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Why do so many reported-Christians
not comport themselves in accord with God’s word? One cannot
really be a child of God and not do the word of God. Was it not
Jesus who said, “If you continue in my word [continue doing it]
then are you my disciples indeed…” and “If you love me, keep
my commandments”? [John
8:31-32; John 14:15] Instead of strict obedience to the word of God,
there are many, far too many, Christians doing what is right in
their own eyes—and their eyes are unconverted, untransformed, and
even distorted by the things of this world, by this world, by their
flesh, and by the god of this world. Still, or because of this
distortion, they think that their mindset and their way of seeing
the world and the word of God are acceptable to God as they are.
[Judges 17: 6; 21:26; 2 Cor. 4:4]
God plainly says that man’s way
of thinking is not his way of thinking. Indeed, that is one of the
major reasons there is such confusion and lack of understanding of
God’s word; man does not think like God or understand as God does,
yet he is willing to prefer his own thoughts and reasoning above
that of God’s. And when man places his corrupted and
un-regenerated mind of thoughts on God’s word rather than a
transformed mind, one will always think that the earthy notions of
man are acceptable to God. They are not.
These types of Christians also think
they love God; they think that they are Christians; they think
they are saved, seeing things as they see them; behaving as they
behave, yet Jesus said this to the hypocrite Pharisees: “If God
were your father, ye would love me….” He goes on to say, that
they are of their father, which is not his father. Instead, their
father was and is the devil. And when one is of the devil he will do
the works of the devil; yet he will tell himself that he is doing
the works of God. But that is merely self-deception and Satanic
deception. Deception is never seeing things clearly. We know that
Satan is and always has been a deceiver, for his entire notion is to
steal, kill, and destroy. As far back as the Garden, Satan was there
deceiving—causing Eve to see things contrary to the way they
were—as God said they were. That is done primarily through
deception. [John 8:42-45; John 10:10] And, of course, if you love
God, you will keep his commandment, but if you love the devil, you
will keep his word, which is always contrary to God’s word.
When we honestly view, not
distortedly see, the Christian world, we see a Christendom primarily
filled with self-deceived and Satan-deceived people, going along in
their own way, making the church of God little more than a society
club or a fraternity. Many so-called Christians who do not have the spirit
of God in them have anesthetized themselves, and they have allowed
Satan to anesthetize them with lies and convoluted ways of seeing
God’s word! [2 Thes. 2:11] They have told themselves lies, they
have allowed others to tell themselves lies, and they have allowed
Satan to lie to them; for most, this has been a deliberate act, but
no lie has legs strong enough to hold itself up, and it certainly
cannot sustain a person. A lie cannot stand before the Living God,
and whereas those lies may be able to deceive the heart of the
simple and unwise, that is all they can do. [Rom. 16:18-19] Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., has said that no lie can live forever! And
that is also true.
The prophets of God prophesied about this time of gross deception and the people’s
responses to preacher lies. [Jer. 5:31; 14:14-15; Acts 20:29-30;
2 Thes. 2:3-5; 2 Tim. 4:4] The scripture teaches us that the
prophets will prophesy lies, the priests will rule by their own
means, and the people will love it so; furthermore, the scripture
teaches us that the man of
sin will come from outside and will also arise from inside the midst
of the church and take the people away from God so that he as God
will sit in the temple of God demanding to be treated as God. This
is already happening in our churches today. There has been an
inordinate rise in the position and supposed power of the pastor
ministry in many of the churches.
[Jer. 5; Acts 20]
I went by a brother’s
assembly—a brother that I had taught the word to and either baptized
him or instructed him to be baptized in the high and holy name of
Jesus Christ. That poor brother had gone away from God’s word in so many
ways and needed to come back to God, rather than try to pastor some
church and mislead the people, as he surely was doing.
This brother was busily showing
the few people he was misleading that the pastor position was the
pastor spoken of in the Old Testament and not only was he the one
that was the Shepard of the sheep, that pastor was also the pasture on which the
sheep grazed. As confused and distorted as that “analysis” was,
I cited it to him as a convoluted interpretation of God's word. But men do not want the
truth and will not stand correction--they seemingly prefer to fall victim to their own snare than
accept the shinning truth of God’s word as rightly divided. They
love darkness rather than light, the Bible says.
