THE SINS OF HER PROPHETS AND PRIESTS (Lamentations 4:14)

Philip G. Ney   22/4/2014  (for vol. IV chapter 12)

INTRODUCTION

“It will never happen to us. We are God’s chosen people and He has promised to protect and save us” said one. The other said, “And those Babylonians all hate God and are idol worshippers and violent”

“Excuse me your reverends but I couldn’t help overhear your conversation. Are you talking about the ancient or the present day Babylonians? Or maybe both? It seems to me the “people of God” back then are the “people of God” now. That being so, the warnings written for that time apply today. God justice doesn’t change. In fact He has higher expectations of those who have Christ. Christians are not listening any better than the Jews of ancient times so they should expect the same dire consequence for their idol worship and violence”

The first said, “Hang on a minute, mate. But we are God’s people, protected by His blood”

“You are protected from hell but not from the natural consequences of your self- imposed ignorance, idolatry (entertainment) and violence (abortion). By your apathy and self-indulgence you reverends are as guilty as the religious leaders of those days. Remember what my young friend Peter wrote……………..Sorry I have to go now. By the way, my name is Jerry”

“Not a king in all the earth –no one in all the world –would have believed an enemy could march through the gates of Jerusalem. Yet it happened because of the sins of her prophets and priests who defiled the city by shedding innocent blood.” (Lamentations 4:12-13)

 

English speaking nations were founded on Christian principles, fought, bled and worked for by wise and courageous Christians, my father, grandfathers, great grandfathers, uncles, cousins and siblings among them. But they are now sliding with the acceleration of gravity into a deep black hole. There are many reasons for this.  Christian apathy is one of the greatest contributors. To this veteran prolife physician, the one factor least commented upon is the role of pastors, priests and deacons. These professional God worship leaders and teachers were the chief causes of catastrophe to Judea and Jerusalem at the hands of the cruel Babylonians. They are the most important reasons for the cataclysmic disaster heading our way now.

This situation of church leader’s immunity from criticism is not very different now than it was in ancient Israel. Just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the collapse of that theocracy, the priests were held to be the most responsible and thus most punishable by God’s true prophets, but they were not criticized by the people. I think there is a close parallel to our time and our nations that warrants scrutiny. I am urged by God to speak up but I am reluctant to write this. I have a well–established disinclination for criticizing “the pastor”.  Yet I have no choice. I feel deep sorrow for the progressive death of our lovely land, just like the weeping prophet Jeremiah. He watched helplessly as the “virgin daughter” Israel was dragged through mud and degradation by her own people, led in this by her prophets and priests.

“Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. (Jeremiah 1:17) This could apply to all outspoken prolifers.  “Son of man, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel. Whenever you receive a message from me, warn people immediately.” (Ezekiel 3:17)

God has always referred to those he has chosen as ‘My people’, or ‘My chosen people’ when he is quoted by the prophets of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, God still refers to his people as his friends and brothers and mothers and fathers, all those who do his will. Thus all the admonitions, warnings, commands and corrections spoken of by the prophets in the Old Testament apply to Christians in the New Testament. The Christians of course are only those who have the spirit of God in them, and God always gives his spirit to those who have decided He is to be their God and Saviour, Lord and Master.

Jesus said, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it, and to elaborate on it and not supplant it. Thus throughout this article, the warnings spoken so eloquently by God’s true prophets in the Old Testament are used to illustrate how God feels toward Christians, his children of the present day. Those warnings apply just as clearly now as they did then, mainly because the conditions are very much the same. It is because the pastors and priests do not see how these conditions are the same,  that they do not apply and use these warnings.

This article is written to illustrate how badly the pastors and priests have let God’s people down. It is to show what the people must do to correct that. It is written with a strong sense of urgency, almost desperation because the time is so short. God cannot possibly tolerate what is going on now. He could not because it would be disastrous to his creation. It would be a distortion of his person, and that person can never be distorted because it is absolute perfection.

The main irresponsibility of the pastors and priests is their lack of concern for the millions of innocent, perfectly formed in spirit, preborn babies. There are approximately 150 million children murdered every year. It’s not possible to get true figure on prevalence because of so much deceit, contrived misinformation and downright lies promulgated in the lay and scientific press. It is because the pastors and priests have not shown leadership in defending these babies, and seeking the healing of their families that God is so furious with them. It is because of this that Jeremiah writes in Lamentations 4:13, “Yet it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the sins of her priests, who defiled the city by shedding innocent blood.”

Although I have traveled and spoken widely, you know me in Victoria. In private and in public, (six elections) in universities and at public gatherings I have urged you to take the horrible problem of abortion seriously enough to endanger your jobs and your  lives. Recently I have offered to train members of you congregation to provide effective counseling for those with deep damages arising from a combination of childhood mistreatment and abortion. Believe it or not about 25% of your congregation by their age of 45 have had at least one abortion. And did you know about 40% of abortions are repeats. And did you know the link between abortion and breast cancer is firmly established and the connection between abortion and preterm birth is just as well settled. If you had an effective healing ministry in your churches, they would be packed.

Relevant Scriptures:

Dan. 2:29 As Your Majesty was lying there, your mind turned to things to come, and the revealer of mysteries showed you what is going to happen.

Amos 4:13 He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the Lord God Almighty is his name.

Jer. 20:8 When I speak, the words burst out. “Violence and destruction!” I shout. So these messages from the Lord have made me a household joke.

Dan 2:47 The king said to Daniel, “Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery.”

Judges 2:22 I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the LORD and walk in it as their ancestors did.”

 

1. WARNINGS TO GOD’S PEOPLE ISRAEL WERE IGNORED.

“The guilt of my people is greater than that of Sodom, where utter disaster struck in a moment with no one to help them…” (Lamentations 4: 6). “My people have been lost sheep, their shepherds have led them astray and caused them to roam on the mountains” (Jeremiah 50:6). “My people” are the Christians of today. They are not listening to God’s warnings any better than did the ancient Israelites because their spiritual leaders are not preaching and practicing the truth with the urgency it requires.

God said of His people, “Now I am your enemy”, such was the intensity of His anger (Ezekiel 5:8). He divorced them and when they still refused to listen, He used the Babylonians then the Romans to almost totally destroy them.  During the time they were exiled the land had its sabbatical because it was overused and polluted with the blood of innocent victims.

The Jews had plenty of popular prophets that gave them false assurances and tantalizing teachers that twisted truth so badly the Israelites thought they could get away with mixing religions. Christians mix going to church on Sundays and bowing to the media and its entertaining idols all the rest of the week.

The prophets and priests were preaching peace and prosperity when there was none. They were the first to be led away to captivity and slave labour as discipline. They ignored the sacrifice of children in fire to the god Moloch like Christians ignore abortion today. They supported slavery and injustice at the expense of the poor, widows and orphans. They mixed the worship of Jehovah with obeisance to many other gods of prosperity, just as Christians do nowadays.

Jerusalem was invaded by a heathen nation who God was using as an instrument of His discipline. The Jews could not believe God would bless and aid their enemies for “We are God’s chosen people, are we not?” They were cruelly conquered, despoiled and enslaved by the “heathen, of all things”. Since God is consistent it could well happen again, this time possibly by the communists or the Muslims.

When the priests should be preaching the gospel in the context of our culture and current times, they seem to disregard harsh realities. In doing so, they add to the problem because then their congregations feel they can also disregard these harsh realities and not respond. Surely those pastors and priests who emphasize the need to preach the gospel realize that the preaching is not just speaking the words of Christ, but living the life of Christ. Their life is as much a witness to the love and redemption of Jesus as any word they will ever speak. The following are the major changes happening in the world today that are being disregarded.

God wanting innumerable, unique, mature friends spent a great deal of time and energy designing people then in the creation of a home for the humans and then made the humans. After creation, he tended them, guarding them, guiding them and disciplining them when they went astray. The devil, realizing the importance of humans to God (Milton, 1674; Milton, 1674; Milton, 1674) has spent most of his time and energy destroying humans. He has done this primarily by getting the humans to exterminate themselves in the following manner:

1. Planned depopulation. In 1992 the UN promulgated a document titled Agenda 21, the purpose of which was to commit as many nations as possible to reducing the world’s population to a mere 800 million people. This they were going to do on the false understanding that the major catastrophe facing the world was the increasing CO₂ resulting in global warming, resulting in all sorts of other disasters. The data was wrong, the hypothesis was wrong, the observations were wrong, and the conclusions were wrong. Nevertheless, a large number of nations, particularly western nations have committed themselves to trying to reduce the world’s population to a fraction of what it is now. (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992 : Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). , 1993)

 

Having made the commitment, the question became how best to do that. It was not likely that they could contain the wars or the plagues or the environmental disasters that would accomplish this, so their major thrust has been reducing fertility rates. With abortion and sexual perversion, they have been remarkably successful, so much so that in at least 3 countries, the fertility has reached a point where they will in all probability continue to decline regardless of how much effort is made to produce more people. Agenda 21 has been a major victory for Satan and his minions. The foolish countries have no idea of what this will mean to the future of the world, and the generations of people who are struggling now to find employment. Sadly most Christians have bought to over-population lie and with it abortion and euthanasia.

 

2. Sexual perversity. The devil clearly understands that if he can have humans disregard the obvious truth that humans need heterosexual relationships not only for the benefit of the couple but particularly for the children, then he, Satan, would have a major victory. If he persuaded humans to have sex in such a way that they would not produce children he could defeat God, (he thinks). As Paul points out in Romans 1, the initial problem for humans is that they keep pushing truth away. From denying truth, there followed a rapid decline in morality that resulted in sexual perversions and eventually “marriages” between same sexes or multiple sexes.

 

This trend, is likely to continue because there is so little effort on the part of humans to reverse it. It is as if those people who understood what is happening feel obligated to tolerate the sexual perversity even though it is offensive and a threat to survival.  The trend will continue to effect more people for two reasons:

1. a) The gays will recruit. Recognizing they can’t propagate, they will seduce young people and gradually persuade them they too are gay.
2. b) Since there are so many post abortion survivors who wonder about their identity, particularly their sexual identity, they are easy prey to homosexual recruiters who will persuade them that their confused identity can be rectified by “coming out”. Finding they are accepted as gay people, these young people will tolerate almost any kind of sexual invasion of their person, even if it means they are likely to get a lethal sexually transmitted disease such as HIV.

 

3. Population Implosion. For the longest period of its existence, the UN has screamed the horrors of population explosion. Approximately 10 years ago the data insisted they wake up and recognize that the problem is population implosion. Since populations grow or die according to exponential curves, it is easy to predict that in addition to Japan, Korea and Belgium other countries will reach a point of no return. So far the efforts used in increasing fertility rates have been generally unsuccessful. Part of the reason has been that young people have become increasingly materialistic, and enjoy being part of the ‘selfie’ generation. They find children, particularly more than one, is an encroachment on their selfish pleasures, and they don’t want children. Grudgingly they will have one, even though their inclination is to have no children, and to die in one great entertainment or orgasmic climax in each other’s arms.

 

4. Wanted children only. Approximately half of the world’s population now are those who have been allowed to live because they were “wanted” while their siblings were murdered by abortion. Consequently they have an existential guilt and a great deal of confusion about their identity. Because they find no pleasure or purpose in their own existence, they are not inclined to have children. The excruciating pain of Abortion Survivors is the best explanation for the growing ill health, distrust, anxiety and demand for distracting entertainment. Yet very, very few are taking it seriously. Moreover nowadays who lives and dies by abortion, euthanasia and eugenics depends on wantedness.

