August 12, 2015
From Within
A pastor was in the middle of
his series on the seven letters of Revelation and he noted that with the church
in Smyrna Satan’s tactic was to work from the outside in. However, with the
church in Pergamum, Satan was trying to destroy the church from within. Jesus
said, “I know where you live—where Satan has his throne” (Rev 2:13 NIV). The
pastor said, “The church was under tremendous pressure. You may think your city
is bad, but you haven’t lived where Satan lives!” While the church itself was
holding onto the name of Jesus, there were people in the congregation who were
holding on the teachings of Balaam and the Nicolaitans.” Unfortunately many people
today are trying so hard to be PC and inclusive that they too are allowing
pagan teachings to infiltrate their thoughts and the church. The warning Jesus
gave to Pergamum is applicable to us today, “Repent therefore! Otherwise, I
will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth”
(Rev 2:16 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Revelation is among the cooler books of the Bible. If you back off it some and give it room to say what it says, it will speak to three audiences, which are all part of just one, and about three different time frames of three different situations, which in essence are all of one, too. The first audience are those living in the churches of John’s day to whom the Lord sent the letters. The second are all of those living in the Lord since then and all those who will live in the Lord until He returns. The third audience is you, now, wherever your are. Each soul reading Revelation is its targeted audience. All three messages are valid, each as valid as the other.
-----The first message is purely historical. It wasn’t history to those of John’s day, but as time seems to render its affects, it soon became that. Also, to the audience of John’s day the second was a prophetic message outlining the church until all is finished. By now, time has validated that prophecy by matching it with history. And anyone anytime reading these seven letters to the churches can see the dangerous tendencies of human nature chipping away at the relationship he presently has with the Lord, as well as the spiritual remedy for those tendencies.
-----A great altar to Zeus and Athena was built at Pergamum in the early second century BC. It is somewhat incorrect to think of Zeus and Athena as merely imposters dredged up from imagination. Like the renowned game of “telephone“ demonstrates, Zeus is one of many similarly produced products of knowledge about God having been passed from one rebellious generation to the next, becoming ever more and more distorted. And Athena is that same type product of passing down the concept of the woman whose seed is our deliverance from evil. Zeus and Athena are grossly misshapen reflections of the true God and his work.
-----Also at Pergamum was a great library rivaling, but not surpassing, that of Alexandria. Libraries are fountains to the thirst for knowledge. But they are poison to any parched mind not craving the truth about God. The combination of such a gloriously embellished misperception as were Zeus, Athena, and their altar being placed in the proximity of a vast supply of knowledge makes very much the same affects as the striped sticks Jacob set in front of Laban’s flocks at their watering holes. A wealth of deceit twisted from tortured truths flow through populations iconizing what they should not until the populations themselves become what they should not be.
-----And you’ve nailed this message to our churches. The Reverend Louis Farrakhan is a good example at this date in time. PC fascism will tolerate nothing negative said about this man because he’s black and Muslim. This poison even seeps into churches. Yet, if the library about him was not so awash in adulation, buried truth would speak volumes about his calling forth “ten thousand” blacks to riot and pillage neighborhoods other folks try to make peaceful. Other examples are innumerable, for Satan has an icon to sit on every important throne of life, including evolution upon creation’s seat, abortion upon parenthood’s seat, sex upon love’s seat, and, unfortunately, many church leaders sitting in the place of the church’s head. They all point out misinformation so that information will not destroy what they enjoy. Satan’s throne lives on, for now.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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