In another instance, God led me to
a certain church in Richmond, California to help a bishop brother. I
was not too clear on what the help would be, but I, as well as he,
knew that God had sent me to that assembly to help in doing the work
of God. I did not go to do the work of man—and there is too
much of that pastor and church work that is not God’s
work. As I continued there it became clear to me what that help
was. The people at that assembly were being starved to death for the
truth of God’s word rightly divided, and that bishop brother
was simply making merchandise of God’s people—the entire
church had been structured to be a money machine for the pastor and
his wife. That assembly had roughly 50-60 members; the bishop of
that church was the head of their organization and spent most of his
days in the southern part of the USA. He was at his Richmond
Church about 8-10 times a year, yet I was told that this brother was
getting roughly $100-120,000 a year out of that small church
through preaching tithes that went directly and totally to him. And
he
was already a millionaire while many in that church went without
necessities!
The saints in light at that
assembly were hungry for the work of the Lord. [Col. 1:12] So
I took them on the streets, handing out tracts, praying for broken
souls; I taught the word of God as they had not heard it and
encouraged questions—a things they seemingly were unaccustomed to
asking. The saints in light loved it and were renewed in the spirit
of their minds to finally do the actual work of the Lord and
finally get the unbiased word of God that had no slanting toward money
or pastor worship, which is almost epidemic in many churches.
But those saints not in light--saints messed up in marriages
and other types of sin and having a mind hardened to God's
word--were not renewed. They were angered. So as I
saw what this brother and some of the saints not in light, but in
control, were doing, I confronted some of their actions head-on and
caused a shaking and a rattling. But by then it had become clear
what God had sent me there to help the brother in doing: Seeing
himself and the error of his ways. But seeing himself was not a language
that “brother bishop” was able to understand. Somehow, being a
bishop, he thought himself too highly elevated to learn, but God had
sent me there to help show that brother his lies and his other
ungodly ways toward God’s people and to open the eyes of those
saints in that church whom God had called out to truth. Fortunately,
God had fixed me in the word that I could increase them and him, if
he would accept it, but he could not add to me--I was sent
to help him.
That poor bishop brother rejected
that help, and although there was nothing of sin in me, as I walked
perfectly in God, he attempted to talk me into being a sinner, as he
could not overcome the wisdom of the word God has placed in me. This
brother was one of those saints not in light. Instead, he is one of
those unfortunate saints who have not done as Paul wrote Timothy to
do: "Flea these things." Those things were the love of
money and the erring from the faith as a result of that lust. Paul
said to flea the
piercing of his soul with many sorrows that money lust will do; and
from every
other evil that the love of money brings with it.[1Tim. 6:9-12] He
had given his soul to money, and from that I do not think I did any
more than give him a godly warning. But if he will receive it, that
was a lot.
Here is what we know, false prophets are only effective
when people adhere to them; they are much like any other product on
the market: if the people don’t buy them, they won’t be on the
market for long. Those who call themselves Christians and linger
with lying prophets will start to love lies—the prophet Amos asked
rhetorically, “Can two walk together except they agree?” When a
person lingers with a lying prophet, it is because he loves and
agrees with what that prophet says. Regardless of the rationale he
or she puts forth to justify his behavior and his failure to obey
God’s word, he simply agrees with the lying prophet.
Strangely, when we can hear, read,
and get the truth from the few true ministers of God who are
dedicated to the truth of God’s word, many so-called Christians
(saints not in light) are disdainful of the truth of God’s word.
