I find myself truly in a sort of a daze today.  I have been watching for the Lord’s return for many years, and even as a young girl, I was always very attentive to the older generations, and had an appreciation for what people like to call “the old days”.  Most of the time that appreciation isn’t there until you are getting up into your fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond.  But I guess because of a natural curiosity about others, I have always watched and listened and dwelt upon things people reveal about themselves.  A lot of times they aren’t even aware of what they reveal.  Sometimes there are people who just enjoy talking and sort of lose themselves in chattering happily like a magpie about whatever is running through their minds. Other folks are so enthralled with celebrity or a sense of awe over those the world refers to as “the lucky ones” they are always lapping up the latest gossip, whether on social media or in the tabloids or some “reality” television show.

Life can tend to shell-shock a person.  The world loves to trumpet the idea that you go out and you make the life you want and deserve, and they consider it a virtue.  The truth is, there are any number of “forces” in life that meet us along the way, and no matter how good some people are at “creating their own reality”, there are always cold hard facts that don’t just get out of the way. When the “unstoppable force” (which people like to pretend that they are) meets the immoveable object (facts) instead of learning that thoughts have no magical power,  most people these days just dig their feet in deeper.  And so they are embracing delusion and that leads to greater blindness.  Don’t you look around you and think, “the entire world seems to have lost it’s mind”?

We visited a new church today.  The sermon was from 2 Corinthians and it jus so happens that is  where I am studying in my own personal study of the Bible at the moment.

The corruption of the gospel, the prevalence of false doctrine that has been embraced by the American church today, is truly astounding.  In my twenties I had a period of time in which I had a crisis of faith and spent several years disillusioned with God.  When I returned to church after that, it seemed to me that “church” had changed.  It has taken me a long time, and a lot of seeking the Lord, a lot of searching the scriptures for myself, and I really had to come to a point that I questioned and checked up on everything I heard from pulpits.  But I finally understand that the change has to do with the hour in which we live.

Things have definitely crept in.  I learned that there are preachers who preach “for a living” but who admit they don’t believe the Bible themselves.  I figured out that there are preachers who are preaching wrong doctrine because they have been deceived themselves, and don’t know that it is wrong. Even so, good luck trying to convince them that what they learned in seminary isn’t what the Bible actually says.  They were sincere in their desire to serve the Lord, went to seminary, and came out having all the truth stripped away and preaching something different from what they first believed. Spiritual blindness works like that.  Listen to a Jehovah’s Witness talk for five or ten minutes and you will notice that they can contradict themselves two or three times, and they don’t seem to even register that they are speaking contradicion, jibberish and nonsense.

These days it is possible to go to one church, then another and another, and find true faith, but linger there a while and  you detect something that doesn’t line up, some spirit of strife and division, some fissure or faction that starts coming to the fore, and stir strife.  Sometimes it is not at all subtle, but as the whole local congregation are conditioned and caught right up in it, it is not apparent to them.  Like the frog in the pot as the temperature raises to the boiling point, they accepted it by degrees, and now they can’t discern truth from lies.

For true believers and students of the Word, more and more we find ourselves having to come outside the camp.  One almost despairs  wondering where are those who truly love the Lord and not this world.  And you know that one friend who is always falling in love but never finds “the one” because they invariably find something about Mr/Miss Perfect that knocks them out of the running?  That is the friend that is just in love with the idea of being in love.  There are churches like that.  The ones that love to have that outward appearance of righteousness, that holds itself up as a paragon of good, because they dress right, and attend church three times a week, and don’t associate with “the world”.  But they are really not in love with the Lord, they are in love with “being good”.  When the scriptures tell us that there is no good in us, and all our righteousness (before and AFTER we are saved) is as filthy rags.

And so, as the world rollicks on full speed into the days of Noah and Lot, we who still believe upon our blessed hope, do sometimes feel dazed and “otherworldly”.  Because we are literally of another world, not this one.  When God birthed a new man inside the husk of this dying flesh, that new life  is one that yearns toward the Light for all it is worth, because that is where all of it’s sustenance is.  We are root-bound for now, on this old dying Earth. But He’s just starting us here in the soil of striving and hardship. He planned all along to transplant us.  All of the toil and sorrow and trouble is merely so much fertilizer, meant for the purposes of a Divine Creator and His perfect plan.

