Choose Now Before its too Late

The problem of pride has destroyed every relationship that has been broken, every war that has occurred, every suicide and every crime that has ever been committed.

And, we know who the father of this pride is and where it got him. That is the devil, he started it and it is going to land him in hell for eternity, as well as all those who chose to follow him instead of Christ.

Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, He loved and died to save us. The only thing between us and Christ is that pride and the devil.

We can either be controlled by Christ and go to heaven or we can be controlled by the devil and go to hell, it is completely our own choice.

Joshua 24:14-15
Choose Whom You Will Serve
14 “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. 15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

All Bad or All Good, Black and White Thinking

The reason so many in the younger generation become unglued when someone tells them they are wrong or need correction even in the mildest terms, is because of the excessive praise that has been heaped upon them in their youth. Praise that has only served to make the youngsters feel perfect and special all the time, they cannot abide being viewed as anything other than exalted in the eyes of others. It really translates into a lack of confidence that they can be authentic and still be loved.

If they do not see themselves as special, then they must be all bad, in their own minds.

The only reason some get their feelings hurt is because so many people believe if we disagree with them, that means they are all bad.

The black and white thinking of today has grown along with the proliferation of the self esteem teaching. We are either a god or we are the devil, there is no in between for our culture.

If someone doesn't like our belief, then they judge us as all bad, if they like our beliefs then they judge us as godlike. There are idols in the hearts of those who must perceive any human being as being all good, only God fits that bill.

Those who are judged as all bad, are treated disrespectfully with contempt while the all good person is praised ad nauseam. When someone cannot see people as human beings with flaws as well as assets, there is a self focus of intense superiority.

The only reason for this black and white thinking is because the one who is judging has a superior view of their own character and importance, usually not warranted, but nonetheless deeply entrenched in self worship. They evaluate others they think do not measure up to themselves.

Romans 12:3 "For I say to every man that is among you, through the grace given unto me, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."

The most humble person will not be thinking much about themselves at all, except when they want to grow in holiness. Then it is a coming to Christ in humility to be changed by Him. Those who elevate themselves above God and others, will not learn and grow, they remain spiritual infants their entire lives, until which point they can see themselves in truth and become broken over their own pride.

One cannot become born again unless they come to the place of realization that they are full of deceit and self worship. Only then can they be changed into a new creation. God will never change a prideful person who does not want to or thinks they don't need to be changed.

When you see an excessively prideful person who argues continually to win in everything, then you may be watching someone who has never been broken over their sinfulness and therefore is not born again.

The One Man Pastor System is not Biblical

It has been my personal experience with the modern "pastor", wants only followers, yes men who will fawn all over them rather than equals who will challenge them to remain Biblical.

The one man pastor system is not Biblical and creates narcissists who think they are above the people, they are the modern day Pharisees.

When we do not allow godly men within the gathering to participate in the teaching and preaching, we are elevating a man with "a degree", ordained by man, to take center stage while godly other men remain in the pews unable to express themselves.

The Biblical model of leadership is an Eldership, more than one man who take care of business, as well as other men in the gathering who preach and teach as led by the Holy Spirit.

Each man getting up to give a word, question the speaker, even correcting a wrong statement of the speaker during the preaching, is the Biblical model. No man is all right, God knows this, that's why His mandate was for all men to participate. When one speaks others openly evaluate and comment in the gathering.

This model is nearly gone now in the modern gatherings. This mandate for all to participate has been abandoned by most gatherings today in favor of a one man pastor who has been educated by an institution, rather than by the Holy Spirit. These educated men place their trust in their schooling rather than in Christ.

God never intended for there to be "underlings" and "superiors" in the church gatherings. Leaders are to lead by example and teaching, not by man made rules and mandates God never commanded. My eyes to the misuse of Scripture as I came out of the Catholic church. Many protestant gatherings are doing the same thing many Catholics do, that is elevate one man above others as though that one man has a special conduit to God more than other believers. This is wrong and not at all God's model of the gathering of believers. There are those in the protestant church who think they are above the Catholics because they don't have a pope, but the do have their form of a pope, that is those who have degrees and have been designated by their parent organization to be the preachers.

