Holy Days?

It is the time of the year again, when many people around the world will soon be celebrating Easter, or, as some put it, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Some take it very literally, to the point of re-crucifying and re-raising Him from the dead, while others say it is only a symbolic commemoration of those events, that took place some 2000 years ago.

There is no small debate in the Christian circles, so much about the various aspects and traditions included in that commemoration, as much as the validity of such celebrations. And this is not particular to Easter, but it includes all such holidays that have been labeled as “Christian” ones. Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Assumption Day, and many more, have become the subject of such debates. And those debates become sometimes so heated, and adherents of particular opinions become so dogmatic, that it has led to many splits and divisions in the body of Christ. And while I understand how this can happen to people who, although claim to be followers of the Lord, have not been regenerated by the Holy Spirit (John 3:3, 5), I am appalled by the fact that many true followers of the Lord, who love Him and want to live for Him, get sucked in to such debates that profit nothing to their spirits.

I must admit that, at some point in the past, I too was caught up in those debates. That is, until the Lord opened my eyes to see the point in this issue. Surely, many of those festivities have their roots in ancient paganism, which made its way into the Christian faith. But that is a minor point. Many choose to follow tradition, despite knowing fully well its origins. And I am not going to try to convince anybody about “the error of their belief and the correctness of mine”. Strife is not from God. Instead, I will bring up the truth that set me free from such unprofitable debates, and which brought me deeper in the knowledge of the Lord.

We get into debates because we have been asking the wrong questions. We ask, “How did those things come about?”, or “What is the correct way to commemorate Christ’s birth, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven?”, or “How do we celebrate free from human tradition?”, and other relevant questions. Instead, we need to ask, “Why did the Lord Jesus come to the earth, to be born and live as a human, to teach people God’s ways, to suffer horrible torture, to die on the cross, to be raised from the dead, to appear risen to His disciples, and then to ascend to heaven?”. This is the real question that, if asked with the pure expectation to find the truth, will bring us freedom, because the truth is the very same person of Jesus Christ (John 14:6).

Now, one should seek the answer directly from the Holy Spirit, who is our guide to the whole truth, as I did. That way there will no doubt be a convincing and fulfilling truthful reply. But for the sake of the readers I will say what He showed me. He told me that the whole reason of the Lord’s coming to my own level was so that I too can see God, that I should die to the world together with Him, and that I will be raised with Him to a new life! In other words, the whole problem is that we see those events as something to be commemorated, instead of something to be experienced. Just think about it – what do we commemorate and why? We commemorate events that happened once in time and that are not to be repeated anymore, and we do that so that we remember those events to draw certain valuable lessons from them.

You may say, “Ok, so what is wrong with remembering that time when the Lord was crucified for our sins and rose for our life? The lessons to be drawn from that are not just valuable, but life changing”. All right, I concede, but if you say they are life changing, tell me, how exactly have they changed your own life? Is it that, because you observe them, they give you the right to call yourself with the Lord’s name? Or is it that His actions motivate you to do good works? If that is all, then you have missed the point by thousands of miles. Let us hear again what the Lord Himself told a very devoted, religious person: “…Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3). And Paul of Tarsus confirms this: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…” (Galatians 2:20). The Lord’s death and resurrection was not a symbolic act, but one that ought to change radically every person who comes to Him with faith. And if this has happened to you, then you will no longer need to recollect some distant event of the past, but you will be living out that new life that the Holy Spirit has brought you into, thus making you a living example of the entire dramatic scope of events that took place 2000 years ago. If Christ lives in you now, you will have no need of any external rituals and acts to “help you remember”.

I don’t want to end this without addressing the various traditions that accompany such holidays. It is a historically proven fact that many such traditions have found their way by adoption of pagan rituals, offered to idols before the Lord came to live as a man. Those are to be rejected without question. But there are other items, such as food issues: Should we follow a certain pattern of abstaining from certain foods during those observations? What does the Bible say about this? Here is what we see: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17). In other words, those are just symbols, or shadows. Put in another way, we are free to eat and drink anything we please, as long as we are not convicted by the Holy Spirit as doing something sinful. Personally, I find no fault in eating lamb and unleavened bread during Easter, as is the tradition of the Greek Orthodox faith. The food has no effect to my soul.

