Is there more to say than what God Has Said? Is there more to do than mar­vel at His Grace? All we can do is ap­ply The Gospel of God, The Balm of Gilead to our lives that our eyes might be opened and we might see.

Cracks in the wall

False ide­olo­gies, ly­ing about the fu­ture and the past, claim that they are new. By fail­ing to ac­knowl­edge your sins and Je­sus Christ Who Died for your sins, they de­val­ue and mis­val­ue you and all hu­man be­ings. But like the frog who rode the scor­pi­on, we should not be sur­prised when false ide­olo­gies lie to us. They ab­solute­ly must ut­ter false proph­e­sies and must de­val­ue hu­man be­ings. They can­not help but act ac­cord­ing to the evil moral­i­ties from which they are made; ac­cord­ing to their cre­ator’s self­ish knowl­edge of good and evil. Yet The Bible re­veals that things and peo­ple are not good or evil be­cause they help or harmGen­e­sis 3:6. Good­ness is an in­trin­sic qual­i­ty Be­stowed by God through His Re­la­tion­ship with His cre­ation. Evil is what we and all our ide­olo­gies be­come when God Judges our re­bel­lion, our “de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence” from Him Who In Love Made us.

In this tor­rent of dai­ly temp­ta­tions, there are many holes a man must shore up and many doors a woman must close to stay close to God. But each crack and lock­less door can be traced back to the day Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil. The fun­da­men­tal rift and in­se­cu­ri­ty in every man and woman is this: you don’t want to live by God’s De­c­la­ra­tion of good and evil. You want to cre­ate your own moral­i­ty ... by steal­ing good and evil from God. Upon re­al­iz­ing that the false prophet has been ly­ing to them, many be­liev­ers feel be­trayed; as if harm has come to them from the hands of an­oth­er. But be­fore point­ing fin­gers, look in the mir­ror and touch the face of your de­ceiv­er. Only the de­ceiv­er can be de­ceived. You fell in love with the false prophet’s false words and false ide­olo­gies be­cause you your­self are false. If you had loved the truth, if you were obe­di­ent­ly in­ti­mate with God’s Holy Word, then by His Grace, false ide­olo­gies would anger and nau­se­ate you. In­stead, I em­brace the false prophet and call her sis­ter. I am de­ceived by the false prophet’s lie be­cause we are both thieves who have “stolen” moral­i­ty from God.

Let us re­mem­ber, how­ev­er, that we are not the orig­i­na­tors of our love for Truth and our great ef­fort at study­ing His Word. Good­ness is the gift of God by which you love The Truth and study the Bible. If not for God’s Good­ness and Mer­cy to keep us from temp­ta­tionMatthew 6:13, all be­liev­ers, en­ticed like Adam into self-de­struc­tionMatthew 24:22, would fall. There­fore, we do not work hard to read the Bible so that we may be­come good­er through all our hard work. That would be phar­i­saism, an­oth­er false ide­ol­o­gy. In­stead, we work hard be­cause God Works His Good­ness in us 1 Corinthi­ans 15:10, Eph­esians 2:10, Philip­pi­ans 2:12-13. Know­ing this truth, we pray dili­gent­ly and fer­vent­ly, ask­ing God to make us more and more like Him, to make us good like Him so that we may hate the lies and be lovers His Word.

From Rod to ser­pent

Image Source: https://catholicgnosis.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/moses_rod_serpent_hires.jpg
But we will not come to Him for life John 5:40, Je­re­mi­ah 6:16. Why should we come to God and com­plete­ly rely on Him for every­thing when we are al­ready healthy, rich and clothed? In the soil of our neg­li­gent, shal­low hearts, false ide­olo­gies take root.1 For this rea­son fem­i­nism’s claim that men and women are equal has found easy trac­tion in the church. Be­liev­ers in these church­es will tell you that the Bible Re­veals that men and women are equal Gen­e­sis 1:26-29, Colos­sians 3:11 but they for­get to say in val­ue. They will right­ly say that all be­liev­ers Are, By Je­sus Christ, Re-Deemed, Re-Val­ued and Gra­cious­ly Giv­en His Worth. Con­se­quent­ly, like lambs to the slaugh­ter, these be­liev­ers wrong­ly con­clude that fem­i­nism is right to say, “Men and women are the same.”

The prob­lem with their rea­son­ing is not fem­i­nism’s de­mon­ic goal of try­ing to make men and women ex­act­ly the same. The prob­lems are not the mur­der, so­ci­etal degra­da­tion and sex­u­al sins that blos­som in the pur­suit of this goal. Those are mere­ly symp­toms. Racism, fem­i­nism, com­mu­nism... are dis­eases be­cause they tempt us to be­come prodi­gal by at­tempt­ing to steal The Fa­ther’s Au­thor­i­ty. De­spite sound­ing bib­li­cal or even quot­ing the Bible, the dev­il, his false prophets and their ide­olo­gies pla­gia­rize and de­form God’s Truth by en­cour­ag­ing us to “make our­selves like The Most High” Gen­e­sis 3:5, Matthew 4:6-10, Isa­iah 14:14, Philip­pi­ans 2:6. By steal­ing His Word with­out sub­mit­ting to His Au­thor­i­ty, we walk around, sin­ful­ly con­fi­dent in our wealth of good­ness, wear­ing rags like moral fin­ery Rev­e­la­tions 3:17. Thus, in­stead of run­ning to God and re­ceiv­ing His good­ness through a re­la­tion­ship of obe­di­ence, we leave Him and go down to the far coun­try to squan­der our “in­her­i­tance” Luke 15:13.