And since they have not acquired the taste for truth, they wear facades of Christianity—using
Christ's name to take away
their reproachful behavior, and do as Isaiah says, they eat their
own bread, and drink their own wine—disobey God’s word and do as
they want to do. That surely is reproachful behavior; it is the
behavior of saints not in light. And as they stay in darkness,
Jeremiah prophesied that they would love that darkness— after
enduring it for a while, they acquire a taste for it. And they will turn their ears away from truth and turn them unto
fables. [Isa. 4:1; 2Tim.4:4]
Those saints not in light will
hate truth-preachers and the truth itself. But telling the truth is the true work
of the Lord. Jesus is “…the way, the truth….” Anything
but the truth is not the work of the Lord; furthermore a limited/half
truth, although it is half or limitedly true, is not the truth
because it is not the whole truth. Paul said when leaving Ephesus
that he had declared unto them all the counsel of God, not part
of it. We cannot parse out God’s word in limits. The saints
must eat the whole roll and the minister must be able to give all
the counsel of God, rightly divided to the people of God. God's
people live and grow by every word that comes from God. And God has
placed various ministers and ministries in the church that his
people can get all the counsel of God. [Acts 20; 1Tim. 2:15; Rev.10:9]
When I was contending with this
poor bishop brother, he easily told a half-truth, which was a
whole lie. But I did not know it was a lie until I was informed by
those who knew the whole history of the particular matter we were
discussing. He preferred to lie rather than tell the whole truth. And
those brothers who heard me tell them what he told me knew he had
lied, but they stayed with this person for certain reasons that
further spoke to the duplicity of the minister.
For some, it is easy to pretend
and lie to
themselves and to others; those are not saints in light.* Those are
the ones who love darkness rather than light because their deeds are
evil; these are the ones who have gone from the close walk with God
and are walking closer to Satan. And as the scriptures say mark the perfect man, you can know
them by their ways. Those brothers who had been around him, knew him
and knew that he was a liar, but they continued with him because
they were a part of him.
Saints in light will hear God's
word, regardless of how hard the truth is--and God's truths are the
most difficult of all mankind; when God says repent, his meaning is so
profound that it goes beyond anything that man imagines. We,
therefore, must have the mind of Christ and set aside our own
righteousness and ways of reasoning and understanding that we may see what God is
saying. [Prov. 21:2; Isa.55:8] Saints not in light will
take the easy way out and not hear the hard truths of God. They will
tell themselves that living the life of God doesn't take too much
adherence to God's word--"He understands that we are human
beings and have
frailties." These are not individuals accustomed to
challenging the difficult
tasks of life and not at all ready to move to the higher things of
God. These are individuals who are given to deception and love to have it so. [Jer. 5:31]
But the truth and only the truth will MAKE,
not set, us free in God so that we will not deceive ourselves or others about
the demands of God.
Where are
you, brothers and sisters? Do not play with your eternal salvation,
for the scripture says, "He that is holy, let him be holy
still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy...behold I come quickly
and my reward is with me to give every man as his work shall
be." Are you a disciple indeed--one who continues in the
word? Those and only those are the saints in light! [Rev. 22:11]
_________
* A saint in light comes from Paul's statement to
the Colossian Church. In Colossian 1:12, Paul says, "... giving
thanks to the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light." This
expression, "Saints in light" implies that there are
saints not in light, hence, their inheritance would be different
from those saints in light. To explain what an implication is and
how it is deduced, note this: A dear reader of this ministry asked
about the tithes teaching of many ministers, especially pastors.
That reader was eager to show that the tithe teaching was a part of
the New Testament, and the reader misconstrued a biblical passage as
an implication. To imply is to suggest something else. Not
every passage suggests something else; most passages in the
scripture are as they are written, suggesting nothing beyond
themselves. However, in this passage under discussion Paul is
plainly implying/suggesting something else. He writes, "Saints
in light." The implication/suggestion is that there are saints
who are not in light; their understanding is darkened and they don't
know where they are going. If he were not suggesting the notion that
there are saints not in light, he would have merely said,
"Saints." That statement has no implication at all. Implications,
types, allegories, analogies, symbols, parables, etc., are
techniques God uses in writing to communicate to his people. But as
in all of God's word, those techniques must be rightly divided. To
violate the rules that govern these techniques is not to correctly
interpret God's word, but to make his word say what it isn't saying. |