Chapter 4
Tearing Down False Religion
*We don’t need to turn to the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witness to find false religion. It is in our own backyard. I just awoke from a dream in which I asked the question, “What would be your response to some one who would say that they see it as though in Christ we aren’t to be concerned with either Judaism or Christianity?” The question came from recent considerations that I’ve been having about the faith.
*The man whom I was asking responded in this way, “To lose the Hebraic roots is to loose everything. To call us Christian is to call our religion the fulfillment of the Old Covenant. To suck from the roots of Judaism by reading our Old Testaments, and not once ever consider the implications that are being made for Jews, is to abandon the faith. One of our biggest downfalls is that we have the Jewish Messiah, and yet the Church has not one Jew in it.”
*I wonder what it could mean; “yet the Church has not one Jew in it.” I am a friend with a Jewish believer. I’ve read books by Jewish believers. I’ve heard testimonies and stories of Jewish believers… Why would the wording be that the Church has not one Jew in it? I don’t believe that this was misquoted, nor do I believe that he was wrong.
*Is it possible that in our ideologies and in our systematic and methodic institutional Christianity we have so forsaken the true Judaism of God, that even the Jewish believers are no longer Jewish? When we mention Judaism, most Christians think bondage. They think of the Law and Prophets, which, “brings no life, but only causes us to realize our sin.” I’m quoting one of my friends.
*The words of Paul are severely lost to us. We love to read him and quote him, because it is easy to misunderstand him. When we read Paul’s words on the Law and grace, we think he is telling us that we don’t need to submit to the Law. He is telling us that in Christ, we are adopted sons and daughters, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither male nor female, and we have all come under the one Head. What is he saying, though?
*If we are adopted sons and daughters, what are we adopted into? Most Christians would say, “We’re adopted as children of God.” This is true, but this is false. God is not the God of the Gentiles. He is the God of the Jews. This is why God gave the Jews the Law and Prophets. In our New Testaments, Jesus, who is the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets, made a way for even the Gentiles to be saved. Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles was to tell them of the great things in God, mainly, our adoption into the House of Israel.
*Now, when a child is adopted into a home, does the rest of the family turn their backs on him or her? When you are adopted, you are no longer part of your old race or family. You are now the same as your new brothers and sisters. This is why Paul tells us there is neither Jew nor Gentile in Christ. We have all been adopted into the true Judaism of God, which is to say, to be men and women of God. To call a man a son of David was to put him at the same level as David. To call a man a son of God is to put him at the same level as God.
*Obviously, this doesn’t mean that we are Gods. This is merely to say that our lives and characters reflect the image of God. This is the Hebraic faith. It is in this that we are to live and move and have our being. We are to go beyond the conventionalism. Our lives should show forth the glory of God. I would go as far as saying that the church that does not show forth the glory of God is not the Church. When we’re worried about our programs and events, Sunday services and speaking, midweek Bible studies and cell groups, and all of the sorts, we are not the Church. We might be a religious institution. But we are not the Church of Jesus Christ.
*The true Church is the end time man of God. It is to have a mode of living that transcends time and space. Her life should not be like the rest of the world’s, but instead it should be flowing from the very life of God. We should be active. This doesn’t mean to storm the gates and start street preaching, planning events, inviting people to church, or any of the other nonsense that has been fed us. To wait on the Lord is to be active. Unless He speaks, there is no movement. When He speaks, we follow His orders to the letter.
*There needs to be juices flowing. Even if we are silent, we are prepared. It is God to call us to physical movement, but we should never stop spiritually moving. How active can you say that your congregation is in the spiritual realm? Do you push back armies of darkness, pull down strongholds, and bring forth a creative word that punctures space and time? Do you grow leaps and bounds spiritually, in understanding, humility, love, and in the Spirit?
