Christendom has become a labyrinth. The faith has been split into a thousand little parts and you are made a heretic if there is one of them you do not accept….What can help? Only the one thing needful; return to Christ, looking to Christ as the only Leader, and walking in His footsteps, setting aside all other ways until we reach that goal, and have come to the unity of the faith (Eph. 4:13). As the Heavenly Master built everything on the grounds of the Scriptures, so should we leave all particularities of our special confessions and be satisfied with the revealed Word of God which belongs to us all. With the Bible in our hand we should cry ; I believe what God has revealed in this Book ; I will obediently keep His commands ; I hope for that which He has promised . Christians, give ear! There is only one Life, but Death comes to us in a thousand forms. There is only one Truth, but Error has a thousand forms. There is only one Christ, but a thousand Anti-Christs…..So thou knowest, O Christendom, what is the one thing needful. Either thou turnest back to Christ or thou goest to destruction like the Anti-Christ. If thou art wise and wilt live, follow the Leader of Life. But you, Christians, rejoice in your being caught up…hear the Words of your Heavenly leader , “Come unto me,’…..Answer with one voice, ” We come! (The Voice of the Morning , 1660)
There has been an ancient battle which will soon unveil itself once again. There are the genuine saints and then there are the religious, the people of the world. In the Reformation, Luther made a fatal mistake. He rejected the notion of a church of “believers,’ in favor of the State church. The State church gave aid and false comfort to the general population at large. It lulled them into a false sense of security, in effect it said “peace, peace, where there was no peace.” The State church today is represented by a thousand denominational and non-denominational churches. In the average church in America for instance, almost half of every congregation is divorced, yet the hirelings remain silent. Materialism and worldliness is rampant, yet again, silence. This modern church model is based on the Catholic model where the power lies in the hands of the priest, which we now call the minister or the pastor. It is true that he does not claim to turn the bread into the body of Jesus or the wine into His blood, but none-the less, the power resides within the one man, who relies on the people to put food on his table.
When this structure is swept away, then the genuine priesthood of believers will arise. This sleeping body of people will awake and walk in their giftings. Now Satan has always violently opposed the genuine witness of the Lord Jesus here on this earth, and he has typically used the religious man and woman to do it, this tactic will not change. What now simmers under the surface, resentment of the religious man toward those who have a genuine faith and walk in the holiness of the Lord, will come boiling and bubbling to the surface and Satan will seek a “final solution, for the “Christian problem.” Yet, as the enemy comes in like a flood, so the Lord will raise up a standard, He will pour His Spirit out upon His children and they will walk in a biblical power that the world has not seen for a long time. The Lord always enables those that He calls, He equips us for what He calls us to do. And all of this is surely at the door. What will be the catalyst for this change? Only the Lord knows..............bro Frank |