There is GREAT need of direct open rebuke of many Christian entities in America (most). Such will never, of course, come from the inside.

.

NON-PROPHET ORGANIZATIONS

Those in control have long since gained full control of the “inside.” No one on the inside who discovers corruption or notices incorrect unscriptural practices and attempts to clean it up will ever get very far without consequently being shown the door post haste. It doesn’t matter if it’s a worldwide cabal masquerading as a Christian denomination or a little church somewhere with dishonest leaders operating on the sly. Whoever stands against whatever’s wrong by the Lord’s anointing will suffer at the hands of the resident corrupt authority. They do this to protect their racket. Sadly, the leadership usually has the support of the congregation which is often too clueless to understand and sees such an attempt at reform as an attack or too fearful to challenge their betters. Just as the Lord’s great Woe’s came from without by a great Prophet and prophetic rebukes of old came forth from outside the religious establishment by OT prophets, so must this great rebuke also come from without in most cases.

For all intents and purposes, every single Christian denomination and local church in the country has established controls of which no one outside of the power structure can bring any effective correcting voice. The “power structure” may be large and include both overall denominational hierarchies and local church hierarchies. Or it may be absolutely small and exist as a single “pastor” of an independent body. Whatever the case, it is very important to establish church ruling structures in which nothing or nobody can bring a word which might differ from church agendas and doctrines or standard operating procedure. This reveals many Christian ministries, therefore, not as entities existing to honor the truth of the Lord’s teachings but their own distinct interpretations of the Lord’s teachings thereof and whatever they allow to be allowed.

And because the success of the enterprise is that which is most important, including, of course, the success of those in control who draw their sustenance and in many cases their excess monetary gains from the enterprise, of which they cannot exist or operate, controlling whatever has proved to be monetarily successful is mandatory.

It is therefore a matter, then, of what is considered “success.” From this we can derive two basics. There is the usual form of success—that of the “bottom line” measured only in terms of necessary monetary income which supports the material structure and salaries thereof. Secondly, there is the spiritual success of the church or ministry reflected in the spiritual development, maturation, and effectiveness of the members.

Of course, the Lord always placed spiritual success first and foremost. He had next to nothing of the former, that of material outlays. He had no electric bills or mortgage payments because He had no church buildings. However, during His ministry, He definitely had need of shelter in that He often stayed at someone’s house and even told people on occasion He would be staying at their house. This means private residences were important and served as necessary shelter. Now, such a fact may appear obvious, but the point is that the Lord drew a distinction, a large one, between the private residence and the public “church building.” Regarding His own ministry, He honored and made use of the former but had no use whatsoever of the latter. Though he sometimes taught in the synagogues He never built His own synagogue or commanded His disciples to do so.

At present, and throughout much of history, especially of the last few centuries, this dynamic of priorities has completely flipped. The original first-century Community of the Lord met almost exclusively in private residences and had their meetings there, and though this did not only take place for a few years or even a few decades after Pentecost, as some wish to assert in defense of their incorrect beliefs, the house church standard actually transpired for centuries. This proves the Early Church maintained the exact procedure in this regard as did the Lord.

PRIORITIES

What this entails, then, is that the juxtaposition from the spiritual to the material which represents itself in church buildings etc. and the large material outlays thereof, is that the first and foremost spiritual priority of the Lord and His true disciples has become secondary. Rather than putting spiritual priorities first which results in strong developed spiritual disciples able to win spiritual victories, take great ground for the Lord and His Kingdom, and go forth as powerful witnesses for the salvation of great numbers, we are left with mostly “successful” non-spiritually developed non-disciple congregants that prioritize monetary and material success as most important. This mindset is perfectly represented in buildings much larger than their members’ individual houses so all the residences of such houses which make up the congregation can meet together at the same time.

It is interesting then, that the Lord was never concerned about such. There were times during His ministry when multiple thousands of people were following Him—they were following Him in the literal sense. Great masses of people, likely as many as 20,000 or more, were literally following Him around. This was a perfect representation of what happened during the Sinai wanderings fifteen centuries before when the nation of Israel, having escaped from the slavery of Egypt by the Lord’s hand at the Exodus, were going about the desert terrain, not haphazardly with no direction, but as trailing God’s every move. They did this for forty years:

The Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way, and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people. [Exodus 13:21-22]

It is interesting, therefore, that the Lord Jesus did not care about sheltering these great crowds of people following Him. As we picture such scenes we usually never consider the weather. It was not always dry and sunny. There had to have been times when it was quite cold, when storms rose up or when it rained, maybe heavily or in a cool drizzle. Consequently, there were those who likely carried the means for a crude shelter composed of a blanket and thin tree branches or some such. The point here is that, in the course of the Lord’s ministry to His people, it was impossible to house all these thousands in a designated building. Maybe when the weather got bad many went home. Maybe the relatively harsh conditions weeded out the committed from those swayed by what they thought were excessive physical discomforts.

THE COMMITTED

Many years ago I was in our large church building at the beginning of a service. A friend of mine was making a few announcements up at the pulpit and then spoke a few sentences about spiritual commitment. He said something about a breakfast of ham and eggs. He said the chicken was involved but the pig was committed.

This draws an excellent contrast. Christians who are committed go way beyond being “involved.” They never quit. They are in it for the duration. They take their covenant vows to the Lord seriously. There is no greater covenant than one’s covenant with the Lord Jesus and those who never violate it are in it for the long haul and whatever that may entail. They will let nothing, absolutely nothing, stop them.