We aren’t here to be successful, as the world defines success.  But while we are here, we are still to degrees bound (and limited) by the vocabulary, the codes and values, the ways of Earth.  It is so easy to slip into the world mindset even just a little, and find ourselves becoming deceived and blinded like the world is, if we are not vigilant.  It is like the way that over time, as a person ages, their eyesight loses acuity, and until they finally go to the eye doctor and get glasses, and put them on for the first time, and they didn’t realize just how bad their vision had become, until their vision is corrected.  Then they realize what they have been missing.  So it is when we are constantly exposed to the world.  The world’s jokes, the world’s philosophies, the world’s false apostles that creep into church.

All of  those are the realm of Satan, and we are inundated with exposure to that, day in and day out.  We can spend our whole lives seeking to know the Lord better, applying ourselves to learning the scriptures, and truly seeking to grow, but in this environment, we can never become that which the Lord intends.  This is like the little starter garden, down here, and all of what we will become, doesn’t really begin until we get up there.

This world and Satan’s influence here, are all passing away.  Yet this is all we have ever known, so even for those who long for heaven, and that new life to come, it can feel like a bit of a shock, even as those things we have anticipated, that many have anticipated and contemplated through the ages, finally come to pass.  Like a first time Mom and Dad await with great anticipation the arrival of the new addition to their family, there is the sense of the unknown that remains somewhat intimidating, and may spark a slight sense of panic when the actual event arrives.  I think that is what I am experiencing.

So if you are like me, and sometimes you just feel sort of weird as you contemplate the fulfillment of that long-anticipated transformation, don’t let it surprise you too much.

In life sometimes we have to curtail our hope, with a dose of reality, and not allow ourselves to get too invested in a particular outcome, because there is so much beyond our control.  In the world, the conventional wisdom that says “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” remains valid.  But thank God that it’s all Yea and Amen” when it comes to the promises of God.  We can look forward to a time and a place where Satan can no longer reward with prosperity, those who care nothing for what is Good and Holy.  Everything will be different.  In God’s economy, what the world loves, is the things God hates.  And what the world disdains, are the things He honors.  We who are misfits and outcasts and losers in the eyes of the world, are going to a place where everything is different.  And those who love the world, cannot go there.  Because they have no love for their Creator, and refuse the pardon Jesus paid for with His blood.

The sad thing is, in this late hour, that is nearly as true for those inside the church, as those in the world.  Which is why the Laodicean church is the last church addressed in God’s letter to the seven churches found in Revelation. This is the state of the church (for the most part today.  Rich, fat and sassy, “successful” by the world’s standards, in need of nothing. Mixing opposites, the world and God, they think they can have it all, standing for nothing,  and falling for all manner of error, not hot, not cold, just that attempt to reconcile good with evil, to marry light with darkness, and have it all be called good and acceptable.  Jesus stands outside the door of that church, knocking, willing to come in and sup with any willing to open the door.

When Jesus started the church, He told us that the Kingdom would be like a mustard seed that would grow so huge it would encompass the earth and many birds would nest among it’s branches.  If you study church history, you see that indeed, from the very beginning, error attempted to add itself to the church, and this whole other outward husk sort of glommed itself around the true church, like a parasite, and grew to monstrous proportions.  The Gates of Hell will not prevail against the true church, but this parasitic faux church has been around as long as the true church has, and though it grew massive during the time of the Roman empire, this entity  has not reached it’s full scope and magnitude yet.  It is going to play an even greater role in the fulfillment of this dispensation and the tribulation, as it will serve to facilitate that final global government. Many pastors, solicited by the DHS, have participated in programs in America in which they have been tasked to serve as liaisons with the community, in times of upheaval, be it natural disaster or massive civil unrest, they will take direction from DHS, and serve to comfort, reassure, and promote cooperation among the citizens. What they see as good, fits awfully neatly into the paradigm of the end time harlot church and the way the Antichrist will use her. Many churches today are about the social gospel, not the gospel of salvation from sin.

