One of the Largest World Occults
I sat down in my mothers living room one day and there was a pamphlet of American occults. It listed the Mormons, Jehovah Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, and the likes. Occults that have an image of Christianity often get their occult title because of a belief of the organization following a different messiah or prophet. The Mormons follow Joseph Smith, the SDA’s follow Ellen White. I notice the Catholics were not listen among the occults. Most everyday Catholic’s don’t know that the upper levels see the Pope as Christ Himself, come down and inhabiting the flesh of the Pope. But, this is not about any of these occults; this is about one that one third of the population of this world profess to follow.
As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God”
(Luke 9:57-62)
I’ve been told that I make the gospel too hard, that it’s easy; but here we have Y’shua saying, “If you follow me, you’re going to give up all”. He tells a man that he can’t even be His disciple if he goes back to bury his dad. His DAD!!! That seems pretty cold by today’s standards. He tells another to not take the time to go tell his family goodbye - I don’t care if your face ends up on the side of a milk carton.
In John chapter 6, Y’shua said, unless you eat my flesh and drink by blood you have no life in you. - looking from the audiences standpoint in that time; that’s weird - I can just see the look on the disciples faces, “We’re not going to get on the list of the worlds fastest movements if you keep telling people to eat you - this just doesn’t work”.
In Luke chapter 14, we see crowds starting to follow Y’shua again, and Christ said, “If anyone wants to follow Me they’re going to have to hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters”. How’s that for an opening line?
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters”
(Luke 14:26 NIV)
Imagine following a great teacher today who says your going to have to hate your father, mother, wife, children. People would be walking out in the middle of the service.
The very next thing out of His mouth was, “your going to have to deny yourself and take up you cross and follow me.”
“yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
(Luke 14:26-27)
Today, looking back at what Christ did, we have respect for the cross but imagine what this sounded like when He said it. When the people of the first century heard Y’shua say you need to pick up an instrument of torture, shame, and humiliation, reserved for the vilest of criminals - that had to be really strange. Imagine your pastor saying, “You need to be willing to give your own life, pick up your electric chair and follow me” - that’s weird and creepy.
Then when you move just a few verses later, finishing up his sermon to this multitude, Y’shua says,
“those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”
(Luke 14:33)
Can He just get any harder? There’s a reason that the multitudes left Him after He spoke. He said, “give up everything, pick up an instrument of torture, and hate your mom, dad, and children” - That’s a lot different than admit, believe, confess, and pray the prayer.
Go to Luke chapter 18 and a young guy comes to Christ. He’s rich and young, this guy needs to be in the church: think about all he can do for the kingdom. Unfortunately, Y’shua did not have the evangelism methods we have today. He told him to sell everything he owned and give it to the poor. The man walked away sad and Jesus didn’t even go after him - Y’shua seemed to be ok with the fact that he just walked away.
I’ve heard pastors talk about the meat of the Word and maybe people are thinking that some just are not mature enough to here this kind of stuff. Yet... this is what Christ gave as the introduction to the Gospel.
Now here’s the frightening thing to think about in reality - Y’shua has said these things to us.
The church today teaches that salvation is free and easy - but it does not say that ANYWHERE in Scripture. Where did that come from?
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works
(Titus 2:11-14)
When I was dating my wife, I was a drunk. She had grace for me and loved me. Just because she loved me, and had grace, did not mean she would have hung around while I continued to destroy my life. God makes clear that we are to clean up our life and if we don’t, we will be separated from Him. Because of her grace for me, I started to love her. I seen her love - and I put down alcohol with no problem.
We see in Titus that the free gift of love that God gave, teaches us to deny that ungodliness, which is sin defined by the Ten Commandments. It teaches us to deny worldly lust, which is the desire of the riches of this world. It teaches us to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this life - that’s based on God’s standards not compared to those around us. Redeem doesn’t mean He looks over but that He regains possession of our lives from lawless deeds, or sin. And he put’s a desire in us to do good works.
But the church today teaches a Grace that saves in which there’s nothing to do but believe Jesus is real; because it’s impossible to stop our sin. Say a prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, which is superstition and a mythical fantasy not found in the Bible. We say, repeat this prayer after me and ask Jesus in your heart and now your magically, and instantly saved. There’s no more Ten Commandments, God wants us to enjoy the worldly things in this life - even go to church and give just so we can get those things. And, we say works is a dirty word. Everything the church teaches today is the exact opposite of what the Bible clearly defines as the Grace that saves.
“Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men”
(Matthew 4:19)
“behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves”
(Luke 10:3)
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations”
(Matthew 28:19)
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me... to the end of the earth”
(Acts 1:8)
We are told that we would be given the Spirit of God to go OUT, and make disciples of all nations. You see, the sharing the overflow with others is the natural reaction of sharing IN the life of Christ. The church today tries to conjure up the Spirit of God while in the safety of their church building; and says that we just cant witness any more, we can’t go door to door. And, if it does any kind of evangelistic work, it spends large amounts of money and time for entertainment - to try and entice people to come - so they can get them to repeat a mythical prayer after them, and ask this recreated Jesus into their hearts: and fool a multitude into thinking they are now fine. Should it not concern us that there is no such superstitious prayer in the New Testament? Should it not worry us that the Bible never says, “Ask Jesus into your heart” or “Invite Jesus into your life”? We don’t see, anywhere, in Scripture, people talking about accepting Jesus as their personal savior - instead we see people confessing that Y’shua is LORD and KING who reins over us. It’s very dangerous to lead people to think they are Christian when they have not responded to the Biblical Gospel. We have taken the lifeblood out of the Gospel and put coolaid in it’s place - and fed it to the crowds.