 

In all four ways, it appears that the devil is winning, and the pastors and the priests do not recognize this threat. If they do, they respond like most Christians by sticking their heads in the sand and their butts in the air.

There are a few of the warnings and dire predictions given by God’s true prophets before Jerusalem was sacked and raped. Yet these thunderings were interspersed with messages of hope, almost always starting with, “And yet…”.

 

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

2 Chron. 7:14 If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chron. 7:22 People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why he brought all this disaster on them.

2 Kings 17:13 Again and again the LORD had sent his prophets and seers to warn both Israel and Judah: “Turn from all your evil ways. Obey my commands and decrees—the entire law that I commanded your ancestors to obey, and that I gave you through my servants the prophets.”

2 Kings 17:18 Because the LORD was very angry with Israel, he swept them away from his presence.

2 Kings 17:20 The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel. He punished them by handing them over to their attackers until he had banished Israel from his presence.

2 Kings 21:16 Manasseh also murdered many innocent people until Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with innocent blood. This was in addition to the sin that he caused the people of Judah to commit, leading them to do evil in the LORD’s sight.

2 Kings 23:26 Even so, the LORD was very angry with Judah because of all the wicked things Manasseh had done to provoke him.

2 Kings 24:3-4 These disasters happened to Judah because of the LORD’s command. He had decided to banish Judah from his presence because of the many sins of Manasseh, who had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood. The LORD would not forgive this.

Amos 3:15 I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,” declares the Lord.

Amos 9:10 But all the sinners will die by the sword— all those who say, ‘Nothing bad will happen to us.’

Dan 9:26 After this period of sixty-two sets of seven,  the Anointed One will be killed, appearing to have accomplished nothing, and a ruler will arise whose armies will destroy the city and the Temple. The end will come with a flood, and war and its miseries are decreed from that time to the very end.

Deut. 11:9 If you obey, you will enjoy a long life in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors and to you, their descendants—a land flowing with milk and honey!

Deut. 19:9b He will give you this land if you are careful to obey all the commands I have given you—if you always love the LORD your God and walk in his ways.

Ez.13:12-19 And when the wall falls, the people will cry out, ‘What happened to your whitewash?’ “Therefore, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will sweep away your whitewashed wall with a storm of indignation, with a great flood of anger, and with hailstones of fury.  I will break down your wall right to its foundation, and when it falls, it will crush you. Then you will know that I am the LORD.  At last my anger against the wall and those who covered it with whitewash will be satisfied. Then I will say to you: ‘The wall and those who whitewashed it are both gone.  They were lying prophets who claimed peace would come to Jerusalem when there was no peace. I, the Sovereign LORD, have spoken!’ “Now, son of man, speak out against the women who prophesy from their own imaginations. This is what the Sovereign LORD says: What sorrow awaits you women who are ensnaring the souls of my people, young and old alike. You tie magic charms on their wrists and furnish them with magic veils. Do you think you can trap others without bringing destruction on yourselves? You bring shame on me among my people for a few handfuls of barley or a piece of bread. By lying to my people who love to listen to lies, you kill those who should not die, and you promise life to those who should not live.

Ez. 16:20, 21, 39 Then you took your sons and daughters—the children you had borne to me—and sacrificed them to your gods. Was your prostitution not enough? Must you also slaughter my children by sacrificing them to idols? … Then I will give you to these many nations who are your lovers, and they will destroy you. They will knock down your pagan shrines and the altars to your idols. They will strip you and take your beautiful jewels, leaving you stark naked.

Ez. 20:3 Son of man, tell the leaders of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: How dare you come to ask me for a message? As surely as I live, says the Sovereign Lord, I will tell you nothing!

Ez. 20:8 But they rebelled against me and would not listen to me; they did not get rid of the vile images they had set their eyes on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt. So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and spend my anger against them in Egypt.

Ez. 22:27 Your leaders are like wolves who tear apart their victims. They actually destroy people’s lives for money!

Ez.25:8 This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Because the people of Moab have said that Judah is just like all the other nations

Ez. 5:6-9 Yet in her wickedness she has rebelled against my laws and decrees more than the nations and countries around her. She has rejected my laws and has not followed my decrees. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: You have been more unruly than the nations around you and have not followed my decrees or kept my laws. You have not even[a] conformed to the standards of the nations around you. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations.  Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again.

Ez. 13:10 Because they lead my people astray, saying, “Peace,” when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash.

Hos. 4:6 My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me. Since you priests refuse to know me, I refuse to recognize you as my priests. Since you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will forget to bless your children.

Hos. 8:12 I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign.

Hos. 8:1-4 Put the trumpet to your lips! An eagle is over the house of the Lord because the people have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law. Israel cries out to me, Our God, we acknowledge you!’ But Israel has rejected what is good; an enemy will pursue him. They set up kings without my consent; they choose princes without my approval.  With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction.

Isa. 50:4 The Sovereign Lord has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.

Isa 55:3 Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.

Isa. 58:9 Then when you call, the LORD will answer. Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply. “Remove the heavy yoke of oppression. Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors!

Jer.12:9 Has not my inheritance become to me like a speckled bird of prey that other birds of prey surround and attack? Go and gather all the wild beasts; bring them to devour.

Jer. 14:11 Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry; though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will destroy them with the sword, famine and plague.”

Jer.19:9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.

Jer. 23:1-2 Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says to the shepherds who tend my people: “Because you have scattered my flock and driven them away and have not bestowed care on them, I will bestow punishment on you for the evil you have done,” declares the LORD.

Jer. 23:15-18, Therefore, this is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says concerning the prophets: “I will feed them with bitterness and give them poison to drink. For it is because of Jerusalem’s prophets that wickedness has filled this land.” This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says to his people: “Do not listen to these prophets when they prophesy to you, filling you with futile hopes. They are making up everything they say. They do not speak for the LORD! They keep saying to those who despise my word, ‘Don’t worry! The LORD says you will have peace!’ And to those who stubbornly follow their own desires, they say, ‘No harm will come your way!’ “Have any of these prophets been in the LORD’s presence to hear what he is really saying? Has even one of them cared enough to listen?

Jer. 23:23- 25, Am I a God who is only close at hand?” says the LORD. “No, I am far away at the same time. Can anyone hide from me in a secret place? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” says the LORD. “I have heard these prophets say, ‘Listen to the dream I had from God last night.’ And then they proceed to tell lies in my name.

Jer. 23:30, Therefore,” says the LORD, “I am against these prophets who steal messages from each other and claim they are from me.

Jer. 23:34-35 If any prophet, priest, or anyone else says, ‘I have a prophecy from the LORD,, will punish that person along with his entire family. You should keep asking each other, ‘What is the LORD’s answer?’ or ‘What is the LORD saying?

Jer. 23:38-39 But suppose they respond, ‘This is a prophecy from the LORD!’ Then you should say, ‘This is what the LORD says: Because you have used this phrase, “prophecy from the LORD,” even though I warned you not to use it, I will forget you completely. I will expel you from my presence, along with this city that I gave to you and your ancestors.

Jer. 25:2-3 So Jeremiah the prophet said to all the people of Judah and to all those living in Jerusalem: For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.

Jer.27:6 Now I will give your countries to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who is my servant. I have put everything, even the wild animals, under his control.

Jer. 32:32-33 The people of Israel and Judah have provoked me by all the evil they have done—they, their kings and officials, their priests and prophets, the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem.  They turned their backs to me and not their faces; though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to discipline.

Jer. 4:18 Your own actions have brought this upon you. This punishment is bitter, piercing you to the heart!”

Jer. 5:7 How can I pardon you? For even your children have turned from me. They have sworn by gods that are not gods at all! I fed my people until they were full. But they thanked me by committing adultery and lining up at the brothels.

Jer. 6:17 I posted watchmen over you who said, ‘Listen for the sound of the alarm.’ But you replied, ‘No! We won’t pay attention!’

Jer. 6:30 I will label them ‘Rejected Silver,’ for I, the LORD, am discarding them.”

Jer. 7: 14 Therefore, what I did to Shiloh I will now do to the house that bears my Name, the temple you trust in, the place I gave to you and your ancestors

Jer. 7:28 Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.

Jer. 8:8,12 “‘How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished, says the LORD.

Joel 3:3 They threw dice to decide which of my people would be their slaves. They traded boys to obtain prostitutes and sold girls for enough wine to get drunk.

Judges 17:6 In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Judges 2:16-17 Then the LORD raised up judges,[c] who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the LORD’s commands.

Lam 4:6 The punishment of my people is greater than that of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment without a hand turned to help her.

Mal 2:2 Listen to me and make up your minds to honor my name,” says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies, “or I will bring a terrible curse against you. I will curse even the blessings you receive. Indeed, I have already cursed them, because you have not taken my warning to heart.

Matt 16:12  Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Matt 16:2-4 He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ signs Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed.

Zech. 10:3 My anger burns against your shepherds, and I will punish these leaders. For the LORD of Heaven’s Armies has arrived to look after Judah, his flock. He will make them strong and glorious, like a proud warhorse in battle.

Zech. 11:13 And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they valued me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them to the potter at the house of the Lord

Zech. 11:17 What sorrow awaits this worthless shepherd who abandons the flock! The sword will cut his arm and pierce his right eye. His arm will become useless, and his right eye completely blind.”

Zech. 7:11, 13 Your ancestors refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing. “Since they refused to listen when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.

Zeph. 1:5 For they go up to their roofs and bow down to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the Lord, but then they worship Moloch, too.

Zeph. 11:5 The buyers slaughter their sheep without remorse. The sellers say, ‘Praise the Lord! Now I’m rich!’ Even the shepherds have no compassion for them.

 

All these prophecies occurred as predicted. Yet the people of God didn’t learn. Thus the same destruction, wanton killings, enslavement and deportation happened in Roman times.

 

 

1. CHRISTIANS DON’T READ or HEED THE SIGNS OF OUR TIMES.

What appears to be self-destructive is also species-suicidal behaviour engineered and driven by the Devil. Suicide is against the primary desire and design of God, for God is always for life and only life, life eternal for everyone. Self-destruction results in guilt which produces anxiety which results in denial resulting in scapegoating and head-in-sand sticking. In the resulting fear and confusion, God’s children turn to their pastors for direction, but are only given false assurances and entertainment. Even though they are taught false beliefs, they give their pastors unwarranted respect which many pastors use to gain more influence and power.

Nowadays, lazy pastors become obese from lack of exercise and lack of self-discipline. They spend an inordinate amount of time on the internet, ostensibly looking for inspiration for the next sermon, but are often sampling pornographic sites, “just to see what is out there so we can better guide our congregation.” The pastors and priests often return to sample some other site just to check what their eyes could not believe the first time. They become sexually aroused, and because they may not be getting sexual satisfaction at home, engage in masturbation while they watch. This is a lethal combination which creates a pornographic addiction very quickly. The end result is shame and guilt that ruins their ministry by driving them into guilt-ridden rationalizations. What they excuse for themselves, they allow others to do, and will provide them with self-justification.

The pastors and priests will not acknowledge the fact that killing your own innocent infant is the 2^nd most evil and damaging thing anyone can do. (Rejecting God is the 1^st). Abortion is dehumanizing like nothing else. Most of its effects are untreatable, mainly because God will not resurrect in this life an aborted child. He could but he won’t, though parents beg him to “bring back the children we killed. We are deeply sorry and will never do it again.” God will forgive but he won’t suspend the natural consequences of our stupid decisions. Why? He wants us to learn and grow. He wants us to realize how serious is the decision to murder an innocent preborn baby. A woman cannot avoid experiencing the long list of adverse effects and harms that result from every abortion. All these damages usually apply:

¨      Diminished ability to bond to subsequent children and therefore a greater likely childhood mistreatment (abuse, neglect and not being known).