*It is this kind of authority that God is looking to present within the Church. There is no way that we could possibly be at this place unless we are willing, and have obtained, to being an end time people of God. When I use a term like true Judaism, I am not speaking of that which the prophets of old judged with their words. How can I possibly be saying that? Yet, there is a real sense in which the true Judaism, or the Hebraic, is what God has been striving for in men since the dawn of time. It is this that displays God to the nations, and to the gods of the nations. It is this that displays God to the people, and to the exposing of people’s hearts.
*Can we really say that we have, as a corporate unit, displayed the character of God to all people? Have our lives brought forth light, such a light that the darkness must flee from and cannot overcome? Do the nations stagger before us? Are cities flipped upside-down because of God in us? Do we nonplus our friends?
*Most of our congregations have not measured up to that. When I ask people about their church, I really do mean the people. They want to tell me about programs and events and suppers, and parties, and service times, and what they use the building for. I want to know about the people. What a pitiful condition we could be in to “know” that the Church is the people, yet we can’t even tell you about the man or woman we sit next to. There is something severely wrong. The absence of the Hebraic roots has caused us to need a model to form to. The model we’ve chosen has been that of a business.
*What are some of these Hebrew roots? What are some of the things we need to be worried with? To start, we could get a right idea of what the will of God is. When most people ask, “What is the will of God,” it could be translated as, “What is the will of God for my life?” God’s will is justice, faithfulness, mercy, love, providing for the poor, pleading the cause of the fatherless, taking care of the orphans and widows, and taking in the strangers. Have you held up to that? James tells us that “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
*Have we held up to that standard? If we haven’t done it individually, then we haven’t done it corporately; I don’t care what programs your “church” offers. When I see a man on the corner holding a sign that says something to the effect of, “Have kids at home and no money, please help,” I can’t help but wonder where the Church is. Why is it that most of the time there is a church building right down the road, yet this man stands on the corner starving? If our pastors were actually ministers instead of paid teachers, we might actually see people’s lives changed (like these men who stand on the corner with a sign). To run the buildings like businesses is to be polluted by the world. God had intended from the beginning to have us be like Him. What does that even mean?
Church as Community
*We jump too quickly in saying; “God wants us to have a godly character; be ye holy as I am holy.” What does it mean that God is holy? Most answers I receive are something like, “You know… holy. Like, God is holy. You know?” It’s like school of redundancy school. God wants us to be like Him… He wants us to be one, even as He is one. By and large, we are not one. Our relationships with each other are superficial. We can have “church picnics” all year long, but we still talk to the same people about the same stuff, and we never get on more than a name basis. We can even talk about Scripture, and yet never be on more than a superficial level with one another.
*Even in this we misunderstand. That doesn’t mean to hold more church picnics and hang out with the people in the congregation more often. What are you doing while together? Are you talking about your life? Many of us do. I was shocked when attending Bible studies to find out that there was more discussion before and after the “study” when we were only talking about the superficial matters. Is that being one?
*Why is it that when we have the idea of community, we have the idea that we all just get along, no one ever gets hurt, we help each other out, there are never conflicts or arguments, it is all a utopia? That is not reality; it is only point of view. It is what we have. The only explanation for it is that we are not living as community. When you live as community with one another, you start to get irritated, people start rubbing you the wrong way, you feel as though you have no private life anymore, your human compassion and love come to an end, you feel anger and resentment rising up against your brothers and sisters, and eventually you want nothing to do with them.
*That is why God wants us to be communal. If we cannot even express true love with each other, how then do you expect to show love to the outside world? You will no longer be taking communion once a month. Once a week won’t even be enough. It will be a daily thing, because the communion cup and bread are holy things. They aren’t for sentiment. The day I set my heart to live like this was the day I realized I have no love of my own. I cleave to the communion cup each morning hoping that God will be with me there to impart what I need for each day.