Thank­ful­ly, all of God’s trea­sures have the same de­fense: once re­moved from His Pres­ence, with­out His Com­mon Grace, these truths, these rod and staff meant to com­fort and guide, be­come to us ven­omous snakes.Ex­o­dus 7:10, Num­bers 21:6 And like the dye packs that ex­plode to stain the clothes of bank rob­bers, the so­ci­etal degra­da­tion caused by their ven­om is ev­i­dence of our theft, mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion and De­i­cide2.

There are many paths to such de­struc­tion and all are faster than a brachis­tochrone curve. For ex­am­ple, con­sid­er that since all state­ments about good and evil are ar­bi­trary, I can­not prove that my good is good­er than yours and nei­ther can you. What then shall we do when your good is dif­fer­ent from my good? What shall we do when we have no com­mon ground, when my “good” deeds dis­gust you? Well, even­tu­al­ly, you must ei­ther move away from me or you must kill me. Con­se­quent­ly, fem­i­nism in Amer­i­ca and com­mu­nism in Chi­na have brought much “good” by fa­cil­i­tat­ing the mur­der of 384 mil­lion ba­bies over the past 40 years.3 Com­mu­nism, cap­i­tal­ism, every -ism nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quire the deaths of hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple so that their false prophets might con­tin­ue do­ing “good”. From our ill-got­ten evil moral­i­ties we con­struct gu­lags and con­cen­tra­tion camps. Like the Philistines who be­came dis­eased be­cause they stole the ark of Covenant 1 Samuel 5:1-4, 9-12, God Brings His Wrath upon our so­ci­eties and our lives be­cause we have lis­tened to false ide­olo­gies and stolen what be­longs to God.

how to de­ceive your­self into heav­en

Broth­ers and sis­ters, be­liev­ers in Je­sus Christ, we are in trou­ble. Every Sun­day the good pas­tor uses The Bible to show us our lives that we might see all the places where we be­lieved our­selves to be rich but are ab­ject­ly poor. Every Sun­day, like the afore­men­tioned Philistines, we bring back the things we have stolen from God with the pre­cious gold of re­pen­tance 1 Sam 6:5-8. And yet by Mon­day or some­times Tues­day,4 we de­ceive our­selves into think­ing we don’t need Him and there­by have stolen from Him again. And by Wednes­day, be­cause He Dis­ci­plines His chil­dren, He Faith­ful­ly Af­flicts us. Is it not time for a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy? Is it not time for a dif­fer­ent de­cep­tion?

As we said ear­li­er, af­ter striv­ing to be­hold God, the be­liev­er’s pri­ma­ry task is to dai­ly re­move this evil root of self-suf­fi­cien­cy Luke 9:23. How­ev­er, this root has in­vad­ed the depths of our hearts so that al­though we know and can eas­i­ly say, “I need God”, we think Him to be our ser­vant and not our Lord. In­stead of be­ing grate­ful sub­jects of our Great God, we flee from Him and join the re­bel­lion against Him. Clear­ly we need His Help to free us from our self-de­cep­tion. We need Him to give us un­der­stand­ing and open our eyes Deut 29:4, 29.

One of the eas­i­est means of do­ing this is to play pre­tend. Treat your­self like the er­rant child you are. Say to your­self, “Lis­ten, self. I know we think we are wealthy but we know that God Is Great and Holy. So let us ap­proach God pre­tend­ing, be­liev­ing that we are poor Matthew 5:3. Yes, like the dev­ilEzekiel 28:12-15, like the phar­iseeLuke 18:11-12, we think we are near to God but let us pre­tend that He Is Holy and stand afar like the tax col­lec­tor Luke 18:13-14. I know we think our­selves ar­rayed in moral fin­ery but us pre­tend that our right­eous­ness is filthy rags Isa­iah 64:6, Rev­e­la­tions 3:17.” This is what the Gibeonites did in Joshua 9:3-14. They heard what God Had Done to Egypt to free Is­rael and, like Ra­hab, they be­lieved that God Would Do the same to them. In­stead of be­liev­ing in their own strength and join­ing with the oth­er na­tions against Is­rael, they pre­tend­ed to be weak. In­stead of be­liev­ing in their wealth, they pre­tend­ed to be poor. In­stead of pre­sum­ing to be near, they pre­tend­ed to be from afar off Eph­esians 2:17. The Gibeonites be­lieved God and de­ceived them­selves from be­ing ser­vants of idols and self into ser­vants of The Most High God Joshua 9:27. They be­lieved, as David lat­er be­lieved, that it was bet­ter to serve in the house of God than to dwell “free” among all the oth­er wicked na­tions Psalms 84:10.

Be like the gibeonite

You might be rich. You might have all the moral­i­ty you will ever need. But lis­ten to God’s Word and you will know He Is Great and you are noth­ing. But still, you de­ceive your self be­cause you are a de­ceiv­er. Good good. Why not use de­cep­tion against it­self? Since only the de­ceiv­er can be de­ceived, de­ceive the de­ceiv­er in you by pre­tend­ing you don’t have any­thing. De­ceive your self into faith. Lay aside your fine linens by pre­tend­ing they are filthy rags. Dress your­self in sack­cloth and a bro­ken heart. Wash your self in ash­es and the wa­ter of His Holy Word2 Kings 5:10, Num­bers 19:9,17; that is wash your self in the Blood of Je­sus Christ. Though you may think there are bet­ter wa­ters, though you may think you have no need, why not just wash and be clean?2 Kings 5:13-14 Now ap­proach Him, God Almighty, Holy And Just Who Sees through your self-de­cep­tion. Ap­proach Him and ask for His Mer­cy, Grace and Good­ness. He Will Have Mer­cy and Bless youJoel 2:13-14. By The Blood of Je­sus Christ He Will.