¨      Pathological grief (a combination of guilt and mourning) resulting in difficult to treat depressions.

¨      Increased chance of suicide

¨      Increased chance of female genital cancers

¨      Increased chance of divorce and murder

¨      Increased chance of HIV

¨      Poor sexual and marital relations

¨      Greater likelihood of poor health, sleeplessness, nightmares, weight gain etc.

¨      Children who are abortion survivors with a wide range of debilitating problems the result in false psychiatric diagnosis and treatment and being put into institutional care because “they are hard to handle”.

 

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

1 Kings 17:24 Then the woman told Elijah, “Now I know for sure that you are a man of God, and that the Lord truly speaks through you.”

2 Tim. 4:3-4 For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths.

Amos 3:8 The lion has roared— so who isn’t frightened? The Sovereign Lord has spoken— so who can refuse to proclaim his message?

Deut. 5:8 You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

Ez. 39: 24 I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their offenses, and I hid my face from them.

I Kings 11:2 The LORD had clearly instructed the people of Israel, “You must not marry them, because they will turn your hearts to their gods.” Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway.

Isa. 55:8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

Jer. 13:15 Listen and pay attention! Do not be arrogant, for the LORD has spoken.

Jer. 7:34 I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate.

Jer. 8:5-6 Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right. None of them repent of their wickedness, saying, “What have I done?”

John 14: 23 Jesus replied, “All who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.

John 14:17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you.

Matt. 16:2-4 He replied, “You know the saying, ‘Red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow; red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.’ You know how to interpret the weather signs in the sky, but you don’t know how to interpret the signs of the times! Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign, but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Then Jesus left them and went away.

Matt .18:6 But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Matt. 6:7 “When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.

Rev. 16:9 Everyone was burned by this blast of heat, and they cursed the name of God, who had control over all these plagues. They did not repent of their sins and turn to God and give him glory.

Rev. 18:4-6 Then I heard another voice calling from heaven, “Come away from her, my people.     Do not take part in her sins, or you will be punished with her. For her sins are piled as high as heaven and God remembers her evil deeds. Do to her as she has done to others. Double her penalty for all her evil deeds. She brewed a cup of terror for others, so brew twice as much for her.

Rev. 9:19-21 Their power was in their mouths and in their tails. For their tails had heads like snakes, with the power to injure people. But the people who did not die in these plagues still refused to repent of their evil deeds and turn to God. They continued to worship demons and idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood—idols that can neither see nor hear nor walk! And they did not repent of their murders or their witchcraft or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

Rom. 1:18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Rom. 1:19-20 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Rom. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom. 7:4 So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.

Rom. 7:6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

Rom. 2:15 They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right.

 

 

 

III        DOMINATED BY FEAR, FOOLISHNESS AND PRIDE

Many modern pastors and priests, out of fear, preach foolishness, which leads to more fear in a vicious cycle. Like the Pharisees, they crave public acclaim and the praise of pew warmers. As one pastor told me, “My first duty is not to lose any of my people”.

Pastors and priests (P&P) are afraid to be seen in public taking sides on issues like abortion. They avoid the annual “Life Chain” and the annual March for Life and the biannual 40 days for life.

All civilized people have a duty to warn anyone who cannot see the danger into which they are walking. Christians have an added duty to turn people to Christ, showing in the simplest fashion the effects of their death and resurrection with Christ, i.e. by being baptized.

Instead of preaching obedience they promote doing what God “calls” you to do, and whatever you are comfortable in doing and feel a passion for. While the bible, cover to cover emphasizes obedience. In the bible the “obey” to “call” ratio is literally 100:1

There is considerable false and deceitful theology being taught as if it is Christian. It may be labelled Christian but by its errors in teaching and by the conduct of its leaders it is obviously false.

Preachers who emphasize scriptural inerrancy miss the essentials because they do not recognize the basic principles behind and defining the words. They strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. (Matt 23:24) Though they spend much time in sermons teaching the exact meaning of a few words, they care not to teach from the bible as a whole. In their conduct they do not display the character of God. Their concrete thinking robs people of the joy and peace of knowing God through Christ. They are fragile Christians who are easily threatened by those who question them. Their rigidity covers their fragility.

Many preachers and priests have inherited the power hunger of the pagan priests who predated Constantine. They hastened to adopt the new state religion without becoming essentially different through Christ. Thus some perform rituals that they believe have power to: heal, marry, forgive, bond, baptize and save people without conveying the essential message that God does it all, every time. They try to usurp God’s prerogatives and mislead people from the truth that we have the honor of demonstrating what God does, for God does it all. When they pronounce man and wife, they distort the truth that only God joins them. (Matt 19:4-6) In so doing they get into theological conundrums surrounding divorce and remarriage, for all who are married (joined by God through pair bonding mechanisms that God created) and who “remarry” (marry again) become polygamists. Those who swear to keep their promise to the one they are married to, are breaking their promises to all those God had previously joined them to as one flesh in holy matrimony. God has been witness to all those other promises to love and care for given by men who “dated” quite a few women.

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

1 Cor. 1:17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

1 Sam 4:3 When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the LORD bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the LORD’s covenant from Shiloh, so that he may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.”

1 Samuel 28:12 When the woman saw Samuel, she screamed, “You’ve deceived me! You are Saul!”

2 Kings 17:33 And though they worshiped the LORD, they continued to follow their own gods according to the religious customs of the nations from which they came.

2 Kings 17:40-41 But the people would not listen and continued to follow their former practices. So while these new residents worshiped the LORD, they also worshiped their idols. And to this day their descendants do the same.

Dan. 8:12 The army of heaven was restrained from responding to this rebellion. So the daily sacrifice was halted, and truth was overthrown. The horn succeeded in everything it did.

Deut. 4:16-18, 23 …so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below… Be careful not to forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the LORD your God has forbidden.

Isa 57:13 – When you cry out for help, let your collection of idols save you! The wind will carry all of them off; a mere breath will blow them away. But whoever takes refuge in me will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain.”

Jer. 4: 22 “My people are foolish and do not know me,” says the LORD. They are stupid children who have no understanding. They are clever enough at doing wrong, but they have no idea how to do right!

Josh. 24:15  But if you refuse to serve the LORD, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.”

Josh. 24:27 Joshua said to all the people, “This stone has heard everything the LORD said to us. It will be a witness to testify against you if you go back on your word to God.”

Matt. 12:39-42 But Jesus replied, “Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign; but the only sign I will give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights. “The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here—but you refuse to repent. The queen of Sheba will also stand up against this generation on judgment day and condemn it, for she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here—but you refuse to listen.

Matt. 23:1-15 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra-long tassels. And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues. They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi.’ Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. And don’t address anyone here on earth as ‘Father,’ for only God in heaven is your spiritual Father. And don’t let anyone call you ‘Teacher,’ for you have only one teacher, the Messiah. The greatest among you must be a servant. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.”

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!”

Rom. 3: 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

 

 

1. GUILT ABOUNDS.

Although there is a massive pile up of guilt, few pastors and priests nowadays preach the need for repentance, salvation and obedience. No one leads their nation in humble persistent prayer to forgive the sins of the whole country. Although Josiah was the best king Judah ever had, the succeeding king went back to the sins of Josiah’s father, and because of this, God said he would not forgive. Certainly he always forgives the individual, but he would not forgive the nation. Although the USA may elect a more righteous prolife president, the nation is persisting in pursuing all the sins mentioned by the prophets.

This is quite different than what happened in Jonah’s ministry. The king heard the message, was astonished, aghast and repentant, sitting in dust and ashes, clothed in sackcloth. The king ordered all his subjects and the animals to do likewise. God saw this repentance and forgave the nation, much to Jonah’s surprise and disgust.

There is a massive accumulation of guilt nowadays that is not being dealt with by pastors or priests. They have the primary responsibility. As a consequence, guilt piles upon guilt. Too often people who feel guilty repeat the wrong behaviour in an effort to convince themselves they don’t need to feel bad about what they did.

Guilt arises from:

1)     Abortion. Killing millions upon millions of innocent preborn babies.

2)     Not protecting the preborn, poor and wounded.

3)     Not supporting the elderly.

4)     Contributing to the euthanasia of the mentally sick, disabled and dying.

5)     Slavery that arises from the mad pursuit of bargains in a highly competitive market.

6)     The pastors and priests not pushing themselves or the congregation to achieve the maximum use of the person they should have become.

7)     The pastors and priests not showing by courageous example, how to protect the most vulnerable and show Christ’s love.

There are few people who are not affected by one of these contributors to guilt. Therefore although there are many denials, distractions and false remedies for present day guilt, it cannot be hidden for long. The guilt surfaces as “depression”, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual perversions etc.

There are many kinds of guilt, distinguished mostly by who has been harmed. Guilt is: the intuitive awareness that we have wronged someone.  It is combined with some sense that person or God will seek retaliation or revenge. As that fear wears off, the person begins to believe nothing bad is going to happen to them after all. Their fears may be replaced by acertain cockiness. “I guess I got away with it. Maybe God isn’t so observant after all,” or “maybe it isn’t so wrong after all.” Yet even with a sense of some relief, the sense of guilt remains.

There is a type of biological guilt which occurs every time a person does something harmful to themselves or their family or their species. Because God was so determined to have trillions of mature, interesting friends, He built into humans strong survival mechanisms. One of these is a sense of guilt. Built-in fear warns a human they are about to think or do something that is harmful to themselves or their species. The following instinctive sense of guilt indicates that they have hurt someone or something upon which their survival depends. In addition, they soon sense that there will be, sooner or later, a reciprocal response that will hurt them.

Because most guilt stems from in-built physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual senses, everyone regardless of sensitivity will feel some guilty feelings at some time. From extensive experience in assessing people, including many people who were serving sentences for civil and criminal crimes, I can affirm that there is probably no one who doesn’t or hasn’t felt guilt. Although I have evaluated in research, clinically assessed and personally treated thousands of post abortion women, I have never encountered a woman who did not feel guilty about “terminating” the life of her preborn child.

Many pastors and priests become good at excusing their own timidity, apathy and passivity in dealing with current discord and dehumanization. With the same self–justifications they encourage the rationalization of others’ apathy. They rebel against God’s explicit command to love, by teaching or implying by their actions, “Don’t do it unless you feel comfortable. Don’t feel obligated to act unless you feel called by God. Make sure it’s your passion.”

To amuse, stimulate and entertain their congregation, pastors and priests imitate the techniques of the entertainment industry. They state or imply those warm feelings are the awakening of the Holy Spirit. They will not face the uncomfortable evidence this benign sensation is comforting hype engendered by the calculated emotional manipulation by the worship team. With good stories or personal (exaggerated) experiences P&P distract God’s people from the solid terrifying impact of disobeying God’s word.

Some pastors and priests may feel guilty for the hypocrisy of their “worship services” and fear that any day God will call them to account. They also intuitively understand they cannot escape God’s wrath for attempting to usurp His prerogatives of: creating new children, pronouncing marriages, absolving sins and being called “Father” and “Master” by His people.

