Babylon
As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:2-4—NIV)
Shinar is Babylonia. This is the original Babylon.
The ambition to build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens reveals the desire in the adamic personality to join with others in order to accomplish something of significance, the idea being that we can gain a name for ourselves. Also, we can achieve power that we would not have were we to be a single individual or a small group of people. By combining our efforts, our wisdom, and our talents we can establish a monument on the earth to our own glory.
However, God does not use the concerted efforts of people, their wisdom, or their talents to establish His Kingdom. God often works through intense interaction with one person, such as Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, or the Apostle Paul.
God immediately recognized that if people of one language joined together they indeed could accomplish whatever they pleased.
The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." (Genesis 11:6—NIV)
We of today would emphasize the good that could be done if people would stop fighting against each other and work together to produce things and situations that would benefit mankind. Thus it is almost impossible for us to perceive the potential evil in everyone speaking the same language and being able to bring about results not possible for warring nations to accomplish.
God saw the danger immediately and confused the ability of the people to communicate with each other. To the present hour we have wars because of the self-interest of nations—nations separated from one another because they speak different languages.
What is the problem with wanting to join together with other people to accomplish something?
First let us explain we are not saying it is wrong to work together with other people in order to accomplish a task. Rather we are speaking of our human tendency to ignore the Lord Jesus Christ and look to the combined strength and wisdom of human beings to bring to pass what we desire. We are speaking especially of using this method in trying "to do things for God."
The problem is that when God created the world in six days He fashioned not only the physical universe but also the destiny of mankind. In particular, God determined the destiny of each member of His elect, His Israel, His governing priesthood. God does not desire that we join with others to do what we think needs to be done, particularly in the work of establishing the Kingdom of God on the earth. Only God knows His plan for our life, and only God knows His plan for His Kingdom.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10—NIV)
Notice the foreknowledge and predestination in this verse.
According to the above, God planned from the beginning of the world specific good works for us to do. We cannot enter God's rest except as we set aside our own ambitions and fears and seek each day the plan of God for that particular period of time. This procedure is simply stated, but proves to be difficult in practice because of our self-will and rebellion against God. Eve fell because she was not willing to trust God for her betterment and joy.
God has been resting since the seventh day because all His works have been finished through to the new Jerusalem. To enter the finished work of God for one's life is to enter the rest of God. The coming of the Kingdom of God is the doing of God's will in the earth as it is in Heaven, not the will of well-intentioned man.
Each human being is moved on by a multitude of ambitions, fears, dreads, obligations, passions, and so forth. There are things we wish to possess, heights we desire to climb, relationships we crave to establish. We may not realize it but God has a specific plan for our life, a plan worked out in detail in His mind from the time He created the world.
Our whole duty in life is to find God's will for us and to perform it diligently. To do this is to enter the rest of God, for God is resting after having decided what good works we are to perform.
To enter God's rest is at once remarkably easy and incredibly difficult. It is remarkably easy because we can lay aside our worries and ambitions and flow with the flowings of the Godhead. It is incredibly difficult because each day a multitude of pressures urge us to follow our own desires. Have you found this to be true?
All we are expected to do in life is to look continually to the Lord Jesus for every action we take, and then do with all our might what is set before us. Sometimes we do not hear from the Lord and we just have to keep on doing what we are doing until we are certain God wants us to do something else. This is all there is to the rest of God; but because Satan is living in our land of promise, we have to follow the Spirit of God into battle in order to enter God's rest.
Satan deems it his business to deceive and confuse us so we do what he wants rather than what God desires. We have to labor to enter the rest of God.
Once we understand thoroughly that a personal mark has been set before us, and we are to be pressing toward that mark each day, then we can perceive immediately how people of one language joining together for the common good will frustrate God's plan for the individual. Instead of looking to God for what he should be doing he is working together with the group to perform the desires of the group.
If anyone chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. (John 7:17—NIV)
God wants each one of us to come to Him as an individual, not as part of a group. God does not interact with groups but with individuals. It is God's plan that His Kingdom be composed of people who have come to know Him in a very personal way, who have become part of Him through the Lord Jesus Christ. Such people automatically are one with each other because they are integral parts of the one Christ. None of them looks to the other for recognition, power, or wisdom, except as God directs one to minister to the other. The members of the Body of Christ do not gain status, wisdom, or power by joining together but by living in iron righteousness, fiery holiness, and stern obedience to the Father.
