On the legislated Tithe

There are detailed biblical studies out there as to why the legislated tithe is actually an abomination. I do not think that they are really very necessary, for the case against tithing is simpler than that.

At its most simple a legislated gift given under compulsion is bribery. We who tithe under compulsion would bribe God. The sin of this should be self evident,

God's gifts are free. If they are not free they are not gifts, and indeed to attempt to buy them is to insult the Holy Spirit. This is the sin of simony as mentioned in the book of Acts where Simon Magus sought to buy the  power of the  Holy Spirit.  [ reference] Although in medieval church history this term changed its meaning to the purchase of church offices with money, something no protestant Christian would dream of doing let alone have the opportunity to do, yet the original meaning is sufficiently broad as to convict us of the very same sin of Simony.

But it is also said that God loves a cheerful giver [ref]. This is true but context must be supplied. God also loves the whole world, John 3:16 and He commended his love for sinners by dying for them. [ref] So clearly He does not love any the less those who decline to give,  lest one thing He does indeed show is favouritism or as the KJV  puts it,  is  a respecter of persons. Moreover to force oneself to give because God loves a cheerful giver is to pretend to cheerfulness, a self defeating exercise.

As with everything  pertaining to the things of God the validity of the deed comes down to motive. I Corinthians 13 makes it utterly clear that  good deeds without love do not in fact count for anything.

I submit that if one forces oneself  to anything this is not obedience at all, given that God commands total obedience from a completely willing and joyful heart and that anything less, as James says,  being guilty of one point in the law is a breach of the entire law. [ref]

Why do we force ourselves to tithe? Because it is commanded? Even if it is  we do it not out of joyful gratitude against which latter  I have not the slightest objection. I am not against anyone who cheerfully and joyfully gives, only against coercion. So we do it under compulsion in the name of "obedience"  to get something. But this is purchase not the receipt of grace. And as such it is the very way of the world. Or it is done to attempt to buy off His wrath. Again this is an utter insult to the Father Who we claim to believe loves us, and I submit the legalism shows we do not believe this. Is the gospel a protection racket? Then we play into the hands of the likes of   the now late Chris Hitchens, militant God haters who say as much and rail against God for it

What does it say to a new convert that he may have experienced the grace of God but is then told he has to pay one tenth of his gross income into the Church coffers without  fail or else he is robbing God?  [ ref] It says that his salvation is not free  and requires maintenance by the payment of money.  But the Old Covenant ordinances are gone. There is now  no priesthood to maintain as the separate priesthood  ordained for the making of sacrifice was abolished at Calvary for its function was fulfilled. And as for maintaining the pastorate, although a man is worthy to receive a just and modest payment enough to support him, St Paul the Apostle refused to take such and supported himself by his own trade as a tent maker. He was not going to open himself up to accusations of being in the business for money or as the KJV Bible so eloquently describes it, for filthy lucre.

Your church does not need your money and if they demand it by force of Divine Law they are extortionists as well as heretics.

Naturally the notion preached by the Word of Faith preachers that gifts are seeds is an outright abomination; and they are rich in money not because of any just means but by extortion and theft.

It is said that God is no man's debtor, by which they mean that God will never let himself be in our debt as He will pay such debts immediately. But who is in debt to who? This is outright blasphemy for the Bible says that it is us who are in debt to God [ref] to such an extent that we cannot possibly pay, hence the Cross of Christ.

I might  say that God is no man's debtor but for the entirely different reason  that it is impossible to put God in our debt and it is blasphemous extortion to try.

His gifts are free. He gives only  gifts to His children. Indeed the only thing He gives as payment is damnation for the wages of sin is death. [ ref]

There is another tragic outcome of legalism concerning the tithe.

People have neglected their family's welfare. This churches think is a good thing for they love to say "give until it hurts"  but why does it hurt? Because it moves beyond one's peace as if "be led by the peace in your heart"  [ref]  is a scripture not applicable to this matter.

But there is also harm to the children, not to mention oneself or other dependants  through neglect in providing the necessities of life. But scripture is most clear  "He who neglects his family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" [ref]. A family close to the breadline in terms of income is not able to afford the tithe and it can lead them to destruction to demand it of them.

A church that demands money by force of Divine Law in fact covets money and of course covetousness is idolatry. When people give to get they are giving out of the same covetousness, and it can cause suffering. For indeed the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil [ref]

On a personal note, the Lord the Spirit said to me  over thirty years ago, "I do not want so much as a penny piece from you, child, lest you think you bought your healing."  So I stopped  trying to bribe Him. He is not so stupid as to be taken in by a bribe for He knows all things, including the motive behind such bribery and He will absolutely not accept such a filthy offering

Now I know I am miserly, but forcing myself to give is no solution to this. My being unwilling it is in fact an expression of miserliness not its remedy, just as all legalism is an expression of the sin it fights, is even the very sin it fights, and no remedy to it. Some have accused me of copping out but again this is boasting in their own works if they condemn me for not doing them also. It is still the case as scripture says  that it is not of works that any man should boast [ref]

But his Grace continues to me now that I keep my money, and indeed he has prospered me well, not as in the dreams of avarice of the prosperity teachers but according to my needs.