P&P are vaguely aware of deep health problems arising from unresolved conflicts and guilt in their congregation but use superficial salves of “healing” prayers for deep wounds. They allow and/or encourage inconsequential poorly researched and reasoned “Christian counseling” performed by eager but often badly damaged and poorly trained counsellors. They use counselling programs whose effectiveness have never been assessed. Accepting personal statements like, “I feel less burdened by guilt” as an indication of benefit, they cannot recognize what is good theory and therapy.

The massive amount of guilt from killing innocent babies by abortion, eugenics and euthanasia is either ignored or dealt with superficially by pastors and priests who preach, “Put it all at the foot of the cross and leave it there.”  The priests that hear confession sometimes get vicarious gratification from hearing the details of a person’s perverted life. Hardly anyone is calling their nation to repent of killing the innocent and to change their ways or else their nation is doomed. God has said very clearly, he will not forgive that nation which kills their innocent citizens. (2 Kings 24:3-4) It is only a matter of His timing and patience. He keeps hoping the nations will repent of killing the preborn, elderly and handicapped. They must lead the nation in repentance and humbly seek to serve Him aright.

Very few Christians are taught how to rebuke a brother or sister as they should. (Luke 17:3) No one knows how to write a letter of reconciliation to make things right between Christians or non-Christians. So the guilt accumulates and festers with no priest or pastor-led avenue to make things right. Rationalizations abound, each person convincing themselves that since God has promised to forgive all who sincerely confess, there is nothing else they need to do. They are taught that when they leave their sins at the foot of the cross, they can carry on with their successful “peaceful” lives. They forget God requires them to reconcile with all those they have hurt and who have hurt them. They are not convinced by P&P that God seldom suspends the natural consequences of bad choices.

In Hope Alive counseling everyone is required to write and mail letters of reconciliation to all Perpetrators (those who predominantly hurt them), Observers, (a host of people who stood by and did little or nothing to aid them when they were locked into a hurtful dyad), and to their Victims (all those they hurt by neglect or abandonment). When they forgive and are forgiven, God forgives them, but not until. (Luke 11:4) Reconciliation promotes healing and maturity, like nothing on earth.

Why did the priests of olden times not lead the people back to God? Why don’t the present day prophets, priests and pastors plead as did the ancient prophets, “Oh if only you would acknowledge the many ways you insult God and genuinely repent, I will heal your land. If not you will die through war, famine and plagues,” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Why don’t they stick their necks out on behalf of God? Mainly I suspect because they fear losing their congregation or losing their heads. Moreover they cannot give up their pleasures of entertainment and perverted sex.

Do you know any professional Christian who is doing enough to deal with the guilt that results from:

¨      Not defending by word and deed the millions of babies being torn apart. Approximately 60% of Western women by age 45 yrs have had at least one abortion.

¨      Not defending the elderly nor the handicapped whose medical care is being rationed.

¨      Doing good things for selfish reasons, e.g. fearfully earning their salvation rather than joyfully expressing gratitude and love for Christ.

¨      Entertainment addiction (2-5 hrs. each day wasted watching TV, etc.)

¨      Eugenics and organ harvesting (ignored until liberal legislation affects their lives).

¨      Euthanasia for children and criminals

¨      Existential guilt. Feeling you don’t deserve to be alive because you are an abortion survivor (affecting 50% of the world’s population)

¨      Fearfulness, lack of trust, persistent foolishness, not taking obvious signs of the times seriously.

¨      Gluttony, many Christians are grossly overweight when most of the world is really hungry.

¨      Idolatry: semi-worship of movie idols, images of Mary, great athletes.

¨      Laziness when most of the world is in grinding poverty

¨      Narcissism, no end of buying to look and feel good.

¨      Neglecting children by not getting to know their blueprint and freely granting them what they truly need.

¨      Abandoning children to day care.

¨      Not providing courageous leadership, very little teaching by demonstration and example.

¨      Not always sharing the gospel of salvation, which is the best news in the world.

¨      Not spending time getting to know and converse with God.

¨      Offering superficial salves for deep wounds with ineffective “Christian counselling”.

¨      Perverted justice, not protesting: prolifers in prison, longer sentences for men

¨      Self-justification and teaching rationalizations.

¨      Sexual perversion, enjoying pornography and prostitution.

¨      Fostering virtual slavery of the many millions who have no choice but to constantly work dawn to dusk, with no time off

¨      Studied ignorance when there never was a time for so rich a harvest of scientific knowledge easily available.

¨      Substance abuse (can’t go without: coffee, cigarettes, pot, cocaine, relaxants, antidepressants etc.)

¨      Surfeit of education when most people cannot graduate from high school because they cannot afford the time from work or the money for books.

¨      Teaching superficial details and avoiding harsh truth from the bible.

¨      Usury, using money to make money on the backs of peasants, peons and wetbacks.

¨      Not insisting on obedience to God’s Law of Love

The consequent guilt is piled as high as the vast mound of aborted babies’ bodies, which is higher than Everest. Instead of teaching, preaching and practicing how to resolve guilt, the pastors are ignoring it or participating in the activities that result in guilt. They are good examples of what not to do rather than becoming well-scarred leaders of people ready to die for the preborn. P&P too often teach by example the many ways that are available to distract yourself from feeling guilty

There are many false solutions for guilt, some are self-imposed, others are recommended by P&P. These are: a) distraction. Fun, fun, fun, or sex, sex, sex or travel etc.

1. repression. “Common, let’s eat and drink for right now I feel okay and the h… with tomorrow.”
2. mea culpa ad infinitum. People keep telling priests about their abortion forgiven and go home to feel a resurgence of the same guilt.
3. self-sacrifice. “I will be really good from now on by serving at the soup kitchen every night.
4. entertainment. “Hey guys, I can’t wait till the next big game”
5. shout at God. “I hate you God. Why did you let me abort my baby?
6. h) constant grieving. “Oh my baby, my baby. What have I done?”
7. i) projected aggression. “Those men are out to get me. I am sure of it”
8. j) defiant repetition. “They can never catch me and God doesn’t see…”

 

The disobedience and lack of leadership in showing the Royal Road to Repentance and Reconciliation (RRRR) are burdens the pastors refuse to carry. It is primarily for this reason their nation is going to ruin. It is for this reason they will be punished first.

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

1 Kings 8:39 …then hear from heaven, your dwelling place. Forgive and act; deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts (for you alone know every human heart),

1 Sam. 25:28: Please forgive your servant’s presumption. The LORD your God will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my lord, because you fight the LORD’s battles, and no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live.

2 Kings 17:17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They practiced divination and sought omens and sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the LORD, arousing his anger.

2 Sam. 11:14-15 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” (treachery)

2 Sam. 20:9-10 Joab said to Amasa, “How are you, my brother?” Then Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. Amasa was not on his guard against the dagger in Joab’s hand, and Joab plunged it into his belly, and his intestines spilled out on the ground. Without being stabbed again, Amasa died. (treachery)

2 Sam. 24:10 David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the LORD, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. Now, LORD, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.”

2 Sam. 24:24 But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

Ez. 20:21, 24-26 But their children, too, rebelled against me. They refused to keep my decrees and follow my regulations, even though obedience would have given them life. And they also violated my Sabbath days. So again I threatened to pour out my fury on them in the wilderness. …because they did not obey my regulations. They scorned my decrees by violating my Sabbath days and longing for the idols of their ancestors. I gave them over to worthless decrees and regulations that would not lead to life. I let them pollute themselves with the very gifts I had given them, and I allowed them to give their firstborn children as offerings to their gods—so I might devastate them and remind them that I alone am the LORD.

Isa. 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Jer. 3:13 Only acknowledge your guilt— you have rebelled against the LORD your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me,’” declares the LORD.

Luke 13:2-5 “Do you think those Galileans were worse sinners than all the other people from Galilee?” Jesus asked. “Is that why they suffered? Not at all! And you will perish, too, unless you repent of your sins and turn to God. And what about the eighteen people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them? Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too.”

Rom. 1:32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

 

1. FAILURE TO LEAD BY EXAMPLE LIKE JESUS AND PAUL

While their nation is going to hell in a handcart, pastors and priests are teaching their congregations, “Relax. The Lord is sovereign. He can and will fix the world when He so desires. Our first duty is to preach the gospel. When they come to Christ, they will have to deal with their abortion-related guilt.  In the meantime, go to the 40 Days For Life if that is what God is calling you to but don’t expect me to join you. It isn’t my thing”. Modern pastors and priests seem to forget that Jesus and Paul taught love and salvation as much by example as by their words. They should be the first in the line of duty and danger but instead they cower in their sanctuaries.

Because they don’t do simple, reasonably safe prolife activities like 40 Days For Life, pastors and priests don’t expect others to do 40 Days For Life. They think it is offensive to hand out gospel tracts. Instead of mounting a soap-box in the park on Sunday afternoon, they sit comfortably at home, watching football or hockey. They may preach in a church but are afraid to minister in the market place. They dismiss the idea of mobile churches (moving from one place to another). They may approve of house church planting but seldom attend one. They are too worried about diminishing church tithing when they cannot fix the rot in the church’s steeple.

Pastors and priests soon become businessmen and women whose main concern is church attendance and tithing. They avoid being offensive and abhor intolerance. Rather than set an example for Christian morals, they increasingly allow sexual practices that God condemns.

Rather than risk losing their charitable status, they never invite a Christian politician to speak for 5 minutes to the congregation. It doesn’t occur to them that they could invite all the candidates to speak (it is unlikely that all will show up).

RELEVANT SCRIPTURE:

2 Kings 12:3 Yet even so, he did not destroy the pagan shrines, and the people still offered sacrifices and burned incense there.

Isa. 3:12 Childish leaders oppress my people, and women rule over them. O my people, your leaders mislead you; they send you down the wrong road.

Isa. 50:4 The Sovereign LORD has given me his words of wisdom, so that I know how to comfort the weary. Morning by morning he wakens me and opens my understanding to his will.

Isa. 51:1 Listen to me, all who hope for deliverance— all who seek the LORD! Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined.

Jer. 10:12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

Jer. 6:28-30 They are the worst kind of rebel, full of slander. They are as hard as bronze and iron,     and they lead others into corruption. The bellows fiercely fan the flames to burn out the corruption. But it does not purify them, for the wickedness remains. I will label them ‘Rejected Silver,’ for I, the Lord, am discarding them.”

Jer. 7:8-11 Don’t be fooled into thinking that you will never suffer because the Temple is here. It’s a lie! Do you really think you can steal, murder, commit adultery, lie, and burn incense to Baal and all those other new gods of yours, and then come here and stand before me in my Temple and chant, “We are safe!”—only to go right back to all those evils again? Don’t you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves? Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the Lord, have spoken!

Rom 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

 

10. WILL NOT OBEY  LUKE 10.

The bible, cover to cover, is a book of reconciliation and healing. Whenever Jesus preached, He also healed and met other physical needs. Healing confirmed His message and attracted the crowds. The combination of good news and becoming well again will still fill the churches as it filled the synagogues of Christ’s day.

When I have promoted the idea of filling churches by attracting people hungry for spiritual and emotional healing, there has been almost no interest. Even when I offered to teach good, solidly scientific, God glorifying counselling they were not interested. Even when about 30 % of their congregation is suffering from the conflicts and wounds of childhood mistreatment and pregnancy losses, particularly abortion. Instead they try to gain attendance by crowd and emotional appeal.  But after a few attempts to believe and be well, most first attenders don’t return. They leave muttering in anger at God and his people because, “I’m no better or peaceful. They make me feel it is my fault because I don’t have sufficient faith.”