We don’t really like what the Bible has to say so we use our feelings, what we think, and we start redefining Christianity according to our own preferences. We take Y’shua, in the Bible, and say, “What He really meant was...” and we fill in the blank with a Jesus we are a little more comfortable with. A Jesus that fits our lifestyles a little better - a nice middle class American Jesus; who looks like us and thinks like us. A Jesus who does not mind materialism. A Jesus who is ok with half hearted devotion to Him. A Jesus who would not call us to dangerous extremes and even avoid danger all together. Yet, the real danger is that we’re taking the Y’shua of the Bible and we are twisting Him into our image of Jesus so that he looks and thinks like us; and aligns with us. And, when we gather together in our churches and we sing praises and lift our hand, the reality is that we are not praising the Y’shua of the Bible, we are singing to and worshiping our own Jesus - we are singing to and worshiping ourselves - and we THINK we’re worshiping Jesus.
While Christianity points the fingers to other denominations the fact is, because we have created our own Jesus in our own liking, the Christian church, in this day and time, with as much as one third the world population professing to be Christian, Christianity has become one of the biggest occult followings in this world. This is not saying that Christ or the following of Christ is an occult. Yet, since the church in America has created their own god with their own salvation and their own christian walk, all of which are contrary to Scripture, in the classifications presented for SDA’s, LDS’s, and the likes, the modern church, especially in America, in an occult as a whole.
When I read Scripture, I see that virtually every major doctrine of the Bible has been twisted, molded, smoothed over, and tortured into an image that is close to but not what the Bible portrays - and the prophecy of 2 Timothy 3 is both fulfilled and revealed.
Until the people in the church stop following what they are told, like cattle to the slaughter, and they start reading Scripture for themselves. Until they stop loving the things of this world so much that they push out time with God’s Word for time with the TV, Facebook, movies, and sports. Until they get a grasp of the passage about the many who will cry Lord Lord but not make it, both because they did not do the will of the Father, which is to spread the Gospel to the world, and they did not stop sinning, the occult Christian church is headed for Hell with a full assurance that they are going to Heaven. They are going southbound on a northbound highway because they got on the wrong ramp. Can this really happen? Read the church of Laodicea.
Because of this fantasy gospel, believed and acted out so readily by the church, it has caused a blending of the world and the church - one can not tell where the church ends and world begins. Study after study shows that our lifestyles look just like the world. We’re just as materialistic, just as sexually immoral, just as self-centered, as the world. Our spending patterns look strikingly similar to the world. What we watch, on TV, on the computer. Pornography is just as bad in the church as in the world. Those in the church are just as likely to have sex outside of marriage as the world. The divorce rate is as high as the world and even higher in the Bible belt regions of this country. The priorities of professing Christian parents for their children look virtually identical to that of non-christian parents. We drive our children all over, from sports activity to sports activity; telling and teaching our children to be good at what this world says is most important - namely sports and entertainment - spending only minutes in the Word or prayer.
In talking about the children of Israel Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10,
“all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
(1 Corinthians 10:2-5)
So Paul is painting a picture of the Renewed Covenant that was shown through the exodus from Egypt. Like us, they were saved from bondage, baptized, to a symbolic communion of the bread and water given by God. But that did not mean that God was pleased with them, because they never seen the promise land and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. When we don’t love God enough to follow Him, God may not kill us now, but we know the ultimate price is death. This is an example of today - in fact, the very next statement by Paul is,
“Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted.”
(1 Corinthians 10:6)
We often point the finger at Israel’s lust and call out the building of the idol and the complaining; but notice what Paul says,
And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play
(1 Corinthians 10:6-7)
So, Israel moved from God by being more concerned with the cares of this world and the entertainment in it. So, where does that leave the church in America today?
Even with these facts, people in this Christian church today are so convinced of their salvation, based on fantasy occult beliefs of what the Gospel is and what the Bible says, they will defend their occult beliefs even when I present clear cut Scriptural references to them - one after another. They talk about how deceived the Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses are when they are just as head strong into their own deceptions. The Scripture of Y’shua standing at the door and knocking is about the church that is so full of themselves that they are not allowing the truth of the Word to enter in - another Scripture twisted by modern theology. Because they will not let the truth in, God allows them to believe a lie.
I’m not perfect, by no means, but I understand where we are - where I am. I long for a day that I could meet a group of people who actually takes God’s word literally - even if we are not thrilled about what it says to us. I long to meet a group of people who actually are willing to give up their life for Christ and stop looking so much like the world that there’s not much way to tell them apart. Will you be that people?
One of two things are going to be said to people who believe they are saved, “I don’t know you” and “Good and faithful servant”. What does it mean to be a “servant”. People say, “I serve God” but God’s services is not warming the pews on Sunday morning, making coffee, taking up tithes, or working the children’s ministry - that serves the people of the church. The Gospel makes clear that service to God is serving those in need of both our money and our time; but we are to selfish and self-centered to give up either. How can we think we will here our name and the term “servant” used in the same sentence? If we don’t do the services commanded of Him, there is only one other thing we will hear, “I don’t know you”. We will not have a defense because we will have traded time with Him for time in the things of this world; while following an occult theology that was similar to but not actually a following of Christ.
We can’t continue like this - the outlook is very grim.
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