We all know how confused
and diverse the so-called "Christian" religion has become.
Every church seems to
have different rules. But why? Surely they can’t all be right if they all
believe a different gospel. Is God that liberal?
Some worship on Sunday,
some on Saturday, some speak in so-called ‘tongues’, others don’t. Some believe
one ought not play a musical instrument, others believe in a "prosperity
doctrine". One church teaches that believers should pray to Christ’s mother.
Some allow homosexual preachers. Some keep the passover weekly, others monthly,
yet others every quarter, or once a year. Some churches teach that eating meat
is wrong. There are those who teach that there is no Satan, others that there is
no hell. One church maintains Christ went to America. There are churches that
ordain women, others that don’t. One church believes that Christ came in 1914.
Many believe God to be a trinity — others that Christ is God’s Son, and the Holy
Spirit is simply God’s power. There are churches where members fall over
backwards, some where women wear headcoverings, and even some who don’t believe
in heaven or life-after-death. The list of variations of doctrine kept in the
name of Christianity is seemingly endless.
Enter now the serious
seeker of truth!
Today’s confused
Christianity can have the seeker of truth searching, all his, or her life in
vain, never coming to the knowledge of the truth (2nd
Timothy3:7).
And yet didn’t Christ
come to make this search for truth easier, not harder?
We read in 2nd
Corinthians 11:1–4:
"Would to God ye could bear with
me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.
"For I am jealous over you
with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present
you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
"But I fear, lest by any means, as the
serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ.
"For if he that cometh preacheth
another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which
ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might
well bear with him."
Note the term
simplicity — yes, simplicity!
There is a mystery that
is easily solved. Most will not understand when I tell you — but for those who
truly seek and ache for truth, they will see it. Why? Because the simplicity
of the real gospel stands in direct opposition to modern lawless
Christianity.
Modern Christianity
contends that belief in Christ will lead to eternal life, but what is belief? Is
it believing on Christ only — or in Christ and in what He did?
The truth is, Christ
came to take away the sacrificial system, that mankind may focus on the law of
God without it. In simplicity, as Abraham also kept God’s law without a
Levitical priesthood, and was still called the friend of God, for we
read; "Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my
commandments, my statutes, and my laws." (Genesis 26:5)
If Christ were on earth
now, He would say the same to modern Christianity as He said to the Pharisees
who also followed the traditions of man, causing the commandments of God to be
of no effect, for they blended truth with error.
"There shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all
the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out." (Luke
13:28)
What? Abraham has
made it?
Yes — and many more
before Christ; all who were faithful in keeping the laws and commandments of
God.
We who sincerely believe
are to go through a simple change from our worldly state, via a narrow way into
life. We are to be transformed by deliberately discarding ungodly tradition in
favour of God’s holy laws. How? We who seek to be a people of God are to be
grafted in to the way. We are to be living a life similar to
Christ and the fathers. Indeed Christ chastised the religious leaders of His
day; "...If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham."
(John 8:39)
In other words, if they
had been doing the works of Abraham, Christ would have praised
them.
The simplicity of the
gospel has always been, and will always be this "making straight" of God’s
ways. That man and woman may live in simplicity as the fathers did, who loved
God with a whole heart and did not show partiality in God’s law. He
straightened the only way there is that leads to life.
Christ formed no new
religion. Modern Christianity is a cheap counterfeit, stating that believers
"shall not surely die" even though they reject totally the very standards
they will be judged by in the Judgement, .
So what is this
‘simplicity’?
It is as Christ declared
— that "...Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4)
"Every word" is God’s
law, minus the sacrificial system, and to live a non-complicated life, raising
Godly offspring to the Lord. In short, all the righteous ways of God Almighty,
walking as Christ walked, gracefully and faithfully obeying and trusting in
God.
The Gospel is a
patriarchal way of life that is summed up in these proverbs, for the
Lord’s ways are peculiar to His people only:
"For the
commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the
way of life:" (Proverbs 6:23)
And: "Let us hear the
conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is
the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13)
Christ Himself declared
that it would be "...easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of
the law to fail." (Luke 16:17)
Of course, the
Lawless One, who in the end deceives the majority of would-be believers,
is rubbing his hands together because the whole world has believed the lie (for
this is how the Lord tests the whole earth – Rev 3:10). That lie is that man can
please God whilst deliberately breaking His commandments and laws.
All the holy men of
God who ever lived kept the commandments and laws of God. Aren’t we meant to be
holy too? It is true there are Scriptures in the New Testament that sound
like the law of God is now void, but this is in reference to the sacrificial
law only.
In reality, the books of
Galatians and Romans in particular are saying that Christ is the end product (a
pattern) of the law (Galatians 10:4), and that every man who thinks he is right
by doing one particular thing, such as being circumcised alone, is indebted to
live by every word of God — not just one, or some, of them. Faith without works
if you like.
To believe in Christ is
to be set free to worship God in spirit and in truth outside the
sacrificial system. That is the righteousness of God and of Christ.
The sacrificial law was
the framework put in place by God to cover our sins. Without this, we could not
understand that Christ’s sacrifice replaced this system. It was the tutor.
Christ is the end of the sacrificial law to all who believe His blood covers our
stumbling. And yet if we mock God and sin willingly, we will die, for there no
longer remains a covering for the willful sinner (Hebrews 10:26). And we know
what the definition of sin is: "Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth
also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." (2nd John
3:4).
Remember that Christ
gave the law of righteousness to man that man may know good from
evil.
The world focuses on
Jesus Christ, and does not comprehend that through Christ’s blood we are freed
from the snare of death if we continue to learn and obey the truth and live
by it.
If we are deceived into
laziness of heart, believing that Christ has "done it all" and do not seek the
Lord honestly with a pure heart, if we are careless and are not a doer of the
law — we will die (Proverbs 19:16).
Please do not be
deceived! Most of so-called modern Christianity will perish, for it is lawless,
just as the Lawless One is lawless..
Understand that where we
read passages in the Bible that say belief in Christ will give us eternal life,
it is a potential truth, subject to our response. Christ is the door, but few
will truly comprehend the Scriptures because the teachers are teaching error, as
was prophesied (Isaiah 3:12). Belief in Christ without loving Him as He
desires us to love is vanity.
"If ye love me, keep my
commandments." (John 14:15)
"He that saith, I know
him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."
(2nd John 2:4)
Remember: No liar
shall enter into the new world. (Revelation 21:8)
"But whoso keepeth his word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in
him [in His pattern]." (2nd John 2:5)