When Jesus sent an additional 72 disciples out to preach and heal, He was reinforcing God’s mandate from the beginning of human history: to proclaim the good news of reconciliation and to meet people’s needs, particularly for healing. It was no accident that very soon after having left His disciples as friends and siblings, the more religious people wanted to make a profession for themselves within His church. They emulated aspects of the Jewish and Heathen practices to create priests and prelates. The first in became the ones who created arbitrary admission criteria. They gained power by formulating rituals and secrets. Soon there was little difference to how Christians and the Old Testament priests and the priests of Baal, etc. conducted their ceremonies. Thus the persistent tendency to meld the true worship of God with surrounding religious practices reared its God-insulting head. Today there are many God offending religions that claim to be Christian. This God mocking worship called Christian was a close copy of the melded Israeli religion that brought down the wrath of God, in the form of invasion by cruel Babylon.

The laity vs. religious split which occurred during the 3^rd and 4^th century still exists, despite the heroic efforts of reformers.   While God was shouting, “Away with your music, It is only noise to my ears”, (Amos 5:23) the health needs of people created a huge backlog of those who were on a waiting list for Jesus. Because of abortion that line of people desperately needing treatment is much longer now. Still Christians won’t respond appropriately. Few pastors and priests will see how preaching and healing go together and that all God’s children are commissioned to do both. Now we have been loaned the thoroughly biblical and scientific program called Hope Alive there is no excuse not to learn how to use it. Ordinary adults from all walks of life can become the “preacher-healers” that Jesus intended us all to be.

Of course God is sovereign and can resolve all the world’s problems and heal all diseases when and how he desires. However He wants us to know Him. This means knowing how He thinks and operates. He wants us to find out how He heals people. God also wants us to recognize that it takes Him time and energy to heal. He also hopes that as we struggle with people to help God heal them, we will mature and become increasingly like Him. Moreover it is in the nature of God to share his work and responsibilities.

The priests and pastors almost universally do not recognize the role of mental conflict in producing all kinds of illness. Some of those conflicts are engendered by poor spiritual teaching.

The sum of this is that Christian pastors and priests, by their weak example, poor teaching, and ignoring the depth of the dehumanization resulting from childhood mistreatment and abortion, significantly contribute towards the problems arising from abuse and abortion. They do little to help those in their congregation (about 30% of the women) who are directly affected. They discourage members who express an interest in learning proper counselling techniques.

RELEVANT SCRIPTURE:

1 Sam. 10:6 At that time the Spirit of the LORD will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them. You will be changed into a different person.

1 Sam. 15:17 And Samuel told him, “Although you may think little of yourself, are you not the leader of the tribes of Israel? The LORD has anointed you king of Israel.

1 Sam. 15:22 But Samuel replied, “What is more pleasing to the LORD: your burnt offerings and sacrifices or your obedience to his voice? Listen! Obedience is better than sacrifice, and submission is better than offering the fat of rams

Acts 14:3 So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders (of healing).

Ez. 20:39 As for you, O people of Israel, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Go right ahead and worship your idols, but sooner or later you will obey me and will stop bringing shame on my holy name by worshiping idols.

Hos. 4:19 Wine has robbed my people of their understanding.

Hos. 2:2 But now bring charges against Israel—your mother— for she is no longer my wife, and I am no longer her husband.

I Kings 8:41-43 In the future, foreigners who do not belong to your people Israel will hear of you. They will come from distant lands because of your name, for they will hear of your great name and your strong hand and your powerful arm. And when they pray toward this Temple, then hear from heaven where you live, and grant what they ask of you. In this way, all the people of the earth will come to know and fear you, just as your own people Israel do. They, too, will know that this Temple I have built honors your name.

Isa. 58:3 ‘We have fasted before you!’ they say. ‘Why aren’t you impressed? We have been very hard on ourselves, and you don’t even notice it!’ “I will tell you why!” I respond. “It’s because you are fasting to please yourselves. Even while you fast, you keep oppressing your workers.

James 5:16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.

Jer. 6:13-14 From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.

Luke 10:1, 16, 29 The Lord now chose seventy-two other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places he planned to visit… Then he said to the disciples, “Anyone who accepts your message is also accepting me. And anyone who rejects you is rejecting me. And anyone who rejects me is rejecting God, who sent me.”… The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Matt. 12:34 You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Matt. 8:17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

Matt. 9:35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

Rom. 15:7 Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.

 

 

VII. PASTORS AND PRIESTS INHIBIT RATHER THAT EXALT MANHOOD

Feminism has been very successful in gaining power and prestige for women. They have done most of this at the expense of men and manhood. Women accomplished this by: making men feel guilty, manipulating them with sex, out-arguing them in public, mocking their masculinity, accusing them of wanting to control, dominate and ignore the rights of women, refusing to respect their traditional roles and selectively supporting each other as “sisters” while demanding equality. Initially men resisted but they were derided

as “chauvinist pigs”. Increasingly men gave up and left their families. The abandoned children in hurt and anger usually sided with “poor women”, their mothers in particular. Girls in anger at the father who abandoned them, became feminist. The boys became ashamed of their masculinity and were easily recruited as gays.

Women now have at least 34 significant advantages over men and are still demanding or whining for more. (Ney P. , What is The Matter with Women Nowadays Anyhow?, 2004) Women hold most of the wealth in the western world. They live 6-8 years longer and are less likely to die of stress diseases and suicide. They get shorter sentences than men for the same crime. There are more of them and thus they can outvote men. Most telling of all is their “sole right” to determine which of their (his and hers) preborn children lives and which is murdered by abortion. Confronted by a woman who is determined to abort his longed for child, men plead, beg and try to negotiate. When they fail, they feel deeply humiliated and become bitterly anti-woman. They know they cannot compete with women who have this immense power over life and death. So rather than keep trying, they tend to leave their families.

The pastors and priests were often in the forefront of agitating for more women’s rights. They often sponsored seminars and weekend workshops for women but seldom for men. By their dramatic preaching, they conditioned passivity, most effectively in men.  In the face of increasingly feminist world some pastors began trying to help men assert themselves but usually with books rather than by example.

Pastors and priests didn’t often recognize and encourage the self-initiated “ministries” of men. Having sidelined men, they began urging men to take more responsibility. The pastors and priests seemed to enjoy talking down to men from the pulpit. They actively discouraged any natural man-like response of shouting back when the pastor shouted at his congregation.

The pastor and priests enjoyed preaching at people from the pulpit and seldom shared the podium with a wiser, older Christian brother. Being watched and admired by a predominantly female audience, the pastors and priests became proud. Sensing men wanted to argue against many of their points in sermons, the pastors and priests became increasingly alienated from men and feared their competition.

Rather than fostering curiosity and enquiry, the pastors and priests increasingly insisted their words were from God and therefore there should be no argument.  They didn’t encourage careful investigation and science where men were more often expert.

The pastors and priests became increasingly removed from ordinary rural and town life. They became blind to politics and significant current events. They tried to placate their people with false assurances. They tried to intervene in ordinary family crises which promoted maturity.

Pastors and priests tended to preach for and to admiring women. Afraid of men, they avoided formal challenges and social debate. They sided with women when couples quarreled. They supported women in custody disputes. It was as if the pastors and priests assumed men were inherently more evil.

All of these factors undermined male bonding to preborn babies. It made it easy for them to avoid their responsibilities because they could not overcome female dominance. Pastors and priests seemed to believe that when a young woman unintentionally became pregnant, her man all too quickly left the scene, or denied his paternity or coerced her into having an abortion. Anticipating the pains of loss and grief, men inhibited their natural inclination to bond both to baby and support their mate. Because the pregnant unsupported young woman is so hurt and angry at her apparently uncaring mate, she thinks, “I’ll get rid of his brat.” The more likely she is to abort, the less likely he will allow himself to attach to the preborn baby. The less he feels attached to the baby, the less likely he will support and comfort his mate. Evidence shows that when pastors try to fill the gap left by the frightened males, the more likely she is to abort their baby. As God arranged families, no one can replace the father in the eye of the mothers and children. Attempts to do so upset the sensitive balance even more.

By deliberately reducing men’s responsibilities and further promoting women, pastors and priests have inadvertently contributed to the murder of millions of pre-born babies. God is furious at them for this. Rather than warning everyone equally and encouraging men to assume leadership, it seems most modern pastors and priests won’t accept challenging men. They are afraid that their assumptions will be effectively questioned by thinking men. Rather than exalting in manhood, pastors and priests denigrate men’s initiative.

God ordered men and women to be fruitful and multiply indefinitely, because He is big enough to have a personal relationship with trillions of people. God ordered Adam to identify and classify all of His created earth-bound creatures. Because this was a very large task, He made Adam a ‘helper/mate’. Both Adam and Eve disobeyed; Eve didn’t have children and Adam didn’t get to work. With lots of idle time they became vulnerable to the seduction of Satan who offered them knowledge and power. Modern pastors extol the benefits of delaying marriage and the material advantages of both having careers. This was not God’s plan. Working women became too tired to have sex, or they became infatuated with the boss or a workmate. The end result of these two factors is that there are many more illicit sexual encounters and thus more abortions.

A man now feels obligated to obtain a good education, find a high paying job, buy a car and rent at least a condo. He gets confusing messages from his fiancée. She wants to marry a handsome, adventurous, vigorous young man with real assets but she is constantly trying to seduce him to make her pregnant and settle down to a comfortable urban life. Because other lovely young things are eyeing him, she tries to trap him with a baby.  She also wants to finish her degree. So both are very ambivalent about keeping the preborn baby if she becomes inconveniently pregnant. Realizing someone must make a decision, he finally speaks both their subconscious intents, “Let’s abort it,” or “Get rid of it or you won’t see me around anymore.” Instinctively, what she wants to hear him say is, “This is our baby. Come on, let’s get married. I will work for a few years and save up for school fees.” Because of her ambitions she may say, “It is my body so it’s my choice,” OR desperately she will plead for her baby because now she is bonding. “At least come with me to see the pastor.” Realizing he is getting manipulated out of his socks, the mate very grudgingly agrees.

The young and modern pastor having heard their stories, feels obligated to tell the young man, “I agree with you, he is probably a baby boy but she has the right to decide.” The pastor is trying to be both prolife and an accepted part of the community. Having spoken with what he considers is political correctness, he is shaken when the girl says, “You men, are all the same. Given a little responsibility, you run and hide. I’m leaving you both. Good night!” and slams the door. Which-ever way the politically correct pastor responds, it will unbalance a very sensitive situation and an abortion is likely to result. He seldom realizes that by supporting the woman he is undermining the father of the baby. Thus he weakens the support she needs to feel coming from her mate.

Pastors and priests spend significantly more time counselling women than they do men. In counselling, much of the time the women are complaining about the men in their lives. Thus the pastors and priests are likely to support a woman’s point of view. As the women blame the men so will the pastors and priests.

The young men who have absent or neglecting fathers look for a role model in their pastors and priests. They are unlikely to find one because most pastors and priests avoid physical labour and vigorous sports. The attire of some pastors and priests looks effeminate, adding to the confused sexual identity of male adolescents, especially those who are abortion survivors.

In an age when women are encouraged to feel sorry for themselves, the pastors and priests too readily accept the popular cant that the woman is the victim. This is partly because they seldom hear the male partner’s side of an abuse story. Women are more adept at expressing their pain and confusion. Compared to the man’s hesitant and embarrassed account, it is too easy to believe the “poor wife” has been battered again. Very few pastors and priests understand that her harsh, belittling words, although they leave no bruise, are more damaging for far longer than most blows from men.

