Man is born for trouble, which always leads to conflicts, which generally leads to wars, which always demand tribute in the numbers of the dead. And since the power of death has always been Satan's greatest weapon, you know who it is that is behind all the destruction that we see and live under. We know the military is a necessity to protect. Still, it's also used to instigate conflicts and protect the interests of parties involved, whether government or private companies, and even influential individuals. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that Satan uses the global militaries to further the chaos and spread misery and death. This is the way of sin; it always leads to death.
The United Nations claims that it wants to beat weapons into plowshares, but that is an open farce for the UN, which is the largest organization of orchestrated violence in the world. It is an operation funded and controlled by nations, corporations, and wealthy, influential families who run global operations. Positions of power are often acquired through ruthless actions and monetary rewards, and those in positions of power within the UN are the players chosen to further the international goals of this insidious creation of men. However, what goes for the UN is also found in every government worldwide, which carries into every province, state, and local government. As you can imagine, the web is intricate, and no one can avoid its touch, especially those working within political powers.
Christians must choose which profession they wish to acquire and whether they are knowledgeable and wise enough to master it. More importantly, is this what the Lord Jesus has called them to do? Most of those who have turned to the faith already have jobs, professions, and families, and sometimes, the call to leave the familiar becomes a burden that is hard to accept. So the compromises begin, picking scriptures to bolster a particular view, a conversation with someone who appears to be wise and spirit-led, and a host of other things come into focus as you determine the best course of action. Unknowingly, you have begun to replace the soft voice of the Spirit of grace with the persuasive words of men, and your path slowly part ways from the directions the Lord provided simply because it's not what you want. Forgetting the all-important words, not my will but yours. And so begins another conflict in the mind that will inevitably lead to open warfare against the will of God.
This is how sin often undermines God's will in a believer's life through questions and demands such as Is this what I want? I have my dreams! It's my life!
Does this sound familiar to you? It should be because we have all acted this way, every one of us. Even those who claim to walk with God often do so with selfish attitudes and pretentious spirituality to make it appear that they serve Christ with the purest intentions and complete obedience. Peer a little closer, and you will see they are frequently no better or worse than yourself. Self-deception is the hallmark of a blind man leading blind people. True believers can never succeed in this type of charade because their hearts do not conform to the ways of this world and have cast off the cloak of deceptive practices. A Christian is in a state of open warfare all day with sin, the desires of the flesh, the strivings of the mind, the pride of life, the lust after recognition, the pursuit of wealth, the enticements of bodily desires, and so much more. The scriptures mean precisely this when they say that the Spirit wars against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit, and it is impossible for the two to reconcile, except it is with compromises that erode the believer's foundation. Many believers live with compromised faith, which means living in unbelief. When you compromise, you are watering down, thinning out, merging, and weakening a position. This is a terrible practice in warfare, for it will undoubtedly lead to ultimate defeat. And it does the same in a Christian's walk.
Compromising faith translates into sin. There is no other way to put it. When we take our faith and merge it with sinful desires, we are committing acts of sin. We need to face up to this and stop acting as though we are faithful believers, for that is not what we are if we are compromising our faith with acts of rebellion or lawlessness. We choose to live with sin and make excuses to justify the results or intentions, thereby deceiving ourselves. As an example, we are commanded by the God who created heaven and earth to keep His Sabbath, but the majority of those calling themselves believers refuse to do that. That is not love and faith but more disrespect and callous indifference to the one we claim to love! The word calls those who act in such a way as hypocrites. And the price of hypocrisy is to be cut asunder and cast away as worthless salt. This is a prime example of placing man's traditions over God's commands. And those who practice disobedience are the ones who cry the loudest about how much they love the Lord even as they disrespect his commands! This is, in truth, a declaration of war against God by those who claim to love Him!