Can you see now why God prevented the ancient people from proceeding with their plan to build the city? God caused them to be confused and scattered them over the face of the whole earth so they would look to Him rather than to each other. To look to the group instead of God is Babylon—confusion!
The spirit of Babylon is found in the world. It's name is Antichrist.
The spirit of Babylon is found in religion, including the Christian religion. Its name is Babylon the Great.
It seems so natural and "right" that people should join together to promote the Christian religion. However, this is not God's way. The result of such attempts at united effort, unless clearly and specifically put into effect by Jesus Christ, brings into existence the horror of Babylon the Great. When God's people neglect to seek the mind of Christ, and look to cooperation with others in order to build the Kingdom of God, we eventually create a cage of unclean spirits.
The Lord Jesus Christ stated He would build His own Church. For two thousand years we have denied Him His right to build His Church. Instead we have attempted to do this for Him. The result has been Babylon! Confusion! A thousand competing denominations!
Many churches understand that a true Christian is not worldly in appearance and behavior, and that God does not want us to continue in sin. This is good and right. But the greatest monster of all is self-will. Until God destroys the self-will from us by repeatedly sending tribulations and prisons to purify us of this monster, we always are going to bring forth Babylon as we seek to build the Kingdom of God.
Two chapters of the Book of Revelation are devoted to a discussion of Babylon the Great, revealing what an abominable institution it is. From the description, I believe Babylon the Great represents the Christian religion when it is guided and empowered by the will and ability of human beings instead of by close interaction with the living Jesus and by the Holy Spirit.
-Bro Thompson-
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
The Old Wineskin – Pagan Christianity
Chapter 7
By Dene McGriff
The Church today is broken and can’t be fixed. It is weighted down by meaningless forms, practices, traditions and programs, by a clergy that tries hard to serve the laity but fails miserably. But it is lifeless and irrelevant. It is an old wineskin that must be discarded if Christians are to discover a living relationship with Christ and one another. Not only are the roots pagan but most of the practices we accept today bear no resemblance to the living early church.
A central theme of “The Tribulation Network” is that in the last days, most of the church will fall away but a remnant will become a triumphant testimony to the world around. The church will go through the tribulation period and Christians will be delivered up by other “Christians” thinking they are doing God a favor. (e.g. Matthew 10:18-20) What will separate one group from the other? Why will brother turn on brother and son against father? Why will Christians be so deceived (e.g. Matthew 24:4, 5, 11, 24)? Why will some overcome and avoid the deception and others become a willing part of it?
What I am about to share with you is revolutionary but I will begin with a disclaimer. I am not condemning or judging anyone. We are all told to overcome. As Christians, we all answer to our Maker on Judgment Day. To a certain extent, we walk in the light we have. But we may unwittingly be deceived because we accept things as they are and do not question the church, doctrines and practices we have been brought up with. As we see in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, there are “overcomers” in each church – no matter what their condition. Today, many see the excesses of the church: the prosperity gospel, the Toronto, Pensacola and Lakeland “revivals”, contemplative prayer (a form of Eastern meditation becoming mainstreamed in the church), the mega and purpose driven churches with their “seeker friendly” approach, etc. But it is practically impossible for the well meaning Christian to see anything wrong with “their” church, with the way things are done.
Although I wrote about this many years ago in my online book “Recognizing Apostasy and Deception,” I have been struggling with another online book titled “In search of the Last Days Church”. But what a confirmation when I read Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna! Frank Viola has long been a leader in the “organic church” movement (rather than calling it the “house church”) and was quoted in “Recognizing Deception”, and George Barna is the head of the Barna Group, a Christian company that has been doing research on various aspects of the church. I would encourage you to go to either website and order five or ten copies, read it and give it to your friends.
Even though I have known for many years there were pagan influences in the early church, I have never seen it so well documented and expressed as in this book. Evangelicals take for granted the fact the Roman Catholic Church has a lot of unbiblical practices, but they can not possibly imagine that they have carried over many of the same practices! Pagan Christianity not only leaves no doubt but it completely exposes the historical roots of our own accepted “Christian” practices. How far did the reformation go? What is the effect of the clergy/laity system, and all the sermonizing? It will surprise you greatly that many of our practices go back to Imperial Rome, Plato and Aristotle rather than to Judaism. But please, don’t take my word for it. Order the book and see for yourself.
