Clueless Church People Vomiting GOD's Wrath

       With all due respect to the late R.C Sproul, who has some really great points in some of his better sermons, I chose this picture to illustrate the point of my title.  Church people are clueless when it comes to relating to non-church people.  Most church people are the type that have been sitting in a pew since they were in their mother's womb.   When I refer to church people, I'm talking about the ones who know nothing other than the morality gospel.  The word gospel means good news, the morality gospel is not good news.  The morality gospel says, "You people outside the church are dirty sinners, and you are all going to hell, unless you conform to the likeness of us,"  PERIOD.   They use the Bible and Scripture as a weapon and not for healing.  Jesus came to heal, not to condemn.  I wish church people would get that, but they are too busy bathing and being baptized over and over again in their own self-righteousness that they have lost the entire purpose of the coming of Yeshua.  

     These people have no clue what "fear GOD," really means. They use it to preach their morality gospel and put others down.  They think that they will win people over by telling them that they are fools because they don't understand GOD.  Who really are the fools?  I'm starting to wonder.  They claim to have the Spirit of GOD, but they don't understand the deep Spiritual things of GOD.  They only know black and white of church thinking.  You're a sinner, they are not.  You are going to hell, they are not.  They have no clue how to speak to people outside of their righteous circle and why is that?   I will tell you, it's because they never lived outside their circle, so they have no clue what it's like out here.  If I can put it more plainly without insulting anyone I'll try it this way.  

     I've never been a drug addict, henceforth, I do not know their struggle because I've never walked in their shoes.  With that being said, as a cancer survivor who was on some serious pain-killers during radiation hell, I do understand slightly what withdrawal is.  While I was getting enough radiation in both sides of my head to put me in an early grave, and swallowing razor blades 24/7 for three months, I was put on not only Fentanyl patches, but I was given straight up Percocet, without the Tylenol.  I was on some serious pain medication which did not make me high, but made the pain bearable enough to survive.  It did not take the pain away completely, it just made it manageable while they burned the snot out of me, pun intended. About two weeks after the last treatment, I noticed some alleviation in the pain, hence, I took off all the patches and threw them in the trash.  BIG MISTAKE!   No one warned me about what was to come next.  About a day later, I was down in my living room bawling my eyes out.  I wasn't in pain, I was just crying.  I couldn't understand why.  The next day, I woke up and I wish I hadn't, because I was freezing and sweating at the same time.  I was as sick with the "flu" as one could be without actually having a virus.  I tell people that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but sometimes, even the butter knife laughs at me. I had no idea that I was going through withdrawal until someone pointed it out to me.  Going off all that pain medication in one instant like that was the equivalent of going cold turkey off Heroin after being on it 24/7 for three months.  

      It was then that I got a whole new appreciation for their struggle.  I didn't want to have to go back on them, but I had no choice but to take a lower dose before I pulled out all my hair, scratched off all my skin and jumped out a ten-story foot building.  I was able to get off that lower dose a few days later, but withdrawal was still haunting me.  I knew if I wanted all that out of my system, I just had to grin and bear it.  I ate lots of greens, took vitamins, drank lots of water, cried a lot, stayed mostly in my pajamas and waited it out. It took about three weeks for me to get semi-normal even for me.

     So, to say I can relate to a drug addict is only in the sense that I get what withdrawal feels like, but I never had the desire to go back to pain medication after that.  I didn't understand how people who get clean fall back into it, because I had no desire to do that. Now, I'm not putting them down who do, what I'm saying is I don't understand them anymore than a church person inside their circle understands a non-believer outside their circle.  I know that is confusing, so let me put it in terms that may be easier, something we all may be able to relate to, like family relationships. 

    To fear GOD is not to fear His wrath so much as the dreaded wooden spoon, you know, maybe down here in the south y'all would understand the "switch" better.  Here is a scenario of what it's like to properly fear GOD.  If you are John Smith a minor, and your father is Joe Smith, you are in his family. He is your father and you call him Dad. It's his job to train and teach you, guide you and discipline you, if needed.  If you take a rock and throw it in your neighbor's window just for kicks, OR to get back at your neighbor because his dog pooped on your grass, and your father finds out, then your father is obligated to teach you how that was wrong, either by grounding you, taking away a privilege, or another creative way to make it "sting."  That is the fear of GOD that the Bible speaks of, PERIOD.