Sin is lawlessness, the breaking of God's law that he gave to man to obey. Even the elements obey His law, for His word upholds all things; the Moon, the stars, and life itself are governed by his law, for without law, chaos would ensue. But man, in his foolishness, has declared the law to be of no effect because the Son of God abolished it! How cowardly and stupid does one have to be to believe such a monstrous lie? But sin will always be justified by the ones wanting to commit it, and unbelief is the reward of those willing to compromise their faith to accommodate their personal views. And this is the majority of the Christian body today, a body of compromisers, a body of traditionalists, a body of rebellious believers engaged in open warfare against the God they rather loudly boast to love and serve, but without obedience to His commands and law. This is a body that lives in disobedience but loves the Lord! This is a body filled with the spirit of disobedience, but they call it the Holy Spirit. This body worships the Lord on the first day of the week and not on His Sabbath as He commanded. This body takes a tiny piece of leavened bread and grape juice, gives it the name of communion to be taken as often as they want, and ignores the Lord Jesus's command to observe the Passover and do as He showed His disciples once a year!
Is this what defines a Christian today, the walk of disobedience? This is precisely why millions will not make it: practicing iniquities, lawlessness, and disobedience. Call it anything you want, but don't call it the walk of faith.
We will read the Bible but not believe the words written, claiming that they were for the Israelites while overlooking the dealings of God with other nations as well. We will deny the law and exalt lawlessness. We will sing beautiful songs from hearts that thrive on false teachings. We will call for unity while promoting divisions. We preach servitude but bathe in the adorations of men, and we love our personal Jesus but ignore the Son of God. This is the post-modern church today, a relic of what it used to be many generations ago. It has now fallen into spiritual apathy and drowning in wealth while preaching enlightenment. How the mighty have fallen. We hire preachers from the organization that we cover ourselves with, and they will teach denominational creeds and dogmas as Biblical truths when, in fact, they are more of the silver-linked chains that keep us in bondage to the teachings of men. We will honor the prophets but not their words toward us. We buy the newest best sellers but discard solid truths and teachings. We have ears that love to be scratched and minds that love to be intellectualized while learning nothing. We talk of raising the dead but find it hard to get out of bed to pray. We preach love but disdain the brethren. We call these times the end of days but live like we have everything to ourselves. We watch our nation implode and still cry for "God" to bless us! And we dare to call ourselves disciples while refusing to obey his commands and believe his words! We have rewritten his word to accommodate our personal preferences, and this is not a discipleship but charlatanry.
How blind can we be, how audacious, how brazen must our hearts be to act in this manner while assuming to be called Christians! We, of all people, must be the most deceived of them all. Claiming the rights of discipleship while practicing sin and rebellion! Hypocrites of the greatest magnitude! What this generation is when compared to the first-century believers is the darkness against the glorious sunrise! We dare to impose our muddied interpretations on the clear text of the scriptures! We dare to abolish, as though that were possible, the commands of God because they don't fit into our worldview! God sanctifies marriage between a man and a woman, but we "bless" wickedness and depravity! Ignorance, stupidity, intellectual numbness, and disobedience reign within many bodies of believers today, and the trend, by all appearances, is growing! And the false teachers cannot be numbered because the stupid flocks count them as honored teachers! Woe to this generation! We have been taught that we will be raptured away, and yes, but not will be, but in truth, we have been and are continually being raptured into lies and deceptions by these false teachers and their doctrines.
As the worldly body of Christ gets swept away and many believers fall into apostasy, what will happen to those who won't bow their knees to wily teachers of false doctrines, organized religions, spiritual mirages, and fantastic new revelations? They are the ones the Lord considers his little flock. The word little implies few, just as many are called, but few are chosen, and to take the narrow way with few finding it. These days that are upon us are fraught with many dangers, snares, and great as well as subtle deceptions, and many have already found themselves falling into unbelief, which is another word for apostasy. Those days are upon us; the churches are folding as houses of cards, and many foolish believers have built their faith on the teachings of men. The truth is communicated thoroughly mixed with lies.
