Voice of the Kingfisher speaks out …from a different perspective
by Elinor Montgomery
The Cross and the Dung Heap
March 20, 2012
Do you really trust in the cross, as we ready ourselves to celebrate anew the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Let me ask you a question: “Are you all inclusive, ecumenically-minded, tolerant of all religions, respectful of religious books, unbelieving of the full truth of the Bible, and more interested in the social work of Jesus than the truth of who He is?” If your answer is “Yes” to this question, then, in God’s eyes, you are destined for the dung heap.
The cross actually is your salvation keeping you from being taken through the Dung Gate to the dung heap outside of the city, where the trash is burned so the stench cannot be smelt in Jerusalem. It is a one-way journey to the valley of Hinnom or Tophet, which presents a graphic picture of the eternal punishment or judgment of hell. Gehenna is another term for this place where the wicked kings of Israel built altars for the burnt offerings of their children to the god Molech.
Would Hinnom or Gehenna not be good names for our abortion clinics of today? Are they not the places where human flesh is trashed by the very mother whose womb was intended to be a place of safety for a child of God to grow? What is dung, if not human or animal refuse? There is a very common word used to describe this refuse, but the real commonality of these words is that they have a stench associated with them. That which does not serve as good nutrients for the body is eliminated by it. If it is not eliminated, it becomes a build-up of toxin, which destroys the body.
Sin is exactly like that in our valley journey of life. It is described quite graphically in Mark 7:21-23: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.” Can we be perfect in our valley wandering? If that were possible, then there would be no need for the cross.
This brings us to the Christian church, the name being an oxymoron in itself. Christianity is a religion, and it was religion, which took Adam and Eve to the dung heap for burning. Jesus said that the gates of hell, represented in the natural by the Dung Gate, would not prevail against His church. Are we not watching them prevail daily against the Christian churches, as one after another of them joins the culture to endorse sin? Apostasy reigns supreme, with sin picking up momentum, as the institutional churches rush headlong into the ecumenicity of a One World Religion.
Don’t our Christian poster-boys, such as Billy Graham, tell us that we must respect religion? Don’t they gasp at the thought of the Koran being thrown on the dung heap for burning, when God gave us the Ten Commandments, the first of which clearly states that we are to have no other gods before Him? The book of Acts shows us that the early church burned thousands of wicked, religious books of apostasy so that leaven would not spread among them. The following words followed in Scripture; So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed (Acts 19:20).
If some of the institutional churches would burn off their religious apostasy there might be hope for their victims. The dung heap is filling up with Laodicean Christians who sit in their comfortable pews at Easter-time, gracing God with a body full of ‘crap’ (the other word), which is nothing more than a stench to His nostrils. They pray to a God they do not know at all, in an ecumenical spirit that loves the liberalism of the Garden, which Satan introduced to man as the first religion. They are religious devotees who come together in the name of Jesus who, in turn, will refuse them at the door of the kingdom where He will say to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness (see Matthew 7:21-23)!”
Millions, upon millions, attend Christian churches one day a week, then never open their Bibles the rest of the week, and know nothing about the truth of its Word and just how much meaning it has for us today. Hence, they do not know why nations stagger, fall and die. They do not know why economic systems fail and why America and Israel are hated by the world religious nations. They do not know why the city of Jerusalem is at the very heart of international political tensions today, exactly as the Bible tells it will be.
So, who really is in charge – God or man? If God, then why are you Laodicean in nature when it comes to what He has to say, while, at the same time, you will spend hours upon end heeding what man thinks and has to say? Are you not choosing to allow the Dung Gate to come between you and the kingdom? Do you really think showing up at Christmas and Easter in your religious pew, bringing along your good deeds you have done the rest of the year, will save you from the dung heap?
It is only the cross, which can save you, and it is very possible that your pastor is getting ready to take it down to make way for the coming One World Order. If this is the case, then church is the last place you want to be this Easter. Instead, pick up your Bible and read just how rugged an experience the cross was for Jesus, and ponder just how much you give of yourself in return, back to Him. He gave His life in excruciating pain and the suffering of separation from His Father when the spiritual waters of the world were placed upon Him who knew nothing but the water of life from which He had never thirsted. He was forced to thirst in the spirit of death so that you and I might be free of such thirst to share in His resurrected life.
Where is the gratitude for what He has done for you? Is it expressed by your presence in a religious system two or three times a year, or does He actually know you? He will not ever know you if you fill up your body with toxic religion, Political Correctness, and multi-cultic gods. You may well be tolerant, but you most definitely will not escape the dung heap.
Unfortunately, Solomon was a slow learner, not unlike most Americans who chase after knowledge and wisdom, but refuse to go to the only source of the Bible, where you will find them. Solomon advised man to remember his Creator in the days of his youth, for the rest of it is all vanity. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity (Ecclesiastes 12:8).”
Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
And this, Solomon stated, is the conclusion of the whole matter. And so where does the conclusion lead you? Are you heading for the Dung Gate and ultimately the dung heap, or will you embrace the cross, to ride with Jesus as He enters the East Gate into the royal city of David? There He will set up His kingdom of truth with His bride of the true apostolic church at His side, and religion will be no more, with the burning and the stench of it well outside the city wall.