Christians who are committed express the same commitment the Lord made. No one ever had a more difficult life. No one ever suffered as much pain. He suffered in every way possible throughout His life. His sufferings reached every part of His being. But He would not stop. No inconveniences would stop Him. No suffering and no pain would hinder His purpose and objective. Whatever challenge presented itself He would overcome and did.

Though we may say “Yes, but that was Him. We are not Him.” This is true, but only in a sense. In reality He subjected Himself to life as a human being in this physical world and achieved His objective within it having to deal with the same stuff we do. He overcame it all, showed us how to do it, and maybe most importantly, spiritually equipped us to do it. And this is where the majority of Christianity, as opposed to a minority which is equipped, refuses to go. It rejects the equipping part. It may appreciate His example and achievements but rejects the idea that it can perform as He did. And what is the result? It does not perform as He did.

And this is not because this multiple millions-strong multitude of non-equipped Christianity doesn’t have the potential. It is because it refuses. It considers the means to be spiritually equipped as far too humiliating and inconvenient. It knows such equipping is bad for material and financial “success” and its respectable place in the culture. Such an attitude necessitates massive REBUKE.

THE REAL AND THE UNREAL

We know from the Parable of the Sower that only one in four sowers will yield a crop. Only one in four planters will have a fruitful harvest. The other three will have no harvest whatsoever. Among those who yield a crop, some will do better than others: “Some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.” One would think the varying success levels are somewhat based on commitment and dedication.

Before proceeding, there must be a definition in terms. We must know the Lord’s definition of success. Only 25% of all sowers were successful. Breaking this down further, on average only 8% were successful enough for a 100% return. What does the Lord mean when He speaks of a crop? Is He not speaking of the lost being found? Is He not referring to souls being saved and coming to full commitment in Him?

The seed sowed is the message of the Kingdom. It is the Gospel, the Good News. The harvest is PEOPLE. Yet the harvest of people does not refer to how many people one can stack up in the pews of churches as viable members. It has nothing to do with affixing a particular denominational name or title upon said people or placing them under the headship of a particular “pastor.” The people of the harvest all belong to the Lord Jesus. They are His sheep and belong to no other, and as His sheep they follow and obey His teachings and not those of anyone else. They are fully committed to the covenant they make with Him:

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” [John 10:27-28]

It should not be difficult, therefore, to identify His sheep as opposed to other sheep who merely claim to be His sheep. The Lord taught specifically on this subject. He made several statements regarding it such as:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” [Matthew 7:21-23]

The main prerequisite here to be counted as one of the Lord’s real sheep is doing the will of the Father. But it does not mean that anyone who prophesies, casts out demons, or performs miracles is practicing lawlessness because the initial Community of the Lord did these things always just as did the Lord. In fact, we are instructed to do these things. No, the inference is that there are Christians who attempt to do these and other things but not under the Lord’s authority or by His spiritual power. He is saying that whoever performs his or her Christianity but not fully under His authority is not actually following Him and is thus operating on his own in a state of lawlessness.

The Greek word translated as “lawlessness” is defined as: 1. Properly, the condition of one without law — either because ignorant of it, or because violating it. 2. Contempt and violation of law, iniquity, wickedness.

Essentially, it means acting apart from the Lord Jesus. The Pharisees and others in His time did the same in that they acted apart from the very God they claimed to serve as perfectly stated in the following verse using the exact word:

“So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” [Matthew 23:28][1]

This statement is spoken within the framework of the Lord’s greatest rebukathon contained in Scripture, a long passage contained in Matthew 23:13-36. This 24 verse passage contains eight occurrences of the word “Woe.” It is truly a shocking overall rebuke.

The same rebuke, at least, is required at present for American Christianity in general. And though this rebuke may or may not be conveyed in spoken form in all or most cases, it will certainly be conveyed through other means. It has actually already started and has been ongoing in part. There was a time when the shysters could get away with it either due to relatively easy economic means in which they could gain what they needed for their enterprises and also due to relatively easy deception in that so many Christians were simply unaware of the Lord’s real and full teachings and had too much misplaced respect and fear of Christian authority.

But due to the Great Awakening, when unobstructed access to the Word of God and superfluous research and study materials have been made available through limitless digital means, Christians are becoming aware of the former deception at the hands of the lawless fakers who look great outwardly but are spiritually empty inwardly. People are seeing that so much of what was formerly presented as absolutely necessary is not. They are also seeing that was is absolutely necessary has been either greatly downplayed or rejected outright by the Christian Pharisees in control.

The greater Light is exposing them. The same thing happened during the Protestant Reformation when Christians regained access to the written Word of God in their own languages and were shocked by what it actually said, in that it differed greatly from what had been pushed upon the unsuspecting people before then. The lawless ones of that time who refused to serve the Lord Jesus but instead served themselves are no different than those in our day.

Part of the forthcoming great rebuke replete with manifold Woe’s will involve a reversal of Unreal Christianity’s economic and material priorities. Another part will involve revealing the real and also the great strengthening and blessing of those Christians who have been doing the will of the Lord but under trying circumstances.

Many such trying circumstances were due to so much of the overall Christian pie being hoarded, gorged on, and scarfed down by the morbidly obese religious shysters concerned only with their own “success” and rarely with the spiritual success of the Lord’s sheep in their pasture.

WOE TO THEM.

© 2023 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved. [To Be Continued…] 

[1] 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.