In the Old Testament, the people of Israel struggle throughout against the prevailing culture and religion. Israel was to be a people set apart for God and they were not to mingle with the nations around them, lest they be led astray. We have this from Exodus 34:
Time and again the nation of Israel gets mixed up with the peoples around them, intermarries and their hearts are drawn away from the one true God. They make idols and worship foreign gods. They go through some heavy trials, repent and come back to God, only to fall again. It is difficult for anyone to stand against the prevailing culture, including Christians today. Culture has a way of intruding on our lives and molding us in the image of the world around.
Religious Form or Reality?
The center of the Jewish religion was the temple, the priesthood and the sacrifice. The temple was considered to be where God dwelt on the earth. His presence was in the holy of holies. The tribe of the Levites was the priesthood who carried out the sacrifices on behalf of the nation of Israel. These were types of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. He was the sacrifice for our sins. He abolished the temple and the priesthood. We became the temple of God and a kingdom of priests. The priesthood, the physical temple and the sacrifices were abolished once and for all – at least they should have been. Jesus did away with the professionals, the buildings and the rituals. However, it didn’t take long before our human concepts of religion began to creep back into the church and we left reality and built another religion!
Viola does a fantastic job pointing out that Christianity was the first and only religion that didn’t have any of the accruements of organized religion. There was no temple, no class of priests and no sacrifices. Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit were the temple and every Christian was a priest and had equal access to God. The early Christian meetings were informal gatherings where everyone shared, prayed, sang and ate together. It was a community of equal believers – a body of people with different gifts and functions. There was no hierarchy, “house of worship” or ritual. There were no sermons as we know them, no “order of worship”, no professional clergy, no temples and no Sunday School, seminary or Bible Schools. But it wasn’t long before these things began to creep into the early church – not long at all. The church slowly began to succumb to the surrounding pagan culture and after the emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire, it was thoroughly mixed with Greek thought, Roman organization and Pagan religion.
“Pagan Christianity” thoroughly documents when and how all of the practices we accept today as “Christian” came into the church. The footnotes are as interesting as the text. It is thoroughly researched. We know the priesthood, temple and sacrifice were a full blown part of the Roman Catholic Church, but most of us “evangelicals” just assume we threw all that away and went back to the New Testament pattern. Again, Viola does a brilliant job showing how things were changed by the Reformers, the Puritans, the Methodists, the frontier preachers coming up to the present day church but many of the essential errors of the Catholic Church were continued. The reformers didn’t reform that much.
The Challenge
What does this mean to us today? It means that the church as we know it is far more compromised than any of us ever imagined. You have no idea until you see it systematically all laid out for you. That is why I urge you to order “Pagan Christianity”. I have never met or talked to either author. This is no ploy to sell books and you know that we don’t accept donations or sell anything. We are a true non-profit because have never charged for anything. But I challenge you to buy and read this book. It will blow your mind and change you forever. You will never be the same! I could never have done the research and put it as well as these two authors do.
After more than 50 years as a Christian in various expressions of the church – from traditional Baptist, to the Jesus movement, to Calvary Chapels, and Vineyards, I can say that the church in its present institutional form will never produce a mature, cohesive triumphant testimony – NEVER! Although there may be many dear saints within the church, the institution will only serve itself and perpetuate its errors. If you want to be free of the deception inherent in the “church”, what can you do? There are only two paths available to the evangelical or even the post modern or emergent Christian today – be a part-time or a full-time Christian (whether in a church or parachurch ministry). And if you decide to be a “full-time” Christian, you won’t get very far unless you go to Bible College or a Seminary where you will be further brain washed to pass along the same error to other well meaning “Christians.” All the preaching in the world has never accomplished the stated goal of “equipping the saints.”
As long as we relate to one another in the context of buildings, programs and Sunday sermons, God will never have a “triumphant testimony.” The average Christian will never grow by sitting quietly and listening to countless sermons. We will never produce Christians secure in their own relationship with the Lord, in their own ability to minister with the gifts God has given them, to minister along side other Christians as equals complimenting one another. We will never have an authentic organic Christian community that attracts unbelievers. If you read Viola and Barna’s book, you will see how absolutely broken the institutional church is. Yes, the people in it are believers, but they are sorely deceived – not just by the practices of their “church” but by their teachings and end times view which in all likelihood is an escapist (pre-trib rapture) and lukewarm Laodicean message. We must abandon the old wineskin and go to Him outside the camp. (Hebrews 13:13)
I receive emails from people all the time saying that their church is either dead, has no vision for the last days or is stifling and killing them. What do they do? Do I know of any churches or meetings they can go to? You can look up house churches on the internet and see if there is a suitable one near you. Or you can order the sequel to Pagan Christianity called Reimaging the Church for practical suggestions. Get extra copies. Share them with your friends. Open up your house an evening a week or Sunday afternoon to begin to experience an open, sharing, body-life type meeting. For some practical suggestions see some of the later chapters in my book online.
