TAKE OFF THE GLOVES

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

There is much that can be said about this text the Lord has laid upon my heart here. Please note that I have just said, “the Lord has laid upon my heart.” This is a theological position, a firm stand; I am saying unashamedly before the world that I was involved in other projects but God the Holy Spirit has moved me to share something with His Church through this text. A couple of things now emerge: 1) I am saying I believe God “communicated” with me, and 2) If this is true, then the onus would now fall upon Him to demonstrate whether this is so – Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, Who confirmed the message of His grace (Acts 14:3).

Those in the very small local church where I am pastor, as well as those who are close to me here at Apprising Ministries, would know what is being faced and yet I still love Jesus enough to do exactly what I feel He tells me to do. And I often express that this means no matter what; to the end. Please understand that all I have just said is what anyone called as one of the Lord’s teachers should be able to say.

And this is simply to testify and to lead by example (see–Philippians 4:9). If I am unfit, or if I have spoken presumptuously, then know I pray that God will shut me down immediately. I have often said to my Master, “if there is no need for the things I feel led to teach then please get rid of me. Jesus, You have enough knuckleheads running around claiming to have a word from the Lord, and You sure wouldn’t need yet another one.”

I tell you all of this in the Spirit of Isaiah 12:2 – “Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation.” And as I have said before, with the things I am already on record about, and with the messages as I am sharing here, if Christ has not sent me I’ll not be around very long. But I can live with that because I believe His deliverance is at hand.

Turning Love Backward

Now I have shared all of that in order to share this; the time has arrived in the Church of Jesus Christ for us to take off the gloves and to counterattack this infiltration into His Body by men who know not God and do not believe His Word. There will be nothing gained by foolish “conversation” with unregenerate Emergent men who pervert the faith with their Gnostic views of contemplative spirituality. We must preach the absolute Truth of Holy Scripture to them and then pray that God will open their eyes before not only they are lost, but all those who follow them into the matrix of their neopagan mysticism.

And as you see above this comes from one who fully believes in experience with the Lord, and is actively involved with a pursuit of God. As such I spiritually lean across the table as it were, look them straight in the eye and say to such men: “Either your views about how we can commune with our God are right; or those I have been expressing in my articles on the Emergent Church and contemplative spirituality are.” For you see men and women, there truly is no middle ground. Again, I personally can live with that.

What Christ has sent me to say here is this: The man-pleasing new evangelical Ecumenical Church of Deceit (ECoD) has turned the idea of love exactly backward. And this is quite easily proved by the text of the Bible itself. We specifically note the end of the b part of verse 28 in the above text where Jesus is asked – “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” The King James Version here brings my point out even a little clearer when it reads – “Which is the first commandment of all?” This would mean that Christ–the LORD God Almighty in human flesh–has just been asked by one of His Own creations to explain to him, “in all of Your Word, what is the most important thing a man can possibly do while he is here on this cursed earth.”

In the Master’s cogent response comes the revelation of how the Purpose Driven Church, the Emergent Church, the Word Faith Church, and their apostate Mother the Church of Rome that comprise what I have been calling the ECoD have actually reversed that which is most important. Look at verse 29, and I’ll use the King James here out of respect to my fundamentalist brothers:

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

Can you see that, “The most important [Commandment],” says Jesus, is to “Love the Lord your God.” And then we get to verse 31 – And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. We must come to understand that while there are no greater commandments than these, they are simply not equal to each other. Verse 31 again – The second is this,” meaning obviously that it is not the first, nor the greatest. Men and women, tied up in our very commission as the Body of Christ, His Church is our Lord’s clear command in John 20:21 – “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”

Therefore our allegiance as “ambassadors for Christ” is to be fiercely loyal to the LORD our God no matter whom it is we must facedown or confront. You must understand that it is only from this kind of love that Christ will then move through us to do all the other things the ECoD thinks it does on its own. We have forgotten that this is what Jesus means when He plainly tells us:

“But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (Matthew 10:33-40, NASB)

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me.”

Rise Up O Men Of God

I tell you in the Lord that we who love God must be willing to take off the gloves and ride to the sound of the guns. Nothing good will ever come from compromising with these people whose spiritual fathers already perished in the Cult of Liberalism. We cannot compromise with counterfeit Christians who seek special revelation apart from the Bible through the reemergence of this neoplatonic mysticism they call contemplative spirituality.

Today I exhort you to rise up with us and stand for Jesus against this satanic infiltration into our Lord’s Church by these “seducing spirits” with their “doctrines of devils.” O yes, it will likely cost you something personally as you come to see the leaders of the ECoD in John 8:42-46; but if you claim to be someone sent by Christ to teach (see–James 3:1), the lateness of the hour demands that you now ask yourself a hard question: “In the time in which He was sent, what exactly did the same stance cost the Lord you say you love?”

Today, my dear brothers and sisters I also strongly encourage you to contemplate this along with me:

And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?