In closing, I want to stress that, in everything we think and do, the central focus must be on Christ and on the fact that He is to live through us. When this happens, we see everything under His point of view. May this become a revelation in all of us.

THE CROSS

What is it

“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” (Luke 9:23; Matthew 16:24)

The cross is the central tenet of Christian faith. It is very widely talked about, made into “relics” and images, used in “motivational quotes”, and generally has become one of the most popular and well known symbols in the world. Thousands and millions of people use it without knowing why, just out of habit, out of tradition, many of whom don’t even know how it became so famous and who made it.

The cross was an instrument of punishment and death, used by the Roman empire. Even today it is being used in some places for the same purpose. Now, if you ask people what do they associate the cross with, the majority will answer Christ or Christianity. Yet the cross existed for many years before Christ came to earth as a human, and many people had been put to death before Him and after Him on that death machine. So it seems that it is Jesus who made it popular, yet that was not His intention. Every time He spoke of the cross, He clearly associated it with sacrifice and death. In that sense, it can never be something that anyone would want to embrace or take for themselves. So why is it such a popular item?

The Role of Religion

Just as everything else that the Lord meant to bring to us so that we will be blessed with, the cross has been “hijacked” by religion to mean things that it doesn’t. Thus the great popularity it has today. Religion took the cross, its meaning and everything it symbolizes out of its place, and it gave it attributes that don’t belong to it. Just like so many other things, people who lived early after the death of the apostles, the chief of them being the emperor Constantine, gave religious overtones to it. He (Constantine), with the inspiration of his mother Helen, turned the cross into a talisman, that supposedly protects those who wear it. Then he claimed he saw its sign in the sky and that helped him defeat his enemies. The first false church, the Roman Catholic, used it in its temples, and that was how it made it the symbol of the “Christian” religion. It turned it into a lifeless symbol and ascribed to it “magical” powers. And because of its practice to re-crucify Christ every year and then “resurrect” Him, yet keeps Him on the cross throughout the year in the form of crucifix, it has given it a somber, almost terrifying note. It is odd for the followers of the “Christian” religion to see any joy into the cross. In addition, the “symbol of the cross” that Roman Catholics and Greek Orthodox people do with their hands, the gesture has become an outward sign that makes them thing of it as an expression of a Christian life.

And lest anyone thinks that only the Roman church is to blame for the terrible distortion of what is supposed to be life for the believers, the movement of Reformation did absolutely nothing to change that. The reformers kept it as an outward symbol on their temples, they just did away with the gesture. Even in Evangelical sermons, the emphasis is placed on the horrors of the cross, on the martyrdom of Christ on it, on our sins that were placed there, and generally on everything negative and terrible that the cross represents. Therefore, the message they convey on the people is that to take up one’s cross is to subject oneself to a gloomy process of self-punishment. It is rather non-desirable, almost sinful, to display any kind of joy when even mentioning the cross. And because naturally nobody can live such a life of pity and gloom, it has become a comm0n practice in all of the “Christian” religious denominations, for one to put on such an attitude when participating in the “church’s” sacred places (the temples they call “churches”), thus fooling oneself that once we go through such religious rituals, we have done our duties and we will satisfy God.

But is that what Jesus had in mind when He said that we should take up our cross daily? Does He want for us to live a sad, pitiful life of gloom every day of our lives? Is that the correct way to follow Him? Is He desiring penance from us? Let’s see what applies here.

