking manifests itself in the 'once saved, always saved' doctrines.
These are the guys John cites in 1:6. And John there writes that such reasoning is wrong: Walking in darkness, it's lying, and it's not practicing truth if we SAY we have fellowship with God.
*ASCETICISM, or MONASTIC gnosticism (where we get the word 'monastery'.) The teaching here is the opposite of the antignomian.
The monastic (ascetic) believes that, once indwelt by the Holy Spirit as a result of an obedient faith, that the ONLY way to GROW in the spirit is to DENY the flesh.
All kinds of prohibitions accrue to this thinking: abstinence from certain foods on certain days; from marriage for leaders; from things that even innocently pleasure the flesh, etc. I.e., my body wants to eat an apple, but to increase my spirituality (& my acceptability to God) I don't eat an apple. (The antenomian would say, 'Go ahead & steal an apple & eat it, it doesn't matter')
See the glaring differences in their approach to Scripture?
Both were incorrect understandings in John's day & they still are.

02/26/2026

Feb.25. Some elements we need to grasp in First John:
After the meeting in Acts 15, the apostles sent a letter to the churches (read Acts 15) teaching that circumcision for salvation was not a component of New Testament Christianity. That reduced the frequency of the Judaizing teachers, but didn't fully eliminate it. Should have.
As it lost influence in the church, Satan raised up teachers of gnosticism.
"Gnostic" comes from 'gnosis' (knowledge), but this knowledge is false, not in line with what is the truly blood- bought knowlege found in the N.T.
It shows up in several flavors, and we'd be well informed to consider those (at least cursorally) as we read the apostles & prophets writing to the congregations of Christ's church.
Zoroaster, c. 6th century BC, began a philosophy in Persia (prob.), introducing "dualism", i.e., that there are 2 gods: a good god, who created spirits: & a bad god who created flesh.
These 2 constantly battle in the world, especially in human beings.
Flesh cannot include anything of the spirit & spirits cannot abide in flesh.
You can see how Christians living a life LED BY THE SPIRIT is incompatable with dualism.
With that introduction, we'll glace at some of the gnostic teachings (all gnosticism has roots in dualism) which John refutes in First John.
(Not just 1st Jn., but opposition occurs also in 1st Cor., Col., 1st & 2nd Tim., Titus, Rev., & John's gospel acct.)
And, once we SEE and can recognize it, as well as the opposition to it's heresy, we learn how pervasive these false teachings were.
But the MAIN point for us is, that they are STILL with us today in many churches. To correct our various paths, we must see where we began to stray from Bible truth.
The apostle John, in 1st John, is the clearest place to find those earliest departures.
As he corrects & encourages this church harmed by those heresies, he teaches them (& us) the purity of true saving faith in Christ.

02/24/2026

Feb.23. (No complete texts, I guess, since 2/20).
John Clugston, a dear friend of the Whitehall Montana Church of Christ, is on paliative care & not expected to live much longer. Dave & Kathy Fike & I have been caring for him 24/7 for 8 days now. I have the night shift & will look over the texts & addenda of the previous week, try to get them squared away tonight if possible, then forward them to all of you tomorrow morning (Tues.).
We plead your prayers for John C. as he may be close to accepting our Lord. Intellectually, he does understand it well, just can't take that final step.
Ananias was sent by the ascended Christ to minister the blinded Saul of Tarsus, and to remove the scales from his eyes (Acts 9:10-19, see).
Pray that scales may fall from John's heart, and that he will fully embrace the gospel while there is still time.

02/19/2026

Feb.18. First John 2:14ff.
Were talking about the order of the Johnine writings, & I asked you to look at John's gospel account, ch.5 v.2 & see what might date that book, said we'd chat.
What did you come up with?
Here's the thing: the reason we have dated his gospel account first is because of the word "is" in 5:2, "Now there IS in Jerusalem by the sheep gate..."
"IS" is a present tense verb, right? So that would mean that the pool by the sheep gate was present at the time John wrote it, necessitating a date prior to AD70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem.
Makes sense, but here's the thing: SOMETIMES a past tense event or quotation is made current by making it an "historic present tense" verb.
We Americans do it all the time in daily speech. I.e. "I saw (past tense) Al yesterday, & he says (present tense) that John ate his cow". See? A past, an historic, event, "saw", brought up to the present tense by employing the verb "says".
The NASB version denotes when they x-late a verb that way with an asterisk. See some in 5:6, 8, 14, 16; 6:8, 12, 19, etc. -they're all over the place. They denote it when THEY have made an historic present, but they don't asterisk the word if the WRITER (the apostle in this case) does it.
So, IF in 5:2, the "is" is one of those, then John could have written his account AFTER AD70, and that would allow his gospel account to follow his epistles.
In 1st Jn.2:12-14 that works better.
In those vss., John is refuting what the gnostic teachers were saying to these Christians whose sins ARE forgiven, that they DO in fact know Him, that they HAVE overcome the evil one (v.14 also), that they ARE strong & that God's word DOES abide in them -all points that the gnostic teachers were saying were NOT applicable to that church unless they bought into gnostic teaching. John is telling them not to & that they don't need to.

