JESUS vs. DEAD RELIGION
Any personal or religious "spirituality" outside of regeneration in and relationship with Jesus, is not of, or from God. Christianity is an exclusive religion in that our Savior and God Himself let us know that without Jesus, it is impossible to know God.
I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE, NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME. John 14:6
There are many so called "Chrisitans" who believe that Jesus is merely "our way" to God and that all of the other religions simply have another way to God. That is not a Christian belief system at all- but rather a pantheistic system that believes that there are many ways to God. If that is your real belief, you are not a Christian at all. If you were are real Christian, you would know personally that Jesus is the ONLY WAY to know God. Other religions may have some nice, moral beliefs, and may be grounded partailly in God's truth as is Judaism, but without Jesus, or a faith that embraces Messiah, relationship with God is not possible. There is one exception.
I believe that there are some religious Jews that by God's grace have placed faith in Messiah, though they do not acknowledge Him to be Yeshua. This is the same faith that saved Moses and other Old Testament faithful who believed in the future Messiah, though they didn't know His name. There are holy Jews today who know God and love His word, and the Bible tells us that 144,000 of them will formally receive Jesus during the Tribulation. Some of them may have already received Jesus but have not revealed themselves as being believers in Yeshua.
The importance of knowing this is not so that we can act as though we are some exclusive club, and better than others as have some "Christian" movements of the past and present. But rather to not to demote Jesus to merely being one of the ways to God, when He is the ONLY WAY, because JESUS IS GOD. To ignore this fact, or to create some other religious belief system that relegates Jesus to secondary status (as being one of many "gods") is absolute BLASPHEMY. The foremost deception that Satan has attacked the church with through the ages is to get Christians to compromise their core faith as to who Jesus really is. The effect was to create dead religion that was "Christian" in name only. Organized Christianity lost its way early on. It took only 70 years for the church to morph from being a holy, underground religion that was persecuted and martyred, to becoming a state religion that began to kill and persecute others in the name of Christ. In those 70 years, Satan obviously pulled off his greatest coup when he co-opted the leadership of Christianity. That organized, dead religion was no longer anything "Christian" at all but rather the most dangerous counterfeit that the world has ever seen. During the past two millennia, the Catholic Church killed millions of people in the name of Christ. The most heinous being the dispicable torture deaths that were perptrated by the Jesuits during the Inquisition. The killings may have stopped but the twisted theology and mentality of the leadership of the Catholic Church has not.
Not to be outdone, the Calvinists of the Reformation were also killing "heretics" of the faith by burning them at the stake. Calvinism also represents a perversion of the faith from a grace based religion, to a subtle works based one. This dangerously dead religion is touted today by lovers of the Reformation like R.C. Sproul, who is well respected by most Evangelicals. His book on Preterism, leaves no doubt in my mind that Sproul is deceived about some basic important Christian doctrines. The fact that a Christian is confused about eschatology doesn't amaze me at all, but Sproul is a clear case of how even a "learned scholar" cannot interpret the deepest truths of Scripture without having spiritual anointing that unlocks the real meaning. (I am not saying that Sproul is not a Christian, only that our ability to reason [gnosis] will only take us so far, and that the deepest truths can only be understood by spiritual revelation. We are not saved by "knowledge" but by God's grace, Jesus is revealed to our inner man via the much deeper work of the Holy Spirit- NOT by our minds). Sproul basically agrees with amillennialists that we have been living in the millennium since Jesus' time. If that was where his fairy-tale beliefs that go against a treasure trove of scripture ended, it would be fairly harmless. But his kind of belief system that was invented by Augustine in the 5th century, led to a dangerous reign of terror by the Catholic church, and I find a glaring dichotomy in the fact that Reformationists like Sproul would embrace such Catholic apostasy.
Hal Lindsey, in his most recent book, "The Everlasting Hatred," analyzes these beliefs and proves that these beliefs led to intense anti-semitism as they then taught that the church replaced Israel and the Jews in every way in their new and perverted religious schema. The remainder of this apostate position is still held by the Catholic church and can be seen in the way that the church especially supports the Palestinian viewpoint. The Church believes that it is the true heir of Jerusalem- not Judaism! The Catholic church still withholds the treasures of the ancient temple that was looted by the Romans in 70 A.D., and refuse to return them to Israel! This is the fruit of replacement theology and is also found in many Protestant and Evangelical churches. It is evil and dangerous as it poses a spiritual and ideological threat to Israel, and in having a relationship with God. Why should Christians support Israel and its divine right to exist if God had changed His mind and now only deals with the church? Over two millennia, such a mentality led to terrible crusades, inquisitions, the brutal conquest of the new world, the brutal "holy" Roman Empire, and Hitler and his holocaust. There is nothing more that Satan loves to do than to get apostate religious zealots to hate God's chosen people, and kill others in the name of Christ. The turn towards replacement theology is made possible in the greater Evangelical church because leaders either do not know history, or have been deceived or brainwashed by the politically correct crowd.
In the body of Christ, such beliefs cause all sorts of division, and usually represent one of many compromises and deceptions that end up in such a body. Such Christians hold themselves to be superior to the "fundamentalists" who believe such things. I have experienced their snobbery and persecution. It seems as though authentic Christians are being lumped in with Jews in these last days. Praise God! What a privilege!
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