It is a reverence for Who GOD is in relation to you.

      In other words, if you do not acknowledge GOD as your Father, then He isn't going to train, guide, discipline, or work with you. When you acknowledge Him as your Father, then He takes a serious interest in your best interest and development.   I wish church people would actually learn the loving character of GOD and not the wrath of GOD.  If this post offends you church people, may I suggest you read Matthew 23 and John 8 & 9 and see how Jesus spoke to church people who lived in their righteous bubble and didn't care to get to know the bruised reeds outside of their bubble.  

     

      Now, let's take this to a new level.  If you are John Smith, and you hit that "legal" adult age, you are no longer a minor, hence, you are no longer under the authority of your father, Joe.  He is your biological father, and nothing will change that.  He is still your father, but not your authoritarian.  You now become his offspring.  It is your choice to continue to follow his guidance and advice. If you choose to say, "Take a hike, Dad, I know better, I don't need you,"  then Joe Smith, if he is wise, will not retaliate, or try to force you back into his family. What he will do is let you go, pray for you, and welcome you back after you realize that you don't know everything, life is hard, and maybe his years in the life may have gained him some wisdom you haven't acquired yet.  You then re-acknowledge his role in your life as father and mentor. I said mentor, not sovereign.  If you choose never to go back to being the son of Joe Smith, and you decide to change your name and identity, breaking off all contact, then he is not obligated to keep you in his will to receive the inheritance.  He won't tell you when you are about to fall off that cliff, because you don't want to hear it.  

     Now, if you do this, and cut him completely out of your life, I can tell you from experience it will break your father's heart, but he will realize that he did the best he could, the best he knew how to do.  If that was not good enough for you, then that is your problem, not his.   However, if you do decide to return to Joe Smith after your little prodigal road, your father will actually have more respect for you, because you went out there, learned a hard lesson and became a better man because of it.  I don't know if this post will help anybody in the church circle or just tick them off, but if you are wise, maybe you'll understand that you don't understand.  Those who are wise enough to keep learning are the ones GOD can use in great ways.  Those who think they've learned it all, He lets go to make all the mistakes they need to make either to become wise, or to remain fools. 

 The Gospel in Prison and Dog Poop in the Fudge Brownies. 

     Countries need to have borders, they may even need a wall, example, the wall around Jerusalem to keep out invading armies, however, the church of Jesus Christ was never meant to have walls and a ceiling imprisoning the Gospel, with visitation every Sunday. May I remind you all that in AD 70, the temple was destroyed. GOD did that, GOD wanted his church to expand beyond one building, beyond one people, beyond one nation. So, what do we do? We build temples again. We build them and plaster them all over the world. Christians' motto is "You need to go to church." Jesus never said, "Go to temple," he said, be the temple. If you ask anyone why do you go to church, you'll get one of two answers. They'll say either, "The Bible says never give up meeting together, (which is the correct answer), or they'll say, "To get fed spiritually." You know what? That's like saying, I go to the grocery store to eat and I eat it there, only.  The Hebrews passage is translated by most church people as, "Go to church, sit as a spectator for 90 minutes, sing a few praise songs, (that's called the worship part of the service), and then be spoon-fed by the CEO of the corporation that operates under the tax-exempt status called evangelism. Believe what he says and do not disrespect your church elder by questioning him, especially if it has to do with the Old Testament.    As you can see, I'm not a fan of incorporated churches. I wrote about that in other blog posts.  

     Never give up meeting together means just that. There are many ways to meet these days and this plandemic devised to divide and conquer us has proven that to us.  We have Zoom, digital meetings, meetings and Bible Studies on any social media, and we actually can develop some very fulfilling and uplifting friendships there with authentic people.  I myself have a few that have helped me keep going over the years.  If you ask me, this plandemic and the persecution of the church was the best thing that could have happened to the church.  The church had gotten way to lazy, way too ignorant, and turned itself into sheeple instead of sheep.  (A term we patriots use as "stupid people" who believe everything they hear on TV or in mainstream media news.)