*From the first irritations to the driving of each other bonkers, the truth comes out. When we can come together there, even in the intensity of disapproval and all of our wrong ideologies and hopes being crushed, God will meet us. Sure it sounds terrible when it is expressed like this. Yet, there is a unique sort of longing in each member of the Body for it. We want to suffer with one another. We want to find ourselves at the end of our ropes. The reason is quite simple. When we find ourselves at the end of ourselves, the only thing that can happen is for God to raise us from the dead. Either God will be there, or we will utterly fail. Lest God be for us, then we cannot have true fellowship. Lest we suffer together with the intensity of life and experience of giving the inner parts to those around us, we will always have the mere succession of Sundays, and the mid-week addendum. There will be no true communion until we offer ourselves as living sacrifices, even to one another.
*It is in the intensity of community that we start to see each other as we really are. It is also where we begin to see ourselves. The Body gets to work with the Body. God uses common everyday people, whom you have lived with and trust, to speak into your life. No longer are we found wanting to run to all the conferences to hear a personal prophecy and see what the Lord would have to say to us. The men and women of our community could tell me that.
*When I discovered what it meant to really get to know the Body, I realized that it was quite easy to see each other’s flaws. Things that they had no idea were in them I could point out as if it were quite obvious. And the same goes for me. Areas of life that I thought I had far repented of and gotten the bitterness taken care of were exposed as only being pushed to a back burner. When the Body was doing its job of ministering to itself, there was true healing. Not only are the flaws exposed, but so is the solution.
*We no longer repent of the surface issues. We can get to the heart of things. We can get to the “root.”
*Another of our many problems is that even if we were communal, we would still build up walls around ourselves. For the Baptists, the Pentecostals are far from “in the faith.” For the Pentecostals, it is hard to imagine Presbyterians as their “brothers and sisters.” For the Presbyterians, it is hard to see the Catholics as “believers.” And the Catholics struggle with the Protestants. So long as we are not willing to put down the walls and accept even the most polar opposite of what we believe as “part of the Body,” we can never truly understand the terms “Body of Christ,” nor can we understand “Church.” Israel did this with their tribes. The Ephraimites and Gadites would fight; Judah was self-righteous against others, the Danites would argue against the Reubanites, and so on and so forth. The bickering and the quarreling would cause division and strife. God didn’t intend that, and the words of both Moses and Joshua prove it. If you want to know community, you should start in Genesis 1:1, and see the Godhead as communal, and move from there to man needing a helper, and into the laws, and then into the history and the prophets, and then into the poetic books, and finally you come to the New Testament with the Church as the full fulfillment of all these Scriptures.
*It is from this place of true community, which is the definition of fellowship, which we can begin to look upon “the will of God.” His will is not to be something only to practice within the walls of our communities. He wants us to go outside into the world and practice it even there. When we’re in the grocery store, we should be laying aside our own lives to take up the cause of the fatherless. Obviously, the scenarios are limited. Yet the point is that we should be practicing justice, mercy, faithfulness, love, and generosity.
Of One Heart
*It is not until we can say that we are one with each other as God is one with Himself that we will understand unity of mind (1 Corinthians 1:10). This is something that is such a difficulty for me to express, because I’ve heard it far too often. People will say something along the lines of “we need to be unified in mindset,” and yet that means that certain people need to leave. They aren’t willing to work through struggles together.
*I have seen groups of people torn apart because they don’t know how to love one another. They want to move onto higher things than that. They want to be able to wrestle with principalities in prayer. They want to spend time worshiping and praying. They want to have deep Bible studies that have impacting words and thoughts being expressed. They want a tangible presence of God that causes people to fall on their faces. They want power without the character of God. They want to neglect their own morale and characters to embrace “higher spirituality” without realizing that the deeper morale and character is the higher spirituality.
*None of these can come about when love is not present. The most that could happen is a soulish atmosphere being pumped up to create some sort of aura or “presence.” Because there are people there who would use the Scripture against others instead of trying to restore their brother gently, it shows forth the heart of those who claim to be “more spiritual.” They aren’t more spiritual. They are little children wanting to “bring out the big guns” that are meant for the mature. They are toddlers who think that they have a right to the deeper things in God when they themselves are not willing to sacrifice that is demanded in Scripture as necessary. They are babes in the playpen shaking the bars and trying to get out, when the best place for them is to remain inside the cage.
