My Search For The Real God
Chapter 2
The Art of Deliberate Confusion
To be victorious in a battle, a frontal attack on the enemy is not always the best plan if the collateral damage would be too high. Collateral damage defines the unrelated losses incurred to win a battle, whether it is hostile or non-hostile entities. Collateral damage can turn the minds of the innocent observer against the perpetrators. If the opposing force were fortified and well entrenched, it would be suicidal to mount frontal attack. Satan and his Army of angels tried this, when they attacked the gates of heaven and collateral damage was too high. If a fighting body utilized its major forces to attack a small target in a highly populated area, care must be taken to insure that collateral damage does not set the stage for winning the battle, and losing the war. The effective warrior has tools in place to minimize the issue of collateral damage.
In the arsenal of spiritual as well as natural warfare, propaganda is an effective tool. Propaganda minimizes the losses and is an effective tool in reshaping the minds of the masses. Propaganda relies upon a process that can be describe as deliberate confusion. Deliberately confuse the minds of the warriors and you destroy their effectiveness as a fighting unit. The Christian church is a fighting unit and if the devil can inject confusion into this unit he may not win the war, but he is well on the way to winning the battle. The struggle of Christianity is a war between good and evil. This war came into focus because of humanity's thirst for the forbidden knowledge of good and evil.
According to the Bible, the chance for collateral damage was high when Eve contested with the Devil, but the control factor was, and still is, not to prove the word of God is a lie, but to convince us that we misunderstood what we heard or read. An act of deliberate confusion perpetrated in the Garden of Eden was effective in persuading man to disobey his creator.
In the beginning, the word of God was simple, pure and easy to understand. The beauty of Jesus teaching was the simplicity of it. His parables were simple illustrations designed to impart knowledge to the hearer. After hearing the word as taught by Jesus, the disciples went out and spread the words of Jesus. There was no disagreement between the gospel preached by Paul and the gospel preached by Peter. If questions arose, prayer and contemplation provided the answer.
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| Earl Gillespie |
The teaching of Jesus was the foundation of the old time religion, but now the religion of old is no longer good enough or acceptable. The denominational quagmire is expanding, collapsing and splitting, and the churches are changing to embrace today's values. Santa Claus was wrong but alternate lifestyles are acceptable. The ten commandants no longer hold a hallowed place in our society, courtrooms or schools, and certain elements of our society loudly proclaim that God is an absentee landowner. Dress codes in the workplace and in schools are strictly enforced, but the churches say, “Come as you are.” One church teaches the “Trinity” is wrong and another says it is right. One preacher says the “Rapture” is wrong another says it is good. To some Christ is the reason for the season of Christmas, and for some it is the works of paganism. Some say we should go to church on Sunday others say Saturday is the day chosen by God. One minister says, “God will give you everything you want,” another says, “You must work out your own soul's salvation.” There are those that say we are under the law, and there are those that say we are under grace and truth. 2nd. Thessalonians 2:11 says, “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:” The messengers of God should teach the message of Jesus, and not messages filled with conjectures and falsehoods. If Gods ministers is reflecting the light of Jesus, then why is there so much confusion in Christianity? Is this an act of deliberate confusion perpetrated by the Devil?
Today, ministers are being called, and they are building beautiful sanctuaries at an alarming rate, yet the believability of God is at an all time low, and hope is dying. The faith of our fathers is floundering, and just as Nero danced at the burning of Rome, the churches are rejoicing in their immaculate sanctuaries as our young people are heading to jail or the graveyard at an alarming rate. Family values are eroding and our young men and women are cast adrift without the benefit of a father or a God. The architects of our faith and families have burned the roots of believability and left many of our youth adrift in a sea of confusion. Too many of our church workers are in denial and have no clue that they are driving people away from God. The preacher rejoices as he preaches to the choir about how great God’s love is while the young woman sit and wonder why did God take her family. Is the only word of hope is, "God know what he is doing?" How do you project hope to this person? How do you teach a person to have hope? We should honestly consider these questions. Do we believe in the spirit world? It is true, as our knowledge of good and evil increased our belief in the spirit world decreased.