This “church”  became a mutation of the original, and you come to realize, if you’ve been paying attention, that we aren’t supposed to really be surprised by the fact that there are now, in this late day and age, more groups of people meeting together calling themselves a church but doing all manner of things not found in scripture, and therefore a false version of the true church.  Hidden among the wheat are tares.  They look just like the wheat.  They talk the talk, they mimic the real deal, but they are there representing the darkness, and spreading blindness by their deception.  I imagine this feels a lot like the way a soldier does when he finds himself in the middle of enemy fire.  All that stuff he practiced and trained for, and suddenly, here he is, in the midst of the real thing.

That is the stunned sense I am trying to describe to you.  Even knowing that we are soldiers in a spiritual fight in this life, there is a difference between knowing and experiencing.  All of the Christian life is warfare.  The enemy is not flesh and blood. But now it’s the last quarter.  Seconds remain on the clock.  It’s a lot more “real” right now than it ever has been before.

Thirty years ago, you could still walk into most churches of any denomination, and hear the true gospel.  Now there are entire assemblies, including the pastors, that are practicing a form of godliness that denies the power thereof. (The power of the cross).  They try to draw near to God by their own means, but God only draws near to those who call upon Him in TRUTH.  That means His World, His Rules. We don’t get to decide a different approach to get there.

Many believe there are countless ways to God, but Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by Me”.  Many people confess love for Jesus, but the Jesus they know and love, is not the Jesus the Bible gives to the world.  It’s a Jesus made in their own image, rather than a Jesus who died so that you could be re-made spiritually into His likeness.

The world’s got it backwards in every way, and if you feel dazed, like you don’t fit in here, then thank the Lord, because that’s probably a sign of just how malleable you are in the hands of the master potter, to mold you and make you what He wants you to be.

Walking into a new fellowship and hearing someone preach what Paul was telling the Corinthians, is so rare now.  Churches where the sermon starts with the Bible, not some point or subject or topic, but the Word itself, and stays with the Bible, are nearly extinct.  That time of a famine of the preaching of the Word is now.  Reality sets in, and then it sets in a little more, and a little more. I mean, God designed us in such a way as to absorb things at a pace we can handle.  I have known for a lot of years now, that false doctrine is rampant but every year I know it a little more.  This is where we are.

And frankly, as the majority of Americans place their hope in one candidate or another, hoping to see a return to the “Greatness” of America past, I personally believe that letting us go through what we have coming, would be better for Americans.  The only hope to be had, is found in Jesus alone. After 9/11 people flocked to churches for a while.  But they didn’t stay because churches don’t offer anything different from what they find in the world.  Not even Jesus.  The REAL one, not the effeminate, free-spirited hippy Jesus of The Shack.  People know so little about the real Jesus of the Bible, that many don’t even know that the Shack Jesus ought to offend them.  And I admit that back when that book first came out, I myself didn’t immediately  grasp all the things that are so very wrong with that tale.  And it touts itself as a modern “Pilgrim’s Progress”!! We are so conditioned to “creativity” and “artistic liberty” and so enamored with our own imaginations.  And kids are taught to be that way, even in school.

I feel a “change in the ionosphere”.  Don’t you?  I don’t mean that in the uber-spiritualized mystical sense.  I mean it in the sense of someone who is diligently seeking understanding and learning more and more about the spiritual warfare always ongoing, and knowing a culmination is building. That same prickly sense you feel outdoors before a lightning storm.  Even those with no discernment or exposure to Scripture, know something is happening in our world.  Even unchurched and un-religious people report being convinced that we are living in the last days.

And people in churches are some of the most resistant and even downright vicious in avoidance of that topic.  They have it good here, they don’t want the Kingdom to come.  They like things the way they are.

It is a time when the unsaved are probably more open to hearing God’s comprehensive plan than ever before, and in many cases church is the one advising believers not to bring up those negative topics of last days, and hell, and all that.

Good is called evil and evil is called good. Fear is the last thing God’s people should feel right now.  Relief. Readiness. Excitement.  If you are going through personal difficulties, instead of getting defensive, angry at God, or discouraged, remember that He isn’t concerned with the things of this world, He is trying to strip you of any love for this world you may have left.  Trust Him and then trust Him again. Trust is not as hard as we pretend it is.  We don’t like it, but it is a decision. Simple as that. The Daze of Noah and Lot is going to give way to dazzling glory soon.  So trust Him through the chaos and trust Him through the pain, and trust Him through the indignities and the injustices. Jesus didn’t get treated “fair”, but hung on a criminal’s cross. What of our trials can we legitimately protest?