I can say from experience, that the traditional church where people come in and sit and listen to sermons week after week will never “equip the saints.” It will just perpetuate the clergy and their position and hold the saints hostage until the day they die. People learn by doing. They grow by doing and I don’t mean by ushering, rearranging chairs or passing the plate. The life of the church should flow out of the living relationship each person has with the Lord and the meeting should be a corporate expression of each individual’s experience. You have no idea how deceived you are until you begin to delve into this yourself. Don’t take my word for it, but please take the time to look into it for yourself. The old wineskin has been patched and patched again over the past two thousand years. It is time to abandon it.
In the last days, Christians will either be a part of the problem or a part of the solution. They will be a part of the deception and persecution, or a part of the testimony (and the use of the world “testimony” and “martyr” are synonymous in the New Testament). During the Reformation, the Anabaptists promoted an open meeting where all saints were free to share. Martin Luther labeled it a heresy and laws were passed against such a practice with the penalty of death. This is not to say that we would be persecuted for having home meetings, but we could be persecuted for not being patriotic as the institutional church and state become more aligned.
Part of what we write about here is what is happening politically and economically. Having the advantage of reading the end of the Book, we know the whole economic system will end badly with the “mark of the beast” (Revelation 13:17) and not being able to buy or sell without it. Revelation 17 talks about the unholy alliance the harlot church makes with the beast. The only thing that will get us through this period of trials is the church with the little “c” – relationships with other saints that are based on Christ’s transforming life in us – not sitting in a building together listening to lectures/sermons. The cry of the post-modern emerging “Christian” is for authenticity and relevance which isn’t found in the institution but is found in the simple corporate life of the organic church.
Just as Israel became entangled in the tribes and nations around them, the Church has become entangled in the world, the traditions of men, Greek philosophy, Roman organization, worldly hierarchy, purpose driven modern management, entertainment and marketing, New Age spirituality and the “good life” – material wealth beyond the imagination of 99.99 percent of all of the people who have ever lived. As Barna’s research points out, the church is so compromised as to be indistinguishable from the society around it. The dynamic, spontaneous, living expression of the church has been stifled by the dead forms, programs, traditions and teachings of the moribund institution we call the Church. With that, I challenge you one last time to get and read Pagan Christianity and you will flee and never defend that old wineskin again.
Dene McGriff, Sacramento
July 1, 2008
By Dene McGriff
The Church today is broken and can’t be fixed. It is weighted down by meaningless forms, practices, traditions and programs, by a clergy that tries hard to serve the laity but fails miserably. But it is lifeless and irrelevant. It is an old wineskin that must be discarded if Christians are to discover a living relationship with Christ and one another. Not only are the roots pagan but most of the practices we accept today bear no resemblance to the living early church.
A central theme of “The Tribulation Network” is that in the last days, most of the church will fall away but a remnant will become a triumphant testimony to the world around. The church will go through the tribulation period and Christians will be delivered up by other “Christians” thinking they are doing God a favor. (e.g. Matthew 10:18-20) What will separate one group from the other? Why will brother turn on brother and son against father? Why will Christians be so deceived (e.g. Matthew 24:4, 5, 11, 24)? Why will some overcome and avoid the deception and others become a willing part of it?
What I am about to share with you is revolutionary but I will begin with a disclaimer. I am not condemning or judging anyone. We are all told to overcome. As Christians, we all answer to our Maker on Judgment Day. To a certain extent, we walk in the light we have. But we may unwittingly be deceived because we accept things as they are and do not question the church, doctrines and practices we have been brought up with. As we see in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, there are “overcomers” in each church – no matter what their condition. Today, many see the excesses of the church: the prosperity gospel, the Toronto, Pensacola and Lakeland “revivals”, contemplative prayer (a form of Eastern meditation becoming mainstreamed in the church), the mega and purpose driven churches with their “seeker friendly” approach, etc. But it is practically impossible for the well meaning Christian to see anything wrong with “their” church, with the way things are done.
