BE DRAWN TO JESUS! Many desire to encourage, entice, persuade, etc, people to come to Jesus. One example was years ago some missionaries were very successful getting large crowds to worship every week and they would help the people by giving each family a large bag of rice after the service. One week no one showed up and they asked the local helper “why?” He responded “No rice” because the boat that brought rice every week had not arrived. Yes, people were coming for the rice not God.  Some use sales techniques and other methods including bribing people with food, forgetting that Jesus tells us “YOU CANNOT COME TO ME, UNLESS THE FATHER MAKES YOU WANT TO COME” [Jn 6:65 CE]. Another example of trying to persuade people to come to Jesus is over 500 years before Jesus walked on earth, Greek philosophers had begun deciding "the word" or "logos" in the Greek, was so important they even gave divine attributes to "the word" and related it to the Greek god Hermes. Early Christians like Jesus beloved disciple, John, reflect knowledge of the Greek emphasis on "the Word" [Jn 1:1-14] in his introduction or prologue to his Gospel which could have been an attempt to appeal to people following Greek philosophical religious thinking. Since there is no indication that God or Jesus said anything similar concerning "the word" and since John, a godly man, was a strong follower of Jesus, it is unlikely that he had embraced a false teaching from the Greek's philosophical religion. Paul also made an effort to reach out to the Greeks by referring to a place of worship dedicated "to the unknown god" [Ac 17:23]. It appears that both John and Paul were trying to reach out to the highly admired Greeks. Unfortunately, John would not have known that a few hundred years later his writings would be included in the bible and that manmade doctrines were developed that claim that every word included in the bible came from God or was inspired by God, resulting in some Christians worshiping the bible or bibliolatry. Some people eventually called the bible "the word" and inadvertently are being deceived by Satan to embrace Greek religious beliefs about "the word". A distinct difference Jesus presented, that no other man has ever factually claimed, is that everything He said is what God told Him to "SAY" and everything He did is what God told Him to "DO" [Jn 12:49; 14:31]. Although John or Paul's efforts to reach the Greeks might appear commendable, Jesus, our human role model, never used people's false religions to reach them. Jesus encountered several foreigners, like the Roman centurion [Mt 8:5-13] and the Greek mother [Mk 7:26-29] who were drawn to Jesus even though they would have been previously exposed to false gods. Jesus is very clear that no one comes to Him unless God "DRAWS"[Jn 6:44] that person to Jesus. If someone desires to lead a person to Jesus, the first step is to pray for God to draw them or make them want come to Jesus and then ask God what He would like you to do to help. The best way to avoid manmade doctrines and influence from false religions, which may result in a negative response from God, is to simply follow what Jesus teaches. Are you drawn to Jesus?                                                                        Home, Basic,  Subjects, Scriptures