[Preach the true doctrine!]
#1To the priests of the apostate church and to pastors seduced by Jezebel, say: O ‘Nicolaitans,’ know you are far removed from me on account of your strange doctrines. Though the earth counts you with mine, I abhor your ways and detest your works! Now, cease from your ungainly fables and embrace the true faith. Desist from heresies and teach the true counsel of God—
2—and this is the true counsel: that you acknowledge me, the one true God, and admit my providential will over all things and all beings; that you receive every word of Scripture and reject every other. Anyone who does not uphold and live these is anathema.
3—and this is the true gospel: that you avow the deity of the incarnate Christ and aver His substitutionary death; that you deny not His resurrection or disavow His exclusive salvation. If anyone believes not these, he witnesses not the faith.
4—and this is the true doctrine: that you confess that Salvation is of grace and not of works; that you profess that ‘Pardon proceeds not from man’s deeds but Christ’s cross.’ If anyone asserts not these, he abides in his sins, his soul eternally lost.
5—and this is the true creed: that you assert the verity of the Triune God and the deity and purity of my Spirit; that you acknowledge His life-giving power and His workings of miracles. If anyone discounts these, my Spirit has no part with him.
6—and this is the true faith: that you proclaim the glory laid up for the just, even the consolation prepared the saint; that you preach the hope held out to the sinner but deny not the condemnation reserved the wicked. If anyone maintains not these, he is accounted with Belial and covenanted to the hell he denies.
7So, let these truths be in you, O priest, even as they were in the saints before you [For it is written: “Holding fast the faithful word as (you) have been taught, that (you) may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince those who contradict”]. Hence reprove the naysayers who lately have emerged amidst the church, babbling and setting forth strange teachings, new gospels, and false christs [As it is written: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them”]. Suffer them not, for they are false prophets and talebearers. Though they don sheep’s clothing and feign the countenance of doves, they are wolves; though their words are faith-effused and their conversation sweet-sounding, they are hirelings who have rejected the love of the truth, perverted grace, sanctified greed, and enthroned licentiousness—wittingly dimming the light of my Word [As it is written: “Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple”].
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