And this is so as He will not  have his favour bought

A Paradox of Faith

I will not say this is THE paradox of faith  for there may be others, but what I would speak of today is A paradox of faith.

Our standing on the word of God, our resisting our own thoughts, our coming against imaginary demons because we refuse to admit that the verse as a man thinks so he is actually applies to our spontaneous thoughts and  not to our conscious force against them, all this is a blasphemous, painful and dangerous waste of time, for we are tempted by our own lusts, not outside forces, as St James said

In the end, in one on one counsel with the Holy Spirit in personal conversation, I have found that I simply had to come out and say to Him, time and time again, as He led in the context of our conversation

"I DON"T BELIEVE YOU!"

I have actually found that it takes more faith to say that to God's face  as it were than to constantly look inwards (for such effort is only inward looking) and rebuke such and such a thought or stand on a bible verse which every fibre of our being is saying we do not believe.

Such a warfare is a private war, but I know for a fact that I wanted this as it made me look like a hero. Even a Titan in chains.  And I see this everywhere. It is grandiose self dramatization. It is merely  the self destructive antics of a kingdom divided against itself whereby, as we are individually that kingdom, such effort could and often enough does lead to a final falling away to perdition, for I have always rejected that dangerous false security which is Once Saved Always Saved


No.

I come to believe anything, particularly  as pertains to Christian living, by confessing as sin the contrary unbelief. But not of course as a legalistic strategy. Such is what I call "reportage."  It is not honest and so is a total waste of time , for as God know it already if we do not mean it for it comes not from the heart, then it is indeed a total waste of time.

Of course it is totally counter intuitive that I should come to faith by confessing unbelief, but how can it be otherwise? We are carnal minded if our fruit are carnal. Our doctrine may be sound but it is not honestly believed. And this makes Pharisees of us for we confuse commitment to a doctrine with believing it. Indeed, if it were honestly believed surely it would bring forth endless joy and we would be known by our love joy and peace.

And being carnal minded then of course I think the gospel is utter insane nonsense, self indulgent tripe, you name it. This is what I might call "flesh" but to separate ourselves from it is deadly and the essence of legalism.

The solution? we prefer to make grace a reified force  at our beck and call, something we use to help save ourselves. This is something God will never do and it shows why God never helps our efforts. If we manage to repress a behaviour so deep that we no longer do it this is no victory.  WE have merely deepened our hypocrisy and the tension of our lives show we will pay for it.

The solution? As always there is only one: personal one on one dialogue with the Holy Spirit of Christ.  This is what prayer is

As part of our healing will, as sure as Christ will return someday, our healing WILL include conviction of sin, including the sins of unbelief; but this will only happen as we let it out and stop pretending that we believe him or most assuredly that we love him, for with such blasphemies that will come out as engendered by our effort, distilled by the high pressure we put ourselves under, we surely do not love God and likely never have.

Be honest with him.

But of course I know full well this is anathema to the religious  heart and  mind which insists on being good where it is not, so even the reality of being honest with Him will only come about by His leading us to it.

It is all much easier than struggling with our thoughts and thing we are heroes for the effort.

But it is still written that His yoke is easy his burden light

Western Democracy

I believe I have had a flash of insight as to western politics. Someone to whose comment I was replying on you tube was expressing disappointment that they elect a leader and he turns out to be a crook. Do they want a messiah? Now that is precisely the problem. What we want is  a God King who will make it rain in season and of course make the trains run on time. And when he does come he will be none other than  the antichrist

No, the matter should not  be a leader, for power corrupts. Rather the matter of politics should be POLICIES promulgated by PARTIES and policed by a politically savvy and active PEOPLE of whom the government is afraid as they know full well that an active populace would vote them out if they break a promise

But again, no, this will not happen, for democracy requires vigilance and work; but this is something modern western man is too lazy or uneducated to do. So the result is that cynicism in the political process becomes justified and the cycle follows that laid out by the Greek Philosophers whereby democracies become tyrannies.

So when this happens we in the West will deserve everything we get.

There is a God King Who is eminently fit to rule, but His rule has been rejected and even when it was professed as real it was subverted by the people who most devoutly expressed claims as to be His most loyal subjects.

Who?

