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I’m Dale Reichel, a Christian, a husband, a dad, a Bible teacher, a guitar player, and a computer and other gadgets fix-it guy.

I was raised in Minnesota, in a happy, intact Christian and musical family. I started playing ukulele in 1962, guitar in 1965. I am not sure when I got saved, though I suspect it was before the altar call at a Bible camp the summer of 1967. In the mid-1970’s, while in college to become a public-school music teacher, I began studying and teaching the Bible. To this day, I’m still studying and teaching the Bible, and still playing guitar and singing songs.

MusicMinister.net is a way I can give back and share the best of the Bible and music I’ve collected over these many years. Through lessons and songs that teach and entertain, I hope to help people who want to learn more about our loving Heavenly Father and our magnificent Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and who would like to increase the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

In addition, I offer this site to teachers, songwriters, singers, guitar players, parents & children, and … well…, ANYONE looking for resources to help learn:

• Biblical research and teaching skills
• Songs (especially songs easy for one person to play and sing)
• Song writing
• Recording and notating music
• Guitar technique

If you are like me, right about now your BIG question is, “What does this guy believe?”

Fair enough!

Anyone who has been around church for more than a day has noticed not everyone has the same list of “Faith Absolutes” — you know — THE DOCTRINES we regard as true, not negotiable, basic and necessary to “really” be a Christian. We all have such a list. The good news is you can almost always find at least ONE other person who is alive, or at least used to be, who agrees with your list. The bad news is you CERTAINLY can find any number of people who will argue with you for any number of reasons about ANY list you offer. (For “extra credit”, I share at the end of this page an old, fascinating, well-written observation on this point from Ben Franklin’s Autobiography.)

I embrace the following in my life and on MusicMinister.net:

Regarding the Authority of Scripture

(You may notice I come from a KJV background. Someone said, “If it was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it’s good enough for me.” Okay, a little humor…)

1. The Scriptures, as originally given, were God’s inerrant word and will.
2. No known translation of the Bible existing today is 100% true to the original.
3. Knowing the original was inerrant, but our versions are not quite, any apparent contradiction we find in a Bible is due either to an error in translation or to our misunderstanding. (Side note: In my experience, more apparent contradictions seem to be due to misunderstanding than translation. It is a big book which, when read with honest diligence and sound method, rewards the seeker with sometimes unexpected answers, ones that don’t contradict anything else in the entire book.)
4. Part of the solution to this problem is recorded in II Timothy: “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth”. This word “study” means to make a diligent effort noting the brevity of time. God does NOT give us permission to be lazy when approaching His Word. We are to be workmen of the word of truth.
5. Neither sincerity nor tradition, nor pounding a pulpit, nor brow beating are guarantees for truth.
6. There are some errors in translations, and there are some errors in our understanding, so we do well to remain patient, gracious, merciful, and humble in our dealings with others who explore the Bible in a sincere search of the original God-breathed truth, MUCH of which is right in front of us, even when reading many of the popular versions available today.

Basic Scripture Truths

1. I’ll summarize my worldview by answering these three questions:
   Where did we come from?
   In the beginning, GOD CREATED the heaven and the earth.
   Where are we now?
   Dead in trespasses and sins unless and until we accept salvation through Jesus Christ.
   Where are we going?
   Final judgement. Then, for ALL that had accepted salvation, life everlasting.
2. From the beginning, God has had a plan to make everlasting life available. God’s plan continues to unfold, and is moving forward with breathtaking speed and precision. I believe the end is drawing closer, but it is our place, our joy and privilege rise up and exert the power and authority we have in Christ and occupy until He returns. God’s people should be running things here, not running away from everything. Obviously we have a lot of work to do. The God who parted the Red Sea is no less able to perform mighty works today. These are days to bring many people into God’s family. FORWARD! Victories to be gained for the Lord.
3. The first man Adam was given the opportunity to live forever on condition of obedience to God’s command. But, in free-will disobedience he violated that condition, and thus introduced death for all his offspring.
4. The last Adam was given the opportunity to live forever on condition of obedience to God’s command. In free-will OBEDIENCE Jesus Christ, called in the Bible the “last Adam”, the “second man”, the “Messiah”, and many other wonderful things, fulfilled every requirement of his Father, God, thus making available everlasting life for all who accept Jesus as Lord and believe God raised him from the dead. (Hallelujah!!!!)
5. Biblically speaking, man was built as a three part being of spirit, soul, and body. The day that first Adam sinned, he died, literally losing the spirit God had created. That day Adam became mortal, living on for several hundred years as an incomplete man with only soul and body. Through sinning, Adam lost the life of God, and the innate connection with God, and became a carnal man of the senses. All Adam’s offspring are born in the same state Adam passed along, having no spirit but with body and soul only. I Corinthians calls the man of body and soul the “natural man”. The natural man is dead in trespasses and sins, without God and without hope. THAT briefly describes the PROBLEM requiring a MESSIAH.
6. Jesus is the Messiah. He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. When God raised Jesus from the dead, IT MADE A DIFFERENCE. Jesus brought LIFE. What kind? Holy spirit, which the natural man, the man of body and soul, could receive to once again be a complete man of body, soul, and spirit. “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
   Romans calls this “saved” (meaning “made whole”).
   I Peter calls this “born again” of incorruptible seed.
   Colossians calls this “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.
   And, to be perfectly clear, there is “none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved”. (Again, Hallelujah!!!!)
7. God desires all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
8. Jesus Christ IS the way, the truth, and the life.
9. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. We’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation, which we carry out by means of the word of reconciliation and the power and authority bundled in “Christ in you, the hope of glory”.
10. Every man will face a final judgement. Those that accepted God’s salvation will live forever with Him. Until then (the title of a great song, by the way), we live for God, praise God, follow the Lord Jesus Christ, walk in the power of holy spirit … and even SING! ♫♪.

Extra credit, as promised:

From the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“These embarrassments that the Quakers suffered from having established and published it as one of their principles that no kind of war was lawful, and which, being once published, they could not afterwards, however they might change their minds, easily get rid of, reminds me of what I think a more prudent conduct in another sect among us, that of the Dunkers.

I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after it appeared. He complained to me that they were grievously calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions, and charged with abominable principles and practices, to which they were utter strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new sects, and that, to put a stop to such abuse, I imagined it might be well to publish the articles of their belief and the rules of their discipline. He said that it had been proposed among them, but not agreed to, for this reason: “When we were first drawn together as a society,” says he, “it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truth.

From time to time He has been pleased to afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now, we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith, we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive farther improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done to be something sacred, never to be departed from.”

This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, tho’ in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them. To avoid this kind of embarrassment, the Quakers have of late years been gradually declining the public service in the Assembly and in the magistracy, choosing rather to quit their power than their principle.

 

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– Dale Reichel

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