The Example

We read in the New Testament the following exhortation: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2). If there was one person in the world who had every right to feel agony about the cross, that was Jesus of Nazareth. And He did, when in the garden of Gethsemane He shed sweat of blood and asked the Father to remove, if possible, that bitter cup from Him. If we think we ever get nightmares about troubles that await us, we have no clue as to what was going on through the Lord’s mind then. He was destined to take upon Himself the entire load of sins of the world, none of which was His own! And if we are honest, none of us would have undertaken such a responsibility; we would all have turned around and left. Worse yet, if we had the same attitude that we have now about the cross, we wouldn’t even entertain the thought of ever going close to it. I know I wouldn’t have. So what did Christ have that gave Him the strength not only to accept the father’s will, but to also carry it on to the end? The answer is in the previous scripture: “…the JOY that was set before Him…”

Jesus did not allow the shame and horror of the load of sins to stop Him; He didn’t make it His focus. For Him, the cross represented triumph over sin and death, and the means to the glory of the resurrected life. The cross was the end of the record of ordinances that brought nothing but death. The cross was the end of the old system and the birth of the new. It was the birth of His bride, His beloved ekklesia. It is no wonder then that the other woman, the harlot, the religious system, tried to manipulate that symbol of passage to glory and new life and turn it into a tool of sorrow and death.

Power to Life

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

“But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:23-24)

These scriptures have been quoted and preached innumerable times, yet the lives transformed by them are very few and far apart in comparison. The reason is that while preaching them, religious teachers have first taken out all the “juice” from them. Why is the message of the cross a scandal (translated as “stumbling block” into English) to the Jews, and foolishness t0 the Greeks? What elements of those two groups are offended to have that effect on them? To get an answer to this, we first need to see what that message really contains.

Yes, we know that Jesus took our sins on the cross, we know that we have forgiveness and redemption there, we know all that very well. But how does that message give us power? We have been saved, made new creation, but besides the assurance that this gives us, it is hard to see how this can be power for us. There has to be something more to it, that religion prefers to keep hidden, lest we actually see it and benefit from it. We are grateful that the Lord did not remain on that cross. He is not the crucifix that religious people keep. He rose from the dead, and He is now glorified, on the right hand of the Father. But even so, what application does that have to us who believe? Unless we realize the heart of this message, we only have a mental knowledge that profits us nothing.

The apostle Paul definitely did “get it”, as we see him say, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…” (Galatians 2:20) That is why he can exhort us also: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:11) THIS is what the message of the cross is! This is the theory of it, of our need to take up our cross daily. We need to bring to the cross every bit of ourselves and let Christ live in us! Well, I am sure we have also heard this countless times from the pulpit, right? But do we really understand what it is in practical terms?

Real Life

Like everything else, we tend to over-spiritualize what we read in the Bible. The evidence is there in our everyday life. While we read of our need to crucify ourselves and let Christ live in us, that we are made alive through Jesus Christ, we continue to “try our best” to live the life that we perceive the Lord wants us to live. We continue to practice religion, to represent the harlot and not the bride. We continue to seek that “experience” of the Sunday morning service, while living every other moment, either in the self-deceit of being “right with God” because we keep certain religious types, or in self-condemnation because we find that we cannot “measure up” to God’s standards. We keep struggling with the flesh and with various sins, and instead of going to the cross, we try harder with our human means to reach God.

We need to realize that there is only one option for us, if we are to live a life that pleases God: to die to self every single day and allow Christ to live His glorious life through us. This is the cross that we need to take up. It seems hard, even impossible for us to let go of all control and cares and simply surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit. That is why Jesus said that it is our cross. Our ego has been in control forever. We think it a “shame” to be controlled by someone else. What we fail to realize though, is that we are actually being controlled by our fallen nature, the flesh, unless we yield that control of ourselves to the Lord through the cross.

It is no wonder that the Jews considered this act a scandal. Their confidence was (and still is, to most of them) in keeping the commandments of the law, the same law that Jesus completed and brought to an end on the cross. Religion is their practice. As for the Greeks, wisdom was their ultimate pursuit. The concept of the cross, as we saw it, does not make any sense to the human mind. Surrender our control to someone else? No way! We will try and with our wisdom we will reach God! That is what they believed. And we see both those movements in action in today’s “church”. The general idea is that we need to keep doing certain things (attend church services, pay tithes, do charitable acts, evangelize), and combined with the “wisdom” we get from preached sermons, we can reach God. I challenge anyone to prove me wrong in this. What else would anyone call the majority’s practice of “attending church”, listening passively to sermons, taking part of rallies and “revival” concerts, and idolizing “star” preachers and “miracle workers”? Today’s “Christianity” is nothing else than a combination of Judaic religion and Greek wisdom! There is only a remnant that has the boldness of worshiping Jesus in spirit and in truth, and those are the true, pure bride of Christ. The religion that calls herself “Christian” is none else than the harlot, the prostitute who hates the bride with passion.