Of course there are some thoroughly prolife pastors but even they are reluctant to deal with abortion and related pro-death, anti-male machinations of the evil one. When asked by pastors, “But what can we do?” I usually respond with, “Say the word abortion from the pulpit, abortion, abortion, abortion, many times. This will make it easier for people in your congregation to say abortion and begin to talk about their own conflicts. And don’t forget, about 25% of the women in the average congregation by the age of 45 have had at least one abortion. Don’t be ashamed of that. Rejoice that they keep coming to church. And make sure you give as much attention to the man’s story as you do to women’s complaints.”

Far too many pastors feel threatened by the more educated men in their congregation, especially specialist physicians and PhD scientists. Instead of providing a platform from which they can teach, the usual response of insecure pastors is to boast about how many professors they have in their church but to otherwise ignore them. The most threatened priests and pastors are those who come from belief systems that have an elaborate hierarchy. Challenging men need to remember the rule of thumb, the more fragile the religious system, the more rigid the professional Christians who support it.

Insecure pastors easily become proud.  God will expose their pride and ignorance. Those who are wise will repent for ignoring the perils of our times, for not warning and preparing people, for not leading by courageous example and for not encouraging men to take up their privileges and responsibilities with visible, substantial support.

Pastors and priests feminize the congregation, primarily by increasing male passivity. They talk to people when they are not doing anything but sitting or clapping. Jesus taught his disciples as they walked about. He provided unique experiences; rowing through a storm, walking through a wheat field, and climbing up a mountain. After those experiences he explained what the lesson was. Pastors and priests try to do it in an opposite way, exhorting people to act first; they have very little impact because they do not lead by example.

Pastors and priests want to be tolerant of people so they feel bound to tolerate all manner of aberrant behaviour as they want to tolerate other people. They do not want to be confrontational. They are afraid of being shouted at, and more particularly being shot at.

Pastors and priests tend to speak to women more than to men. In Africa, I noted how the pastor when passing men or women on the path between villages would smile and greet the women, but generally ignored the men. It’s a small wonder the gender distribution in congregations is so lopsided. In many churches it is 80% women and 20% men, and those men are often not glowing examples of manhood. Women are more adapted to sitting and listening. Men prefer to walk about. There is a more equal balance of involvement of the sexes while the churches are being built. Men fellowship better while hammering nails and chatting. From a man’s perspective, women fellowship by sitting, ostensibly making a quilt for orphans in Africa gossiping about their “rotten husband.”

Pastors do not object to the alluring cleavage of breasts and buttocks that the women exhibit. Some seem to enjoy being sexually titillated in this way. They hug women too tightly for most women’s comfort. They love the greetings of “Pastor” and the praise of ‘That was a wonderful sermon.’ But they tend not to like any kind of argument, debate, discussion or disagreement coming from men. Men are much more likely to object to being told what to do. Men do not like being shouted at, especially by someone above them. They want to stand and argue back at least. Inhibited from asserting themselves, they just walk out.

Adam and Eve were given a very important scientific task. They were to examine, differentiate and classify the animals. (Genesis 2:19) It would have been a lifelong scientific endeavour. It could have started humans on a long path of scientific research and development which would have ended in this age with humans quite easily colonizing space.

Pastors often complain about the imbalance of men and women in their congregation, but seldom seem determined to uncover the reasons and do anything about correcting the reasons. Jesus taught his disciples usually when they were on their feet, and almost always within the context of some public debate. His followers saw how their master conducted himself when accosted by hostile religious and political leaders. They watched him heal, feed, comfort and pray. I have never seen a pastor or priest do these, not even the best of preachers. What I longed to hear is my pastor say, “Okay, men, follow me. We’re going to the political rally. We will have time to discuss how I handle my questioning the candidates right after the meeting at my place. I hope you join in the cut and thrust.”

Pastors need to recognize and try and rebalance the huge power and privilege women have over men. At least they should encourage women to give up the pursuit of the almighty career in favour of having and caring for children. As a start women should be encouraged to set aside their “affirmative action” and let the equally well qualified man have the job she is offered because she is a woman.

 

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

1 Kings 2:2 I am going where everyone on earth must someday go. Take courage and be a man.

Acts 13:50-51 But the Jewish leaders incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. So they shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium.

Deut. 22:23-24 Suppose a man meets a young woman, a virgin who is engaged to be married, and he has sexual intercourse with her. If this happens within a town, you must take both of them to the gates of that town and stone them to death. The woman is guilty because she did not scream for help. The man must die because he violated another man’s wife. In this way, you will purge this evil from among you.

Deut. 22:5 A woman must not put on men’s clothing, and a man must not wear women’s clothing. Anyone who does this is detestable in the sight of the LORD your God.

Deut. 24:5 A newly married man must not be drafted into the army or be given any other official responsibilities. He must be free to spend one year at home, bringing happiness to the wife he has married.

Deut. 34:10 There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.

John 14:3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.

Matt. 11:30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Rom. 8:19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

 

VIII.    PASTORS AND PRIESTS PANDER TO THEIR CONGREGATION’S ADDICTION TO ENTERTAINMENT

Pastors and priests are mere humans immersed in a very materialistic, sensual, anti-life world. They seem not to realize how they are personally affected by that. Being so immersed has made them conform to the world, rather than being an outstanding example of transformation.

There is mutual inadvertent reinforcing of maladaptive behaviour by congregation and pastor. The pastor is reinforced for speaking at his congregation from a platform raised above them by the admiration and adulation of his people. At the same time the pastor reinforces in his congregation persistent passivity by entertaining them, not only by his personal dramatic preaching and gestures, but also by the entertainment he provides during the service, primarily through the worship team.

The worship team supposedly is there to instil an atmosphere of worship. However, it makes very little sense, if you consider the fact that when anybody really encounters God directly, they immediately fall on their face in awe, or explode with praise, and stand in silent reverence. Logically, the sermon describing God in detail should precede the worship. However, every church I have attended always began the service with some kind of ‘worship’ led by the ‘worship team’.

The real effect of the worship team is to entertain. The wonderful feeling the congregation so enjoys from singing a simple tune, raising their hands, clapping or dancing while repeating some simple lines, is an Engineered Emotional Experience (EEE).

It is shocking to recognize the similarity between the Nuremberg Rallies of Hitler and that of a large church congregation. In both, there is a central figure on a raised dais behind a solid podium, flanked by dignitaries on either side on a wide stage. Behind that a choir with flags draped about, and then rows upon rows of the disciplined faithful in front, doing precisely what is required of them. In style, it’s almost indistinguishable. It was carefully engineered to create a predictable atmosphere, a sense of supremacy among the Nazis. At church it evokes a sense of being close to God among the Christian congregants. It is false in both situations. God does not tolerate false worship (Hosea 6:6). True worship comes from a real encounter with God. That is what a church service should aim to achieve, but doesn’t.

The congregation inadvertently rewards the pastor for his role by their being so faithful, passive, accepting, and admiring. The pastor reinforces passivity, i.e. rewards the congregation for being passive by entertaining them with his lurid stories or dramatic gestures and inflammatory words. The worship team led by an assistant pastor, engineers an emotional high that the congregation is led to believe comes from the Holy Spirit.

It seems that all pastors would love to have a mega church, which brings them fame and fortune. They tend to envy each other and copy each other, not only in their preaching styles but in the songs of so-called worship. In doing so, they plagiarize each other, quite unapologetically except of course if they quote some famous writer of a very famous book.

The entertainment is heightened sometimes by the dramatic scenery flashed on the very large screen behind the preacher. It’s also heightened by turning off and on stage lights, strobe lights, artificial smoke, dancing on the stage, and appreciative utterances from the congregation: “Amen, pastor. Preach it!” This drama turns people away from God. It is imitating the entertainment provided by the culture in which they live; only they cannot detect how it affects them.

Vanity is very much a part of this. The preachers like to dress in special clothes. These were initially meant to be the plainest of all clothing, but they have become the hallmark, the uniform of the professional religious. They wear these as a signature. People are supposed to recognize that and reverently call them Pastor or Father. Jesus says, precisely, do not do that! Call no man master, or father, or leader, or anything reverential, because God made all Christians into brothers and sisters. (Matthew 23:8-10) If they have a role as a prophet or teacher, it is a job, it is not who they are. They are all children of God, servants just doing their job.

This equality that Christians claim by calling each other “brother”, even the Pope, is false. Nobody actually acts the way brothers normally do. They kneel before the church hierarchy, and call them “holy”. They cannot be holy unless of course they are talking about their holiness in God’s sight, gained only by being cleaned by the blood of God’s Messiah, Jesus. That is one thing that all Christians share, so that all who have the Spirit of Christ in them are holy.

There are many areas of “creeping compromises”, a progressive tendency to tolerate this world’s values among Christian clergy that becomes a tolerance of sexual aberration, which paradoxically becomes an intolerance of health and normality. As the preachers and pastors tolerate abnormal sexual relations, so they themselves emulate that tolerance and become entrapped into a range of sexual addictions. They justify their own lack of self-control with rationalizations that the congregation quickly picks up. They say, or imply, “Don’t judge him. He can’t help this,” which encourages those with sexual aberration to claim, ‘I can’t help this, I was born this way.’ This is absolutely not true. There would be very little addiction if people watched graphic, sexually titillating scenes with their hands tied behind their back. What makes it an addiction is the masturbation or “fapping” resulting in an orgasm that occurs while watching. An orgasm is more reinforcing than heroin. God made orgasm to encourage procreation. It has become the primary purpose of sex and results in many addictions.

As the pastors rationalize their inconsistencies, so they become more tolerant and vice versa. One of their greatest inconsistencies is a statement that all men are equal. I know of very, very few Christians who actually believe that and can support their statement by their behaviour. If all men are equal, then each person deserves equal medical care, clean water, education and nutrition. How many people actually work toward that end?

In the Old Testament, many of the sins of self-indulgence were possible because the nation practiced slavery. With slaves, people had the time, money and energy to be indolent. Slavery is still widely practiced today; in fact there are more slaves now than in Roman times. North Americans enjoy very inexpensive products. Why? Because those products are made by people working in sweat shops, often 11 or 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have no time off to visit sick relatives or celebrate without being fired. They are virtual slaves although they are not ostensibly owned by anybody. They become so indebted to the factory owner they literally cannot leave the job without starving.

Pastors and priests watch television as much as anybody else, even when they are preaching ‘Do not be conformed to this world.’ (Romans 12:2) There is nothing like television that conforms a person to this materialistic, violent, highly sexualized society. Small wonder that the Moslems object to it, and become violent in their protests against it. They are struggling not to get sucked into it, like the Christians have done so easily.

Because of their vanity and pride, pastors and priests, like the prophets and priests of Jesus’ day, love to have the important seats at the banquet (Luke 20:46). They sit at the head table. They line the podium at national meetings. They love to wear distinguishing robes as their badge of authority. They enjoy compliments while pretending to blush. They dislike disagreement, and become intolerant of those people who they think do not agree with them, even while preaching tolerance of everybody else. Like the prophets and priests of Jesus’ day, they like giving long winded prayers out loud and in public (Matthew 23:5-8). They like ceremony and ribbon cutting. They like to be hailed as the pastor ‘who has shaken the president’s hand’ or ‘wrote 20 books’, all of which contain very little useful information. Most of all, they love to entertain, little realizing that by doing so they reinforce apathy in those who are listening to them.

