One of the reasons I believe America is going down for the count is that it is too easy and safe here to be called a Christian. The devil does not bother the churches because they are already in his pocket. He is afflicting those who have left the institutional churches and those who stand up against the sin in the institutional churches.
Satan has deceived many in all forms of false doctrine that make people feel good bout themselves and excuse their sin.
Even those who do not commit the big, obvious sins indulge in gossip, rage at disagreement unnecessarily, and are unkind in many ways that they have justified and normalized.
The Corinthian church coddled the sinning man who was sleeping with his father's wife, justifying it by claiming to do it out of love for the one committing grievous sin.
So many thiings done in the name of God in the modern churches are aginst Him. So many people who say they are "Bible believers" think just saying so makes it true, but they have no desire to search the Scriptures to evaluate themselves and become obedient to His Word.
The organized church system has become the tool of the devil, making people feel safe when they should be ashamed.
Jermiah 6:15 "Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done? They were not ashamed at all, nor did they know even how to be ashamed. Therefore, they will fall among those who fall; At the time that I punish them, they will collapse,” says the Lord."
In the matter of divorce and remarriage, we see most people accepting it as normal when it is full of destruction for families and the culture as a whole.
The same mentality that existed in the Corinthians church, thinking they were loving the sinner by accepting his sin as normal, is the same mentality we have in the churches today as people think they are being loving by not exposing divorce and remarriage.
The Corinthians church accepted sin and even encouraged it, believing they were more noble by loving the person in their sin. They were, in fact, promoting sin within the body by not rebuking it. At the end of the story, they finally obeyed God, chastised the sinning man, put him out of the gathering and eventually he repented, stopped his sin, and returned to the gathering cleansed of that sin.
The ultimate good was done by putting the sinner out of the body, not only for the one who repented and was restored but as an example to everyone else to repent from their sins and work toward holiness within the gathering.
People in the modern churches are becoming harsher, unloving, and judgmental toward the one who calls out sin while promoting the sin by accepting it as normal.
Those who accept the sin call others judgmental while they judge those who come against the sin.
This has been a favorite tactic of the devil from the beginning, to accuse the one doing right of something to make the one doing wrong seem like the victim.
Satan did this with Eve in the garden. He convinced Eve that God was wrong in withholding something from her and that God was the mean one. She listened to him because she placed her desire to have the fruit above God Who created her. God never lied to her but the devil did.
This is what divorce and remarriage are all about! The devil has used lies to convince people that God is withholding pleasure from them by expecting obedience to His Word, which is for their protection.
Because Eve chose to believe the devil instead of God, she got what she wanted, a taste of the forbidden fruit, and it cost her paradise.
God's design for marriage gives us protection, blessings, and security that broken marriages cannot have. It is a lie that second marriages after divorce can be "blended families." It is the same lie the devil used in the garden, that God didn't mean what He said or that He meant evil in His commands and principles. The devil convinced Eve of the opposite of God's ways, and it destroyed all that she had.
One of the terrible consequences of divorce and remarriage in our day is that the children learn to bail out of problems instead of working through them. The example the children learn is that no one is worth fighting for or struggling to save.
In this mess, the children have learned to discard anyone who does not please or elevate them. They refuse to hear correction, punish those who do correct them, and worse, seek to turn others against the one who upholds God's standard.
We desire to uphold God's standard for the good of the person being corrected. We know obeying God is far better, fulfilling, and emotionally and spiritually prosperous than disobeying God.
These violations of God's Word have created a terrible culture of simplicity, shallow thinking, and vengeful people who will not tolerate sensible thinking.
We are living in the times of 2 Timothy 3:1-5. The only recourse is to keep telling the truth, learning to ignore the attacks and get on with those who understand and agree with God.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 "1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."
So what is our response to all of this? We must just keep obeying God even if no one comes with us. We are only responsible for obeying, while everyone else is responsible to God for their own response.
Bottom line: Obey the Holy Spirit and ignore the response.
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