December 15, 2005
Ever since the genesis of the war between light and darkness, between good and evil, between Lucifer and his armies and God, the enemy has known that even he must submit, even he must obey the Creator of all that is.
The enemy has also known that God's faithfulness endures, and if man is faithful to God, God will be faithful to man. Then the devil found a loophole. Get man to distance himself from God, get man to reject his Creator, and as they wander away from the light of His love, they wander out of His sphere of protection. The enemy realized that God will not force His protection on a soul that rejects it, and with enough willful rejection the inevitable end becomes God leaving man to the desires of his own heart.
And so, with cunning and great patience, the enemy devised his plans, laid the groundwork, and waited for the house of God to wander so far off the path of righteousness that God would not recognize His house as His own anymore.
Because as human beings we are tethered to this physical world by the temporary nature of our flesh, often times we fail to see the long term ramifications of the seemingly insignificant events taking place all around us. We dismiss the small battles the enemy wins on a daily basis, not realizing that if you lose enough small battles, you have already lost the big war.
We also seem to think that the enemy's battle is with the world. We have posted sentries on the walls of the city, we have reinforced our defenses, but sadly our sentries have fallen into a deep slumber, and the attacks we anticipate as coming from outside the camp most often come from within. Enough wolves have snuck by the watchmen undetected, enough heresy is being preached from today's pulpits, enough duplicity and hypocrisy is found in the hearts of those who claim to be of God, that lawlessness abounds within God's house.
It was never the enemy's intention to cause the world to be more evil, because the world becomes more evil of its own accord. A seared conscience does not merely maintain its level of immorality but is pulled ever downward into the abyss, requiring more sinister, and loathsome acts of depravity to feed the darkness that continues to consume from within.
The enemy's intention has always been, since the moment he was cast out of heaven to deceive those in whom God resided, to corrupt the righteous. To put a stumbling block between the children of God and their Creator, and thereby prevent them from cementing a true and lasting relationship, an eternal covenant with Him.
He is ceaselessly working toward this goal, and if the word of God is any indicator it seems to a certain degree he will succeed in bringing lawlessness to the house of God.
Though the house of God ought to be both bound to and constrained by the Word of God, we have found ways of reinterpreting that which is not given to interpretation, of putting our own twist on fundamental teachings of the faith, that if altered become powerless and without substance.
There is more to the faith, than merely being a moral person. There is more to salvation than daily striving to maintain a level of morality, minimally higher than the world's, all the while thinking ourselves worthy of all that God has reserved for his children, entitled, because we speak the Name, utter the prayers, and give our money.
Absent of true knowledge, and a true understanding of what God requires of His own, all we are doing is mocking God with our traditions, denying the power that sets our faith apart from every other in this world, and bringing God down to an inferior level where He is no longer the holy, righteous, omnipotent, and omniscient God who will accept nothing less than what He has demanded, but a double minded, overly tolerant God who understands the frailty of the human condition and so requires nothing more of us, than a ceremony, an offering, and an acknowledgment once in awhile.
We have done our best to minimize the need for a relationship with God in the modern era church, we have gone out of our way to reassure the loyal masses that the bar has been lowered, the standard no longer applies, and those that came before us, those that bled and died, suffered and wept, though commendable for their actions were extremists, zealots, men whose ministries did not flourish, men who never grew to prominence, because they never grasped the concept of going along, to get along.
The modern day church has entered into an age of lawlessness. It is something so starkly evident, that even the world has done a double take at the changes, somewhat jealous of the success this watered down message of the Gospel is having with the masses, seeing their market share slip away, realizing that what most are preaching from the pulpit today, though no more substantive than their own self help rhetoric, is having wider appeal because of the spiritual connotations.
What is lawlessness one might ask? In my humble opinion, lawlessness is anything that causes one to willingly compromise the precepts and fundamental teachings of God's word, no matter the reason. I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy than God's word no longer being preached in God's house, of men who ought to know better substituting the truth of the living Bible, with humanism and earthly pursuits.
Why write concerning this topic now? Simply because lawlessness is one of the harbingers of the end times, one of the signs by which we would know that the end of the age is at hand. Among the many things Christ singled out as being signs of the end times, he said, that due to an abundance of lawlessness, the love of many would grow cold. It would seem, the prophecy that Christ gave over 2000 years ago, is coming to pass before our very eyes, for although the number of churchgoers has grown dramatically in the past few years, the hunger for the truth of God's word has diminished drastically.
We walk into the house of God expecting to be entertained rather than be challenged, we enter into His temple hoping to laugh rather than weep. We puff up with praise and adoration those who sparingly if ever speak the name of Jesus from the pulpit, while detesting, mocking, and rejecting those who would dare to preach the cross, the Christ, and the truth.
Make no mistake dear friend, we are today, in this hour in the grips of lawlessness, too busy reveling in our newfound political clout, and financial attributes to notice that the enemy has won yet another battle, and with every step we take leading us away from the truth, we are one step closer to the darkness. When did our light begin to flicker? When did we become more concerned about these present lives, than our eternal souls? When did we begin to compromise? When did we sell our birthright for some bread and lentil stew? When did we stop caring that the lambs were being devoured from within, having plugged our ears and closed our hearts to their cries?
These are the questions that should stir us, like a thunderclap on a bright blue-sky day. They are the questions that should compel us to cry out, press in, and evaluate our own individual responsibilities in the face an all-knowing God.
If we do not stand who will stand. If we do not speak out who will speak on our behalf? Especially now, we cannot and must not adopt a posture of indifference, to the lawlessness that surrounds us, for every one of us will be called to answer for that indifference.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.