Keith Giles - Page 3 of 21 - This former pastor left the pulpit to follow Jesus and started a church where 100% of the offering goes to the poor.

Forsaking Church As We Know It To Experience Church As God Intended

November 29, 2018 By Keith Giles

Someone once said that if you want to save something, you first have to destroy it. This was more in the context of art or fashion, mind you, but it does have applications in a few other areas. Like, the Church, for instance. Church as we know it is really more of a recent development in Western culture. It honestly bears very little resemblance to what the original Christians used to practice about 2,000 years ago in Palestine… Read more

Our Divine Potential

November 29, 2018 By Keith Giles

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The question usually gets framed as something like: “Do you believe that humans are all born in original sin?” or “Do humans have a sin nature?” For me, the problem is in the question itself. It assumes the answer before anyone can really consider all the variables. As an example, we could factually say that every human being goes to the bathroom on a regular basis. So, does that mean that humans are poopers by nature? Well, yes, but is… Read more

No Jesus? No Christ. Know Jesus? Know Christ.

November 28, 2018 By Keith Giles

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Trying to clarify a bit more how I understand the Christ consciousness, as some call it. I’ve already written a few posts recently about how being Christlike is not the same as being Christ, and about how Jesus and Christ are synonymous. However, I still feel like there’s one more thing I need to stress: You can’t talk about Christ without talking about Jesus. In my ongoing dialog with a few of my friends who see Christ as being independent of Jesus,… Read more

Christlike (But Not Christ)

November 24, 2018 By Keith Giles

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The other day, a friend responded to one of my posts by saying that I reminded him of Christ because of something I did or said. That was a blessing. I honestly do have a very real desire to be like Christ, and so whenever someone says they can see Christ in me, it really means a lot. However, after that comment, my friend went on to say that I was Christ, which I think I can honestly say… Read more

Undeserved Love?

November 21, 2018 By Keith Giles

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There we were, sitting in a new church on a Sunday morning. Having just moved to a new town only a month ago, after living in Southern California for 25 years, my wife and I were mostly looking for an opportunity to gather with other Christ-followers. Our long-term plan is still to start another house church family here, but in the meantime, we were just looking for an opportunity to fellowship. So, the worship set that morning was… Read more

In Defense of Brian Zahnd

November 19, 2018 By Keith Giles

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Back in 2015, I posted an article called “Not A Sin?” on my previous blog site called ‘Subversive1’, after several weeks of showing the post to a handful of people I respected, and especially those who were members of the LGBTQ community. My concerns were two-fold: One, I wanted to be sure that my response was solid from a scriptural standpoint, and Two, I really wanted to be careful not to inadvertently insult or belittle my friends who were… Read more

Childlike Wisdom

November 16, 2018 By Keith Giles

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It was about 9 years ago. I was sitting in the floor of our den, surrounded by our house church family, and one little boy from our neighborhood who had started to join us, along with his even younger brother and sister. His name was Parker, and he was six years old, going on 26. Smarter and sharper and more clever than any other six-year-old I had ever met before. The first person to greet us when we had moved… Read more

Thankful Every Hour

November 15, 2018 By Keith Giles

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Now that we’ve moved to Idaho, Wendy and I are really starting to miss our house church family back in Orange County, California. Here’s one of my favorite memories from our time together with those wonderful people: One Sunday, after our house church gathering in the morning, we shared a potluck lunch together. These were always pretty amazing, on both the food and fellowship scale. On that particular afternoon, our conversation started to drift into an exploration of “What Makes Us… Read more

The Crowley/Darby Connection

November 15, 2018 By Keith Giles

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Dispensationalism, the dominant theology of Evangelical Christianity today in America, originated in 1830 with John Nelson Darby. Or, so we might assume. But, recently I came across a bit more evidence of where Darby got his strange ideas about the Rapture, End Times Tribulation, and the identity of “True Israel.” As a result, I also uncovered an odd connection between Darby and famed Satanist Aleister Crowley, which is fascinating. For some background, John Nelson Darby popularized and was largely responsible… Read more

For God So Hated The World?

November 9, 2018 By Keith Giles

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If Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory is true, then we need to re-write John chapter 3, verse 16 to say: “For God was so filled with wrath against the world, that he sent his only begotten son to take the beating that we all deserved. That if anyone would want to escape eternal suffering, and would raise their hand and repeat this prayer after me, they would escape this horrible wrath. For the son was not sent into the world… Read more