Although I wrote about this many years ago in my online book “Recognizing Apostasy and Deception,” I have been struggling with another online book titled “In search of the Last Days Church”. But what a confirmation when I read Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna! Frank Viola has long been a leader in the “organic church” movement (rather than calling it the “house church”) and was quoted in “Recognizing Deception”, and George Barna is the head of the Barna Group, a Christian company that has been doing research on various aspects of the church. I would encourage you to go to either website and order five or ten copies, read it and give it to your friends.
Even though I have known for many years there were pagan influences in the early church, I have never seen it so well documented and expressed as in this book. Evangelicals take for granted the fact the Roman Catholic Church has a lot of unbiblical practices, but they can not possibly imagine that they have carried over many of the same practices! Pagan Christianity not only leaves no doubt but it completely exposes the historical roots of our own accepted “Christian” practices. How far did the reformation go? What is the effect of the clergy/laity system, and all the sermonizing? It will surprise you greatly that many of our practices go back to Imperial Rome, Plato and Aristotle rather than to Judaism. But please, don’t take my word for it. Order the book and see for yourself.
In the Old Testament, the people of Israel struggle throughout against the prevailing culture and religion. Israel was to be a people set apart for God and they were not to mingle with the nations around them, lest they be led astray. We have this from Exodus 34:
12 Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. 13 But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images 14 (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods.
Time and again the nation of Israel gets mixed up with the peoples around them, intermarries and their hearts are drawn away from the one true God. They make idols and worship foreign gods. They go through some heavy trials, repent and come back to God, only to fall again. It is difficult for anyone to stand against the prevailing culture, including Christians today. Culture has a way of intruding on our lives and molding us in the image of the world around.
Religious Form or Reality?
The center of the Jewish religion was the temple, the priesthood and the sacrifice. The temple was considered to be where God dwelt on the earth. His presence was in the holy of holies. The tribe of the Levites was the priesthood who carried out the sacrifices on behalf of the nation of Israel. These were types of what Jesus Christ accomplished for us. He was the sacrifice for our sins. He abolished the temple and the priesthood. We became the temple of God and a kingdom of priests. The priesthood, the physical temple and the sacrifices were abolished once and for all – at least they should have been. Jesus did away with the professionals, the buildings and the rituals. However, it didn’t take long before our human concepts of religion began to creep back into the church and we left reality and built another religion!
Viola does a fantastic job pointing out that Christianity was the first and only religion that didn’t have any of the accruements of organized religion. There was no temple, no class of priests and no sacrifices. Christians indwelt by the Holy Spirit were the temple and every Christian was a priest and had equal access to God. The early Christian meetings were informal gatherings where everyone shared, prayed, sang and ate together. It was a community of equal believers – a body of people with different gifts and functions. There was no hierarchy, “house of worship” or ritual. There were no sermons as we know them, no “order of worship”, no professional clergy, no temples and no Sunday School, seminary or Bible Schools. But it wasn’t long before these things began to creep into the early church – not long at all. The church slowly began to succumb to the surrounding pagan culture and after the emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the empire, it was thoroughly mixed with Greek thought, Roman organization and Pagan religion.
“Pagan Christianity” thoroughly documents when and how all of the practices we accept today as “Christian” came into the church. The footnotes are as interesting as the text. It is thoroughly researched. We know the priesthood, temple and sacrifice were a full blown part of the Roman Catholic Church, but most of us “evangelicals” just assume we threw all that away and went back to the New Testament pattern. Again, Viola does a brilliant job showing how things were changed by the Reformers, the Puritans, the Methodists, the frontier preachers coming up to the present day church but many of the essential errors of the Catholic Church were continued. The reformers didn’t reform that much.
The Challenge
What does this mean to us today? It means that the church as we know it is far more compromised than any of us ever imagined. You have no idea until you see it systematically all laid out for you. That is why I urge you to order “Pagan Christianity”. I have never met or talked to either author. This is no ploy to sell books and you know that we don’t accept donations or sell anything. We are a true non-profit because have never charged for anything. But I challenge you to buy and read this book. It will blow your mind and change you forever. You will never be the same! I could never have done the research and put it as well as these two authors do.
