Publications
Outreach Letters Series
Where is Love
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
The God of love, who is Love, constantly seeks to win people to Himself. He longs to gather them, to speak to them, to give Himself to them. Yet what do those who benefit from His love do? So often they distort it all by repeating an age-old apostasy. They create religious systems. They build institutions and ‘spiritual empires’ which bear His name but are devoid of His love.
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What Really Matters
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
The most truly elite people on earth should be God’s people – those who known as ‘born again believers’. It follows then that they, of all people, should know What Really Matters. Many appear to … but do they?
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Let My People Go!
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
The Christian system is a prison. Worse than that, it is a deceptive prison, for it offers ‘protective custody’ to those who were once the devil’s captives – whereas Jesus came to set them free.
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You’ve Got to Conform to Belong!
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
The pressure to be conformed comes from without. The power to be transformed comes from within. Transformation is God’s way of changing us. Conformity is the world’s.
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Cry Freedom
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
The domination of one group by another is, of course, as old as humanity itself and the phrase, ‘man’s inhumanity to man,’ has become so hackneyed as to lose its impact. Nevertheless the insatiable desire to dominate, to control, to use and abuse, continues unabated in every social setting from families to nations … to churches.
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The Christian Spectacle
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
Spectacle is vital to religion. Whether it be a High Papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, a Hindu procession along the banks of the Ganges, or an American ‘Christian Television Spectacular’; the passion to display, to dramatize, to excite the senses and to stir up the emotions is plainly evident. That passion, however, has nothing to do with the way God approaches things. Though He is the one true God, the Creator of all things and Lord of the Universe, He has nothing to prove… and He is not a show-off.
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By Their Fruit
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
There is a fundamental difference between results and fruit. A man can produce results, but he reproduces fruit. Jesus was adamant about this. He made it very clear that it is not the outward impressiveness of a man’s ministry which endorses him as a man of God – no matter how powerful his prophecies, how great his power over demons or how mighty his miracles. No man is acceptable to God unless he does God’s will. And if he is doing God’s will the evidence will not be found in the results of his ministry but, rather, in the fruit of his life.
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The Great Confusion
By Tony Kostas | Published 1988
It may come as something of a surprise to such Bible-believers to realize that not only is ‘The Great Commission’ not a scriptural term, but those words of Jesus, recorded in Mark’s gospel, are never again quoted nor referred to in any of the New Testament teachings and exhortations by such as Paul, Peter and John. Even more startling is the fact that those same leaders of the Early Church, who themselves sacrificed their lives for the Gospel, never even encouraged – let alone commanded – their First Century flock to embark upon any ‘soul-winning’ or ‘witnessing’ activities.
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The Golden Calf
By Tony Kostas | Published 1989
“Make us gods who will go before us!” demanded the Israelites. “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” With those words, God’s people made a democratic choice – against the way God wanted them to go and for their own “security”. God’s way was not to their liking. It required faith and trust – not only in God but also in a man. That man had climbed a mountain forty days earlier to speak (he claimed) with God and had not been seen nor heard of since. They never liked the way he did things anyway, so here was a – literally – golden opportunity to have it their way. Aaron, their high priest and Moses’ brother, was massively outvoted. The majority ruled and they got their god – a golden calf which could be the kind of god they wanted. Most Christians know the story well. Unfortunately most Christians don’t realize that Christianity itself is a golden calf of such proportions as to put Aaron’s effort in the shade.
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The Great Divider
By Tony Kostas | Published 1989
Division is both a dirty word and a common phenomenon among Christians. Much of it is avoidable. Some of it is inevitable. The apostle Paul put it succinctly when he wrote these words to the Corinthian church: I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you… No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. Jesus Himself made it clear that He had come to bring, not a uniting peace but a dividing sword: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household”.
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In the Beginning was the Word…
By Tony Kostas | Published 1990
Few statements are more familiar to Christians than the first six words of John’s Gospel which form my title, and few phrases are more often used by Christians than: “the word of God”. Almost two thousand years have passed since John wrote his Gospel. Two thousand years of Christianity. After all this time, can there be any doubt as to what “the word of God” is? Certainly not, most Christians would reply with impressive confidence. As impressive, in fact, as that of the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, who were sure they knew exactly what “God’s word” was.
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God’s Representatives
By Tony Kostas | Published 1991
Ever since God entrusted the future of His kingdom into the hands of men, He has asked of them one simple thing: to represent Him. Hardly an unreasonable request, and one which many claim to be obeying. But is God really being represented by those who make such claims, or is he being grossly misrepresented?
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