Are You
A Member of the Mob?
Thank you to those of you who sent notes or letters of encouragement after my last two newsletters ['This Is The Message'] and ['Vain Worship'] concerning the Vatican's attempts to get legislation passed to support it's transgression of God's Law [see the article in The Detroit News, July 7, 1998 entitled "Pope's Call for Worship Welcomed"].
To others of you who didn’t appreciate the newsletter, I would like to reply to you: No, this subject is not the burden of God’s message to His people, but it is an important part of it, as the Lord says: Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. Revelations 18:4. Open wrongs must be openly addressed. I also would ask you: what would you do if the leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church [or any other 7th day church] and many of its members were pushing and endeavoring to pass laws to punish heretics who violate the sanctity of the 7th day [Saturday], the Sabbath of the Lord, and that leader even goes before the world-wide media reiterating just this very thing. I venture to say that secularists and a majority of Christian leaders would join forces howling the following epithets to the world:
“THEY’RE LEGALISTS! THEY’RE
FANATICS!!
THEY HAVE NO LOVE!!! THEY’RE
A CULT!!!!
THEY WANT TO KILL US WITH THE
LETTER OF THE LAW!!!!!”
But what did you hear from the same people when Pope John Paul II did exactly the same thing regarding Sunday? Nary a sound could be heard above the loud roar of approval.
Hopefully, without belaboring the things I
have already written, I would like to say to both, those of you who wrote,
and those of you who didn’t, who were offended by my last newsletter: Great
peace have they who love Thy Law and nothing shall offend them.
Psalms
119:165. Many, in their readiness to take offense, saw the
headline, ‘Vain Worship’ and believed that I was attacking or
judging those who believe in the doctrines
summarized therein. They failed to read with understanding the Words
of Jesus below the headline: In vain they do worship Me, TEACHING
for doctrines the commandments of men. Matthew 15:9.
It is those who TEACH others the commandments of men, instead of the Commandments
of God, whose worship, Jesus says, is in vain; not those who have been
deceived into believing their leaders were teaching them truth: Forasmuch
then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead
is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.And
the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men
everywhere to repent. Acts 17:30.
I am not attacking you who are Catholics, it is the leaders of your church who are attacking and threatening my freedom and that of others who want to obey God rather than men. God gives me a right, a duty, and an opportunity to speak out against tyranny and mob rule, especially when it comes masquerading as the faith of Jesus; and as God determines me to use all three to lift up Him, I will; and if lifting up Him, Who is the Truth and Light of the world, exposes the lies and the darkness of false teachings, may His will be done.
I cannot be silent since it was the leaders
of the Roman Catholic church, who, in the dark ages butchered millions
for the “crime” of following their conscience as enlightened by God, and
it is the hierarchy of this same church now rattling the same sabers they
did back then; pushing and endeavoring to pass laws that would “punish
heretics” according to it’s perverted version of God’s Law. The blood
of those martyred saints from the greatest holocaust of all times, cries
out still, to God for “Justice” and for us to “Remember”. I thank
God I am a ‘heretic’ according to their definition of the word, because
it is not His definition. Isn’t it ironic that the church that claims
Peter as it’s first pope [in actuality the
first pope wasn’t until more than 500 years after Peter] wants to force
its commandments of men on the world, but it was Peter who said:
We ought to obey God rather than men. Acts 5:29.
So few seem to understand the gravity of the
situation. In smoke-filled rooms, behind closed doors negotiations
are going on involving your freedoms and mine and yet, many, who should
know better, are sleeping while they should be on watch. Someone
once said: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
It seems many have forgotten that price and no one is more guilty than
the purveyors of free Grace who make merchandise of it, who cry “Peace
and safety” [1Thess. 5:3] while they make war
with God’s Word and with those who would live by it; but they, too, are
guilty who
take no stand against these wolves in sheep’s
clothing. We are today eating the bitter fruit from the evil tree
of slavery that was allowed to take root because men in responsible positions
took no stand against this planting of the enemy in the beginning.