02/17/2026

Feb.16. 1st John 2:2-14.
John says that Jesus is our "propitiation".
This word dates back to the Hebrew Sacrificial System and integral to the forgiveness of a trespass.
I steal your cow & eat it. I get caught because you find 25 empty A-1 Sauce bottles in my trash can.
I must replace your cow with one of equal value ('restitution') PLUS 20% more ('satisfaction').
Restitution plus satisfaction equals propitiation.
When Jesus died on the cross, He didn't just pay for our trespasses in full, He paid in full plus 20% /one-fifth more / a 'double-tithe' more.
These 2 verses are of extreme value when you find yourself dealing with someone who believes that they have sinned in such a way that God can never forgive them. John says that God can, & they need to know that.
John additionally says that this propitiation is not for "our sins only" (Christ's church), but also for those sins of the whole world!
All trespasses, plus 20%!
The sad part is that so few are willing to meet Him on His terms to take advantage of a fine which He has already paid!
How do we receive that astounding benefit? By following vss.3-10.
We are to keep His commandments, some of which are what place us IN His church, in fellowship with God.
In vss.12-14, John address 3 groups of saved people.
Considering them, it occurs that they sound much more like what he wrote in Revelation, than what he wrote in his account of Jesus' gospel.
This may challenge our thinking about the ORDER of John's writings, doesn't it?
It's a bit technical, but it does support the idea that John wrote Revelation first, then the epistles of First, Second, & Third John, and then finally his gospel account. Increasingly, scholars are leaning to that position.
The only reason we presently date his gospel account before A.D. 70 is due to one verse:
Jn.5:2. Read that & think about what is found there that would argue for an early date.
We'll chat about it.

02/16/2026

Feb.15. 1st John 1:6-2:2.
A lot of teaching First John is UNteaching erroneous ideas about it.
Don't want to talk about gnosticism, but I'm going to have to, but not today. Notice, for instance what John writes in vss.6, 8, &10. These 3 vss. refute an equal number of gnostic heresies to do away with them & clear the unjust guilt imposed upon the Christians there by those false teachers.
He strips those away, releasing the truly faithful in that troubled church to enjoy the confidence & freedom Jesus purchased for them & us.
Because those heresies are still present today in some churches, learning more about what Jesus has done can free us from those lingering errors as well, so we should take this epistle very seriously & give it the study it deserves.
2:1f are my favorite verses in all the Bible.
He's writing so that we don't sin, he says.
And if (when) we do we have an advocate before God. Jesus Himself!
The word chosen for "advocate" is para+clay+toss, usually used for the Holy Spirit (the Paraclete) but used here of Jesus the righteous.
It's a compound word combining 'para' =alongside and a cognate of "kaleo" =to call. So together, 'the one called alongside'. As an attorney, a councilor, one who pleads a case before a magistrate.
Jesus came as Savior, and once that mission was successfully completed (Heb.1:3, see), He took on His new mission as our mediator, our intercessor.
A better attorney than Perry Mason because while all his clients were innocent, all Jesus' clients (us) are guilty.
So, 2 things: 1) cf.v.7, even while in fellowship with the Father, we still sin, and 2) THAT'S when Jesus mediates for us -when we've sinned. (If I've not sinned today, I don't NEED a mouthpiece, I can plead my own case, yeh?)
So Jesus isn't just our pal when we're doing everthing He says, He's our advocate with the Father when we don't.
Quite different from what some present day religions teach.
Re-read ch.1, then 2:1f. See how it fits.

02/15/2026

Feb.14. 1st John.
So if John's not talking about Jesus in 1:1-4, what IS he talking about?
He's talking about a particular kind of life, which we have due to a unique relationship with the Father from our relationship through the Son.
-now, run that through vss.1-4 each time he says "what" there & you'll see it fits.
Better give you a short & serviceable outline before I forget.
Ch.1,2 relates to the truth that God is LIGHT.
Ch. 3,4 relates to the truth that God is LOVE.
Ch.5 relates to the truth that God is LIFE.
1:2 brings up a thing John does with the words "eternal life" (& not just in 1st John; he uniquely does this in his writings), when he pens the phrase, "eternal life" he makes it an adjective, not an adverb.
What's that mean? First, we can tell he's done that because of how he spells it, so it's not opinion, it's a choice he consistently makes.
Second, because he makes it an ADJECTIVE, it has to do with a QUALITY of life. It's 'an eternal kind of life'.
Were it an adverb, it would deal with it's DURATION, which is what most people think when they hear 'eternal life' I.e., how long it LASTS. But John intentionally wants us to view our 'eternal life' (which he says we PRESENTLY have) as the type of life purchased by Christ only for those who are His.
Duration isn't the point. Quality is. (I hope I did that clearly enough. Each time it comes up, ask yourself which kind of 'life' is being communicated and you'll see. With John, it will be quality.)
In v.7, fellowhip between man & man is not under discussion. We KNOW that because (read v.7 again) YOU don't have a son named Jesus & neither do I. So the fellowship here is between the reader & God the Father. 'Vertical fellowship', if you will; he'll deal with 'horizontal fellowship' (man & man later).
In v.7, some will say that we must "walk in the light AS He Himself (God) is in the light", so, flawlessly.
That can't be right, or we'd HAVE no sins for His Son's blood to cleanse.

Address

510 West Railroad Street
Whitehall, MT
59759

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 6pm - 7pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 11am - 11:45am
12pm - 1pm

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Whitehall MT Church of Christ posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Place Of Worship

Send a message to Whitehall MT Church of Christ:

Shortcuts

Share

Category