Cosmic Attacks on Communicators & Their Message; The Bible Is God-Breathed through Progressive Revelation, 2 Timothy 3:16

		14-	These attacks indicate the satanic modus operandi: attack the prophets who are the communicators and the altars which represent the rituals that inculcate their message.
		15-	In the Church Age the attacks are against the communicators of biblical truth in order to discredit their message.  It is not unusual that many of these communicators are functioning outside the boundaries delineated in Scripture.
		16-	Widespread failure to teach doctrine by a large number of theologically confused pastors has resulted in an even more confused number of believers.
		17-	The Bible clearly states that the first job of the believer is to grow in grace and this requires a very serious approach to the only source of knowledge provided to us by God for the fulfillment of this mandate.
		18-	That source is the Bible and its message contains God’s directive will for the believer in the dispensation in which he lives.
		19-	When a particular generation transcends one or more dispensations then God provides those believers time to assimilate the alterations of divine policies brought about by this change.
		20-	For example, during the Incarnation, our Lord was very patient in explaining His purpose and His mission regarding Plan A, His millennial kingdom.  Most of the Israelites who lived in Judea rejected His message.
		21-	The way they decided to deal with His message was to discredit Him.  Thus the Pharisees and scribes, et al., hounded the Lord with technical questions about Mosaic Law and the oral tradition.  Our Lord was perfect in His management of these attacks.
		22-	Nevertheless, there were those who were able to make the transition and believed in the Lord’s presentation of Plan B.  These individuals moved into the Church Age as believers but with only sparse knowledge of the spiritual life of the new dispensation.
		23-	Over a period of approximately 65 years God revealed the details of that spiritual life through the writers of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.  During that time there was a transition from the ritual plan of God practiced in the dispensation of Israel and the Incarnation to the power plan of God for the Church Age through the process of progressive revelation.
		24-	The book of Acts must therefore be understood as a history which documents this transition away from an emphasis on rituals over to an emphasis on the reality that is behind these rituals.
		25-	The ritual of the Old Testament spiritual life is designed to teach (1) principles of sin and its forgiveness through the coming Messiah, (2) salvation from sin by faith in the coming Messiah, and (3) postsalvation sin management through certain sacrifices that emphasized confession and forgiveness based on the Messiah’s future work.
		26-	Once the New Testament canon was complete all ritual ceased with the exception of the Eucharist.  The focus of the believer was now directed toward the Bible as his lone source of information for learning the plan of God and his place in it:
2 Timothy 3:16 - All Scripture is God-breathed [ God exhales divine thought which is called revelation and the writer inhales the information which is called inspiration ], and becomes beneficial for teaching doctrine, for reproof [ rebound ], correction [ concepts of disciple designed to motivate recovery from carnality and reversionism ] for training in righteousness [ spiritual growth ];
v. 17 -	in order that the man of God may be mature having been equipped for the production of every good work.
		27-	Elijah is right.  Jezebel and her underlings had indeed broken the covenant, torn down the altars, and killed the prophets.  It was typical of satanic assaults that occur within the client nation.  The intent is to discredit or eliminate the communicators while destroying the means of proper worship.
		28-	Although in a much less obvious way, we are experiencing such assaults in our society today.  The discrediting of the communicators and the defilement of the altars is far more sophisticated then in the ninth century b.c. but the results are potentially the same.
		29-	One of the more sophisticated attacks is to discredit pastors who actually do their jobs as defined by the Bible and who refuse to submit to the fads of the day.
		30-	We will now examine the present-day equivalent of “killing the prophets” and “tearing down the altars.”