Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 3-4)

Spiritual Judgement

Years ago Charles Spurgeon said: “We can learn nothing of the Gospel except by feeling its truths. There are some sciences that may be learned by the head, but the science of Christ crucified can only be learned by the heart.” A while back I wrote an article entitled Emerging With The Spiritual Side Of Christianity which is a reminder that no matter how intellectual any of us are, in the end the Christian faith is still a spiritual relationship with God Himself. The Bible clearly tells us that God is Spirit, and not a spirit as the King James Version reads, therefore those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). My point being that, although this is a bit mysterious–it’s been referred to correctly as the mystical union of the believer in Christ–there is no escape from the fact that to be a Christian is to become involved in another world, this one spiritual.

No doubt we are seeing an increase of deceptions entering the Christian community and the reason for that is actually tied to 1 Peter 4:17 – For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? Now, I’m not saying that this is the final judgment, nor am I saying that the Lord is necessarily coming in our lifetime. What I am attempting to do is draw attention to a secondary principle which is found in this verse, which is when God tires of mankind’s foolishness in a given generation He will first begin to deal with His Own remnant–or specifically to this verse–His Church. And what is happening by the Lord allowing the rapid acceleration of these spiritual deceptions such as the Purpose Driven Church/Life, the neo-liberal cult of the Emergent Church and the growing acceptance of the Word Faith Church is He is challenging our most cherished beliefs through the combined forces of The Ecumenical Church Of Deceit (ECoD).

By allowing this ECoD and its own highly prized contemplative spirituality to gain strength the Lord is forcing an evangelicalism steeped in the humanism she never renounced to come to grips with the spiritual side of the Christian faith. I’m not going to hash out dispensationalism, cessationism, Calvinism, Arminianism etc. at this point, what I am trying to do here is to let you know that we had best come to grips with a good working knowledge of these kinds of issues because the Devil is doing his best right now to drive his wedge of division and confusion into the very remnant of God itself. I must tell you that at the present time he is winning the battle spiritually and his ECoD has been doing a fantastic job of undoing the Reformation. Men and women, can we really not see that this ECoD is a dutiful daughter who’s been very busy tying spiritually obtuse Christians right back to the apostate Church of Rome her man-pleasing mother? These are the new Pharisees of Roman Catholic self-righteous religion who have simply recreated their own form of Judaism all over again. Do you possibly think all of this interest in Contemplative/Centering Prayer–which originated within the monastic system of the Rome–has come about by accident?

A Sad Pattern Emerges

Better we might look at it this way. Consider the sad pattern of mankind’s relationship with his Creator from Adam, who walked with Him in the garden, to God’s Own chosen people not even recognizing Him when Jesus Christ stepped upon His planet. Man is given the privilege of knowing His loving and merciful Creator but through his own sin and rebellion he ends up abusing that relationship until he no longer even recognizes Him anymore. Now let’s move ahead into the Age of Grace; our Great God and Savior Himself establishes His Church and then graciously comes to actually dwell within us. However, by 1517 His Own Church is so corrupt, and has turned so far away from Him, that God has to send His Reformers to return the Body of Christ back to the things the Lord has already taught us in His Word the Bible. Even so, if you will honestly take a look at what God has revealed to us prophetically concerning what is going to happen to this world before Christ returns, you will see that once again mankind will push Him right out of his life and even now seeker sensitive pseudo-Christians are engaged in shoving the Lord out of His Own Church.

We need only turn to Revelation 3:20 to shed some prophetic light on this. Although it’s often quoted in its secondary meaning to unbelievers, this truth is that the passage from which it is taken is actually speaking to the Church, or at least people who would profess to be Christians – “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (ESV). So we see an interesting pattern come emerging from Genesis to Malachi; even among those who considered themselves God’s chosen people because of their birth, they end up completely forgetting Who their Creator is by the time Christ comes into the world He created. And then as we move into the Age of Grace, from the Matthew to Revelation, could it be that we are seeing this same pattern come emerging once again by the time we reach chapter 3? I would say this is good cause for one to take heed of the Biblical admonition of 2 Corinthians 13:5 – Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?

If John the Baptist were here, in a style that would no doubt be frowned upon by today’s focused on self Christianity, I believe he’d be saying to these leaders in the ECoD of new evangelicalism, as well as to their apostate brethren in the Church of Rome: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:7-9). Since God cannot change, the spiritually mature should see that the point is still the same: It’s one thing to say you belong to God, but it’s quite another to have the life to back it up. You don’t think these Pharisees had good works; of course they did, but they loved the approval of men, just the same as Rick Warren and Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen and Pope Benedict XVI do today. I exhort you, don’t be fooled by these deceivers any longer because this is what the Lord says:

But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Revelation 2:14-17, ESV).