The Words of Jesus are Spirit and Life that overcome ingrained mental falsehoods. Knowledge of the written Word leads to greater relationship with the Living Word.

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My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge… [Isaiah 5:13]

“If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” [John 8:31-32]

The Lord has made access to His written Word extremely easy. The essential purpose for initially accessing the written Word of God is to discover God. One learns who He is, how much He cares for us, and also what He requires on our part to facilitate a lasting relationship. By acquiring knowledge of the Lord’s pure teachings one can break free from misleading false narratives, lies masquerading as Truth, and disabling deceptions imprisoning one on the other side of an otherwise bridgeless chasm.

OVERCOMING GUIDELINE GRIDLOCK

One must remember that the Early Church of the first century had no New Testament. Many did not even have access to the Old Testament Scriptures. Even at that time, people often believed and practiced not that which derived from the pure Word but from some religious leader’s interpretation of it, whether his intentions were noble or otherwise. There were scads of rabbis, doctors of the Law, synagogue leaders, and most notably, casuistic Pharisees who went so far as to essentially rewrite the OT through their endless oral traditions filled with Truth-debilitating minutia. The more they attempted to explain the Word of God the more they took their listeners away from God. Moses never did this. The prophets never did this. Moses, who was himself a prophet, and all the other real prophets in those ancient times simply delivered what God told them to deliver. If anyone got the message and understood, great. For those who did not it was their problem.

It is no different in our day in that so much of what Christians believe about the Word of God is actually not what is written right there in black and white but interpretive slants delivered by questionable Christian practitioners who often merely parrot denominational precepts, much as the Pharisees did, and overlay them upon the written Word in such a way that they have precedence and gain priority. All one must do to verify this, short of actually reading and studying the Word of God on one’s own (a novel concept for a probable majority of Christians), is visit a few other denominational churches.

Rather than cementing oneself in one place forever and hearing ad infinitum the same old same old that everyone there believes is the verbatim veracious version of the Lord’s teachings as if delivered from on high, one must at least occasionally visit the weirdos in other locales who beg to differ. One will discover that those Christians are also burdened with the same attitude of budgeless caution which was inflicted upon them, again, with good intentions or not, by interpretive teachers doing interpretive word dances as the conservative counterparts to the strange artsy folk who engage in odd expositions of poetry and dance.

Some churches put forth what are essentially emotionless drones who must think God requires them to be religious robots and otherworldly autocratic automatons appearing as ecclesiastically-cloaked talking statues. Emotion with these guys is verboten. Other churches at the other extreme have moving, walking, emotive talker-shouters who appear as fidgety née ferocious hyperactives which may or may not be under God’s actual spiritual anointing. In between are all manner of speakers-forth delivering various shadings of the same Word of God though emphasizing some parts and neglecting others (and often violently rejecting others).

And God looks down on all this duded-up strangeness and wonders how such strayings have taken hold in the minds of apparent believers because the very opposite of His intentions have been established in that He came here to unify His children rather than Tower of Babel them into impossible religious divisions which were also all the rage in His day. He did come to separate, of course, but only the sheep from the goats. What Unreal Christianity has done is to separate, at least on the surface, the sheep from the sheep and in that process created a construct for the invasion of conquering goats who seek to rule the sheep and effectively shroud the Word of God rather than share it. And instead of assisting the Lord to create open green pastures of luxuriant spiritual richness containing much more sustenance than enough for all, we have the equivalent of a barbwire kingdom of sectioned off partisan neoranches each sternly guarded by hardened shotgun-wielding cowhands intent on maintaining division and hatred for those unlike themselves. Rather than a dude ranch it’s a rude ranch. There’s a vast ponderosa of non-ponderable opposing pardners.

A CONFUSION OF LANGUAGES

Like their ancient contemporaries though in reverse, Christian dissemblers have confused God’s one universal language into a multitude of languages and rejected His one Gospel for many counterfeit variations thereof. Rather than joining and supporting the Lord’s single Community created at Pentecost they have created thousands of non-relational communities each with its own distinct language. And they continue with ongoing multiple subdivisions. Rather than “accurately handling the word of truth,” [1] they inaccurately mishandle it and thereby create doctrinal divisions which further divide the people.

The only cure for all their resultant multitudinous nonsensical wordfare permeations is entirely bypassing the faux bloviaters pontificating from fixed pulpits and lecterns of luxation and going straight to the Word of God. When the middleman does not assist us correctly under God’s authority, eliminate the middleman! Christians must learn, on so many levels, to show some spiritual spine, but most of all through the simplest, most profound, and potentially abundant fruitful process of reading the Bible.

I know, it’s tough. It’s pretty much impossible. It’s so big! It’ll take forever! Working one’s life away to old age for money is much easier. Going to a million church services to hear mere drips which never get collected into so much as the bottom half of a bait bucket is far preferable to wrenching open a fire hydrant and flooding one’s soul with life-giving Word water from which one will never thirst again. Better to drag oneself through a religious desert and occasionally suck out the moisture from a dead cactus, thorns be damned, than float upon and dive within an endless bottomless fresh water ocean filled with nutritive spiritual plankton satisfying all hunger, answering every question, and fulfilling every need.

THE GREAT AWAKENING DEMANDS GREAT DISCIPLESHIP

We must be disciples. Considering what is now upon us, as I have been warning of for the last quarter century (it’s all mapped out in my book), fence-sitting not-clear-on-the-concept don’t-confuse-me-with-facts Christians in general will either get it together finally at last or never gain the required closeness to the Lord, spiritual strength and stamina, eyes to see, and knowledge of God’s Word to overcome. We are way past the watch out for weirdos stage and the I’m too cool for school cred demanded by the social media acceptance wokesters. The enemy is here. He’s not hiding anymore. He’s determined to get you. He’s no longer playing the long term deceive you gradually into oblivion game. Instead of slowly boiling the frog he is now simply stomping on it. If you are not ready for the fight you must get there quick. The battle is upon us whether we know it or not or acknowledge it or not. This is not a drill.

In the meantime, here is an encouraging word that applies forever in every instance on every applicable occasion and illustrates the Lord’s great love for His children and ability to kick the devil’s backside always:

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, “I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” [Luke 10:17-20] [2]

Upgrade your New Testament reading plan now.

© 2021 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.

[1] 2 Timothy 2:15

[2] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.