Imagine How I Feel

In previous posts, we have discussed the TrueBeliever's Facebook group. They are the ones who believe Jesus will take the true believers away in the rapture on May 21, 2011. They have even set the time as 6:00 PM on that day, but we have not seen any information as to what time zone that would be. Interestingly, the people discussing that possibility seem to be mostly in the good old USofA. We gather they arrived at that time as the same time of day Elijah was calling down fire from heaven during his challenge to the prophets of Baal and Asherah. (1 Kings 18:20-40) We would have to suppose from that the time would really be 6:00 PM (if that is even the right time) in Israel. That would make it 8:00 AM here on the west coast. As of this writing there are about 450 people in the group, including me. I was put into the group by a longtime friend for whatever reason.

Do not count me as one of the TrueBelievers. I am truly skeptical of that date and time for various reasons, but I am much more troubled by some of the other doctrine of the group. I read some of the posts and have chatted on Facebook with a few members of the group. There would not seem to be much point in detailing their bad doctrine except to point out in regard to our personal responsibility to accept Jesus as Lord of our lives, they would be considered hyper-Calvinists. They believe we have no responsibility whatsoever for our own, individual salvation. They believe God has chosen a group of people from before the foundation of the world to be born-again and dwell eternally with Him. Through a complex series of mathematical calculations (bear in mind all mathematical calculations are complex to this writer) they have been able to unlock the mysteries of the Bible as to the timing of events and numbers of those who will be born-again. If you are not in, you are not in. This has caused some pause and even some fear amongst people who belong to the group. They truly do not know if they are among the chosen. It has also given yours truly many opportunities to minister to some of those people. That is what this is post is really about.

I was kind of walking around the house praying the other morning and some frustration, aggravation, and maybe a little anger rose up in me as I thought about the people who have fallen victim to some of the false doctrine. I was complaining to the Lord about the situation, telling Him it was making me angry. I had no sooner gotten the words out of my mouth than I heard in my spirit, "Imagine how I feel."

Preachers occasionally like to remind congregations of a scene in heaven. One never quite knows for sure about such things, but the scene is most likely fictional. The angels in heaven have witnessed the Passion of Jesus and ask the Father what the plan is now that Jesus will be returning to heaven. God responds that the gospel will now be entrusted to born-again men who will preach His salvation to the world. The angels, who have observed mankind for some millennia by that time question God as to His back-up plan should man fail. He tells them there is no back-up plan. That is probably overly-simplistic, but the fact remains that we are the body of Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:27) For now we are sons and daughters of God locked in flesh and blood, but we know that when Jesus appears we will be like Him. (1 John 3:2)

I cannot tell you exactly how God feels about people who do the wrong thing with every good intention because they have been seduced and deceived. I have to think they are not blameless because they did have a part in their deception. We enter into the deception of sin when we are tempted to do the wrong thing and do it because of our own desires. (James 1:14) One has to wonder if the TrueBelievers (on anyone else for that matter) would be quite so sure about their interpretation, analysis, and mathematical computations of the scriptures if they really understood they will be held accountable before God for whatever harm they cause to people who listen to them. (see Mark 9:42) On more than one occasion, I have reminded the TrueBelievers that, "...God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) God did not keep salvation a secret from anyone, let alone those whom He called. He calls all who He knows will respond. We would have to think by this point in history we would be talking about billions of people. They have the number down to only several million. Again, their math, and I do not understand it, so I remain skeptical. I am already working on a post for May 22nd, you know, just in case. If Jesus really does come that day, I will not be here to finish it. I sincerely hope none of you reading this post will be either.

One of my former pastors gave an invitation to receive Jesus at nearly every service he preached. He was fond of saying, "You know if you have been born-again as surely as you know if you have a driver's license." If you are not sure about either of those check your wallet first. If you do not have a license do not drive. Then check your spirit because the Bible certainly says, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." (Romans 8:16) If there is no witness, you can take care of that immediately by asking Jesus to be Lord of your life. Imagine how God would feel to have you as part of His forever family.

