With
every passing day the predictions prophesied in the bible are increasingly observable.
Recently you may have read about a certain minister who preached the words of
Christ for many decades has now come out saying he no longer believes in God
(1). This mans change of heart is not an anomaly, he is not the only person who
was once a believer in Christ, who preached to their congregations week after
week about Jesus Christ being the Lord, having been raised from the dead, and now
has some new revelation that Jesus is not God; in fact this man and some other
former ministers claim that there is no God and that he is just mans creation.
There
is article after article written about ministers who claim that their eyes were
opened because they had a so-called epiphanic encounter and realized that they
have been living a lie, they prepare sermons every week to preach to their
people about the God of heaven, but in their heart they do not even believe he
exists; their faith in Jesus Christ has died. Do these epiphanies happen overnight;
no they happen over a period of time, likely because their expectations of God
did not meet up with their experiences. I do not intend to make excuses for
these ministers who have forsaken their first love, the Lord Jesus Christ, but
I am trying to make some sense of it in my own mind.
Why
do I bother to write about such a topic as this and post it on my blog anyways?
Is there not something more positive that I could write about, why post an
article that seems so negative? These ministers who abandon the faith are not
just a statistic, and they are not just people whom you should show no concern
for, they were once given the opportunity to receive eternal life but by the power
of deception they gave up believing. I do not want to hear you say that these
ministers were never believers in Christ to begin with, or they would have
never abandoned Christ, or that they never experienced him in their heart, for
they had only head knowledge of salvation. How do you know you who say and
think this way, are you God? Can you see into their inner being and know what
they have believed all their life? Oh, I know, you quote the words of John the
apostle when he wrote about those who say that Jesus is not the Christ, and
they leave the body of believers, proving they never did belong to the body of
Christ (1Jn.2). I would agree with you on this if you knew what John was truly
saying, he never said that these individuals never did believe, but that what
they believed did not remain in them ( 1Jn.2:24-27), this is what is happening
to a great number of the ministers in the churches today. John said that this is
how the church will know that we are in the final hours of the church age, when
many antichrists begin to multiply denying Jesus is the Christ (1Jn.2:18,
22-23).
Do
a Google search on the internet and see how many men and women who were once
ordained to preach the gospel are now confessing that they are now atheists;
the number seems to be increasing especially over the last few decades. There
are numerous articles and books written about these individuals, like the man
in the website link below. Why have they changed their minds, how can they now
deny the Christ whom they once followed? The Lord is not caught off guard by this
shifting of belief because he saw it before it even began, and he knows why it
has begun. It is because of the doctrines of demons, these ministers are
turning away from the truth because they are listening to seducing spirits who
deceive them (1Tim.4:1, 4), rather than listening to the Holy Spirit who will
lead them into all truth (Jn.16:13).
The
believer must continue to walk in the Lord Jesus Christ once they have received
him, they must stay in the faith and not let anyone cheat them through deception
(Col.2:6-8). Whether you are a minister or a parishioner you must not follow
after the traditions of this world but rather follow Christ, do not listen to
the spirits of deceit. There are so many things to deceive a believer in these
final days and that is Satan’s plan, to get you away from Christ through your
mind. This is why the Apostle Paul exhorts the believer to renew his mind and
not be conformed to the pattern of this world (Rms.12:2), do not follow after the
traditions of men but follow after Christ.
I
wonder if someone is bold enough to do a survey among those who once believed
in Christ and see what their hearts were set on before they had the epiphany
that they are really atheists. Were they spending their energy on saving planet
earth, were they fighting for the rights of every man to behave anyway they see
fit? These causes seem to consume a lot of the energy of many of the clergy
these days, even though the bible condemns these activities (Rms.1:18-32). Were
these ministers involved in the movement that scoff at those who believe in the
imminent return of Jesus Christ, that the Lord is coming at any hour to rapture
his church out of this earth (1Thess.4:16-17), if they were it is only because
they desire something other than the coming of the Lord, they long for
pleasures that are forbidden to the minister of the gospel (2Pt.3:3-4). My
heart aches for men like this, for God has a word for those who deny him: “If
we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us”
(2Tim.2:12, KJV).