So What Should I Do?

To you who are reading this, I have this to say: You are challenged to make a choice, especially if you are a part of the harlot. You can ignore all this, continue to be contented with your religious life, because “this is how you found it, why bother changing it now?” Or you can sense how uncomfortable you grow in that situation and go to the cross. I must warn you though, if you choose the latter, you are in for a real experience of the cross.

The cross is neither pleasant nor comfortable. It calls for total and honest surrender of everything we hold dear, our lifestyle, our perceptions, our desires, everything will be turned upside-down. For some it will mean very drastic changes, even in status, job, family, you name it. Most notably, it will bring us in opposition and conflict with the established religious order. It did so to Jesus, so it will happen to us as well. For some will also mean persecution and torture. The only way to willfully go through all that is to focus on the outcome, “the joy that is set before us”. We are called to bring all of ourselves to the cross, as a living sacrifice, and do this daily. We cannot rely on yesterday’s success or blessings, we need to do it every single day, or else the Lord would not have said it.

Do you want to follow Jesus? In reality? In spirit and in truth? Now you see that it’s no “walk in the park”, but the result is glory and eternal life. This is not for cowards or for the comfortable. It is only for those determined to have the experience of resurrected life of Jesus in them. I hope and pray that you are one of them. Go to the cross, allow your entire self to die there, and let Christ’s life make you alive.

A Matter of Confused Priorities

There is a lot of noise recently, stemming from terrorist attacks and from the atrocities committed by ISIS. The attack in Paris on November 13 sparked an outrage over the mass media and the social media. People created hashtags such as ‪#‎prayforParis‬, superimposed French flags on their profile pictures, and the news agencies deal almost exclusively with the unfolding of that story.

Honestly, I don’t understand why all that hype. Terrorist attacks happen on a daily basis somewhere in the world, yet we don’t see such mobilization by so many people. Israel, for example, faces terrorist attacks almost every single day, but only few people speak about that. Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and the list could go on and on. But everybody still speaks about 9/11, about the London terrorist attack, and some may even still remember the attacks that took place in Spain in 2004. What makes the difference? Why all the outrage about the “violence perpetrated against the Palestinians”, yet not even a word of sympathy for Israel, whose children and old people are being killed by internationally admitted terrorists?

Now, I understand that the world is confused and shocked of such things happening. I also understand that they give a lot of (undue) credit to the media reports. But what I don’t understand is why, those who claim to be followers of Jesus, those who say that they worship Him as their Lord, follow those crowds and fall in the same trap. And before anyone accuses me of being unsympathetic towards human suffering, I will explain my position here.

Terrorist attacks, although increasing in intensity and frequency, are nothing new. If someone pays attention, they will know that it has been happening for a long time now. I honestly do feel sorry for any victims, especially for those who don’t know Jesus as their Lord. I just refuse to be blinded by the smokescreen that the media wants to promote and hide some much more important facts. For example, the media propaganda has been very successful in swaying the public opinion in the USA. A survey to find out if America should accept refugees from Syria showed that at least 30 out of the 50 states refuse such request, on the pretence that terrorists hide among them and thus they put the country at grave risk. So, they effectively say, “we don’t care if those folks are being chased by the same monsters who commit those cold-blooded murders of innocents, we don’t care if children, who lost their parents and families in that war need someone to take care of them, we just refuse to even listen to any of their plights”. Of course they don’t use such language. After all, we need to be politically correct. The terrorists are the monsters, the bad guys, not like us, the law-abiding citizens.