Matthew 14:26 gives an example of the disciples believing in ghosts, “And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.” It is clear from this verse the disciples had a strong belief in spirits. The ancients believed in spirits or ghost, they were all the same regardless of their name. There are many stories told of their encounters with ghosts. To them the spirit world was just as real as the natural world, the only difference was the spirit world was scary. My grandmother and grandfather were strong believers in ghosts and they had a different respect for God than many of us have today.
In the natural world dichotomies exist such as good and evil, night and day and life and death. Can night exist if there is no day? The inverse of the natural world is the spiritual world and to deny the existence of one is to deny the existence of the other. The spirit world interacts with the natural world. There is God’s spirit and there is the Devil’s spirit. The Holy Spirit is of God and unclean or demonic spirits are of the Devil. John 4:24 says, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” In our civilized world, can we can believe in a spiritual God and deny the entities of the spiritual world. If there are Angels, there must be Demons, if there is a Holy Ghost is there an opposite? If you do not believe in the spiritual domain, then I think your experience with the spirit world will be unrewarding.
There are demonic spirits at work all around us and in the church. The spirit of confusion, the spirit of uncertainty and the spirit of lethargy is at work today, and soul saving is not significant as it once was. There is more attention given to the position we serve, than in following the path of Christ. If I can just keep myself straight is the accepted norm, but this goes against the teaching of Christ. Christ taught his disciples to go into the vineyard, highways and hedges and work.
The art of deliberate confusion and the lack of knowledge are working and many are finding it difficult to believe. Will a message of deliverance cause me to believe? What can I learn from a message about being faithful when the messengers who are seeking to influence my spirituality, implant doubt and confusion?
Some years ago, I asked a noted prelate a simple question, in my struggle for the truth, and ‘all hell broke loose’. I was at a crossroads in my life where things were not going well. He attributed my problems to a lack of faith. If faith comes through believing then I recognized that my problem must be in believing. The question was, “How can I become a true believer?” He said that all I had to do was believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. There was silence in my brain cells as shock settle in, the learned prelate had just used the word ‘believe’ to define ‘believe’. I slowly regained a sense of mental balance and endured my rebuking for asking that type of question. Once the conversation ended, I was more confused than I was before I asked the question. The sound bites of Christianity were ineffective, and the answer is often left obscured.
Is it unreasonable to ask for instructions on how to believe? We should be able to go to our friend, our neighbor, our pastor, or our priest and request help with our problems or questions of faith. How can I believe and why people lose their faith is two question that the religious community refuses to address. Why is it hard for a God fearing person to acknowledge that a God fearing person can lose their faith?
Acts 8:30-31 gives a perfect example of how teachers of the gospel should perform. “And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?”, “And he said how can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.” The rest of the chapter will give a great insight of Philip’s work. He taught this listener how to believe.
If a person says, “I want to believe in God,” do we error when the responds is, “read the Bible, pray and go to church.” I contend that reading the Bible or praying without a firm belief in God will firmly plant your feet on the path to becoming one of the Devil’s disciples. What I mean by this statement is that if you do not believe in God, are you going to believe his word? If you do not believe in him is he going to answer your prayer?
A message of believing, a message of faith, and a message of hope should be more important than a message of longevity and prosperity. Longevity and prosperity is earthly treasures and Jesus spoke against laying up your treasures here on earth, but the charlatan prelate can easily explain this away. I blame the failure of religion or Christianity on a number of things, but some who claim to be the messenger of God have done some of the most damaging work. The proliferation of churches and messengers of their selective faith, and newly created doctrines, spreading their message through every available media outlet is not conducive to believability or to the spreading of the word of God. Claiming that you have a message from God does nothing to promote the word of God either, when your message is shallow and does not meet the criteria set forth by Jesus Christ.
The best approach to believability may not be the separation of the teaching of the Bible and the teaching of science as many propose. This thought process has nothing to do with, the theory of evolution. The name itself implies that it is a theory and not a fact. Science and the Bible are based upon facts that can be misinterpreted. Through Science, we can understand the languages of the Bible and the world around us better. Admittedly, many people have obtained a deeper understanding of the Bible through reading, prayer, and contemplation. Theories can conflict with the word of God, but the facts of science are the study of the Universe and the application of God’s preset laws. Science cannot deny or prove the existence of God but Science should allow us to appreciate the works of God better. We should be able to discard theories when they are contradictive to the Bible.
Continued
A Book Review
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