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Read part 1 here!Religion is an insidious and diabolical attempt to establish an identity independently from the creator himself. There never has been nor will there ever be anything within the spawn of religion that remotely has anything to do with being the “church” which IS His body.
I grow weary of the erroneous notion of those re-birthed by God the Father emphatically saying or implying they have left the “church”, what they have left is an entity fostered out of the sick madness of one known as Satan who inspired the first man to embrace, to taste his doctrine of, “you shall be as gods” (you shall not surely die.
On the other hand I love where in scripture it says, “that he Jesus by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”
Simply having exited the bondage of a religious establishment is not synonymous with now being free, anymore than the Jews led out of Egypt into the wilderness sadly discovered that the ingrained matrix of religion, that which had polluted there former captors was very much a fixed identity within their hearts.
The tiniest iota of law commingled with grace becomes the food rooted in the doctrines and teaching of demons. A little leaven will totally corrupt just as a mixture of half truths is in reality a recipe for disaster.
Men seem to love religion and its many expressions; it is no different today than it was in the very beginning of the church, here is but one example where Paul is imploring the believers to take heed to what is going on right under their nose.
“For you gladly bear with fools, being wise yourselves! For you bear it if someone makes slaves of you, or devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face. To my shame, I must say, we were too weak for that!"
Also here where Paul is speaking to the church, “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ's hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.”
The harnesses that men have in mind for the believer who has vacated the premises of any religious establishment have no idea of how many other entrapment's yet await him, not so much from without, but from within!
Rich
2 comments:
Rich, do you have any experience with or of evil within the church itself (I mean here organized religion). I also mean real evil and not just poorly intentioned people. There is someone, a deacon-to-be, who has been set up (not at my beloved mission church but in another venue) as the faith formation director for me and several others from our town. We are all concerned about this person. The others simply feel that he is arrogant, condescending, and Pharasaic, and don't want to speak about anything personal in his presence because they don't trust him. For me, the reaction is deeper. My skin crawls, and I feel like I am being spiritually raped. (Yes, of course, I am getting myself out of that situation and so are some of the others.) My question is: Does Satan dare to invade the church? As I asked at the outset, do you have any experience of this?
Elizabeth,
First, thank you for your thoughts and comments, and yes, I do have first hand experience with the covert insidious workings of evil in my own life as well as in what so many synonymously mistake as the church. The entrenched well camouflaged and innate workings of evil are in us all, aka, "Satan in our flesh," something that will caustically infuriate most believers, even to say those words will invoke a similar reaction from them much like the projected vomit coming from the hearts and mouths of the Pharisee's when Jesus said, "You are of your father, the devil."
It is my understanding (discernment) that apart from His spirit revealing, exposing who and what is in (all) our flesh we will be blinded to that which desires to keep us from fully becoming whose we are, and who we are yet to be by his amazing Grace!
One concentrated expression of evil and not as you put it, " poorly intentioned people" is when after by revelation Peter answers Jesus' poignant question, "Who do you say that I am" "you are the Christ of God" he (Peter) then tries to stop Jesus from moving toward Jerusalem where he will die a most horrible death. What does Jesus do, he rebukes Peter, it was much more serious than just correcting a poorly intentioned person, "Get behind my Satan Jesus said to Peter, for you have and are imbibing from another source, spirit, that is not of or from the One who revealed to you who I AM!
The deacon to be that you mentioned and the deep reaction you sense when around him I would take most seriously, for example, have you ever witnessed say in a doctors office where there might be a mother with small children and a stranger will try to make vocal and visual contact with the child only to to see that child repelled by their actions? I'm sure some of it is out of a shyness, but I am also cognizant that in other cases it is that child recognizing intuitively an evil that repulses them from any contact with that person, thing is, if you were to try and analyze the situation you might wonder about the very strong reaction of the child in light of seeing NOTHING outwardly suspicious or scary about the adult who tried to communicate with that child.
I trust you will find this helpful.
Rich
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