Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
Do you go to Church or are you the Church?
February 22, 2009
What is it that you have been told – you should go to church or you are the church? One is a mere religious institutional building or system, the other is the reality. Jesus sent out His church after He separated it from the religious system of His day called Judaism. The religious priests of the system were His enemy throughout His short career and finally managed to coerce the government to falsely accuse Him and to kill Him. This was the religious spirit, which came against Christ called the antichrist spirit.
Religion is no substitute for truth. There is a ratio that applies out there to the religious system of Christianity, which is this; the more religious the church system is, the less the Bible is applied to it and the more the doctrines of men replace the truth. Directly related to this is the issue of prayer. Jesus gave us the order for prayer, which begins with “Our Father which art in heaven.” No one on earth is able to answer prayer.
The Lord gives the answer for prayer offered in the perfect will of God. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” This was always the divine will of God from the moment He created man and gave him the rules by which he was to live in obedience to Him. There was no option left open to him to embrace a religious system led by Satan that opposed God’s truth. The way of such a system leads to death in separation from God.
This is why Jesus told the religious Pharisees that their father was the devil. They were on the fast track, which leads to hell. Furthermore, they were the blind guides of the religious system of temple builders who were taking the people down with them.
One might counter with the fact that the apostles preached in the temples. They preached anywhere they could find those who were involved in religious idolatry, in the hope of reaching them with the truth of God about Who this Man Jesus was, as His only begotten Son. They preached salvation to anyone who had ears to hear, but they never asked anyone to go back into the synagogues for spiritual nurturing, once they were saved from the doctrines of the Pharisees and had separated from them. Note that one of Jesus’ own apostles kept up his religious ties with the Pharisees, to his detriment; his name was Judas.
Quite to the contrary, the apostles departed from the religious system, which could not or would not hear, to preach the truth as Jesus had done before them. They testified to all nations in the spirit of prophecy, pointing back to the prophets for validation and authority. Jesus told the Pharisees that they were their own fathers who had killed the prophets, whom they now claimed to be their own.
There was no legitimacy to the temple practices of Jesus’ time, for they had already incorporated some of the doctrines of religion, picked up in Babylon while in captivity there. Israel, like all the nations of that time, was suffering as well from the effects of Hellenism and the cultural changes, which came with it.
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.” Here is the key to successful prayer. Without the Spirit ruling our lives, we will choose wickedness over righteousness every time. Americans of both nations are a people who desperately need the truth of Jesus and do not know it. We have stolen truth from our children by allowing liberal governments to take the Bible from the classrooms.
Most American schools and colleges were founded on Biblical truth, which held a place of equal importance with the teaching of mathematics and the sciences. In fact, the Bible was considered foundational to all educational systems, except in the separate system of religious schools where catechism and religious observances were more important than the truth.
In the public system, it was strictly Bible truth, without religious interference, in the early days of America when she was subject to the law of her national constitutions. Jewish children were required to attend the public system and, if the parents desired it, they could be excused from Bible studies. However, Bible study was not forsaken for the sake of appeasing cultural religious differences under any circumstances.
Anyone who objected to the Bible was stopped at the borders of immigration, where ALL immigrants were required to swear allegiance to God and country. That is what made our country the great nation she is. In fact our gift to new immigrants was a Bible, that is to say, before liberalism began to pervade the culture.
It was Jesus’ will for His apostles not to take up the sword against the religious nations that ruled by the sword, for there will be no sword in kingdom living. Isaiah tells us that, in the latter days, the people shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (see Isaiah 2:4). And they shall learn war no more.
There is no would-be messiah, whatsoever, on the present political scene, who does not twist this statement to present it the other way around, as we are told in the book of Joel: “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruninghooks into spears (Joel 3:10).” This is the message of how nations under satanic rule will live in these, the latter days; that which is labeled peace is no peace at all. The sword with which the Antichrist will rule his One World Order will cleanse the religious system of all dissenters, who reject it for the truth.
Do not be deceived; there is no false messiah ruling over any nation or anyone who has ever ruled over any nation of this world as a son of His Spirit who can say he is the son of God. The only begotten Son came to save, but He is very soon going to return to rule all nations. Then, and only then, will a Messiah rule over the world. It will not be by the sword, for He will take back world ruler-ship in the authority of the truth and never by the signing of peace treaties with nations, which depend upon weapons of war.
Are you praying in truth or in religion, for one will align you with God’s will and the other with Satan, wherein you will be cast from His sight. God tells Ezekiel that the house of Israel has become nothing but dross to Him and He will gather it in the midst of Jerusalem like men gathered in the midst of a furnace (see Ezekiel 22:17-22). He is speaking to an unclean nation, the prophets of which conspire and the priests of which have violated the Law.
Does this not paint a picture of America today embracing every false god, which is brought into this land, supposedly ruled by the one true God? He went on to say to Ezekiel that He sought just one who could make the wall of truth stand between His people and the religious, corrupt crew, and there was not one who could stand in the gap and pray into the will of God that He might hear their prayers and respond.
The problem with what we generally call church is that it is defined by religious Christian institutions. This is where the rubber hits the road. The walls of religious institutional structured churches keep God from hearing. The wall of the true church is a spiritual separating wall, which stands between a foundation of religion and the foundation of truth. Was the wall of fire in Australia this past year fanned by a nation that mainly denies the existence of God? Are the fires of California fanned by the general wickedness that prevails throughout that state?
The bottom line depends on which side of this dividing wall you stand, if you are to stand in the gap in prayer to God for the nation. Are you deeply committed to being the church by witnessing to the truth throughout the week, or do you call the religious structure in which you sit on the week-end, the church, which is nothing more than just that – a religious institution?
There is only one way for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and that is in obedience to His Word, as His people witnessing only to the truth and never to religion. It is only the truth of the fishermen, which will draw the fish into the nets of heaven.
www.voiceofthekingfisher.ca