Pastors and priests love to be chairperson of the building committee, in the construction of cathedrals and mega churches. Ostensibly these are ornate structures for God’s glory, but it’s their name that becomes attached to the structure when people admire it.

In modern Western society, it is common for people to work 5 days a week, ostensibly setting aside one day for family recreation and one day to concentrate on getting to know the Lord. Certainly the Lord encourages people to get to know him by demonstrating himself and speaking quietly to them in the woods. They can’t listen because they spend so much time listening to loud hymns of praise.

Not many pastors and priests are practically prolife. They do not exhibit what is required of a true prolifer, which is a significant change in lifestyle. All real prolife people should buy 2^nd hand cars and clothes and live in small houses. Each major war required the people of the combatant nations to scrimp, save and work hard. Since there has never been a war like the present prolife vs. pro-death conflict, those who are truly prolife cannot afford the time and money to live an ordinary materialistic lifestyle. If millions of innocent people are being murdered every year, surely they must devote the money they pay for big houses and cars and the time at recreation to march, write, sue for the preborn.

Because of economic slavery, pastors and priests can, like all other western people, work (only) 5 days a week. God intended us to work 6 days a week.

God wanted us to know him well enough so that we would detect and live the life and do the work that suits our blueprint.  (Ney P. , A Blueprint for Every Child, 2014) When a person is working according to God’s desires and their own blueprint, work and recreation are indistinguishable. There is no reference for recreation in the bible, but most Christians believe it is their due.

Christians should remember, their life on earth is a blink in time. They should be working at many kinds of outreach endeavours, particularly those prolife on the 6th day, if they have only 5 days of work. However, they principally use that to watch games on a mega screen, or to go for picnics in the park.

Pastors and priests like most Christians will say they need to spend time with their family. But God says, no, He comes first; the family second (Luke 14:25-26).  It is more important that their families spend time with their father and that the father make the possible and meaningful. It is quite possible to be serving God in some outreach together with family members. If that outreach suits the pastor’s blueprint, it will suit his children, and so they can enjoy the activity together. Although it appears that they are working hard, in fact it is a day of recreation. Life should be a blend of worship, work and recreation so that one can hardly distinguish at any point in time which is which. Jesus came to demonstrate that work and worship, meals and times to remember should and can be melded

The tolerance of sexual aberration is unscriptural, as certainly seen from the character of, and the preaching by Jesus. Jesus said that those who are not for him are against him (Matthew 12:30). In the struggle between life and death, there are only 2 positions, and those positions are not black and white, they are deep scarlet as opposed to brilliant light. With respect to homosexuality and other sexual aberrations, there are at least 30 factors which influence sexual orientation.  (Ney P. , Male Homosexuality Part 1) Very few of these are such that choice does not have the most significant impact.

For the pastors and priests, the problem of pleasure is as much for them, as it is for their congregation. With slaves, most modern Christians have time, money and energy to spare. That should not be the case. They should be working with each other toward the betterment of their society and for the life of the preborn. When they are working for the Lord, work becomes pleasure because it is so close to their blueprint. Rather than the pursuit of pleasure, Christians should show the world the vast difference of the joy of doing a job well done, or sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from him in a quiet wood.

Rather than increasing the entertainment in church, pastors and priests should be showing examples of the joy of their salvation. They should do this as they work together with the people in their congregation. There should be evidence of the fact that they can worship God while working, just as clearly as they can by sitting and listening. Jesus came to demonstrate that all of life is an act of worship. And so it should be. But the pastors and priests do not emulate this. They would much rather increase the entertainment and thus make Christians more passive and defenseless.

 

IX        A LAYMAN’S LIST OF CURRENT COMMON THEOLOGICAL ERRORS 

1. Inerrancy: Some pastors and priests insist on the inerrancy of scripture, but they miss the principles behind the words. God’s words in scripture take their true meaning from the context in scripture, the principles they describe, but most importantly from who God is. Nineteen times in Psalm 119, King David insists that he abides by the principles of God (e.g. Psalm 119:44, 56, 60). Elsewhere he describes God’s precepts. God made the moral laws for humans before He created the universe. He gave words to His prophets and priest who struggled to describe the infinite with mere human utterances. This is especially true when you consider that God deliberately used languages to confuse people and disrupt their coordinated thinking and planning at the Tower of Babel.
2. Their God is too small. We need every nuance of every language, metaphors, similes, parables, etc. to try and understand and describe God. Even then we fall far short. Many pastors and priests cannot see that God wanted to fill the universe with trillions of individual, mature people with whom to chat and play and work with. . If they think that scriptures fully describe Almighty God then their God is too small.
3. Wrong about love. Pastors and priests blindly accept Hollywood’s concept of love as a warm fuzzy feeling, or no definition of love. Yet Jesus taught that to love God and your neighbours contained the whole system of laws and prophecies.  (Ney P. G., 1974) All Christians are commanded to love all the time, (John 13:34-35) yet pastors and priests seldom teach on love. Hollywood teaches that love is an intense feeling. Jesus on the other hand, commanded people to love, and emotions cannot be commanded. Since love is commanded, it can’t be a feeling but it must be doable. Therefore, the command to love has got to be an understandable, usable, necessary law that people must obey.
4. Neglect healing. Pastors and priests constantly preach morality and/or the Gospel but neglect healing the sick and wounded which God ordained to be the attraction for crowds and the confirmation of the truth and power of God’s words. (Luke 5:15, Luke 9:6)
5. Miracles/magic. Pastors and priests constantly long for “supernatural miracles” without any understanding of what they are talking about. Since God is the essence of all nature, there is no way He can be above Himself. We should stand in awe whenever He does something beyond our understanding but that is the cue to get very busy and try to analyze, understand and duplicate what God does. To know everything is possible. It represents a challenge for the earth lifetime and eternity for everyone.
6. The Spirit of God within permanently It is clear in the writings of Paul and the other apostles that a Christian is someone who has the Spirit of God in them, and that Spirit comes into them when Christ saves them. That Spirit stays fully in them. They cannot be more full than to have God’s Spirit within them all the time, every time. That Spirit cannot be taken with then to purgatory. That Spirit defines that they are a human and that they are a son of the Most High.
7. Fully filled with God’s Spirit. “Spirit filled” pastors and priests don’t seem to understand that what happens at the moment of salvation is that people are given the Spirit of God, and they get all of Him. There is no such thing as partial infilling; if that were the case, there must be a vacuum which invites evil spirits. The challenge is then how to tap that amazing peace and power.
8. Eternal Security: Jesus was very clear that whenever someone believes in him, they are given eternal life. They become permanently adopted into the family of God. Once they are adopted into the family of God, they are a member for always. He will never disown them.. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, this profligate young man was always considered a son, and his father always waited for him to return, regardless of how badly he misused his opportunities and the wonderful gifts that his father gave him. Human parents know they will always be the parents of their children even when they sin grievously. Moreover how can anyone have the peace that Christ promises if they are unsure of whether or not they are still in the family. How would they ever expose themselves to the possibility of being tortured into renouncing Christ. If they could not take that risk, how could they ever be missionaries in dangerous parts of the world.
9. God clearly does everything. The New Testament is a unilateral contract in which God does everything. What we do is to illustrate and celebrate what God does in the rituals called the Eucharist, Baptism, Wedding, etc. Pastors and priests are constantly attempting to usurp God’s prerogatives. They claim to marry people, “Ladies and gentlemen, I pronounce James and Joan to be man and wife.” That is heresy. The bible is clear that God marries a couple by making them one flesh (Matthew 19:5-6, 1 Corinthians 6:16). That marriage pair bond lasts until one or the other dies. What God does, humans are ordered to celebrate, remember and explain by word and action.
10. Pastors and priests claim to baptize people. It is clear from scripture that people are baptized by the Spirit. (John 1:32-33) What they do in by baptizing through water immersion is to demonstrate, (model) what really happens spiritually in the most elementary way possible, the message of salvation. They are buried with Christ and resurrected with him, having a new Spirit. It is not what happens at that moment, but it is a demonstration of what happened at the moment when they were born again (John 3:6-7).
11. Pastors and priests claim to forgive and absolve sins. Only God can forgive sins.. So God needs to forgive all sins.
12. Pastors and priests claim to annul marriages. They cannot do this. When God makes a man and a woman one flesh it is for the duration of their earthly life.
13. Pastors and priests claim to save people. Only God can save people (Revelation 7:10). Pastors and priests claim to heal people by praying over them, anointing them with oil or laying hands on them. Only God heals in every situation, whether the procedure is done by a professional healer or not. The healing is done by God.

By usurping God’s prerogatives, pastors and priests appear to have God’s power, and with that power they become proud and increasingly vain. With this ‘power’ they believe they could be more effective in guiding people’s behaviour, and so expect people to take their advice and admire them.