Jesus Christ

A Lesson in Bigotry

I have just received a rather bitter lesson in the nature of religious bigotry.

Getting home from work and checking my youtube recommendations I come across a quote

"The cross shows us a different way of measuring success. Ours is to plant the seeds. God sees to the fruits of our labors. And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and not produce fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus Christ and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, the failure of the cross."

If you will bother to read this without prejudice, and to aid in this I will withhold for now the name of the person saying this, you will see that there is in fact nothing wrong with this.

Humanly speaking the cross was a failure, but divinely speaking it was something else entirely. By no stretch of the imagination can the speaker be said to be saying that the cross was a failure  in its intrinsic essence. He was saying, or at least gave no reason to have us think he was denying, what all Christians know,  namely that it was only apparently so, humanly speaking  To hold any other meaning those hostile to the  speaker have to ignore the phrase "humanly speaking" as well as the very opening of this quote  "The cross shows us a difference way of measuring success".

How can the cross be offering a different measure of success if it was a failure?

I invite you to reread the quote.

Done?

Very well, I will tell you , if you do not know , who said this

It was the current pope. Francis I.

They are saying that the pope is saying the cross was a failure.

Moreover they are screaming blue murder and denouncing him with all self righteous fury

He was not saying this, however. There is nothing wrong  with this quote

In their hatred they have twisted the words that this man uttered in order to make these words something to justify their hatred

This is seen not by appealing to hatred as some kind of a priori, but by simply examining the words spoken. When we do we see that the true statement such as this can only be twisted by motivations such as hatred

A true statement, then,  is twisted into a blasphemy then the speaker is railed at for speaking blasphemy.

This reflects on the evil of those who think that libel is the way to serve truth. It is not, and neither is railing against the perceivedly evil person, for it says in Jude verse  9 that "when the Archangel  Michael was disputing with  Satan over the body of Moses he did not dare bring a slanderous accusation against Satan but said 'the lord rebuke you.'"

To rail even at evil is sin.

To bring false charges against it is open defiance of the Word of God

The arrogance of this filthy underbelly of Protestantism s quite literally a disgrace, as it the warping of minds that such hatred produces.

Even if Catholicism is riddled with heresy to bring false charges against it is only to encourage them in their error.  But alas this is something the anti-Catholic bigot does not care to consider

The Time of Day

I now realize, now that indeed nothing has happened as I expected would be the case as regarding September 23, that I have been far too generous in giving even the time of day to  those fanatics for whom Acts 1:6-8 is simply not good enough.

I listened to them, carefully weighed what they had to say against scripture and of course concluded that they simply did not know what they were talking about.

But I still insisted on examining their ideas.

Some ignored verses like Acts 1:6-8, or insisted that they were not meant for the Church, or that they were only meant for the disciples at the time, or even twisted the Greek to justify this.

They are all contemptible. Even if we set aside for a moment the fact that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, they did not even have scholarly regard for a text which spoke plainly and simply.

They jumped on a bandwagon  for they were so desperate to have the world end when they determined it should, and in my opinion were likely so consumed with hate for the world that they wanted to see it burn, that their burning lust overcame their sense and even their ability to read.

This is not simply a matter of sincere error.

To make predictions where the scripture forbids specific date setting is open defiance of scripture. To insist on doing so is to be deeply backslidden, powerfully estranged from the Holy Spirit who would have spoken to these persons if they were amenable to hearing His still and small voice. But they were not amenable.

They may not be lost because of getting wrong some issue of eschatology but they are in deep danger of loss if they are so estranged from the Spirit as  to be backslidden -  and this separate and distinct from any amount of religious activity they may engage in.

Once Saved Always Saved is a deadly heresy for it does not trust in the Love of Christ, it presumes upon it.  And the difference here is crucial. Thus backsliding is  real danger and those who rashly predicted, and in the name of the Lord Himself to boot, what did not occur, have themselves backslidden, for all their religious zeal.

One cannot be close to the Lord the Spirit and falsely predict  anything. To be estranged from the Holy Spirit is the danger; and all who predicted what did not happen are estranged from Him
 
Then of course there is the reputation of the gospel among unbelievers. If one person rejects the gospel because of a failed prediction which had no shred of biblical warrant, then though the person who did this is accountable for his own disinclination to distinguish true from false prediction, yet nevertheless those who gave such the temptation to do so, namely end time fanatics with their obstinate penchant for date setting, will also be judged with ferocity. For it is written "It is inevitable that temptations come, but woe to him through whom they come."  There is nothing in this passage nor the rest of scripture indicating  that we the Church are exempt from this dire warning.

What hellfire preachers love to say to an unbelieving world, usually in hatred, cruelty and arrogance, must be said to the church that gave credence to the folly of Set 23 2015, May 21 2011, 2007, Y2K, 1988 and so on back over, I regret to say, centuries.

