The reason I am so aggressive against the errors and accretions, the false and unnecessary aspects of Christian belief, is that for Christianity to do its work in our lives in 2021 - we each personally need to be sure in our knowledge.
It is all very well for traditionalists and the orthodox of various denominations and churches to assert their complex laundry lists of must-dos and must-believes - the systems and screeds of things that everyone ought-to (or be an outcast heretic, apostate, not-a-Christian) but it is overdue that Christians got real.
What matters is what matters - and what matters is (now and increasingly) that which you know to the extent that you would 'go to the stake' over it.
What a Christian asserts must from now be rooted in solid and personal knowledge. Christian church leaders are traitors, scripture translations interpretations are corrupt...
Everything that is external and official and institutional is now corrupt and has joined the side of Satan. A Christian life cannot be rooted in the corrupt and evil.
These End Times are a spiritual war that affects every single person on the planet - nobody is exempted, all are tested. And we will be tested first and most strongly where our beliefs are weakest.
You will be probed, pushed and pressurized on some-thing that you have always 'insisted' was necessary to all Christian - but which you personally are not so sure of that you would suffer actual and imminent harm to defend it.
The End Times will discover and test all our hypocrisies.
You may have insisted that acknowledgment of original sin was essential to all Christians, that there is no salvation outside of your church, that the creedal formulation of necessary belief in the Holy Trinity was vital to any Christian - all the specific lifestyle and ritual aspects and exclusions... There are many, many such 'must-believes' in mainstream Christianity...
Okay - it is easy to say that these 'must' be believed by 'all true Christians' - but would you personally really 'go to the stake' over all of them?
Because if you regard every-thing as equally essential, yet would not go to the stake over all of them; over all the issues that you supposedly regard to be essential to Christians - then you will abandon Christianity sooner or later (if not already) - because your faith is only as strong as the weakest belief you regard as essential.
Roman Catholics who had asserted that the priesthood and participation and Mass were essential to salvation, found themselves abandoned by priests and excluded from Mass for many months - and with the RCC enthusiastically supporting this complete withdrawal of sacraments for as long as the secular authorities chose to impose it. The statistics of national health - as these were interpreted by officials - took absolute and exclusive priority over what had been regarded as essential spiritual values.
Clearly, these spiritual values were too weak to matter, when the chips were down.
Protestants who had asserted that frequent gathering for worship and prayer was integral to Christian life, suddenly found that a perceived risk to health was more important.
The supposed need for Christians to gather turned out to be too feeble to motivate Protestants, when they were put under pressure. Health Officials turned out to have more real authority in their lives than The Bible. Indeed, many embraced the restrictions that prevented their gathering, and were (and are) very reluctant to abandon them - even when 'health officials' allow it.
If Christians insist upon their 'belief' in complex, large, secondhand schemata as the only real and true Christianity - then their belief will be too feeble to pass the tests of these times.
Their belief as a whole will fail; because their specific component beliefs are founded on grounds that are now obviously insecure - grounds such as church authority, or very exact historical and linguistic interpretations of The Bible.
When we cannot (and should not) be confident in the truth of church authority, or the truthfulness and accuracy of Bible scholars and interpreters - then these Christian beliefs will crumble when threatened with adverse consequence.
Most such 'Christians' have already ceased to be real Christians, whether or not they have officially left their churches - and they have joined the side of global totalitarianism - advocating as life priorities... whatever they are told to advocate (birdemic, peck, antiracism, climate change, socialist economics... whatever).
Probably at least tens-of-millions of people who were (more-or-less) followers of Jesus in 2019 crossed to the other side in early 2020 - in what was surely the biggest (proportionately as well as numerically) apostasy since the early churches were organized.
And hardly anybody seems to have noticed! Yet destruction of the Christian churches was very likely the core goal of the birdemic fraud and the totalitarian coup which it excused.
My point here is that if you believed in 2019 that Christian churches (i.e. your favoured church) are essential to salvation - then you have already been tested, and quite likely have failed - and have de facto joined the side of Satan in the spiritual war.
But the process will continue.
What Christians absolutely need to do, is each to base his own faith upon what he personally regards as absolutely solid ground: ground solid-enough that he would metaphorically (if not literally) 'go to the stake' over its truth.