*How can we express this ideology of being of one heart and one mind? Who could possibly come to such a place in their spiritual walk? What congregation could possibly be sufficient for these things? Notice that I used 1 Corinthians. Paul told even them who were so low in their spirituality that a man was having an affair with his mother in law.
*This is something crucial to the heart of God. We need to be of one heart toward each other, but equally of one heart toward the outside world. We need to be able to discern the very heart of God for each other as well as those around us. In fact, the New Testament word for glory is doxa, which means perception. The very glory of God is tied to His perception by Luke when the angels cry out, “Glory to God in the Highest Heaven.” But who is sufficient for these things? If the word we are to bring is of judgment, then we must suffer a judgment. If the word that we are to bring is an exposing of sin, then we must be humbled to a place of acknowledging the sin in ourselves, even if we ourselves haven’t committed it.
*There is a severe suffering that must take place in every congregation. We have ipso facto decided that suffering is too hard of a burden, and therefore have rejected the true fellowship of the saints for a false superficial forgery. We have nice meetings. We have nice people. We have nice messages. But there is nothing of God coming forth. Iron doesn’t sharpen iron. It is more of clay and iron mixtures breaking each other.
*I can see it quite clearly that unless we are willing to repent in an ultimate kind of way now, then we will suffer worse later. I don’t mean hellfire. God doesn’t need to use hellfire to judge. We will be brought before all the people of the earth and shown forth in truth. It will be in the moment of calamity that our nakedness, shame, wretchedness, false humility, false fruits of the Spirit, false Christianity, and false community will be exposed before all the people of the earth. There will be no escaping it. In that hour people will see quite clearly who is truly a man or woman of God and who is playing the stupid religious games. Mark my words, God will not be mocked; a man reaps what he has sown.
*Turn back to the faith that God had established, even in the laws of Leviticus, or perish. We will either be an end time people of God, or we will be brought to destruction. The ruins are already exposed to those who can see it. Our buildings, which we love to display, are complete signs against us that we are getting what we want. The words of Jesus hold true for us in this day: “They have received their reward in full.”
*The Hebraic roots of the faith are supreme. Why? Let us define Hebraic. It is not Jewish. It is not Christian. It transcends both Judaism and Christianity to bring forth a new breed of believers: the people of God. I know that I’ve said this, but let us consider something further. Judaism is born from Abraham. They claim him as their father. The word Christian comes from the term meaning “slave of Christ.” The term Christian was formed in Antioch (Acts 13:1-5), because the people actually lived their lives in such a way that the world around them said of them, “It is as though they are slaves of this man named Christ.” They were people who looked back to “In the beginning, God…” Their faith went past Abraham and dwelled within the confines of eternity itself. The only hindrance, the only limit, the only setback for these first century believers was that of the timeless eternal Word of God, which they were slaves to. That kind of bondage is freedom. It is in Jesus that we find the Hebraic roots of the faith. They extend back to Adam being “the son of God” (Luke 3:38). They project us forward to the next life by resurrection from the dead (Romans 6). These are the Hebraic roots of the faith: resurrection. It is in this resurrected life that we have a new logic that is formed. Questions don’t need to be asked; they are simply understood. Who doesn’t know that we are supposed to go from house to house breaking bread daily? Who doesn’t know that we are to take in the stranger and sojourner? Who doesn’t know that we are to preach the good news to every living creature? Who doesn’t know that we are to plead for the poor, fatherless, widows, and orphans? It is just the logic of love. It is the logic of resurrection.
Holiness or a “Blessing”?
*Unless we have what is true, how could we ever “tear down” that is false? What I mean by this is simply that we will not have the discernment to call out false teachings, false signs and wonders, false prophecy, false apostles or false prophets if we don’t have an intensity of life that is born out of the intensity of community. One of the evidences that we have fallen short is that there have been at least 3 revivals within the past 10 years that have been of a dubious kind, and no one is raising questions.