1. Fear Science. From the earliest times most Christians, particularly pastors and priests have been afraid of investigating the world that God has made. Their fear of science retarded the development of technology and the freedom to investigate for many centuries. The persecution of scientists must be one of the darkest parts of Christian history. There is only one truth so that the honest pursuit of truth will always take us to God.  (Ney P. , How to know a Man of Truth, 2005)
2. Christ’s church Christ’s church belongs to Christ, not to humans. He looks after it. He disciplines it and cleans it with his Spirit. There is no need of any kind of human hierarchy, particularly that which emulates the Old Testament hierarchy. Obviously it didn’t work in the Old Testament, why should it in the New Testament.
3. Simple plan of salvation. God’s plan of salvation is very simple; simple enough for intellectually handicapped people to understand and use for their salvation. However, since the invasion of pagan priests when Constantine made Christianity the state religion, people have wanted to complicate, obfuscate Christ’s simple plan of salvation with rituals, steps, required activities, economy etc. Salvation can only be a gift which we accept in faith.
4. Equal members. Christ’s church belongs to his people. They are all equal members of that church, and have equal authority and responsibility. We are bricks in His building, bones in his body.
5. Predict the future Jesus told his disciples that they should use their ability to observe and their common sense to predict future events. They didn’t need soothsayers and prophets to tell them what was about to happen. This would make it possible for every Christian, wherever they are, even in isolated communities or in prisons, to perceive what was about to happen. Jesus made it clear what Christians should do in the event of a catastrophe. “When they persecute you in one town, run to the next (and evangelize there).” (Matthew 10:23)
6. Clergy/ Laity Splitting. In the early Christian church, there was no split between what was later termed laity and clergy. Jesus never meant to have two classes of Christians. It has made the experience of joy in Christ so much more difficult, especially when some Christians felt they were the only ones who were able to interpret scriptures. For far too long it was believe that only priests could read and understand the scriptures. The net effect was that most Christians were kept in dark with fear and confusion dominating their everyday thinking.
7. Taught Only by Clergy. The scriptures are clear that everyone who has the Spirit of Christ will be taught by the Spirit of Christ, and that “the spirit will lead you (individually) into all truth.” This indicates that Christ expected us to be able to harness the clarity and truth that the Spirit provides to understand his creation, and thus advance in a scientific description of it. . These are not just spiritual truths. These are moral, psychological and the truths of particle physics. With God’s spirit, we have an avenue to learn all the so-called mysteries of God, and he welcomes us in doing so. He aids and encourages all those who seek to uncover the deep things of his creation.
8. Natural consequences. Christians will not be spared the discipline they deserve. Christ is just. If any person needs to be disciplined, they will be. Christians, particularly pastors and priests must not forget that discipline begins with the house of God. (1 Peter 4:17) The idea that Christians will be raptured before the tribulation is an insult to the holiness and righteousness of God. Besides, God wants Christians to be mature. He doesn’t want to spend eternity with immature people. God forgives but seldom suspends the natural consequences of our stupidity.
9. Justifying the Means turning Evil turned into good. Although there are many harmful things humans do to each other, (e.g. Judas’ betrayal of Jesus his master and friend,) God can use evil intents for good, blessing and benefit even though the people who did them had no intentions to do good. Those who received the dubious action were blessed although there was no credit to those who did something beneficial when their intention was only to harm. Only those actions done in love and for God’s glory will be credited at the final judgment.
10. Everyone hears. Jesus also said that He would not return until the whole world had heard the gospel. There is no question that if Christians need to run, and that will happen, they should run to wherever the gospel has been heard the least. There they will be doing the Lord’s work and they will be most safe. (Matthew 24:14)
11. Miraculous Signs. Nowadays, as in Jesus’ day, people are constantly looking for a miraculous sign, rushing from one special service to another, listening to people who claim to be prophets, most of whom contradict each other. The facts are that history is predictable. It’s predictable mainly because of what has happened in the past. There comes a time when God is totally fed up and that is clear in the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. He will even bring down on His people his reaction to what their ancestors did, not because he thinks that’s fair but because it’s inevitable and because the current generation has done nothing to correct the progressive evil.
12. Tragic history. History repeats mainly because people don’t learn from it. (Ney P. , Child Mistreatment: Possible Reasons for its Transgenerational Transmission, 1989) It will keep on repeating until the Lord’s patience runs out and then He makes history. When the Lord intervenes to make history, it is a powerful intervention. People get hurt. In the past, God has punished nations who have sinned against Him with idolatry, murdering of the innocent and rebellion. He often does this by visiting on them the invasion and wrath of another nation. Thus Babylon was used to attack and destroy Jerusalem, and then the Medes destroyed Babylon. From that point on, it was the Greeks, then the Romans etc., all because people would not heed God’s warning and learn from history. All other factors being equal, the best predictor of future behaviour is past performance.
13. Z. No innocent nation It is apparent that with murdering innocent babies, there is no nation that is more innocent that another. It is possible God will use the Muslims to discipline the Western Christian nations and then turn the Muslims on themselves. However, the Muslims have very little moral advantage because abortion is also common among them. Thus because abortion is worldwide, and because God is enraged that so many millions of innocent babies are being murdered, and because His people are doing so little to protect them, He will bring history to an abrupt close. This is not hard to predict because the events now taking place will continue and worsen. The warnings of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, etc. are very appropriate for current events.

A1. Discipline   Christians will not be spared the discipline they deserve. It is impossible for any nation to run a free market economy with a declining population. Nations have bolstered their attempts to keep their economy running by printing more money. The net effect is currency devaluation and then inflation. When that happens, the financial institutions, that support almost all the economies of the world will fall apart. Nations will attempt to correct this with worldwide control as seen in the predictions of the Beast with his number that is required before people can buy or sell (Revelations 13:16-17).  But eventually that won’t work; nothing will. Though there is totalitarian control and terribly cruel efforts made to enforce it, economic chaos will worsen. As a result, hunger will become rampant. As the medical systems fall apart, plagues that have been held back by antibiotics and immunization will march around the world very quickly. In all of these, people will refuse to cry out to God (Revelation 16:9). Nations will refuse to repent and God will be totally justified in intervening.

B 2.  Mysteries God is constantly revealing Himself to humankind.  He does so in His word and all the magnificent discoveries of the universe, and in the events of history. He is transparent. He is not happy with “mysteries”. Daniel wrote that God is a revealer of mysteries (Daniel 2:28). Jesus said he had come to reveal the mysteries of God. Paul writes his mandate was to reveal the mystery of God’s being able to reconcile both Jew and Gentile. Those who teach mysteries, promote ignorance and power for themselves. They become the only ones who have any insights into the mysteries and people have to pay them either with servitude or money in order to gain some glimpse into these mysteries. But you notice what’s behind those mysteries is never uncovered. God is not happy with this subterfuge and will wreak judgement on the pastors and priests who use mysteries for their own end.

C 2.  Predictions of the Future Jesus says “I assure you, this generation will not pass from the scene before all these things take place. Heaven and earth will disappear but My words will remain forever.” (Matthew 24:35) I believe Jesus is indicating that before the universe was created, He established the moral rules that would govern the use of it, particularly the behavior of humans. One of the most important parts of which is the Law of Reciprocal Response

 

RELEVANT SCRIPTURES:

Acts 15:1 While Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch of Syria, some men from Judea arrived and began to teach the believers: “Unless you are circumcised as required by the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.”

Amos 5:23 Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

Deut. 31:19 So write down the words of this song, and teach it to the people of Israel. Help them learn it, so it may serve as a witness for me against them.

Deut. 32:47 These instructions are not empty words—they are your life! By obeying them you will enjoy a long life in the land you will occupy when you cross the Jordan River.

Ez. 14:4-6 Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: When any of the Israelites set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet, I the LORD will answer them myself in keeping with their great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.’ “Therefore say to the people of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices!

Ez. 16:17 You took the very jewels and gold and silver ornaments I had given you and made statues of men and worshiped them. This is adultery against me!

Ez. 43:7 The LORD said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place where I will rest my feet. I will live here forever among the people of Israel. They and their kings will not defile my holy name any longer by their adulterous worship of other gods or by honoring the relics of their kings who have died.

Hos. 9:9 The things my people do are as depraved as what they did in Gibeah long ago. God will not forget. He will surely punish them for their sins.

Isa 57:12 Now I will expose your so-called good deeds. None of them will help you.

Jer. 8:12 Are they ashamed of these disgusting actions? Not at all—they don’t even know how to blush! Therefore, they will lie among the slaughtered. They will be brought down when I punish them, says the LORD.

Jer. 9:17 This is what the LORD of Heaven’s Armies says: “Consider all this, and call for the mourners. Send for the women who mourn at funerals.

Rom 6:3 Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death?

 

A PARTIAL LIST OF SINS LISTED IN THE BIBLE THAT GOD JUDGED IN ANCINT TIME AND IS ABOUT TO JUDGE SOON.

1. a) Murdering the innocent: About 150 million babies annually are killed in the cruelest manner possible; ripped apart in the supposed security of their mother’s womb
2. b) Using slaves. Investing in high profit stocks, (the higher the rate of return, the more likely it is to be unethical) and enjoying “my what a buy” products of sweat shops. These virtual slaves are often worse off than literal slaves who because they are valuable property are cared for.
3. c) Enjoying violence, TV, movies, boxing, football etc.
4. d) Expecting entertainment which conditions their passivity.
5. e) Injustice for the poor and disadvantaged in court.
6. f) Pornography, anal intercourse and prostitution.
7. g) Dishonoring fathers and mothers
8. h) Pushing away the truth or God as seen in nature and science.
9. i) Disobeying God in not loving one’s neighbour, not preaching the Good News, not healing, not baptising as clearly commanded.
10. j) Listening to false prophets (Popular speakers) and ignoring the prophets in the wilderness.
11. k) Idolatry by semi-worshiping movie “idols” and emulating the most popular speakers.
12. l) Promoting “prophets” who do not speak for God.

WHAT MUST BE DONE.

        Looking at the olive tree and the signs of our times, we cannot but conclude we are very near the end of earthly time. “And yet”, there is always a slim chance God will relent. So what must be done be done must be done quickly and thoroughly. Here are few obvious suggestions:

1. i) Look around and look inward to see the devastation; our own dehumanization and the extensive dehumanization throughout the world which arises primarily because of almost universal abortion.
2. ii) Open your eyes to see the vast mountain of bodies of aborted babies and tune your ears to hear their screams as they are torn limb from limb.

iii)            Repent of your/our sins of commission, (contributing directly to abortion) and omission (doing so little to defend preborn babies)

1. iv) Throw away your TV, video, surround sound and sell your newer car and get a smaller house so you can better share your wealth and energies.
2. v) Share your podium with elders, men who really know Jesus from study but mostly from experience
3. vi) Preach by example. Start simple ( 40 days for life) and quickly become bolder until you risk freedom and life in defense of babies and old people who are being murdered by the millions

vii)           Lead from in front, bring your family and church families into the fray and teach them they do not have to be afraid because Jesus is always with you.

viii)         Teach the gospel that requires action and check to see if people are really doing what they say they will.

1. ix) Have a wide variety of church Get rid of the worship team and sing hymns and songs that instruct and inspire and which you will sing in prison.
2. x) Have an effective healing ministry in your church with counsellors who are taught an effective post abuse and post abortion program like Hope Alive.
3. xi) Never forget There is a vast number of deeply damaged adults and children who need real healing in your congregation and millions outside your church who need to personally know Jesus as Lord and Saviour. Surveys show that about 30% of women in an average congregation have had an abortion.

xii)           Have a mobile church, meeting in any available place for a few weeks then move to another part of town that more obviously needs Jesus.

xiii)         Share your wealth, all of it all the time, travelling to distant places with yourselves as the main gift.

xiv)          Keep looking up, expecting Jesus with joy and not complaining about the pain of being disciplined.

1. xv) Always live with love and good manners.

xvi)          When the time comes, show the world how a Christian dies, for he is confident he will not stay dead.

xvii)        Write and send letters of reconciliation to all who have hurt you and you have hurt.

xviii)      Shout warnings of impending disaster unless the people of this country humble themselves and repent

xix)          Plead with everyone to seek Christ as their Saviour and Lord while there is a moment of time.

1. xx) Weep for our degenerating country, imploring God for a little more time.

xxi)          Keep singing and laughing morning noon and night loud enough that your neighbors can hear you.

SUMMARY

            It may seem mean and it isn’t popular, however scripture points directly at the pastors, priests and prophets as the cause of the disastrous invasions of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, then by the Romans. By seeing that God was speaking to “my people” He is still speaking with dire warnings to His people today. Realize that in accusing the pastors, prophets and priests of long ago, God is holding present day pastors and priests responsible for the coming disaster.

The world- wide progressive dehumanization is the best predictor of the rapid growth of famine, atrocities, slavery and war. People are awakening to the near destruction of humanity predicted by Jesus. Why because not only are the professional Christians not doing their job, but mainly by their apathy, they are the major contributors.

       God is not pleased when pastors say they are prolife but do little to lead their congregations in defending the preborn. God is even less impressed that most Pastors and Priests do not preach against killing the innocent because they are afraid of offending some members of their congregation. God is furious that P&P ignore the vast numbers of guilt ridden people and do nothing to provide healing for so many of their congregation suffering the agonies of being post abortion. God is enraged that the P&P refuse to see that at least ½ the world is populated by abortion survivors who live in the constant misery of existential guilt. God is losing His patience with P&P who do not use their people as God’s helpers in providing appropriate gospel preaching and healing. They have no excuse. Now is the time to act. (See attached Crowd Your Church)

      God did not spare His people of Israel and Judah. There will be no easy exit for Christians from a world God is disciplining. He will begin with the pastors and priests because they have failed in their God given duties to teach, lead and heal. And yet God is merciful. If only the leaders of His people today would humble them-selves and lead their flock from the front into the battle for lives and spirits, especially those of preborn children.   “For the time has come for judgement, and it must begin first among God’s own children” (I Peter 4:17)