The Egregious Omissions of a 501c3 Pastor
It is hard to find good healthy churches that can provide rich spiritual sustenance. I'm convinced that it is because most Christian churches are intractably tied to the World System through its law and bylaws, one of which is the 501c3 paperwork the leaders of those churches sign to get all the goodies Caesar offers them.
Tonight I went to the Saturday evening event of a "Truth Conference" that trumpeted itself as an apologetics-oriented affair, and I'm always jumping on good apologetics kinds of things. The speaker tonight was Ed Hinson, and I'd never heard of him, but thought I'd step in and see what was what.
His ambitious plan was to go through the entire book of Revelation for the several hundred seated in the megachurch-like auditorium. Whew, I thought, that's a really tall order. But alas, I was not in a church where the people were necessarily expecting an expansive scholarly take on a very challenging part of the Bible. Sure enough, much of his talk contained the most minimal exposition, lots of pithy arrangements of its substance (you know the kind: "Here are the seven 'P's' that make up the seven seals..."), and heavy doses of loud and gesticulate reminders of the most basic gospel truths ("Jesus is Lord!" "Give Him glory!" "He's coming for His church!")
I felt like taking off about halfway through his talk -- which had reached just over an hour by the time I did leave -- but I really wanted to see what he'd say about the woman on the beast, the whore of Babylon in chapters 17 and 18. He'd spent great gobs of time on everything up to those two chapters, when suddenly he made some very brief transitionary remark about them and sped right to chapter 19.
Guh?
I should have known.
As a fully vested member of the World System Roman Catholic Religious Organization, he couldn't say anything about it.
The interesting thing is that I'm sure that any of these church people watching and listening, if they had any biblical knowledge and any understanding of history and current events and any genuine desire to insightfully grasp the truth, they'd know that a critically significant character being talked about in chapters 17 and 18 was Rome.
What most of those Christians have been taught, however, is that the whore of Babylon is Rome. But what is worse that very few see that it cannot be anything but Jerusalem. Throughout the Bible in dozens of places God laments losing His true love to idolatry, immorality, disobedience -- and the only way any of that makes sense is if the object of His devotion is Jerusalem.
God never describes Rome (earlier Babylon) as anything but a dispassionate instrument of judgment or a worthless rag that will ultimately have its final use and then tossed.
Or as the one who has wooed His love away from Him.
So Hinson, the supposed expert on all things prophetic, must indeed dismissively neglect those chapters because if he got into them for even five minutes he would have to issue a blistering indictment of his real commitment.
He and all 501c3 pastors are truly part of the Rome that God will send to hell on that last day. Those pastors presently will never, ever face the reality of that condition as long as hundreds of congregants keep putting money in the offering and they live nice cushy lives courtesy of Caesar.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not one of those who actively encourages everyone to prove they are really God's by living on the streets to show how pious we can be. I'm not making a statement about austerity or wealth or any of that. I'm also not saying that people may not be positively impacted by all the wholesome simple Jesus stuff -- that's all good.
I'm just saying we'd all be wonderfully cared for if we as avowed followers of Christ did actually abjure the World System. If we did actually jettison all those contractual obligations to Rome and
Became ungrafted.
Why do so many distrust a God who loves us with a love that He showed us with His very life? One major reason is that so many are so hypnotized by the Ed Hinson's of the world -- System spokesholes, essentially, who after shouting "Praise Jesus!" in one moment will turn and demonically sneer "Don't you touch the anointed you crazy conspiracy theorist."
So, yeah. Here's another quite egregious example of a Roman minister in the service of Caesar's grand religious operation doing his duty to keep people tied to the System.
Maybe there will be a day when I can see someone share the Kingdom.
Maybe.
_
Tonight I went to the Saturday evening event of a "Truth Conference" that trumpeted itself as an apologetics-oriented affair, and I'm always jumping on good apologetics kinds of things. The speaker tonight was Ed Hinson, and I'd never heard of him, but thought I'd step in and see what was what.
His ambitious plan was to go through the entire book of Revelation for the several hundred seated in the megachurch-like auditorium. Whew, I thought, that's a really tall order. But alas, I was not in a church where the people were necessarily expecting an expansive scholarly take on a very challenging part of the Bible. Sure enough, much of his talk contained the most minimal exposition, lots of pithy arrangements of its substance (you know the kind: "Here are the seven 'P's' that make up the seven seals..."), and heavy doses of loud and gesticulate reminders of the most basic gospel truths ("Jesus is Lord!" "Give Him glory!" "He's coming for His church!")
I felt like taking off about halfway through his talk -- which had reached just over an hour by the time I did leave -- but I really wanted to see what he'd say about the woman on the beast, the whore of Babylon in chapters 17 and 18. He'd spent great gobs of time on everything up to those two chapters, when suddenly he made some very brief transitionary remark about them and sped right to chapter 19.
Guh?
I should have known.
As a fully vested member of the World System Roman Catholic Religious Organization, he couldn't say anything about it.
The interesting thing is that I'm sure that any of these church people watching and listening, if they had any biblical knowledge and any understanding of history and current events and any genuine desire to insightfully grasp the truth, they'd know that a critically significant character being talked about in chapters 17 and 18 was Rome.
What most of those Christians have been taught, however, is that the whore of Babylon is Rome. But what is worse that very few see that it cannot be anything but Jerusalem. Throughout the Bible in dozens of places God laments losing His true love to idolatry, immorality, disobedience -- and the only way any of that makes sense is if the object of His devotion is Jerusalem.
God never describes Rome (earlier Babylon) as anything but a dispassionate instrument of judgment or a worthless rag that will ultimately have its final use and then tossed.
Or as the one who has wooed His love away from Him.
So Hinson, the supposed expert on all things prophetic, must indeed dismissively neglect those chapters because if he got into them for even five minutes he would have to issue a blistering indictment of his real commitment.
He and all 501c3 pastors are truly part of the Rome that God will send to hell on that last day. Those pastors presently will never, ever face the reality of that condition as long as hundreds of congregants keep putting money in the offering and they live nice cushy lives courtesy of Caesar.
Please don't get me wrong. I am not one of those who actively encourages everyone to prove they are really God's by living on the streets to show how pious we can be. I'm not making a statement about austerity or wealth or any of that. I'm also not saying that people may not be positively impacted by all the wholesome simple Jesus stuff -- that's all good.
I'm just saying we'd all be wonderfully cared for if we as avowed followers of Christ did actually abjure the World System. If we did actually jettison all those contractual obligations to Rome and
Became ungrafted.
Why do so many distrust a God who loves us with a love that He showed us with His very life? One major reason is that so many are so hypnotized by the Ed Hinson's of the world -- System spokesholes, essentially, who after shouting "Praise Jesus!" in one moment will turn and demonically sneer "Don't you touch the anointed you crazy conspiracy theorist."
So, yeah. Here's another quite egregious example of a Roman minister in the service of Caesar's grand religious operation doing his duty to keep people tied to the System.
Maybe there will be a day when I can see someone share the Kingdom.
Maybe.
_
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