The Reality of Americanist Human Sacrifice
The past two days during my devotional time I've read the 17th and 18th chapters of the first book of Kings. If you know what's in those two chapters, you know we are introduced to one of the greatest prophets of them all, Elijah. First we find Elijah commissioned by God to tell King Ahab what's what. He's told to go to a place to wait but resources are very scarce because of a famine. Yet God still provides. No matter what, his resources do not run out.
Then he visits a woman and her son who consider themselves about to die because of the famine, but Elijah assures her, your resources will not run out. The boy later gets ill and dies, but Elijah brings him back to life. God is a God of resurrection from the dead, of eternal life.
Elijah finally confronts Ahab, but it is much more about his challenge to Baal, the pagan god Ahab has authorized the people of Israel to worship. Elijah asks the people, "So, who is it? God or Baal?"
What a question.
I think about this question when beholding all the things that are going on the world around me, reaching quite a crescendo with this spiritually and emotionally violent response from the most powerful homosexualists regarding their conception of how things should be. I'd blogged on it already the past couple of times, but I just felt like blogging briefly about it again, in this context.
For you see, everyone has their own conceptions about what is right and wrong. Even the thief works valiantly to protect his booty in the name of his own conceived righteousness. Perfectly rational, despite the fact that it isn't objectively righteous. People who say they shouldn't judge are extraordinarily judgmental regarding the sacred cows they worship. The most critical thinking about all this is, alas, quite sparse.
Point is, there are rules. There are laws, and boundaries, and conceptions of behavior we all like others to respect.
The homosexualists have them, the religionists have them. In my own web work I've delineated these two camps as the "Radical Selfists," homosexualists claim those who have same-sex attractions should be able to act on them and have others accept those things on the basis of people being free to do their thing -- and "Devout Romanists," religionists claim simply that there are ways everyone should behave to make sure society is functioning properly and orderly and all the rest of it.
What is lost on all of this is the way out of that body of death.
Yes, indeed: It is Christ. But while there is a ministry of sin -- giving full vent to your desires no matter how destructive they are -- and the ministry of condemnation -- using the full weight of judgment which may include a commensurately ruthless measure of civil law enforcement -- there is also another ministry.
The ministry of reconciliation.
Yes, identify the sin. Yes, establish the law against it. But here's the thing.
Most people stop there. Sin - law - sin - law - sin - law - sin - law. It is a horrifically gruesome body of death. In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul even said, "The power of sin is the law." Damn. It is scary how many people have the most scant spiritual intelligence about God and who He and they simply don't get out of that body.
Ambassadors of Christ are available to take it to the next level, to take it to the next ministry, to take someone yearning to be free to genuine freedom.
Forgiveness. Mercy. Charity. Grace. Healing. Wholeness. Salvation. Joy. Fellowship.
Here's the next major truth that even fewer people are grasping.
Where are those ambassadors?
They are too tied to the World System that engenders the body of death! Churches that are 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organizations are just as much ministries of condemnation as anything!
Have you ever noticed when confronted by this major battle in the culture war, this one about homosexuality, people just have nothing to say? And when some people say something, it is so stunningly lacking in any real spiritually meaningful rigor?
It is that way because so many people and so many churches and so many ministries are so fully and comprehensively Catholicized that the discourse is haplessly contaminated. Don't get me wrong -- the ministry of condemnation is ordained by God for its purposes, sometimes the people serving there say very principled things about how evil homosexual behavior is, they really do.
But they will never have the impact that lost, hurting, dying people truly need.
That requires Christ. That requires reconciliation. That requires people who so love homosexually-minded people and homosexualists so much that it cannot be denied that they have what they really long for.
Did you catch those things there, the things they should have? Forgiveness? Mercy? Charity? Grace? Okay okay, I see you know them.
See, after Elijah asked that question, one that could be asked right now, today, in this world with its festering reigning body of death, you know it, I'll write it here again: "So, who is it? God or Baal?" Do you know what the people did? Do you know what they did when they were asked that simple question? Do you know what they answered?
Nothing. They just stood there. Duhh-yerrrrrr. Read it right there, there in verse 21 (of chapter 18). And it wasn't just because they were so vacuous with regards to the rich spiritual intelligence and insight one could have about truth.
It was because they were supposed to be God's but were instead also doing stuff with Baal. The purity of their worship was wholly infected with Baal worship.
That's what the American church is like today. It is a lot like that today with the whole homosexualist discourse. People just stew and stare at each other and hate. Those in supposedly Christian churches should be on the forefront of ambassadorship, from the deepest essence of their very beings pouring out forgiveness-mercy-charity-grace -- you know... But they're not.