Denial, Deception, and Hyprocrisy

I had lunch with an old friend earlier this week. He is both chronologically older than I am and we have known each other for over 35 years although we have not seen each other for much of that time. The meeting was encouraged by a mutual friend who thought we might benefit from talking to each other.

We were catching up on each other's lives and trying to discern why we might be having lunch at all. We discovered that we are both engaged in substance-abuse recovery ministries although we had gotten there by different doors. This blog and the religious spirit in the Santa Maria valley came up during the course of the conversation. I briefly explained my concept that a religious spirit is the same spirit that challenged Jesus through the religious leaders of His day. After asking a few questions for clarification, my friend seemed puzzled that anyone would not believe there is a religious spirit here. (Of course that is what I have been saying all along, as you know.) His assertion was that the entire church is affected by religious spirits. I certainly have no quarrel with that viewpoint. I only know that my focus is to be the one here.

Christian author Os Hillman writes, "The religious spirit can best be defined as an agent of Satan designed to prevent change and maintain the status quo by using religious devices. The religious spirit seeks to distort a genuine move of God through deception, control, and manipulation. This spirit operates out of old religious structures and attempts to maintain the status quo, favoring tradition over a genuine, intimate relationship with God. It influences believers to live the Christian life based on works instead of grace. Similar to the Greek way of thinking, the religious spirit depends on human effort to acquire spiritual knowledge and favor from God." Assuming Os is right, we can see the fallacy a religious spirit perpetrates, especially in the last sentence. Spiritual knowledge is not acquired or learned by an act of our will. It comes directly from the Holy Spirit into our spirits, bypassing our minds all together. As our minds are renewed (Romans 12:1) we learn how to incorporate those spiritual deposits into our daily lives.

It has taken me so long to finish this post that in the interim, I have been invited into a closed, Facebook group called TrueBelievers. The basis of the group is that they believe the rapture is going to happen on May 21, 2011. Aside from the obvious question there, after reading some of the posts in the group I could not resist questioning one of their teachings, just one mind you. Last time I looked, there were over sixty comments to my post. As you might guess they were overwhelming negative toward me. I was criticised, accused, and bashed for being Pentecostal, for believing we learn things from each other and from books, and for actually inviting Jesus to be Lord of my life rather than letting Him do all the work. Yes, I do know how ridiculous that sounds. I have never considered a theological education to be a liability, but I have found that some people do not agree with me on that. For whatever reason, some folks consider all theological education to be a bad thing. My experience is that sitting under the concentrated teaching of a group of people more knowledgeable and spiritual than I am has paid great benefits over the past decades. It has given me a framework upon which to hang the things the Holy Spirit is teaching me without going cuckoo as some people from my past have. In case you are unfamiliar with the term cuckoo, it comes from the Greek meaning way off base. (Yes, that is a joke.)

This is beginning to sound like a ramble and I have not even mentioned the glorious visit with my chiropractor today. All I was going to say about that is that I am glad he went to school to learn his profession. I went into his office in some pain and left feeling much better. (In case you need your hand held on that one, it refers back to the first statement in the previous paragraph.

Whenever we deny spiritual realities, we open ourselves to be deceived. By definition, one does not know when one is walking in an area of deception. The deeper into deception one moves, the less one believes oneself to be deceived until the deception becomes the truth for them. A person following a lie as though it were the truth becomes the only truth that exists for them. When that person gains any kind of following, it looks as though he or she has been right all along. In fact, sometimes the truth is 180 degrees from their reality. Of course I am over-simplifying. Virtually no one is 180 degrees off in more than an area or possibly two, and many are not off nearly that much in any area. The point is that we do not know unless we have people keeping us sharp as iron sharpens iron. (Proverbs 27:17)

The bow on this post is that when we are wrong, thinking we are right, our whole life becomes a lie. Though we do not recognize it as such, hypocrisy has worked it's way though the whole lump of our life. Our yes becomes negative and we have unwittingly made it impossible for truly Spirit-led believers to say the Amen to our words. (2 Corinthians 1:20)