Then there is another issue in America, which spreads to the rest of the world, having a big impact in the Christian world. It’s called “same-sex marriage”. There is a huge issue about that in the U.S. of A. It has divided more than Christians and secular people. It is Conservatives vs Liberals, Humanists vs Christians, Blacks vs Whites, and it gets worse by the day. And if you think that, by getting rid of those issues we will have peace, you are absolutely wrong. We hear the masses say “let’s annihilate ISIS and the problem will be solved”. Those are the same folks who, a decade ago, were saying the same thing about Al Qaida. And before that it was the PLO. And before that it was the ETA. And before that it was the IRA. And before that… Do you see the pattern? It goes on and on and on! The Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, there will always be someone. And so we, the Christians, who have been commissioned to bring the gospel of peace and love to the world, are being caught up with current events and miss the real picture! 

So, just what is the real picture? The real picture is that people perish every single day, not necessarily to acts of terrorism, and we, the body of Christ, who used to perform miracles in the name of Jesus and who brought the greatest revolution on earth, are weak, inactive and indifferent. No, don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating any humanitarian work just for the sake of it. There are already many secular groups and movements that do that. And they seem to be far more effective than the church. Many African nations that were given the light of Jesus through missionary work, are back into darkness, after the very effective work of communist groups and, more recently, radical Islam. And speaking of radical Islam, it grows more rapidly than any other group, incorporating even members of nations where Christianity was the most popular belief. In other words, the devil is succeeding in his deception.

This work of blowing a smokescreen and working in the background is nothing new for the devil. In relation to the body of Christ, it has its beginning way back, just a couple of centuries after it was established by Jesus Himself and His apostles. After the pouring of the Holy Spirit and the rapid growth of the first church, the way of Jesus spread so fast and so far, that it threatened the then established order. Persecution did not work; in fact, it made things worse for the empire. People of the immediate inner circle of the emperor’s trustees and even his own family became Christians and pledged their allegiance to the King of kings, something that the emperor considered a treason of sorts. The first emperor to successfully quell the spread of Christianity was Constantine of Byzantium. He thought that, by making everyone a Christian, nobody would be a Christian, so he suggested that every Roman citizen should become one. He “gave the example” by publicly declaring that he was now a Christian. Yet many were unconvinced and unwilling to give up their religion (the pagan one) for something that seemed to change a man’s inner life, and that is why later on, another Byzantine (Roman) emperor, by the ironic name of Theodosius (translated “God-given”), made a decree by which any citizen of the empire who would not become a Christian, should be exiled or executed. So the poor pagans were forced to have “Christ” pushed down their throats rather than die. And then the divisions started. Should we have the pope as the head of the church or the emperor? Thus the Roman Catholic vs the Greek Orthodox schism was created. Later it was the dilemma, should there be icons in the church or not? And so the iconoclasts vs the icon worshippers schism was created. And the divisions went on and are still going on. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed, Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopals, Methodists, Pentecostals, and the list goes on, each group claiming to have the ultimate truth, trying to prove it even by killing its opponents. And lest anybody says that this is ancient history, I will bring things to this day.

We still have different dogmas and denominations, don’t we? We fight over things such as worship style, place of worship, doctrine, finances (this is a big one), number of members and other such “important” issues. We worry about our safety and avoid helping those in need. We worry about our status and avoid approaching “the gays”, the unconventional and the rejects of the society. And while we are over busy quarrelling about our differences, the devil unhindered spreads hatred and disaster in the world. We have become like little children who fight over a toy, forgetting that it is the togetherness and the fun of play that matters more than the silly toy. So, instead of worrying where the next terrorist attack is going to happen, how about we pray and approach those terrorists? How about we start bringing some of them to the Lord who is love? Or do we ignore that many of them have turn into violence because they are fed up watching “God’s people” put up a “good and nice” mask, attending religiously Sunday morning services, paying tithes and being involved in “ministries”, while in their regular lives we are worse than those “monsters”? At least they are real, they show their anger and frustration. We, on the other hand, crowd churches, even “mega-churches”, built by the sweat and blood of the misled who are made to believe that they “sow seeds of faith” and being given empty, meaningless promises of prosperity.

