State of the Bride.

I just read an article on CNN.com about a minister who converted to Islam.

Ok, that I really would just read right over, simply because most of the people in the church today are cultural Christians and it seems that more and more "ministers" are just smart people who decided to put a religious twist on it... there's no Holy Spirit in it, so the whole thing is dead. So the first part didn't really suprise me. The second part, however, did.

She wanted to be both Muslim and Christian (while still remaining an minister in a particular denomination) and didn't see the problem with that in the slightest.

HHHHHEEEELLLLLOOOOOOOOO!!????!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Somebody please tell me you see the problem with this...

Seriously... something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Did you hear me?? WAKE UP!!!

SOMETHING IS TERRIBLY WRONG!!!!

When our ministers and pastors don't believe the stuff they're preaching, something's off... and it makes me ask serious questions of the institutions that ordained and educated them. I am terribly skeptical of seminaries and people who aced through them (I call them cemeteries). If the people at the front of the room aren't walking this stuff out, what does that say about the people they're leading?? This is why Jesus is right, as usual, that not everybody who claims to follow Jesus will enter His kingdom (Matt 7.22-23). Not everybody who shows up and sits in the pews is "in" and the people behind the pulpit have even more scrutiny to endure.

If I even need to begin to explain why this woman is out of her mind, not to mention completely blinded by the spirit of the age, I'll probably cry.

At the core of this whole thing stands one single gigantic figure: Jesus Christ. He is the figure who stands at the center of this, the entire Christian faith and all of human history. He is the Beginning and the End. Ephesians makes this incredibly clear: it's all about Him. Jesus Christ, in all His majesty and glory, will be the subject matter of all the ages.

This is what we have lost. This is the reason we live and breath (Eph. 1.7-10).

Inscriptions encircle the inside and outside of the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim site that sits upon the supposed site of the temple. On the outside are inscriptions about Allah and Muhammad and such. The inside is a different story. If you're a church-going person, picture this on the inside of your sanctuary walls or the walls of your meeting place accusations against other religions and declarations that things like Islam and Buddhism are false teachings. This is essentially the story of the inside of the Dome of the Rock. This inscription can be found there:

"The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three' - Cease! (it is) better for you! - God is only One God. Far be it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And God is sufficient as Defender. The Messiah will never scorn to be a servant unto God, nor will the favoured angels."

This is just a portion of it, but you get the idea. The underlying tone, and the one that has apparently succeeded in making its way deep into the roots of the American church is that Jesus was simply a good guy and nothing more.

Hear these words very carefully: Christianity and whatever other religion and belief system you may want to try to come up with are completely incompatible.

Completely and utterly. Humanism and Christianity are incompatible. The world and Christianity are incompatible. 99% of what is on television is incompatible with Christianity. In fact, you are incompatible with Christianity, but praise be to God for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We have this strange idea that God is so much less than He is (and the "we" I refer to here is Christians). We have this strange notion that God is pretty much cool with stuff here and that all that's really important to Him is that we love people (I say "love people" with as much sappy, hippie tone as I can muster, because that's the notion it's taken in our society) and help other people out.

In other words, be nice.

Sorry boys, that's not what Jesus said. And it's not gonna be the story when He returns to remove everything that does not stand with Him.

Reread that last sentence. I worded it very carefully. I didn't say He's going to remove everything that stands against Him, I said that He'd remove everything that isn't with Him. Big difference. There's no middle ground in the Kingdom of God. "Neutral" is a response in the negative in God's case. There is no such thing as neutral in the Kingdom of God.

You are for Him or you are against Him.

The things you take part in are either for Him or against Him. They either welcome His presence or push it away. Which one you want? I'll give you a hint: at the end of the day, it's all His and He's gonna come back to get it, so things will be a lot easier if you opt for welcoming Him. He paid a high price for His Bride and He will have her and He will remove everything that keeps Him from her.

It's time we wake up and return to our first love. It's time we wake up and see that something is terribly wrong. Matt 7.19-20 tells us that we will "know a tree by it's fruit." And in our case, there's no fruit to show. There is no evidence of the Spirit within our churches, there is no declaration of Christ, there is no deliverance from addictions and bondage, there is no meekness (all we have his weakness, and we're calling it 'meek.') We have no authority in the Spirit. We have no vision for fullness in Christ.

We sit through movies and don't think twice about the vulgar language or sex scenes, but then our friend starts to tell the waitress at a restaurant about Jesus (there's still people like that aren't there???) and we start to squirm and blush. We're so much in the world, clinging to a few nice ideas about God and heaven, that we don't even know there's more to this whole thing.

We have got to get a vision of fullness in the Lord. We have got to start walking in the things that we were created for. Only a few people are miraculously healed in Nazareth because of they had so little faith, and Jesus rebukes them for that. We, however, could be so fortunate (at this point) to aspire to being like Nazareth... for at least there were a few manifestations of the power of God there.

At least there were a few people for whom Jesus was absolutely everything.


Wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...wake up...