RECENT LETTERS FROM SPIRITUAL FREEDOM BIBLE CORESPONDNCE STUDENTS

19.02.2011

Dear brothers and sisters! I asking for your invaluable assistance to study the Bible. I want to study the Holy Scripture very much, but I do not know where to start .I really hope that you won’t leave my letter without attention.

May God keep you!  Sergey, prisoner Stavropolskiy region

2/3/2011
 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,Not so long ago I happened to get some of your literature. And I want you to know I read it all. The books are very interesting and informative. I have learned a lot from them and I’d like to know more. That is the reason I’m writing you so that you would admit me to your correspondence school. I am not baptized but I believe in God before and now. I could not find a time to study about God before and I regret about it as I did not know a lot about God .But now I  want to correct this mistake and try to learn about our Creator as much as possible.  I want to study the Bible and I hope for your assistance.

May God bless you.

Sincerely yours, Alexey

3/12/2011

Dear SF Bible school teachers!
I have become a Christian on 08.08.2010. I sit in prison with false charges against me and I’m trying to have my conviction canceled. My wife, children and relatives are waiting for me. I suffer without them and they suffer without me. However I believe that God gave me this trial according to His plan. Being imprisoned I have approached Him and became a child of God. I read the Bible every day and sometimes some other spiritual literature. I pray regularly along with my brothers in Christ. I want to get closer to God. Due to this I ask you to admit me to your Bible correspondence school program. There are four more brothers from my prison team who also want to be accepted. Their names are……………..We hope to get your response soon. May God bless you.

Eugene

Krasnoyarsk City

Received 07.02.2011

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Dear Spiritual Freedom workers!

I’ve got your address from my friend. I decided to write you because there are many opinions

and many disagreements about God here in the prison. So I have decided to examine myself and to learn something new. My request is that you send me the first examine book “What the Bible Teaches”. I promise to return it to you with all questions sincerely answered. That is all for now.

Peace and Grace to you.

Truly yours, Roman

Vladimir region

25.01.2011 / Received 07.02.2011

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My name is Alexander and I’d like to know more about God and I saw that you can help me with that. I’m asking you for New Testament and any other Bible literature if of course you can. Thank you so much in advance!.

Alexander Altay region

Received 25.02.2011

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My name is Ilia. I have a Bible. I have already read it a few times, but I truly want to understand it. I was in a library and an old book got my attention it is the “Good News” Bible study. There I

found your  address  inviting me to learn  about  Holy Scripture. I’d like to know what truly essence of Christian faith is, how to get approval of the true God and what God requires from me personally. I consider myself as a Christian. But I understand that to consider myself a Christian and to be a Christian are not the same. Psychologists have a term “self-suggestion”. For example I can try to convince myself that I am a President and believe that. But I will be self deceived because I am in reality not 3/12/2011the President. I went to our prison church and spoke to a priest and other believers. I have figured out that the priest himself is not competent in some Bible issues and most of parishioners do not know what they are talking about. My desire is scrutinize the Bible but not mere to repeat the words without knowing their meaning. Wrong knowledge is worse than ignorance. Please help me in my seeking.

Truly yours,

Ilia

Krasnoyarsk City

31.01.2011 / Received 21.02.2011

ROMANS 13:8 OWE NO ONE ANYTHING EXCEPT TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER,FOR HE WHO LOVES ANOTHER HAS FULFIILLED THE LAW.

Ro 13:7  Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

Paul teaching believers that paying our taxes honor God. That paying of taxes and fees to the government we live under is the duty of every follower of Jesus Christ. According to historians the Christians were noted for their abiding by Laws of the Roman Empire. No doubt as the believers in Roman hear this section of the letter, heads were going up and down in agreement. Perhaps even in their hearts boasted in confidence that they submitted to the Roman authority and had paid the government their due taxes and fees. It is probably the same for most of you who have no problem abiding by the law and pay the appropriate taxes and fees that are due to government. We may have paid our due to the economy of man and that is to be commended, however Paul in the next verse declares that the believer has a greater obligation to the economy of God. It is an obligation that is much harder to fulfill than paying taxes and having all our bills paid. We as believers have a great debt we owe to Gods economy and that is the debt of love for another.

Ro 13:8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law .Here Paul is not talking about a debt that is owed to government so that we can have a better temporal existence on this earth, but a debt to love our neighbor so that God can influence their eternal existence. Paul understood the debt that had been paid on his behalf and so he qualified to proclaim this truth. Paul declared this truth earlier in his letter Romans 1:14 I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. Paul as a fellow follower of Jesus Christ understood the price that was paid for him to know the truth. That God Himself sent His only beloved Son to redeem Paul from a debt He could not pay, and Christ paid the debt that He did not owe. Paul therefore came to the conclusion that he owed Christ everything he had his heart, his soul, his mind, and his strength. Paul gave himself as a living sacrifice to the service of God. And so Paul compels the church in Roman and every follower of Jesus Christ to understand that a great debt was paid on our behalf, a debt that we would not have been able to pay for all of eternity. therefore we are to love our neighbor because Jesus who redeemed us first loved us. As believers we are to owe a debt to love one another. Not just in our family circles, Paul does not have to teach on the love that is expressed in a family. Paul is speaking about the greater family of mankind, to whom Jesus stepped out of heaven and into to the darkness of this world to redeem. Who are our neighbors it was asked? Any one who is breathing. This love does not come naturally and is really impossible apart from the love of Jesus Christ. This love that the believer is to owe his neighbor is not just for the sake of making them feel loved or making their lives more comfortable. What kind of love is that when a person’s soul is perishing from the lack of the truth of Jesus Christ? This action of love can never be separated from the truth of Jesus Christ. This debt that a believer is to owe to all men is to point the lost to the source of all love Jesus Christ. When we stop and consider what Christ has done for us, we owe all to Him.

Php 3:7-8 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