*What kind of a place are we at spiritually when a man can get up and bark like an animal for half an hour, people roll around laughing hysterically, women “walk” their husbands like dogs, men hissing like snakes at each other, people stuffing money into the pockets of the preacher for a “blessing,” and all this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ? Where is the discernment? To even raise a question is to get attacked most grievously. The Charismatic leaders laud and applaud this movement. If you are of the Pentecostal faith and question these phenomena, people will attack you and claim, “You are speaking against the Lord’s anointed.” The people who don’t attack you will simply ask you, “How do you know that God won’t decide to move like this?”
*Is there no character of God? Is there no understanding of Him? People who have been in the faith for 20 plus years go to these things and find they agreeing with everything that is being promoted. How? Not once do we see anything like this in Scripture and it is a good thing. The only place I can think of people barking like dogs is in a curse that God pronounced over a nation.
*If we have come to a place today where this is not brought under serious consideration, what will be the spiritual condition of our children? Even if this isn’t the lying signs and wonders of the end times, when they come… what will be the difference? What would have changed to cause for the children of God to be able to discern them? We can’t even practice discernment in these phenomena. I’ve heard of a man who passes around “Holy Spirit marijuana.” He is one of the fastest growing superstars in the Charismatic Movement.
*These phenomena are not out of the blue. They come from a long-standing lack of integrity and discernment. Even from the 1970’s Jesus Freaks and the Charismatic crusades that went forth, the children of God have been only too willing to open themselves up to any kind of atmosphere or feeling. Jude puts it this way in verse 8, “In the very same way, these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.” He goes on to say, “But these men revile the things they do not understand; and the things they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.”
*It is amazing to me how quickly God exposes such men. Whether you want to look back a ways to Jimmy Swaggart or Marjoe, or if you want to look at the more recent Todd Bentley, they both were exposed. What baffles me is how quickly they can bounce back and form another ministry. Jimmy Swaggart isn’t gone. He has his own ministry called SBN (Sonlife Broadcasting Network), and Todd Bentley is being restored back to the ministry by Rick Joyner.
*These ministries might bring excitement, but what spiritual blessing does it give? When you leave the meeting, or turn off the TV, what remains in your spirit? Does anything remain? Or do you just go back to your life with a bit more excitement, and maybe a bit of hope that God might answer your prayers for healing and miracles?
*When our faith rides so heavily on seeing Benny Hinn perform miracles, therefore He might answer my prayers, then we have no faith at all. Most people are all too eager for their feelings that give them an immediate blessing, but never leave us with an internal holiness or character. In fact, most of the time, these meetings act like drugs where we become vicious if we don’t receive this kind of excitement. When our revival week is over, or we see that “revival” has broken out here or there, we find that, at least in the Pentecostal faith, the music becomes louder, the preaching becomes more passionate, and talk about signs and wonders intensifies. In order to keep the congregation in a state of excitement, we move away from the Spirit of God and take things into our own hands to try and “keep the fire burning.”
*The result is detrimental. We hype ourselves up until we explode, and this explosion of emotion is manifest as screams, dances, slaying in the spirit, running, jumping, laughter, animal noises, crawling, rolling, and other exuberant extremes. Where are those who see the glory of God and fall prostrate before Him? Why do we see no increase in holiness among the people? It seems to me that the people too quickly become more critical and more agitated. They get ferocious and down right mean speaking vile things and absolutely evil words to other parts of the Body that raise questions. All love is cast out in the name of “holding fast to sound doctrine.”