What must be said, and God discern my motive for saying it?

REPENT.

As for the title of this piece and my opening paragraph: I have been far too generous in giving the time of day to people who have so little regard for scripture as to use it as a cherry picking resource for their own fantasies, to the detriment of the faith of their weaker brethren and the reputation of the gospel itself

If I have any sense I will cease to give even this aforementioned time of day to any of them.

Their arguments are all the same, cherry picking, word twisting; and this when they know how to present a purportedly rational argument. Some were incapable of even this bare minimum and just bombarded the you tube watcher,  where I found the bulk of this nonsense, with a set of images that proved nothing.

And as always we wonder why the Name of God is so hated these days, and as always we deny that our unbelief, hypocrisy and sheer  dishonest scholarship have anything to do with it.

the 23rd of September 2015

Today is the 23rd of September. In itself this is of no significance. I know this. But various religious extremists have predicted any number of events for this day, in open and arrogant defiance of the Bible which clearly says we are not to set dates.

Some claim that the Antichrist will be revealed for who he is, after having shown their racism and ignorance by insisting it is Obama.

Others say that an asteroid will hit the earth, others that the Rapture will happen whereby they gloatingly say they will be teleported off the earth before 7 years of hell will be unleashed on the rest.

Even others say, and this is true insanity, that a counterfeit alien invasion will happen, and this to force the New World Order

NOTHING WILL happen. None of the arguments they advance as to why this day are valid. So I am going on public record to say so.

But I am also going public to say that as the Bible set no such dates

Therefore to reject Christ because of this failed prediction is itself irrational and even dishonest.
They who defy the Word of God to make unwarranted predictions will damage the reputation of the gospel by their rantings but they are so infatuated by their scheme that they do not care to face the plain fact that the Bible forbids setting dates.

Upon their own heads be it

I will not be fazed by the passing of a non event. I was not bothered when Harold Camping's prediction of May 2011 failed, for I knew before hand that it would.

But my prayer is that some would not have their faith destroyed by trusting these irrational, schadenfreude riddled and heretical predictions wheen thy do not come to pass; and also that others will not think that these failures reflect on a Bible which clearly said no dates were to be set.

However as men are prejudiced against God  and are looking for excuses to both set predictions without warrant and, from other quarters to reject Him when they fail, I am not hopeful that anything other than blasphemy and apostasy will result from this latest round of futility

Subverted Scriptures 2

"The wages of God are eternal life but the free gift of sin is death"

Of course you know this is not what Romans 6:23 actually says, but I have seen it subverted this way many times.

One local street preacher used to appear in our inner city public speaking forum with a booklet. "What do you have to do to be saved?" he asked.

He opened the booklet and it had blank pages.

To be damned you need do nothing.

To those who suggest this is a straw man, well this preacher was a legalist. He was serious about his religion and was a bully who regularly insulted his hearers ("I am here to speak to morons," he used to say). To be so loveless and serious about religion is the very essence of legalism, and the upshot of this is that what came out of such preaching  to be saved one must keep all the commandments of God.

And I certainly believed this. And time and time again I have seen Christians imposing the Law on people, including other Christians, showing they do not believe in the free gift of God.

They call this obedience to Christ yet, as no one keeps the Law and as our efforts therefore do not constitute obedience of the Law it is no such thing. Indeed the letter to the Galatians spells out what error this is

But believing this, as so many of us actually do in our heart of hearts, for all our fervent declarations of faith based righteousness, we hold that the wages of God are eternal life.

Thus the scripture is subverted.

There is a second subversion here.

"The wages of sin are death."

Period.

I did this. I never ended the sentence, forgetting that the free gift of God is eternal life and that this eternal  life is not just conversion, but the whole thing,   including discipleship, as much a gift of grace as anything else lest we fall away into the Law trying to pay for it. This gift, the whole of eternal life is delivered in personal relationship with the Hoy Spirit, without Whom there is only impossible law and despair to any sensitive (so many are not) to this. But instead I thought, emotionally, of course  that as the wages of sin were death and with no free gift as in sight, I had to stop sinning. And as Romans 8 says, this is outright impossible

Oh, I could quote the entire passage, but what I focused on was not a matter of my forced determination, and being carnal minded I missed the second part of this dictum and it took the Spirit Himself to show this to me just recently

As with just about everything what we truly believed is shown by our spontaneous living, our careless words, by our lives.

If we are carnal of fruit we are carnal of mind and all of us subvert the scriptures time and time again.

It will take gracious conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit to reveal to u what our deceitful hearts have wrought, as it will take his persuasion, as loving Counsellor, to lead us to repent of it

The relationship is the thing.

Always