In other words - these times require each Christian to embark on a radical process of grounding his own faith on only those places where he is sure that he is secure.
Sure enough to suffer for it.
But if you continue to insist on the complex and secondhand descriptions of Christianity, your own motivation to remain Christian will be undercut by your (perfectly well founded) lack of confidence in the rightness of external institutional authorities (who will, overall, be in service to evil).
Note: The forces of evil are perfectly aware of this phenomenon; and one mode of anti-Christian subversion is to pose as a strict and traditionalist Christian, of whatever denomination or church; and to state categorically that all those who fail to sign-up to all of the complex and voluminous requirements of that institution are thereby heretics or apostates.
These anti-Christians therefore say: All True Christians are like THIS, and if you are not like THIS then you are not a True Christian and ought to acknowledge the fact, and leave the church and Christianity (and, implicitly, join with 'us demons').
And, on the other side, there are the usual 'liberal Christians' who claim to be radically reforming Christianity down to its true essence, while actually assimilating it with the demonic leftist-globalist totalitarian agenda.
'Your' task, as an individual Christian. is not to answer this question for everyone, but for your-self. To discover what aspects of that vastly bloated structure of inherited institutional Christianity you actually are personally sure about - sure enough to go to the stake over.
...And use this as the basis of your Christian faith.
8 comments:
@Bruce, I agree the Christian institutions are corrupt and have distorted true faith. My only concern, and it's a big one, is how many people can really go it alone? It takes a lot to go against the grain of culture, and without some structures in place most will fail to remain true Christians. This requires daily spiritual practice (meditation, prayer, contemplation), study and reflection, and to be of service to the world in some way that goes beyond a vocation. I understand most Church going (cultural, nominal) Christians are not doing this, but does not the Church at least offer something to those who do not have discipline or obedience to God?
@tes. Well, if it is necessary to go it alone, that is to take personal responsibility for faith; then it is necessary. This is indeed a concern - but that is exactly why the demonic powers have infiltrated, subverted, and assimilated the major Christian church leadership.
"does not the Church at least offer something to those who do not have discipline or obedience to God?"
Well not 'the' church, for the reasons above - but some individual, specific pastors/ priests and their churches can of course we found and used in a net-beneficial way, may help the individual Christian...
But whether this church help will be strong and clear enough for these times; and whether it will 'cover all the bases' (such as all the Litmus Test issues - because even *one* Achilles' heel that an individual fails to discern and repent is nowadays enough to lead to chosen damnation) - I doubt.
Because the main 'help' a person Now needs is help with *clear, explicit discernment*, and courage to hold to it; and that area is exactly where the churches are failing most badly.
It's funny to me that I find your posts very uplifting. But I guess that's true about Christianity in general, it seems kinda grim taken at superficial value, but underneath is hope, real joy. Or in your words, "help with *clear, explicit discernment*". Good stuff.
@Lucinda - "kinda grim taken at superficial value" - Well, as Pascal said 400 plus years ago - there is no other religion that offers so much, that so many people (at least until recent generations) would more want to be true.
I understand ted's point and agree with it to a certain extent but would add a couple of things to what Bruce said. Firstly, going it alone does not mean completely alone. There is all sorts of support that comes to the person who sincerely makes an effort. For example, from tradition, from books, from forums like this and, last but not least, from God who always guides those who genuinely seek him to what they need. Going it alone is tough but that's how you grow spiritually. You may make mistakes but if your heart is in the right place and your aspiration true you will find a way through in the end. It's all part of the growing process and the conversion of a spiritual child into a spiritual adult.
It isn't necessary to go it alone. I'd say that, for example, most of those who frequent this blog are in effect "two or three gathered in my name". My circle of fellow Christians has shrunk considerably since January 2020, but there remain a few where I live with whom I can physically gather to worship our Lord.
One of your finest.
@Nova - "It isn't necessary to go it alone. "
It is not *always* necessary; but it *may* be necessary.
And that *may* now applies to many, Many more Christians than it did 2 years ago - there are sure lots more since the birdemic who need to go it alone... or else cease being Christian.
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