Each gathering, according to the Bible is autonomous to every other gathering. The preaches ought to be coming from among the people, not hirelings from outside to be paid a salary. It is one thing to give some money to a traveling preacher to help pay expenses, it is quite another to pay a "salary" to someone to be the leader. God never told us to pay a salary to those who preach in the local gathering.

1 Peter 5:2-3 "…2 Be shepherds of God’s flock that is among you, watching over them not out of compulsion, but because it is God’s will; not out of greed, but out of eagerness; 3 not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. "

I cringe a little every time I hear someone say, "pastor whoever", in a description of someone who leads. "pastor" is not a title or a position, according to God's word it is a gift and many men in the gathering should have it. When only those who come out of formal schooling are allowed to preach and teach, it is a demonstration of man relying on man rather than man relying on the Holy Spirit. We see no model in the Word of God, of a man attending a college to become a Biblical leader. The prophets of old spent time in God's Word and alone with Him, their marching orders came from God. Just as ours come from Christ Who lives in us.

1 John 2:27
"27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him."

There is an amazing blessing in any gathering when those chosen to lead are one of several and gifted in preaching. They are led by the Holy Spirit and not affected by whether or not they could get fired. There are so many problems created by the one man pastor system that we see today. One of these problems is the tendency for the "pastor" to be careful what he says so he will not lose his job. Another tendency is to seek to find what the people want, entertainment and foolishness to keep the people coming. If this hireling can keep the people coming, he has a guaranteed salary.

Often the one man pastor system tends to cause a sense of superiority in the one who is given so much praise and responsibility. There have been articles written on this very subject, that is 90% of the pastors in the pulpits today are narcissists. They refuse to take correction, they will not change their view when challenged that it is not Biblical and they will even seek to chase away the Biblical believers to maintain their status of superiority.

There are so many problems with this one man pastor system, it could all be written in a book and probably has been.

I reject a system that is not mandated by God, a system that is man's idea to keep the masses controlled and feeling a sense of inferiority to the leaders.

The Holy Spirit dwells in EVERY believer. The men are told to be the leaders, preachers and teachers in the formal gathering, all of the men participate. The woman are allowed to share as long as they are covered but they do not step out of their order in the mandate to be the leaders.

May many who read this go to prayer, asking God to show them. It is very hard to come out of a system in which we have been entrenched for three generations. So many people think it strange when a gathering has no pastor who is over everyone. I left that system behind when I left the Catholic church, that is when the Lord opened my eyes to the false system even in the protestant church.

So many things in the protestant church follow the model of the Catholic church, in the holidays, the one man pastor system and the form of worship. Someone asked me one day if a Catholic can be saved, my response was "can a protestant be saved." I was not saying that Catholics who remain in the church are saved, I was saying that many protestants are not saved any more than the Catholics.
When we become born again we put behind us all those man made traditions that were never mandated or encouraged by Christ. We leave behind many things we were taught in favor of obeying the Bible.

What should we be asking? Here it is; "what does the Bible say about this" and "Lord what do you want."

While Man Trusts in Man, the Frog Boils

Our previous president was a dictatorial one, not even a very good deception, actually easily discerned as one who wanted to be a king. Even the president we have now, is a part of the end times events.

My husband thinks this is a pause in the pregnancy, he may be right, however personally I think it is an increase in the birth pangs of the end times. Those who believe our president is doing what the people want, must admit that the country as a whole is working to destroy him.

The destroyers believe he is a representation of righteousness, it isn't true, but their perception creates in them a wrath against him and those they believe supported him. What they don't know is that God placed our president there, but not for the reason many Christians may think.

The anti-christ will be more subtle, covert and deceptive than any other who has ever lived. Those who claim to be Christians will love him, they will fawn all over him the way they do other political entities as well as popular talk show hosts and famous "Christian" rock singers.

God is not going to save America, He is in the process right now of discipline. At this time God is allowing the consequences of our own foolishness to spank us.

The families are pretty much destroyed, even the good ones have adult children who have rebelled against truth and have no love for their parents. All other families are broken beyond repair and don't even think anything is wrong.

2 Timothy 3:1-5 "3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, [a]haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of [b]godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."