We are good in wearing masks. We have been trained to act and we do it so naturally, that the actors of the ancient Greek tragedies would be so envious of. We are fake, and yet we criticize and condemn those “dirty sinners” who seek the truth that we withhold in lies. We are more than willing to “stone the criminals”, even those who have nothing to do with us, just because they don’t fit our “proper” image.

Jesus said “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:16-18). Those things happened in the first church. That was because “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul” (Acts 4:32), unlike today that we are divided over petty issues. We need to repent of all our religiousness and pettiness and “remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works…” (Revelation 2:5). We need to remember that we are the illegal immigrants, the terrorists, the “bums”, the murderers, the homosexuals and the perverted. In fact, “…such were some of you…” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Unless we approach those “lost souls” in that spirit, the spirit of the redeemed and the spirit of love, we only have religion that brings hatred and death. Jesus was called “the friend of the drunkards and the prostitutes and the tax collectors”. The false church, the prostitute, Babylon, is doomed with destruction (Revelation 18:1-3). The only way for us to be saved is to come out of it (verse 4) and even give our lives, if necessary, for the salvation of souls, just like the first Christians did in the arenas of the Coliseum and the various persecutions. God is calling His own to come out of religion and live the life of the Spirit. How will you respond to His call?

Kent Crockett's Devotionals: The Modern-Day Pharisee Test

Kent Crockett's Devotionals: The Modern-Day Pharisee Test: The Pharisees were more concerned with performing religious rituals than connecting with God. We can easily get sidetracked and become...

Wake Up Time

Reading the Acts of the Apostles really opens my eyes up in many ways. When I read about all the miracles and signs and wonders that took place in that first church, I can’t help but think why those things are not happening today. Surely, they may happen sporadically and far apart, but not like those times. I ask God this same question. And as always, He answers what I ask for His glory.

The problem is twofold: divisions in His church and spiritual sleep. We have fallen asleep. We no longer talk about Jesus’ return as an imminent event. We think we have all the time in the world. We don’t desire fellowship with other believers, but we prefer to go about our own business and “hang out” with our secular friends. We are preoccupied with “business meetings” than with constructive fellowship. We completely ignore the scripture in Hebrews 10:25 which says “Not forsaking the assembling of our selves together, as the manner of some is: but exhorting one another, and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” (KJV). That is why we also miss verse 24: “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works”. We cannot gently remind, far less “provoke” anyone to good works and love because we don’t have fellowship with one another. We cannot suggest holy life to anyone else because we ourselves do not pursue holiness. Holiness is not standing on a pedestal and pretend we are above everybody else; holiness is availing ourselves to the Holy Spirit for Him to do His work through us.

What can I say about divisions… A large part of the church denies the ability of the Holy Spirit to do His great and marvelous things today as He did back in those days, and another large part tries to force the movement of the Spirit in the church. We either say, “those things were for those times and they don’t apply to us anymore”, as if there is absolutely no need for it and as if we ourselves can replace the role of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives, or we cry and shout and gesture violently, as if that will somehow force the Holy Spirit to move inside the believers. We even dare to “command” blessings, as if God is obligated to perform to our every self-centered desire, so that we would appear to be doing great works. No amount of “Christianese” can ever change the sinful nature of such acts. We even go as far as to presume that, if things don’t appear a certain way, God hasn’t moved or the person or situation we “attack” is resistant to the move of the Spirit. It’s “our way or no way”. We shout and yell and dance about, some times for hours, to “force” a (real or perceived) unclean spirit out of someone. We try to simulate a powerful touch by the Holy Spirit on someone by pushing the person physically. We completely and deliberately ignore the freedom of choice that God has granted to every believer, which freedom includes resisting the work of the Spirit. We would have none of that and we rather push salvation and transformation down people’s throats.

