Why They Don't Believe? Part #3

God Is Not The Genie In The Bottle

The unforgiving nature of humanity, especially the African-American has produced a renewed division between the races and it is promoted within many organized churches. It is my belief that this division will bring about the events prophecied in Revelation 13.  Hatred has existed since the days of Adam and Eve, but in today's society it is being watered and cultivated under the guise of political correctness.  This hatred is growing and our belief structure has become contaminated as we seek to recreate God in our own image.   Through a special connection, some of us claim to reek in the favor of our God, while all around us the world is in turmoil.  The believability of the true God suffers because the organize church stands with blinded eyes, praying and projecting peace and prosperity while the nations are aligning and the appearance of the four horsemen are imminent. 

A centuries old Arabic folk tale tells the story of Aladdin, a street urchin who finds a lamp that houses a Genie.  In exchange for releasing him from the bottle, Aladdin is granted three wishes.  A wish implied that whatever the situation was, whatever your wants all you have to do is ask (pray) in the form of a wish.  In today's modernistic, pessimistic and apostate society to make God appealing to the mass, it seems as if we have given him the same attributes of a Genie in a bottle.  We can now go about our daily task, confident that God has got our back as we type Amen and share statuses on social media to collect party favors.  Finally, we have a God we can control, if I don’t like what you are doing, “God will get you”, and we are confident that we always closer to God than the next person.    Is it because we feel that we have a better understanding of how to manipulate the Genie in the bottle?  Our attitude is often based upon a sermon I once heard on, "How to work God". 

The rain finally came to our neck of the woods.  It is my expectations that my dried up fall garden will burst into new life.  The drought that had caused the trees to shed their leaves early and the grass to turn brown was spoken of by some as a warning from God.   Intercessory prayers were offered by some community members for the return of the rain, yet the dusk bowel continued to engulf our community.   But, praying for the rain to come was something I just could not wrap my faith around.  The warning of the prophets was that if we repented and turned to God he would heal the land.   The supporting scripture was 2^nd Chronicles 7:14  If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  The land, the world our homes, our schools, our communities are suffering, therefore we must be doing something wrong.

To add to the misery of our drought-stricken community, one preacher or prophet pronounced the vengeance of God upon the church and community.   The threats that were made from the pulpit was equivalent to threats made by false prophets of old, “If you don’t do this or that, SOMEBODY is going to die.”    In my early years of Christian endearment, I was guilty of playing the same game.   At the close of a service, one lady spent thirty minutes communing with God, when it was over the message she received was, “somebody is going to die if they don’t stop fighting with the pastor.”  Needless to say anybody that had a disagreement with the pastor repented and went home and did some serious praying.   Back in the old days there was something profound about standing before a group of peoples and stating that God had spoken to you. As long as the message was scary, nobody bothering to question the validity of your message.  It happen sort of sudden and without warning, God began to speak to anybody who had the time to listen, and soon conflicting messages began to appear.

Why they don't believe us?  if we looked closely at the antics and messages of those who profess to be a Christian, the answer to the age-old question would be easy.  Look at the church, the cornerstone of Christianity, what do we see?  Not one, but many different intricated networks, designed to amplify the status of an individual, to collect money and funnel it up the chain of authority.   What's the effect of these multiple franchises of God's house?  Is there a decrease in crime?  Is the world becoming a much better place?  Are the spiritual needs of the saints being met or have the church just resorted to a platform of entertainment?   A better question that is the crust of the believability issue, how many unfilled promises or even threats   are made in the name of the Father?

The rain has come, but I guess we are still waiting for SOMEONE to die.   The truth is somebody is dying every day.  There seems to be no shame when it comes to making threats and promises in the name of God.  We just flip out our little genie in the bottle, say a few words and watch him work.  I once made the observation that even a drunk wallowing in the pit of sin and depravation could play the “somebody card” and be right.   The underlying question is do “they” really believe in God?  Maybe this is one of the many reasons why “they” don’t believe our report.

In Exodus 20:7, the scripture explicitly states, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”  The word “vain” has been redefined under the guideline of political correctness, thus allowing the name of God to be cast about careless.  Even in acts that are unethical or unholy it is more appropriate to say “Oh my God” rather than “Oh my Devil”.  God has become like that genie in the bottle, whenever we need him we just pluck him out and put him to work.  Car breakdown, call God, need money, call God and the preacher says, whatever you need to ask God.  While many are sucking every dime they can get from the community they serve for profit and prestige.     Every weekend thousands of pastors or ministers stand before their selected audience and proclaim a fresh message from God.  True, the metaphysical or supernatural aspect of God allows him to deliver messages simultaneously, but the question many ask is, why does God give out conflicting messages.   Thus, it becomes easy to see why many question the validity of the message.  

Jesus delivered the message of the kingdom without the pomp and pride of self-promoting titles.  Contrasting today’s churches that are filled with pageantry and the Word of God is merely a byproduct of a staged production.  Hearing and spreading the word of God has become an entertaining process and many are vying to make their performance on the  stage a stellar event.  The desire to act or to perform on stage before an audience could be described as an aphrodisiac.  It drives the qualified and the unqualified with the same intensity.  On the world stage, those who are unqualified are quickly discarded, yet in the religious community the conscious is, whom God calls, he qualify.  This extrapolation is based upon God’s actions towards Moses and even Jeremiah, whose callings were stated facts within the Word of God.   The problem that emerges is that Jesus and even Paul spoke of false prophets coming into the church.  Some of these false prophets are good entertainers, some are not, some have powers and some do not, but they all have one thing in common, they are not called or qualified by God.

The Devil and the unscrupulous are skilled at using  the Word of God to intimidate the righteous.  This process started in the garden of Eden and was even played out against Jesus in the wilderness.  The sheep of God’s pasture has been warned and they should be protected, yet the protectors of Jesus’s church have allowed the wolves to come in with their mega-programs, their pomp, and ceremonies and they are leading his people astray.  Those who question or rebel at the ideology of organized religion or churches, operating as a business are silenced and cast aside, they are treated as heretic or infidels. The question remains when I speak of the church, what am I speaking of?  Am I speaking of a denomination, the church over here, or the church over there?  This question cannot be resolved within the organized church.

The best answer to these question can only be found with the Heart of man, the spiritual church.  The numerous organized churches have long been contaminated by the wages of sin.  Once we realize that the purity of the church does not exist in some fashionable building or denomination, or even a man in a purple robe, we are well on the way to resolving the issues we have created.  Then, the question becomes, do we have enough time to repair the damage before Jesus return and call for his church?   The began the journey back to the cross, Christ organized churches we should read, study and meditate on the letters Jesus sent back to the church.  They are warning that we should heed rather than being cast aside.  

Contrary to what many teach God is not a Genie in a bottle offering you a walk of prosperity in this world.  The earthly journey is filled with hardships, and these we must endure if we intend to prove that we are capable of reigning with Christ.  If your intent is to float around Heaven on a cloud, then you have been misinformed of God's plan for this earth.