September 19, 2008
Passing By
One young mother told me, “I had an abusive husband and for my own protection the police told me I needed to get out of town. I had money and no where to turn, so I turned to the church I’d attended all my life…and they [the leaders] turned away my request for help.” An older lady shared, “More than once when my husband was dying I asked the preacher to come by. He never did.” Certainly there may be another side to their stories, however their rejection and pain is real. In the parable of the Good Samaritan some of us can identify better with the victim, than we can with anyone else. Often requests and needs, filtered through the church office, never reach the congregational level. Consequently, who hasn’t felt that it’s our leaders and preachers who are sometimes passing us by on the other side of the road?
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think today, more than any other day in my life, I see the truth of this blog. Our church leaders have so abandoned righteousness for their own personal agendas that the church has become wholly ineffective in preventing the evil that ominously threatens to take control of the very culture in which we must live. But even at the corruption of that culture, it does not mean the culture in which those of us who have come into eternal security ends. The cleft of the rock for us only narrows, but never closes. That is not dependent upon church leaders, but upon your submission to Jesus Christ.
-----For we have not been taken out of the stream of human history. It is that stream in which God has been revealing His manifold wisdom through the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places. Though man once lived among their forebears who experienced God firsthand (Adam and Eve and their immediate generations), man so rejected God for their own rule that He washed the Earth clean by a great flood. Having been given the responsibility to deal with wickedness by requiring the blood of anyone who spilt the blood of another man, authority was still seized by leaders to build a great city and tower, again in rejection of God and His principles. After being selected as a family of men among whom God would live and do great, marvelous, and observable things, that selection was used by human leaders to elevate themselves among man. Our hearts having been made the very temple of God by the sacrifice of God’s only Son and His historical resurrection from the dead, we submitted again to the leading of men above the knowledge of the Word.
-----Parallel to man’s greed for authority on earthly thrones has been man’s greed for power upon spiritual thrones. The Kingdom of God was seized by violent men for violence, both spiritual and physical. Men have sat in the high places of the church pomping upon us their ideas of what the Bible means by this and what it means by that. Because you were not baptized right you were excommunicated from this church, but accepted by that one. Because you did not believe the bread and wine became the actual flesh and blood of Christ’s body you were excommunicated from this church and accepted by that one. Because you believed once you were saved you were always saved, because you used musical instruments in worship, because you hung up pictures of Christ and revered saints, because you worshipped on Saturday rather than Sunday, because you spoke in tongues, because you regarded a few at the pinnacle of a denominational structure as your leaders, because you sang hymns and held to traditional church culture you were excommunicated from this church and received by that one. Because you distributed the goods and services of human effort from each according to his means to each according to his needs, because your king was king by birth and not by vote, because your land fell between the land to your left and its enemy to your right you became enemies to your fellow man. All of it created by man’s greed for power over others. All of it created by the lust for the seat at the top.
-----We have failed to understand the truth about God and man. There is not one seat at the top. There are as many seats at the top as there are humans alive. And those seats are all for the sitting of Jesus Christ. The mess our world is in exists because Christian and non-Christian alike have failed to effectively allow the One to Whom that seat belongs to fully sit upon it.
-----We now face the starkly real possibility that a true evil will take man’s leading seat of the most powerful nation in the world, the most free nation, the most charitable nation, the nation most active against human indignity by human tyranny. We stand poised to watch this nation slip into tyranny itself. We have come to this sad precipice because too many good men did not become better men. We have come to it because too many better men have been too involved in securing the daily necessities of life for their loved ones. At one time, more than forty years ago, the entertainment industry of our people looked to a consortium of spiritual men for principles and guidelines for their artistic works. At that time we had a chance. But when the industry turned from them without being given an effective fight, the doom of the greatness of our culture, our, society, even our country was sealed. And great men could find few better men to elevate good men to an effective fight against it.
-----There now stands one slim chance for our future prospects. A solemn and real revival of relationship between man and Christ must take place. A genuine emptying of that top seat of the heart and invitation to its true bearer be made by us and those who are our leaders, both governmental and religious. But in as much as revival does not occur until there has been repentance, and repentance does not occur until there has been confession, and confession does not occur until there has been hearing of the Word of God, I do not hold my breathe.
-----The showing of the manifold wisdom of God to the powers and principalities in heavenly places is very close to being completed at His wrathful taking of what is His from those Who have denied Him, and at His merciful forgiveness of those who have failed Him. I stand before this precipice, hoping in my heart America will get one more chance to repent, but ready to cry out in the knowledge of His ultimate triumph, knowing the stream of human history is His stream and ends at His feet, “Bring it on, Lord Jesus, BRING IT ON!!”
Love,
Steve Corey
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