     There is a serious problem in Christianity today, and I believe that GOD is going to do something about it. The people want to be spoon-fed the Bible once a week or so. We have a church filled with the Biblically illiterate. The church has been dumbed down. God is not going to fix the church, because the church cannot be fixed. Basically, the church doesn't want to be fixed, either. GOD never tried to fix his people who had given themselves over to idols or mixed the world in with their religion. What GOD did was pull out a remnant and start over. Case in point, Noah, then Abram, then Moses, then Samuel who led Saul, until Saul turned back to the world's way of doing things. Then GOD entrusted his people under the care of David. Now that was a messed up king, but whose heart was fully devoted to the LORD. After David, Solomon led the people astray and the kingdom was divided. As time went on, His people delineated as they usually do.

     GOD pulled out a remnant again with Zerubbabel and started all over again. Then Jesus and his disciples, and then Martin Luther. Four hundred years ago, He pulled out another remnant and shipped them off to the New World. Well, it's time for a new remnant, and I do believe GOD is going to do it again. Luther began the Reformation, but it needs to be a work completed, and now is the time. Luther still had too much of the world mixed in with faith in GOD. How is GOD going to do it? Well, I have a pretty good idea, but I'll leave that up to GOD to show His remnant. I will tell you this one thing, His remnant will have a new kind of faith, a faith that is pure as gold refined.  I have this strange kind of faith that most people do not understand. I believe in GOD's ABSOLUTE Sovereignty over every human being. Yes, we have free will, but our free will does not "trump" GOD's sovereignty over His world and His plan for it. (The earth is the LORD's and everything on it and all who dwell in it. Psalm 24:1) GOD wants a pure faith, not one that mixes the world in it. He wants complete trust in Him in all we do in all our decisions, and to not mix the world's philosophies or practices in with our life with Him.

     A perfect example of mixing the world in with the purity of the Gospel is the hit sensation, "The Chosen."  It is a series written and produced by the son of Jerry Jenkins of the "Left Behind" series of books, a huge hit with the contemporary church in the 90's.  I myself was taken in by them, also.  I'm not here to take them apart, but I wish I had used better discernment, but I was still a baby, being bottle-fed the Gospel back then.  A decade or two of life in the fiery furnace of affliction has given me a college education in discernment and serious Bible Study.  For example, I watched all the way up to the second season of this series.  When I had enough fudge brownies, I realized that maybe it wasn't all pure chocolate in this desert on-line in dramatic form.  The part that lost me, and when I decided to never watch it again was in I think, episode 3 of season 2, where Jesus is "rehearsing" his Sermon on the Mount speech, walking around, pacing throughout the night before he was to give it.  It was as if he was a nervous pastor on the evening before his "test" sermon, in front of a church building full of people deciding his fate.  It showed him walking around at night practicing and trying to decide what to say. I'm sorry, but Yeshua didn't rehearse, nor did he have to take an entire evening before trying to decide what to include and what to edit out of his sermon the next day. 

     The Spirit spoke through Yeshua off cuff because GOD doesn't "rehearse." This book made Yeshua way too human and way too less Divine. He almost has some faults in the series. It's a fictional account of the disciples life walking with Yeshua, but it takes poetic license to a whole new level of offense. That's my humble opinion. The thing that really got me to stand up and take notice was its popularity among the sheeple in the church.  Then, the final nail in the coffin for me, no pun intended, was when mainstream media took notice and gave it a great big thumbs up.  People, if the Atlantic Journal loves something, you know it's time to maybe take a second look with exegetical eyes on a particular Bible series.  Like most, I was captured by my curiosity and the drama between Mary and Yeshua when he delivered her of her demons and quoted her long past deceased father, dropping her to her knees. Who does love a good tear-jerker, I know, right? So, I continued to watch. It was entertaining at first, but isn't that how the devil gets us with the counterfeit? Just enough chocolate fudge to make the brownies with dog poop baked in them to look edible?

     In other words, people, the church today, for the most part, mixes dirt in with the brownie mix, (the devil adds the dog poop), bakes it and then tells us to eat it. God wants to give us fudge covered brownies, nothing but pure chocolate, the sweetened mixed in with the unsweetened kind, because people, life is hard and some times it ain't that sweet.   The Bible is dramatic enough, the Gospel is powerful enough with enough healing in it by the power of the GOD, that we don't need to take 1st century innocent and ignorant fisherman, and make them 21st century comedic actors.