Millions of babies have been slaughtered in the name of personal convenience, while pornography and movies have increased in wickedness. Many shout "freedom of speech", while they prevent the truth tellers from having their say. Censoring those who speak the truth about God, the "freedom of speechers" isolate and mock those who love God's word.

Most people don't really see what is going on in our culture, they have accepted things as normal and natural, that were not normal or natural just one generation ago. They think this is how life is suppose to be, not realizing that the way things are now is a judgment against us.

I don't see the population as a whole becoming more aware of their sin, just the opposite, they are becoming accustomed to and accepting of sin, even bludgeoning those who would say it is bad.

To make matters worse, even those in the churches are claiming love by accepting sin when the opposite is true, it is not love to accept sin in the body. Their love of the acceptance of sin is growing while their love for the truth teller is missing entirely, even a hatred toward those who tell the truth of the Bible is increasing in the gatherings that call themselves the church.

Back in the day, when I was young, the makers of movies and television shows knew the culture as a whole would not tolerate filthy language in the shows they produced, so they left them out or cloaked them in other language that would make the people think of those unacceptable words without actually saying them. The people had little discernment so the next change was not even noticed.

As time went on, the language in the movies and TV changed, one word here for a little while, then another added in a couple of years. Each new word that was added was ignored because, "it was only one word in the whole show." It reminds me of the frog that is boiling in the pot. Beginning in the pot with the cold water the frog enjoyed, gradually the water got warmer but the frog was not noticing it, until one day the frog dies because the water is too hot, but by then the frog was too tired and weak to jump out of the very water that would boil him to death.

We are there folks, the things that most believers tolerate or ignore today in the media is astounding. The liberal agenda in the movie industry is slowly boiling away our Biblical standards, they have been boiled down to dregs, slosh and we think what we are seeing is deep and inspiring.

I hear people saying this all the time, "that movie changed my life", as though one hour ago they were not thinking anything important and all of a sudden as they walk out of the theater they are completely different people.

All that happened was that the emotions were aroused for the moment, and in the morning they will wake up sober again after drinking in the rum laced Coolaide, resuming the same life they always practiced day after day, day in and day out. Nothing changed, the words they spoke on the way out of the theater were nothing more than temporary emotions that they enjoyed during the movie, only a few short hours later nothing in their life was different.

When we live on a continual diet of emotions, anything can fool us for a short time. When we are continually being momentarily fooled by clever emotional charges, eventually we will buy into and become sold out to a lie. This is how the spirit of anti-christ is working in the world today and the deceptions are getting more frequent and more intense as the people become accustomed to living life in an emotional rather than rational state of being.

This is the reason I challenge others and try to practice myself is continual evaluation of everything I hear, see and read. It is so easy to get caught up in the emotions of things, clouding judgment, and yes we should judge everything, or we will be that frog in the pot of hot water, where most people dwell today.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 "…14 The natural man does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is not subject to anyone’s judgment. 16“For who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.…"

1 Thessalonians 5:21
"21 Test all things; hold fast what is good."

Notice that we are COMMANDED to test all things, evaluate and judge, to refuse to do so is disobedience toward God. You will hear lots of people, family members and even church attendees who will tell you not to judge, this is a lie from the pit of hell. If we do not judge everything according to the word of God, our minds will become like mush, believing everything we hear and falling into error continually.

1 John 4
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.
6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.
15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
19 We love because he first loved us.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother."

Recapping this passage:
1. We are able to love God's way because we are born again and because He is love.
2. God's love is based on truth, we correct others who are in error or lack wisdom because of our love for God and for them.
3. It is only truth that sets us free, if we will not seek truth, then we will not have God's love.
4. The two greatest commandments are to love God with our whole being and then to love our brother.
5. How do we love? We love by speaking the truth of God's Word, never considering it love to indulge others in wrong thinking just to make them "feel" good about themselves, this is actually indifference, which is a from of hate. 6. If we fear the wrath of man we cannot fear God. We must fear God, rather than man.
7. When we confess Christ it is not mere words, but in lifestyle as well. When we fear man we live the way man wants us to live. When we fear God we will live the way God wants us to live.
8. Trusting in man leads to death, but trusting in God leads to life.