Presently, we are seeing the illusory unveiling of God as a
good-luck-charm and salvation as an inoculation against hell. If you buy into this new scheme, then it is
promised that your life with be packed with fortune and bliss. Additionally, no matter what you do hell will
never be a consequence. This deviant message
is being offered by churches that are designed to showcase the charismatic
personalities of individuals rather than being venues of corporate meetings
with God. The hirelings begin with a
simple truth (and sometimes no truth, but a fanciful idea) and project their
personalities around it. The result is
large portions of nothing with a miniscule something inside. The essence of their messages can be spoken
in one phrase, usually the sermon title.
Along the way they linguistically meander through a maze of psychobabble
and New Age philosophies. The bottom
line is that God’s word is not preached and there is no anointing on those
preachers. Thus, for most professing
Christians the practice of “going to church” is no better than wearing a
talisman around ones neck. In fact, that
is exactly what people do with the cross.
They do not seem to realize that the cross was an instrument of death, a
tool of Satan to brutally murder the Son of God.
Why has this happened?
It occurred incrementally as congregants repelled the idea of God as
anything more than a god of fortune, blessing, and protection. They do not view Him as God and do not even
understand what the title God means.
There seems to be no reverential fear of God in most of them. Therefore, they gravitate to church meetings
where the preacher offers them the substance they desire and in fact demand. The first hint of any reference to God as
holy and One who requires full surrender, commitment, and obedience to His
divine will, those individuals exit the building never to return. There was a generation of preachers who spoke
truth. The result was near the end of
the last century, an exodus of the so-called baby boomers occurred. Shrinking congregations with the consequences
of dwindling pastoral salaries, and the struggle to pay utility bills and
mortgages, had denominations frantically searching for ways and means to pack
the pews. The “Seeker Friendly”
movement, started by Bill Hybels, became the archetype of how to get it
done. Instead of offering people a
genuine anointed message from God, they went about discovering what people
expected in a church meeting. Then they
designed church meetings based on the result of those findings. If people wanted more music and less
preaching, they got it. If they wanted preaching
absent of any negative tone, they got it.
When they demanded preaching that left them as sinners, but promised
them the fullest blessings of God, they got it.
It is no wonder that in venues where thousands of these folks gather
that the experience is mass psychotherapy.
It makes me question if the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders) has covertly replaced God’s word.
Now here is the blunt truth.
The Apostle Paul would not recognize the overwhelming majority of church
meetings today as being Christian assemblies.
Further, he would not be welcomed in the pulpits of those churches. But if he were invited to preach his message
would be unrecognizable as true Christianity and rejected. He would in fact be considered a
failure. It is not likely that any
denomination would ordain him as a minister.
Of course, I am open to the charge that I am viewing the
entirety of Christianity in America
through the distorted lens of personal experiences. I admit that personal experiences are involved
in my perspective, but the glaring truth is immediately clear if one simply
considers the offerings of Christian television, radio, publications, Internet,
and even music. The bulk of what is
offered can be described as a “soothing balm for the consequences of sin and
rebellion/rejection of God”. In fact,
after hearing some preachers or teachers, they appear to have flipped the role
of God and Satan. What Satan offers is
now being presented as the benefits of Christianity and what God offers is
being represented as the attacks of darkness.
Offering salvation as inoculation against hell for the unregenerate
individual who pays only token acknowledgment to God is satanic. It begins with God being presented as a deity
who begs and pleads with people to join His kingdom throng. Salvation is actually a covenant agreement
with God made possible by the sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus the
Christ. It is a privilege that should
not be cheapened by the idea of a desperate God who kowtows to the masses for
possible converts. God’s word presents
Him as the Righteous, Almighty Creator, who is so holy that approaching Him
without the covering of the blood of Christ is deadly.
Imagine this; what would be the result of making a promise
to do a job for a wealthy and influential man, taking his money, and then
refusing to do the job? How much worse
is it to made an agreement with God and then ignore our part of the
agreement. Can we continue to expect Him
to keep His part of the agreement?
People need to wake up to the truth!
Salvation is initiated with a confession, is enacted with a commitment,
and maintained by faithfulness. The
volume of the New Testament describes the nature of a true Christian as one who
has surrendered to the salvation and Lordship of Jesus Christ, and consequently
received the Divine Nature in the form of the Holy Spirit. Such an individual does not go shopping for
church meetings were the preaching is non-threatening to his or her carnal
lifestyle. Instead, he or she is open to
conviction by the Holy Spirit in order to develop a greater intimacy with God. If the Holy Spirit is in us, we will have a
deep, passionate, and driving desire to increasingly have a purer spirit and a
closer relationship with God.
Sadly, individuals who have that concept of Christianity and
that truly are devoted to pursuing it every day are rapidly fading away. As my generation dies off, the concept of true
Christianity is also dying. When the
swirling factors of apathy, lethargy, ignorance, and deception, reach critical
mass, the final apostasy will be fully formed.
My consistent warning is to wake up, get prepared, and resist the broad
path of hirelings and their blind followers.
One day there will be no more warnings and no more prophetic
voices. The silence of impending
destruction will be broken only by the party noise of a deceived world system. If one cannot hear God now, how will he or
she hear Him then?
Comments
Post a Comment