An elderly lady in her 90s wasn’t sure what I meant when I publicly announced in a local church recently that it was the Lord Who closed our churches in 2020. Uncertainty about this is completely understandable but I hope this video helps to address what is now a chasm of more than 3 years.
It’s a tender picture: a fine Christian lady in her ninth decade understandably struggling to grasp the need of God to “smite” His Bride.
Here’s T.A-Sparks:
“…we see from history how the Lord again and again has had to smite with smashing blows things which in themselves were good, in order to save His people unto Himself personally….”
Last weekend I spoke in a church near to Liverpool, England. Beginning with an introduction to our fundamental conviction about the current juncture of the Church, here are two sessions working through Psalm 77.
As I emphasise towards the end of this video, it’s not my business to know whether this kind of biblical error is wilful or ignorant — God alone knows — and I pray that grace teaches people to say “No!” to ungodliness in this church.
However, it is the business of us all to be able to discern biblical truth from spiritual folly. (See Acts 17:11).
“An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?”
In other words, false prophets and false priests are one thing, but the love of the people of God for falsity is quite another.
WHAT WILL WE DO WHEN THE END COMES? (See 1 Corinthains 10:11).
All Spirit-filled believers have responsibility to discern truth from error.
Shun (keep clear away from, avoid by flight if need be) any sort of idolatry (of loving or venerating anything more than God).
1 Corinthians 10:14 (AMP)
There are many things which are not only harmless but good in themselves, which have, nevertheless, been allowed to take the place of the Lord Himself, and good things can therefore embody the principle of idolatry in the one in whom the devotion is found. Touch some Christians, or Christian institutions, and let the touch be even in relation to something more of the Lord Himself, and you will find an uprising of jealous regard for the institution which utterly blinds to that possibility of an extra measure of the Lord Himself. You can be so devoted to a denomination, a missionary society, a piece of Christian work, that there is no room for any extra measure of the Lord. The thing itself has become the end, the object for which you live, and when the Lord wants to get you moved on into something more of Himself, the obstacle is that good Christian work, association, institution, tradition, connection. Yes, and that is idolatry in principle, and we see from history how the Lord again and again has had to smite with smashing blows things which in themselves were good, in order to save His people unto Himself personally….
What is He after? It is Himself which He is seeking to establish as the object of man’s life, and not the things that have relation to Himself: and I say again, you meet something intensely fierce if you touch a thing, even though you are touching it maybe with a view to getting people to move on with the Lord Himself. To put that in the other way, if your appeal for moving on with the Lord seems to people to involve their having to move away from this or that or some other thing, then there is warfare; which shows that Satan in his eternal campaign of idolatry, has got a footing amongst Christians in relation to things which take the place of the Lord Himself, good things though they be in themselves; and you find, if you are spiritually sensitive, that you are not just encountering the established institutions, but you are encountering a terrific spiritual force. Is that true? It is true. Had I never come up against it, never would I have believed the terrific force there is lying behind Christian institutions if your ministry touches them. You meet something which turns upon you, and it is not just the thing or the people. It is something that threatens your very life, to slay, and this in principle and essence, beloved, is idolatry; because its ultimate effect is that even the Lord cannot have what His heart is set upon and get His people spiritually where He wants them, because they are so bound up with His things. They are not able to discriminate between His things and Himself.
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