An excellent example is around thirty-five years ago when the German Pentecostal movement taught that men should get in touch with their feminine side, ignoring the Word, which declared that men should not act effeminately. Much later came "youth and women" elders. And on top of that, prophets and prophetesses prophesied nonsense even as they would attack each other through back-biting and gossipy tongues! Two Russian-German men would begin a church but then quickly divide because the spirit could not choose which man was walking in truth! And such foolishness pervades the church today! And it grows exponentially as the deceptions spread among this generation of new believers being poisoned by their false teachings! The fingers never cease to point out the sins of others; the tongues are never still as the gossip spreads, the ears forever wagging as men claim to have received knowledge from the Spirit of Christ when, in truth, a phone was in play.
This type of idiocracy is rampant in the body today and is foolishly seen as revelations of God! God is a holy God and not some caricature from the Looney Tunes franchise! But the Christians of today have made him into just that because of their foolishness, lack of spiritual understanding, immaturity, insincerity, gossip, lack of love, shallowness in forgiveness, clinging to their little black books of counted wrongs, holding to false teachers, disregarding the scriptures, practicing disobedience, following the spirit of this world and not the Holy Spirit of Christ, and not, I repeat to their shame, not walking in love but running in sin! This is the body of those who call themselves disciples of Christ but, in truth, are disciples of iniquity—practitioners of lawlessness.
But the faithful in Christ are called to walk upon the narrow way, to know the voice of their shepherd, and to follow the law and commandments so that they may enter into life. When the Lord calls them his little flock, he is not talking of a small group of organized believers such as the Jehova's Witnesses, the Biblical Churches of God, the Vineyard churches, Calvary Baptists, the Pentecostals, or any of the many others who call themselves the actual body of Christ for none of them are. The body of Christ is worldwide, and its members are to be found wherever the Spirit of truth is to be seen. Whether it be in a jungle clearing in Vietnam, in a grimy alley in a concentration camp in North Korea, in a rehabilitation camp in China, in a prison cell in Saudi Arabia, a root cellar in Ireland, a garage in Boston, a desert camp in Arizona attended by a half dozen immigrants, it does not matter where they are to be found; this is the actual body of Christ. This is his flock. Those attending church services in the well-known buildings also have a few of his flock within, but not all are his, but only those who know his voice and do as he expects them to. And this is why the main-line churches are falling. It is because of their blasphemous teachings and dishonoring of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord knows that they are out in the byways, the fields and forests, the alleys, the shanty towns, the high deserts, the lonely mountains, the jungles, the apartment buildings, the prisons, the sidewalks, the workplaces, the mess halls, and private homes everywhere in this world. And he sends us out to minister and to make disciples of all men. That is his command. Are we to ignore his commands? I think not!
The command is to walk in love, not to run after sin and false teachers. You do not need the newest translations or revelations, and you are not to go after men or women who claim to have the spirit of Christ. Do not go after them, for we are servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, and his voice is the only one we need to follow. Do not pursue after the UFO enigma, paranormal creatures, giants, or anything that will take your eyes off the Lord and the path of life. The many pastors out there teaching have been compromised and blinded by their vanities and spurious revelations not grounded in the Word, but yet see themselves as teachers, able to teach, but not of the Lord. You must pray fervently, be ever watchful, and study the scriptures daily not to be led astray. You must believe His Word and every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. When a man teaches or speaks words that do not align perfectly with scripture, leave that man and his teachings lest you be swept away with him into perdition.
I have often repeated these words, and though the ears of many are closed to the warnings given, there are yet those to whom it will bring about the desired results. Repent of your lawless ways, turn back to the law and his commands, forsake your false teachers, and have fellowship with those who seek the truth and the ways of the cross. It is too late to save this nation or any other, for the hour is late, the main-stream churches are falling away into apostasy and false teachings led by a spirit, not of Christ, and the false teachers have snared millions into their nets, but not with those who have chosen to follow Jesus Christ and the law. If you will see life, keep the commandments.
I remain a brother to those in Christ Jesus.
Edward L Ordway