Though now that I have your attention, I'll admit I'm not giving away free stuff. However, I think this title attracted more attention than the ones I was thinking of putting, such as:
Warning: Conviction Ahead!
Followed by a bunch of scripture. But being as this post is concerning those who are Christians only by name and not by life, in other words: HYPOCRITES, I want as many people reading this as possible. I especially want those who fall into that category to read this! Hopefully those who would stop reading right here will be mad enough at me to continue reading this because I called you a hypocrite. But just like Jesus called certain ones (especially those who were religious), pigs, snakes, wolves, white-washed graves, etc, I'm simply being blunt here.
Let's get on with it, shall we? This morning I read this article from Christianpost.com: Falling on Deaf Ears? and I honestly got upset. Furious actually. Not many things get me angry, but "Christians" who teach unbiblical teachings, mislead others, and other things that are hypocritical....that does get me upset. Of course this followed a few days of reading some other articles around the web that talked about churches and Christians going completely against the Bible and teaching others to do likewise. So it's been building up, I suppose.
The article talks about how many congregations and Christians don't want to hear the Bible being taught. It speaks of how for the most part people have become so narcissistic. Here's a quote from the article quoting another article:
It has been said to the point of boredom that we live in a narcissistic age, where we are wont to fixate on our needs, our wants, our wishes, and our hopes-at the expense of others and certainly at the expense of God. . . .
It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out. Don't spend a lot of time in the Bible, we tell our preachers, but be sure to get to personal illustrations, examples from daily life, and most importantly, an application that we can use.I fully agree that this seems to be the state of the world---and the church apparently---that we live in. And it's reprehensible!
First off . . . since when do Christians believe the Bible is NOT relevant to today?! I'm not talking to people who are NOT Christians here. I'm talking to those who claim to be Christians! Since when does God's Word, not apply to us today? Have you taken up the belief that the Bible is merely a book of stories? Book or rules and laws? And outdated book that was written thousands of years ago and cannot possibly apply to us today? To that I say, SHAME ON YOU!
How in the world can someone claim to be a follower of the teachings of Christ, if that person doesn't even KNOW what the teachings of Christ are, because they don't believe or read the Bible as being relevant to today? If it's not relevant to today then we've no need to listen to the Bible, right?! You claim to love God and yet have no desire to listen to what He says! Prove to me that the Bible is not relevant to today! Prove to me that you can be a Christian and not care about the Word of God! Prove it! And I don't mean your opinions, I mean proof, Christian. If you throw out parts of the Bible as irrelevant, then you might as well throw out all of it. How can you tell which parts are good and which parts are bad? Your own personal thoughts? The collective thoughts of others as well as yourself? "...yea, let God be true, but every man a liar..." (Romans 3:4)
How does one become Saved? Become a Christian? Through faith in Jesus, correct? (Ephesians 2:8-9)
How does one GET faith to begin with? From hearing the WORD OF GOD (Romans 10:17)
So take away the Word of God, you take away your faith which takes away your salvation!
And yet not only so, but faith in Jesus isn't exactly what gets you saved, but instead you have to choose to FOLLOW Jesus. So saying "I believe Jesus is the Son of God and He died on the cross for my sins" isn't exactly going to get you into heaven. You may get in---if you die right then and there before you have the chance to live your faith out in your life. But if not, well . . . . even the Devil Himself Believes in Jesus (James 2:19), but is he getting into heaven? NO because he doesn't actively choose to follow Jesus of course! Faith is not just believing. Faith is acting upon that belief as well.
So how can you actively follow Jesus if you cast out the very words He has spoken that were written down?!
You who don't care about hearing the Bible but prefer something that is more like entertaining stories about life and your own personal situations (which begs me to question, why is it you cannot relate the Bible to your life? There's a problem there if you cannot), you are become like those warned about in the books of Timothy, that were going to show up during the last days "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." (2 Timothy 4:3-4) Christians who pick and choose the teachers based upon what they like to hear, having ITCHING EARS, in other words hearing what they want to hear, wanting to be entertained . . . turning away from the TRUTH and turning to fables instead. What is the Truth?
John 17:17 "Sanctify them through thy truth: THY WORD IS TRUTH."
John 8:31-32 "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in MY WORD, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the TRUTH, and the truth shall make you free."
God's Word is not subject to Time, just like God Himself is not subject to time. There is no turning that goes on with Him (James 1:17). His Word is settled FOREVER in Heaven (Psalm 119:89)
The end of the matter is this: If you call yourself a Christian, and then don't care about learning the Word of God or you believe it's not even relevant to today, and you'd rather hear stories and fables and be entertained with some fun stuff, then you are a hypocrite. Simply put. To call yourself a Christian, means you are telling other people you are a follower of Christ. First off that's lying because you don't even care to learn what Christ taught and therefore cannot follow Him (John 14:23-24, 1 John 2:4), and second off you are telling someone else through your title of Christian, that they should follow Christ, and yet you yourself do NOT! It's just like the Jews who told the non-jews to live like the Jews under the jewish laws, and yet they themselves didn't even do so (Galatians 2:14).
The Bible is like food for our Spiritual lives (Luke 4:4), so if you don't eat that Spiritual food, then just like your physical body will die without physical food, your spiritual life will wither away and die just the same.
The Bible is like a mirror as well, that shows us exactly who we are, and what we are like (James 1:22-24). If you don't actually DO the Word of God, but only hear it (Or worse, don't even want to hear it), then it'd be the same as you looking in the mirror in the morning and seeing you need to fix your hair, or shave, or put on some make-up, or you have something green in your teeth, and you walk away not even caring about taking care of those things.
Take away the Bible and you take away:
The Truth
The way to get faith
The faith for salvation itself
Jesus
His Teachings
Obedience to His Word which goes with salvation
God
Heaven
EVERYTHING that comes with Christianity itself!
And the Bible is like a shirt made up of a single thread. If you pull on one piece of the thread and try yanking it out because you "don't think it's reliable" or "relevant" or "necessary" then you end up pulling the entire shirt apart and you are left naked (almost like the guy in the parable in Matthew 22:11-14, who when called to Salvation/the Wedding, didn't clothe himself right or even try---didn't cloth himself with The Word, Faith, Salvation itself).
So now it's your choice: Continue in the state you're in right now, of denying and rejecting the Word of God, being a reprobate Christian hypocrite . . . or start seeking to hear and learn the Word of God. Notice I said nothing about being perfect or perfectly following the Word. I said start SEEKING the Word. Which means Repent, which means turn around and start walking in the right direction. If you start walking in the right direction, trusting in God, then God will help you to change and help you to follow His Word.
It's your choice. But now, you can never say that you were never told, or you never knew any better when you meet up with God. This stuff is common sense, but . . . like it was also warned in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, there's going to be a "falling away" of Christians before the end. But hopefully YOU won't be included in that falling away, now.
~In Christ,
Michael