Don't get me wrong. Some are, I'm sure. Buttt, I honestly don't see many. Oh I see a lot of nice people, I do. Oh I see a lot of kind giving people, I do. I see lots of people doing nice kind nice things for other people, I do. Catholicists are those who just do things the way the Catholic Church tells them to, whether actually Catholic or not, whether they even know it or not -- and many, many of them are splendid people, they are. Protestant churches are coming out -- so to speak -- in droves supporting the sexual and spiritual crime of sodomy. I even saw a news story about the gentleman selected to be president of Loyola Marymount University -- a top Jesuit college in the Los Angeles area -- replacing, as president, mind you, a Protestant. Guhh??
Damn there are a lot of good wholesome Catholicists doing kind giving nice neat nice nice NICE things for others, and doing principled things like stepping up and defending sexual health and morality. Yes!
But I'm not seeing many instances where people are wholly, fully, richly, powerfully impacting the lives of those who are lost and hurting and dying with the Kingdom. With the Gospel. With the deepest richest Reconciliation. With a conception of being wholly out of the Catholic Church and its subdivisions and its brutally intractable ministry of condemnation.
Sorry, but the only way to do that is to get ungrafted. Right now. Stop being a subdivision of the Catholic Church. Make your worship assembly a lighthouse that is bright with Reconciliation. Don't have 501c3's any more. Don't pay taxes you don't owe. Don't sign up with World contractual obligations that compromise your capacity to purely and wholly abandon to the Living God. All you're doing when you are in with the System is stirring up all the things that foment more and more human sacrifice.
Instead turn 180 degrees to the One Who Was The Sacrifice. And then be living sacrifices by Him for them, for those God has put in your life to effusively pour out forgiveness and mercy and... okay okay okay.
Wow, what would happen if we actually had that.
Know what happened after Elijah asked those people whether or not they wanted to stay in their little Baal worship cliques? And after they just stood there, silently? Remember?
Do we need God to detonate what's put on the altar piece today? I don't know. Maybe. Seems to me He'd already shown us who He is, what He's about -- He did it big-time there on Mt. Carmel. He did it in dozens of other places in Scripture. just as dramatically.
Thing is,
What else do we need to know?
I guess what's left is that we let Him show who He is in our lives to those with whom we have to do.
Wow, would that be a spectacular conflagration that'd get people in the Kingdom.
_
Then he visits a woman and her son who consider themselves about to die because of the famine, but Elijah assures her, your resources will not run out. The boy later gets ill and dies, but Elijah brings him back to life. God is a God of resurrection from the dead, of eternal life.
Elijah finally confronts Ahab, but it is much more about his challenge to Baal, the pagan god Ahab has authorized the people of Israel to worship. Elijah asks the people, "So, who is it? God or Baal?"
What a question.
I think about this question when beholding all the things that are going on the world around me, reaching quite a crescendo with this spiritually and emotionally violent response from the most powerful homosexualists regarding their conception of how things should be. I'd blogged on it already the past couple of times, but I just felt like blogging briefly about it again, in this context.
For you see, everyone has their own conceptions about what is right and wrong. Even the thief works valiantly to protect his booty in the name of his own conceived righteousness. Perfectly rational, despite the fact that it isn't objectively righteous. People who say they shouldn't judge are extraordinarily judgmental regarding the sacred cows they worship. The most critical thinking about all this is, alas, quite sparse.
Point is, there are rules. There are laws, and boundaries, and conceptions of behavior we all like others to respect.
The homosexualists have them, the religionists have them. In my own web work I've delineated these two camps as the "Radical Selfists," homosexualists claim those who have same-sex attractions should be able to act on them and have others accept those things on the basis of people being free to do their thing -- and "Devout Romanists," religionists claim simply that there are ways everyone should behave to make sure society is functioning properly and orderly and all the rest of it.
What is lost on all of this is the way out of that body of death.
Yes, indeed: It is Christ. But while there is a ministry of sin -- giving full vent to your desires no matter how destructive they are -- and the ministry of condemnation -- using the full weight of judgment which may include a commensurately ruthless measure of civil law enforcement -- there is also another ministry.
The ministry of reconciliation.
Yes, identify the sin. Yes, establish the law against it. But here's the thing.
Most people stop there. Sin - law - sin - law - sin - law - sin - law. It is a horrifically gruesome body of death. In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul even said, "The power of sin is the law." Damn. It is scary how many people have the most scant spiritual intelligence about God and who He and they simply don't get out of that body.