Is it ever okay for some to lose their freedoms for profit’s sake, because
the temporal good of the majority is at stake? The same issues are
involved here, and at the same price: the price of departing out
of God’s Way, of causing
many to stumble at the Law by being partial
in the Law. Malachi 2:8,9.
I tell you, because God says so, that they
will take away our freedom to choose just as suddenly
as the Berlin Wall coming down overnight gave
freedom to Eastern Europe. When we lose our religious freedoms gained
at so dear a price there will be no fleeing to a New World, but we will
have to stand then, with the strength we have gained exercising our faith
standing on God’s side today. If we don’t do it now, we may not be
able to do it then. We will have no excuses to offer for taking our
freedoms for granted, because we all have opportunities to know and to
understand the truths of the Scriptures and the lessons of the dark ages
and of past history. They may not right now, in these prosperous
times, be able to make their ‘commandments of men’ the laws of the land,
but let the bubble burst, as all bubbles do, and calls for a return to
God will ring out swiftly and loudly from all corners; and this return
will manifest itself in legislation against ‘heretics’. Call me a
doomsayer, if you will, but the Lord impresses me to always hope for the
best and prepare for the worse. Jesus says:
He who endures unto
the end, the same shall be saved [Matthew 24:13],
and He also says in the very end of time there shall be a time of trouble,
such as never was since there was a nation....Daniel
12:1. Are you allowing the Lord to prepare you for such a
time?
When the lowliest official makes the slightest hint of support for the Nazi policies of the past, headlines and demonstrations are made denouncing him around the world; but let the head of the world’s largest religion reiterate before the whole world the same policies by which that power tyrannized the world during the dark ages and there are shouts of acclamation for ‘His Holiness’ by the news media and the masses alike. Why is it that the ends condemn the means of the Nazi era, but those ends do not condemn the same means the Catholic church used during the dark ages? Why do so many find appproval for speaking out against the ungodly and unscriptural ways of the Nazi regime, but those who speak out against the same of the Roman Catholic regime are labled as "anti-catholic bigots"? Money and mob rule always seem to go hand in hand. The bottom line in mob rule is always Money or Mammon [‘worldly gain personified as a false god’]. They wanted to take Jesus by force and make Him King to satisfy their worldly ambitions, but He lived by what He told them: My kingdom is not of this world, and because of this, the mob eventually turned on Him shouting:
CRUCIFY
HIM!!!! CRUCIFY HIM!!!!!
WE HAVE NO KING BUT CAESAR!!!!!!
Christ died a victim of the mob spirit created
by the religious prejudice of His own nation. Others will suffer
in like manner. But they will not have to stand under the curse of
the transgression of the Law of God, as did Christ in behalf of a sin-filled
world. It is the religious prejudice of today that crucifies Christ
afresh and builds denominational walls in the world and in the hearts of
men and
women that separate them from He Who is
our peace, Who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of
partition between us. Jesus also, that He might sanctify us with
His own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore
unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. Ephesians
2:14; Hebrews 13:12,13.
It is not easy in this world to stand for truth, but, yet, Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light because He will give us rest amidst a world where they have no rest day nor night who worship the beast and his image. Revelations 14:11. But if you believe that God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus [Philippians 4:19], then you will have nothing to lose sleep over. The mob may make and keep us poor, but the filthy lucre of the world cannot compare to the victory of faith that overcomes the world!
I have not graduated from the school of Christ, I’ve only just begun. When men confederate to place a detour on the road to the holy mountain of God, faithful men and women must stand together in the Spirit and Truth of God to point out His Way and His Truth, lest the lame, the blind, the maimed, and the poor be turned out of that way. I don’t judge any individual’s motives as only God sees the heart and the end from the beginning. Jesus does say, however: By their fruits ye shall know them. Matthew 7:20. Still, I judge no one, for I am far from perfect, myself. We are all as an unclean thing, and all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.Isaiah 64: 6. There is only one good and that is God. It is His way, His truth, and His life we should be coveting.
Christ in us, our only hope of glory,
Jon Zwayer