The Church of Jesus Christ has come so far from the Church of Acts, where apostles worked works and believed in God, and held no loyalty to anything but their God.
It seems that Christians nowdays are willing to go back to the Old Testament to justify their lifestyles. How do I say this?
A few days ago, I got an email from a person I know that goes to a large Church of our faith near Sacramento. It was something political, against Obama, talking about how he must be the AntiChrist. I replied to all that mentioned something to the effect of "The AntiChrist will be someone whom even the elect will be deceived by". Someone that I sent that to, begun writing me back, telling me how I should support my government no matter what it does, because we are fighting against evildoers and our country is a rightous one, etc etc etc.
I wrote back to her and told her that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but he would rather that they turn from their ways. She replied that it was hard to reconcile the OT to that kind of logic. A few days ago, my own parents said something of the same thing.
Why have Christians turned away from the fundamentals of Christ? Where is the Church of God? Why do supposedly Christian people think that it's okay to send the heathen to hell for all eternity? We don't live in the Old Testament anymore. We live in the New Testament... and Jesus said to the woman who was condemned, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Yet Christians nowdays want the vengeful God of the OT, not the merciful God of the NT. They themselves sit at ease in Zion and think that they have their salvation locked up.
Their definition of Revival is... "everyone getting the holy ghost, and the church rises up, and votes out all the liberals, and we run this nation as a CHRISTIAN nation just like it's founders intended". The Church of Jesus Christ is not anything like that. The countries of this world, including this one, are under the control of the devil, according to the Bible. God GAVE that power and glory of the countries to satan, they are delivered to him until the time comes. Why do we want to pretend that we are doing God's work by killing muslims? There is a wave of revival going on in Iran right now... sure, Christians are murdered and persecuted there, but people are getting saved too! Why do we want to bring the power of God down to be used to kill humans, when God would rather have them saved?
I remember in the Bible, John and James, who wanted Jesus to destroy Samaritians with fire because they wouldn't allow Jesus to pass through. Jesus said that "the son of man is not come to destroy mens lives, but to save them". Christians nowdays are not worthy of that title. If you aren't "Christ like"... you aren't "Christian". That's what Christian means. So if you are willing to give a pass to killing people just because they are muslim, then you are not Christian. If you label innocents as "collateral damage", then you are not Christian. If you want to continue wars against anyone because they threaten your way of life, you are not Christian. If you want to be Christian, you should seperate yourself from this world, not be "entangled" in the bondages and the affairs of this life.
I'm obviously not talking about going off to live in a commune. I'm talking about actually having a Christian attitude, an attitude that is Christ like. Forget the OT, and what it says about Israel's extermination of wicked races. We don't live in that time anymore, we live under God's mercy... and if you aren't willing to display God's mercies, you aren't willing to receive God's mercy. Ponder that for a while.
Where is the church of Jesus Christ? Where are his followers? Where are those that are willing to stand up for what is right? They are few.