Ambassadors of Christ are available to take it to the next level, to take it to the next ministry, to take someone yearning to be free to genuine freedom.
Forgiveness. Mercy. Charity. Grace. Healing. Wholeness. Salvation. Joy. Fellowship.
Here's the next major truth that even fewer people are grasping.
Where are those ambassadors?
They are too tied to the World System that engenders the body of death! Churches that are 501c3 tax-exempt non-profit organizations are just as much ministries of condemnation as anything!
Have you ever noticed when confronted by this major battle in the culture war, this one about homosexuality, people just have nothing to say? And when some people say something, it is so stunningly lacking in any real spiritually meaningful rigor?
It is that way because so many people and so many churches and so many ministries are so fully and comprehensively Catholicized that the discourse is haplessly contaminated. Don't get me wrong -- the ministry of condemnation is ordained by God for its purposes, sometimes the people serving there say very principled things about how evil homosexual behavior is, they really do.
But they will never have the impact that lost, hurting, dying people truly need.
That requires Christ. That requires reconciliation. That requires people who so love homosexually-minded people and homosexualists so much that it cannot be denied that they have what they really long for.
Did you catch those things there, the things they should have? Forgiveness? Mercy? Charity? Grace? Okay okay, I see you know them.
See, after Elijah asked that question, one that could be asked right now, today, in this world with its festering reigning body of death, you know it, I'll write it here again: "So, who is it? God or Baal?" Do you know what the people did? Do you know what they did when they were asked that simple question? Do you know what they answered?
Nothing. They just stood there. Duhh-yerrrrrr. Read it right there, there in verse 21 (of chapter 18). And it wasn't just because they were so vacuous with regards to the rich spiritual intelligence and insight one could have about truth.
It was because they were supposed to be God's but were instead also doing stuff with Baal. The purity of their worship was wholly infected with Baal worship.
That's what the American church is like today. It is a lot like that today with the whole homosexualist discourse. People just stew and stare at each other and hate. Those in supposedly Christian churches should be on the forefront of ambassadorship, from the deepest essence of their very beings pouring out forgiveness-mercy-charity-grace -- you know... But they're not.
Don't get me wrong. Some are, I'm sure. Buttt, I honestly don't see many. Oh I see a lot of nice people, I do. Oh I see a lot of kind giving people, I do. I see lots of people doing nice kind nice things for other people, I do. Catholicists are those who just do things the way the Catholic Church tells them to, whether actually Catholic or not, whether they even know it or not -- and many, many of them are splendid people, they are. Protestant churches are coming out -- so to speak -- in droves supporting the sexual and spiritual crime of sodomy. I even saw a news story about the gentleman selected to be president of Loyola Marymount University -- a top Jesuit college in the Los Angeles area -- replacing, as president, mind you, a Protestant. Guhh??
Damn there are a lot of good wholesome Catholicists doing kind giving nice neat nice nice NICE things for others, and doing principled things like stepping up and defending sexual health and morality. Yes!
But I'm not seeing many instances where people are wholly, fully, richly, powerfully impacting the lives of those who are lost and hurting and dying with the Kingdom. With the Gospel. With the deepest richest Reconciliation. With a conception of being wholly out of the Catholic Church and its subdivisions and its brutally intractable ministry of condemnation.
Sorry, but the only way to do that is to get ungrafted. Right now. Stop being a subdivision of the Catholic Church. Make your worship assembly a lighthouse that is bright with Reconciliation. Don't have 501c3's any more. Don't pay taxes you don't owe. Don't sign up with World contractual obligations that compromise your capacity to purely and wholly abandon to the Living God. All you're doing when you are in with the System is stirring up all the things that foment more and more human sacrifice.
Instead turn 180 degrees to the One Who Was The Sacrifice. And then be living sacrifices by Him for them, for those God has put in your life to effusively pour out forgiveness and mercy and... okay okay okay.
Wow, what would happen if we actually had that.
Know what happened after Elijah asked those people whether or not they wanted to stay in their little Baal worship cliques? And after they just stood there, silently? Remember?
Do we need God to detonate what's put on the altar piece today? I don't know. Maybe. Seems to me He'd already shown us who He is, what He's about -- He did it big-time there on Mt. Carmel. He did it in dozens of other places in Scripture. just as dramatically.
Thing is,
What else do we need to know?
I guess what's left is that we let Him show who He is in our lives to those with whom we have to do.
Wow, would that be a spectacular conflagration that'd get people in the Kingdom.
_
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