The Church has lost the heart of God. Instead of doing something from a place of perfect love and being motivated personally to help others, we enroll in projects. Whenever there is a problem like hunger or a need to connect with neighbors, the Church boards decide that it is their duty to start a project to reach those people. The problem is that people are not a project! Jesus did not go to the masses and treat them like their were an obligation or program! He tended to their needs with love. It says over and over in the Gospels, "he was moved by compassion."
Christ's Church was meant to be a family, not a fraternity! The Lord's followers were to "love their neighbors as themselves." Would any of us like to be treated like a project? Would you or I want some cooperate Church reach out to us because of duty and that it will increase their numbers? No, we would feel offended that instead of being treated like brothers or sisters in Christ, we are being treated like some political cause.
Mother Teresa said, "do small things with great love." The Church is doing the contrast, it is laboring for big projects with little love and hoping that benevolence with sway people to believe. What the cooperate Church fails to see is that people care just as much about how the gift is given as they do about the gift. If someone gives you one hundred dollars, but then has strings attatched and makes you feel indebted to them and controls you with guilty feelings and even becomes verbally abusive, the gift no longer is a gift. We were never suppose to reach others for Christ so they would fill a building and pay tithes to a board of elders. No! We are suppose to be Jesus to the lost, love them, and share the Gospel with them out of a heart of compassion. Our goal to share the Gospel is not to increase the quota of some denomination, but to create Disciples from a place of love. We should be motivated to share the Gospel not because we want to goude people into a fraternity, but to save their souls. We should care about their eternal fate and that they have relationship with the Supreme Loving God, not seek to increase numbers at our cathedral.
When the Gospel is introduced to most people the reaction is often positive. People love to hear about a loving God who died for the sake that he loved mankind on a cross and thus with his Blood purchased salvation and eternal love in God's presence for those who believe. The problem comes when the unbeliever then points to God's Church and says "Your Jesus is loving, why aren't you?" The famous reformer and politician Ghandi once said "I love your Christ, but I hate your Christians." Ghandi almost became a Christian, but when he was mistreated by believers who were judgemental and not full of the love of Christ, he decided to stay in the caste system of Hinduism. If we have not love, we have nothing! St. Paul said, "and these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Love is the axis that every Christian should be revolving on. Jesus so loved us that he suffered and died on the cross. And yet, we who profess to be his followers cannot seem to be motivated to love others! We are walking hypocrites and the world knows it! If they do not see love, the Love of Almighty God inside us, then we have failed! I chaste myself as much as any other Christian in this regard. We are losing the love that makes us different. Jesus said that, "they will know you are my disciples by your love for one another." (John 13:35). We have so turned the Gospel into works and projects, that there is no love at all in it anymore! We are motivated by fear, wealth, and status to expand the faith, not the motives of love, worship, and salvation. The Church will continue to corrode and collapse if we continue to treat others like projects or numbers on a ballet. If we do not reach out in love, then we are selling religion, not a relationship with the loving God.
Religion does nothing! Religion just makes already bitter people feel proud and haughty. It cannot connect lost souls to a loving God. Religion is a white washed tombs that claim more and more people with its flattery and Satanic hierarchy. What people need is a relationship with Almighty God through Jesus Christ. They need to feel and know His love! They need to personal relationship with the Creator and Savior, not some system of control and slavery! The Early Church was a family. St. Paul called the churches his children and he cared for them and they cared for him. It was not the abomination of cooperate churches of power that now sit on every hill in the world. The Church in America and Abroad has lost its first love. (Revelation 2:4). It has bowed the knee to Greed, the Wisdom of Men, and Control. Instead of imparting the love of Jesus and welcoming people into a family, churches make people jump through hoops and work to be worthy of an ounce of affection. If Jesus came back today, I think I can say with impunity that he would be ashamed. Except for The Remnant: those devout followers all over the world who have held on to the love of Christ and seek to spread it everywhere, the Church is under judgment.
There will be no escape on the Great Day of Judgement. Even if you are a believer, you will be held to account for your actions. If you chose to banish love and replace it with lust for riches and the logic of men you will be held responsible for your part in the anti-Christ movement. Yes, I boldy say that to reject the two great commandments of Loving God and Your Neighbor (Luke 10:27), you have become an anti-Christian! To favor instiutions called churches that promote pride of life, lust of the eyes, and lust of flesh over loving Jesus Christ and loving your fellow man is betrayal! How long shall the Church be hypocrites? Jesus had some very harsh things to say to the hypocrites of his day, The Pharisees and Sadducces. He called them "snakes and vipers," "Sons of their father the devil," and that they would "lead people into hell." (Matthew 23:33, John 8:44-45, and Matthew 23:15). Is not the Church doing the same? Has not the corperate and institutionalized Church of Works just replaced the Sanhedrain with their saints? Is not the Pharisee of Jesus' day the same as the Orthodox Priest of today?
Christ warns us that the lukewarm will not be with him. That he will spew them from his mouth and caste them into the gnashing of teeth (hell). (Revelation 3;16). We have churches teaching people to know about Jesus, but very few churches who teach people to personally know Jesus. There is difference between knowing about someone and knowing someone. With God it is the latter: knowing him personally, intimately, and like your closest friend, your Father, and brother. If you choose to just learn about him, you know him not and risk even with your pretentious piety being caste out on Judgement Day.
Wake up O ye saints! Let the King of Glory in! Stop impeding his way with your harden Pharoah hearts and humanist mindsets! Return to Christ in love and learn to love every man! Be transformed! Cease playing Church and be the Church (Family) of God! Amen.
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