After more than 50 years as a Christian in various expressions of the church – from traditional Baptist, to the Jesus movement, to Calvary Chapels, and Vineyards, I can say that the church in its present institutional form will never produce a mature, cohesive triumphant testimony – NEVER! Although there may be many dear saints within the church, the institution will only serve itself and perpetuate its errors. If you want to be free of the deception inherent in the “church”, what can you do? There are only two paths available to the evangelical or even the post modern or emergent Christian today – be a part-time or a full-time Christian (whether in a church or parachurch ministry). And if you decide to be a “full-time” Christian, you won’t get very far unless you go to Bible College or a Seminary where you will be further brain washed to pass along the same error to other well meaning “Christians.” All the preaching in the world has never accomplished the stated goal of “equipping the saints.”
As long as we relate to one another in the context of buildings, programs and Sunday sermons, God will never have a “triumphant testimony.” The average Christian will never grow by sitting quietly and listening to countless sermons. We will never produce Christians secure in their own relationship with the Lord, in their own ability to minister with the gifts God has given them, to minister along side other Christians as equals complimenting one another. We will never have an authentic organic Christian community that attracts unbelievers. If you read Viola and Barna’s book, you will see how absolutely broken the institutional church is. Yes, the people in it are believers, but they are sorely deceived – not just by the practices of their “church” but by their teachings and end times view which in all likelihood is an escapist (pre-trib rapture) and lukewarm Laodicean message. We must abandon the old wineskin and go to Him outside the camp. (Hebrews 13:13)
I receive emails from people all the time saying that their church is either dead, has no vision for the last days or is stifling and killing them. What do they do? Do I know of any churches or meetings they can go to? You can look up house churches on the internet and see if there is a suitable one near you. Or you can order the sequel to Pagan Christianity called Reimaging the Church for practical suggestions. Get extra copies. Share them with your friends. Open up your house an evening a week or Sunday afternoon to begin to experience an open, sharing, body-life type meeting. For some practical suggestions see some of the later chapters in my book online.
I can say from experience, that the traditional church where people come in and sit and listen to sermons week after week will never “equip the saints.” It will just perpetuate the clergy and their position and hold the saints hostage until the day they die. People learn by doing. They grow by doing and I don’t mean by ushering, rearranging chairs or passing the plate. The life of the church should flow out of the living relationship each person has with the Lord and the meeting should be a corporate expression of each individual’s experience. You have no idea how deceived you are until you begin to delve into this yourself. Don’t take my word for it, but please take the time to look into it for yourself. The old wineskin has been patched and patched again over the past two thousand years. It is time to abandon it.
In the last days, Christians will either be a part of the problem or a part of the solution. They will be a part of the deception and persecution, or a part of the testimony (and the use of the world “testimony” and “martyr” are synonymous in the New Testament). During the Reformation, the Anabaptists promoted an open meeting where all saints were free to share. Martin Luther labeled it a heresy and laws were passed against such a practice with the penalty of death. This is not to say that we would be persecuted for having home meetings, but we could be persecuted for not being patriotic as the institutional church and state become more aligned.
Part of what we write about here is what is happening politically and economically. Having the advantage of reading the end of the Book, we know the whole economic system will end badly with the “mark of the beast” (Revelation 13:17) and not being able to buy or sell without it. Revelation 17 talks about the unholy alliance the harlot church makes with the beast. The only thing that will get us through this period of trials is the church with the little “c” – relationships with other saints that are based on Christ’s transforming life in us – not sitting in a building together listening to lectures/sermons. The cry of the post-modern emerging “Christian” is for authenticity and relevance which isn’t found in the institution but is found in the simple corporate life of the organic church.
Just as Israel became entangled in the tribes and nations around them, the Church has become entangled in the world, the traditions of men, Greek philosophy, Roman organization, worldly hierarchy, purpose driven modern management, entertainment and marketing, New Age spirituality and the “good life” – material wealth beyond the imagination of 99.99 percent of all of the people who have ever lived. As Barna’s research points out, the church is so compromised as to be indistinguishable from the society around it. The dynamic, spontaneous, living expression of the church has been stifled by the dead forms, programs, traditions and teachings of the moribund institution we call the Church. With that, I challenge you one last time to get and read Pagan Christianity and you will flee and never defend that old wineskin again.
Dene McGriff, Sacramento
July 1, 2008
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