Metamorphosis Complete
What do you call it when a citizen openly fraternizes with enemies of the state? What do you call it when one spouse openly and brazenly cheats on the other? And what do you call it when a Christian openly and unapologetically fellowships with those who “bring another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4, 2 John 1:10-11), not to witness to them but to accept them as part of the ekklesia?
There have always been apostates among us; there have always been weeds among the wheat (Mt. 13:24-30). But if you read that whole parable, you’ll notice that the harvest is when the difference between wheat and weeds is obvious. So if the differences between believers and unbelievers among us are stark and open, the final redemption of the ekklesia is surely at hand.
Judgment has come upon “the church”, and as Peter said, “For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17). God sends delusion on those who have hardened their hearts (see all the “So God gave them over”s in Rom. 1), and this has surely come to pass in the visible church.
A prime example is found in in this article, whose title, sadly, is more literal than I had hoped when I first saw it. This “church”, this club for Christians (as they all really are), hired an unbeliever to one of their staff positions. Clubs and businesses can hire whoever they want, but when their primary focus is supposedly the gospel of Christ, hiring unbelievers is, shall we say, a mixed message at the very best. We’re not talking about unbelievers attending services or social functions, but being official representatives in some capacity.
This would be like the US military commissioning active and loyal officers of the Chinese army. And these officers keep in daily contact with the Chinese government, openly and unashamedly. They bring their official Chinese army manuals and practice their Chinese army drills right there in the American army camps. And the US Army is okay with that. After all, these are exemplary officers and role models for the soldiers. Now if that scenario were not to produce at least a little “shock and awe” among Americans, then I’d have to question both their loyalty to their own country and their sanity.
Yet here we see virtually this very scenario happening in the churches. Islam has another Jesus who isn’t the Son of God and didn’t die on the cross or pay for anyone’s sins, has a god who does not love the world, teaches Muslims to not befriend infidels unless it is to win their trust so they can be converted (never the other way around), and teaches them to lie to infidels. Yet the bulk of the Christian community believes the god and Jesus of Islam are the God and Jesus of the Bible.
All of this is the fruit of a long indoctrination in the dialectic, where Christians have been systematically trained to abandon scriptural doctrine in favor of outward conformity, and to put outward niceness over the honor and holiness of Jesus. Islam never budges an inch, while Christianity is not only doing all the moving but doing it with gusto. And this is nothing less than spiritual adultery. Yet those of us who see it for what it is are mocked (see the article: “ridiculousness” over the ground zero mosque, and a gratuitous jab at Sarah Palin thrown in for kicks). It “never occurred” to the pastor of that church that hiring this enemy of the gospel “might be a problem”.
That pastor asks, “Does his practice of faith threaten or diminish mine? Are the prayers he offers in a quiet corner of the office harmful to the rest of us? What’s a church to do?” in apparent and woeful ignorance, not only of Islam but of “what a church is to do”. Was Paul a flaming nutcase for all his impassioned railings against compromising the faith? Why did he worry so much about threats to the faith, and why didn’t he invite the Judaizers and Pharisees and pagans to be leaders? After all, what harm could it do, according to this pastor?
To paraphrase an old saying, “With shepherds like these, who needs wolves”? Heck, let’s get rid of the fences and gates and shepherds so the wolves and sheep can be friends! Wolves are only mean (well, only some of them of course) because of bad shepherds who actually try to beat them off and tell the sheep how to spot them.
This pastor further laments that “I’ve yet to find biblical directions for how best to address what, apparently, may be a scandalous outrage.” What?? No directions at all, no situations that might give guidance, no Holy Spirit to provide a tiny clue? Worse yet, it is claimed that “if Jesus were here he would gratefully welcome Mohamed to the church staff... More than that, I think Jesus would extend a hand of friendship, engage in honest and respectful dialogue about faith and actively look for all the things we share in common rather than creating and fanning irrational fears that drive us apart.” Wow... I guess reading the New Testament is a total waste of time them, since it tells us nothing about the purity of the faith, the deadliness of compromise, and the eternal fate of all who deny the divinity and humanity of Jesus.
If the example of this Muslim on the staff of a Baptist church is so much better than that of the Christians, then surely we should conclude that the Christians are simply not living their own faith. And that’s because we have forgotten our own faith and replaced it with a cheap imitation that cares nothing for the exclusive and non-negotiable claims of the real Jesus. We have swallowed whole the sanitized version of Islam that is never seen in the countries it has overtaken, and we refuse to believe that Islam is still preaching a very different message among its own from the one made for western consumption.
The pastor should try asking this exemplary employee what would happen should he renounce Islam and embrace the true Jesus of the Bible, and also what will happen to all the Christians once Sharia law is the new law of the land. We’ll see whether the smallest protest is raised when the girls are forced to marry old men and the women are wrapped like mummies and kept as prisoners in their homes. We’ll try and remember what love and peace even mean when men are executed for leaving Islam or tortured for listening to music. Today’s squabbles over mosques will seem like the good old days. But such questions will not be asked, because apparently there’s no reason at all to renounce Islam.
I would like to hope that I’m not alone in my shock and grief that this is what Christianity has come to. But sadly, many who would object at all would sooner do so only because the pastor in this case is a woman! Yet clearly the males are no better, teaching and promoting all kinds of heresies and acting more like Islam’s founder than Christianity’s. Truly the churches are fully apostate now, and the angels are being summoned to begin the harvest to separate wheat from weeds. We “fiddle” over truly ridiculous things like gender roles while the essentials of the faith are burned before our eyes.
Jesus will return when “the full number of the gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25), after which God will turn His attention back to Israel in order to finish the prophecies about her and finally judge the world for its evil. Let those of us who still remember what the gospel is get busy spreading it so that number can finally be reached. The longer we take, the more pervasive the error, and the more of the lost there will be who are told by “Christians” that they are just fine the way they are.