*My questioning comes entirely from this. Are we receiving holiness or a blessing? If we are receiving one without the other, then it is false. To put the two against each other is to tear them apart. You can’t do that. If you receive a blessing from God, you will receive holiness, because what blessing comes from Him without holiness? It says in Mark 5:30 that virtue went out from Jesus and healed the woman with the issue of blood. His virtue is His character. Jesus’ power was directly related to His character and conformity to the image of God. The Spirit had a clear channel because the character of Jesus was of direct reflection of the character of God. This virtue is not the virtue of Jesus, but the virtue of the Spirit, who is God.
*God’s character is inseparable from His power. To receive one is to receive the other. To be touched by one is to be touched by the other. To be filled with one is to be filled with the other. To have one imparted is to have the other imparted. Therefore, if we receive any kind of blessing from God, and we don’t see an increase in godly character, then that miracle is false. For the Spirit to be released and infused or imparted upon a person in the form of a healing or manifestation, and the character of God is not made manifest as well, then we know that it was a false spirit.
*This is how we test the spirits. We must ask the questions of God’s character. Who can know the character of God apart from spending time with Him? And how can we spend time with Him and not spend time with His people? It is all agglutinated. There is wholeness. Because God is One, we will desire to be one. Because we are one, we will see the character of God. Because we will see the character of God, we will have the fruits and gifts of the Spirit in complete operation in our midst. Because we will have the fruits and gifts of the Spirit in our midst, we will have the Spirit in our midst. Because we will have the Spirit in our midst, we will have the threefold presence of God in our midst. Because we will have the threefold presence of God in our midst, we will have the discernment to see through anything that is phony, even within our own gathering together. All things will be open and lay bare. God will be in us and with us.
Restoration to Godly Discernment
*There is so much that ties into the realm of Hebraic faith. With a jealousy for the God of Israel, we are more prone to not falling into the realm of deception. The Jews of our day, even in their humanistic and spiritless discernment, can see right through the emotion and hype. They can tell when the speakers are play-acting. They can tell when the people are playing along. This, by the way, is the definition of hypocrite.
*What is it that the Jewish people have that we lack? Why is it that they, even in their unbelief, can see strait through the lie? I believe that it is all part of an unseen continuum. The Jewish people of today are somehow linked to the ones of Moses’ time. They saw the Lord on Mount Sinai, and therefore are able to see when He is in the midst and when He is absent. Though they were completely different people and a different generation, the prophets would quote God saying, “From the time you were coming out of Egypt you have not followed me.” God distinguishes no difference between Moses’ generation and the Jeremiah’s generation.
*It is this continuum that we lack. We, as Gentiles, do not have this resource. However, we have been adopted. This discernment and knowledge of the Holy is at our grasp. It is not a far off thing. We only need to reach out to grab it. But reaching out requires effort, and many are not willing to do work.
*How do we gain such knowledge and discernment? The only way is to have a personal relationship (no matter how corny and clichéd that might sound). We need to establish a history with God. It is in the times of intimacy with the Lord where we see Him as He is that will deliver us. Unless we have personal experiences to display His character, how will we know Him? We can read of His provision to the saints of old, but is that enough for us to know Him as provider? We can read of Him sending fire down from Heaven, but is that enough for us to know Him as our protector?
*We must have a personal relationship where He pours Himself out and reveals His Spirit and character. Yet, we must also be able to hold on to those times. If we are going to toss aside that which He has shown Himself to be, only to grab hold of the newest and latest fads, then we have lost it all. There is no way to restore the damage that has been done except to wipe the slate clean and start over.
*One of our greatest needs today is the need to know how to guard our hearts. We can say the phrase, quote the Scripture, and even pray for a “hedge of protection,” but unless we are willing to suffer because of our lack of involvement, we will never truly guard our hearts. To guard your heart, you must step back from the crowd. You cannot be quick to pick up everything, even when others are doing it and seemingly receiving a blessing. Unless what you hear, see, and feel line up with the presence of God that you know and experience at home, have nothing to do with it.
*If people are running up to the altar, stay in your seat. If God is really there and has been pouring Himself out, either they will be running to the altar in repentance, or they won’t run at all. If there is excitement on the faces of