On the other hand, we live our lives in a religious way, lulled by messages full of theology and devoid of Spirit power. We wonder why sinners are not added to the church of believers when our attempts for bringing the gospel to them are weak. Those attempts are based mainly on our own efforts, lacking the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. We forget the words spoken by the prophet Joel and confirmed by Peter: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:17-21, KJV). If those were the last days, what kind of days are we living in now? These are the last of the last days! If that message was true for almost 2000 years ago, when the church was just formed, how true can it be today when the church is about to be removed from the earth! We become content to argue our theology and boast on our knowledge and titles and we miss the whole point of our salvation: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:15-18, KJV).

We have made for ourselves a “safe and cozy” environment and we refuse to operate outside of that. We think inside the proverbial box. We don’t want to offend anybody by the word of the cross; even our call to repentance of the sinners has to be done in a “hushed” way. “Let us all bow our heads and close our eyes”, lest we scare away repentance from the sinners. Let’s not be too up front, we may be dealing with shy people. Let us keep begging, “Please, is there anyone who wants to accept Jesus today? Pleeaase? Pretty please? We are still waiting here”. “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls”, we read in Acts 2:41 (KJV). Three thousand souls in one shot, and we beg for one or two! Something is seriously wrong with our methods. But instead of taking an introspection to see if something is indeed wrong with us, we blame others, our fellow-Christians, the sinners, even God, as things don’t happen. And even if we see some genuinely wrong things in our local church, we cower from exposing them, thinking “if the church has operated this way for so long, it means that they know something. Who am I to challenge the church’s leadership?” This is why the Holy Spirit will pass over many believers and He will move on to others, who dare to defy the status quo and humble themselves to the Lord to become agents of change.

We need to repent. There is no other way that we can become God’s vessels for bringing salvation to the world. We need to recognize that we seek to bring a gospel according to our own biased theologies. We need to see honestly in how many ways we promote ourselves instead of Christ. We must admit that we have been trying to do God’s work by our own power instead of that of the Holy Spirit. Only then we will make a firm decision to submit ourselves to the Lord, to humbly admit that we have failed. Only then we will see how deeply divided and failed we are in carrying out His mission, and only then we will be eligible for the Holy Spirit to come with power on and in us and use us to perform miracles such as those of the early church days and even greater. Let’s put aside our silly, prideful titles (Apostle So-and-so, Prophet So-and-so, and any other pedestal we put under our own feet) and only then unity will become possible. Let’s stop fighting and biting each other and instead turn on our real enemy, the accuser of the saints. Every day our brothers and sisters come under attacks of that enemy and many fall by the wayside and we are responsible for that. WE ARE SLEEPING! We fool ourselves by thinking that we will go to heaven and the Lord will be obligated to give us crowns for our vain earthly pursuits. Unless we wake up though, we will stand accused of neglecting each other and sleeping when our brothers and sisters needed our help most. Do you notice people missing services in your church? Hopefully you are there to notice. What do you do when you do notice? Do you make every effort to find them out and support and encourage them, or do you wait until they show up again after a few weeks (or months or even years) to tell them the most hypocritical, “I missed you brother/sister!”

The Lord is coming sooner than you think. It is time to wake up. I plead with you, don’t be like those foolish virgins who in the last moment were frantically trying to get hold of the Holy Spirit, only to miss Him AND the Lord’s coming! Fall on your knees now, ask the Lord to show you in what ways you have failed Him and how you can repent. Then He will use YOU and make great things for His own glory through you. He promised to do it and He will do it anyway, even if He has to use one or two people in the whole world. I pray that you will be that person.

Introduction

Welcome

For many years after Christ's resurrection and departure from the earth, the truth that He left for us was hidden from the common people, by religious tyrants who thought of God' kingdom as something to be grasped. Today, after the hard work and death of many real disciples of the Lord, we have the Bible, the written word of God, available to us in many ways. Yet, instead of looking into it for the truth, we often embrace human teachings that are only deceptive.

My effort is to examine the truth, like my Berean brothers of old, and expose it here for many to see and be encouraged to do the same. My admonition to you is to take nothing you read here for granted or as the final authority, but instead to take it as a starting point to pursue and follow the truth. I want to encourage you to leave your comments, suggestions, questions or anything else worth posting. "For we know in part, and we prophesy in part." (1 Corinthians 13:9). May the Lord bless you always.