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 harm Genesis 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 temptation Matthew 6:13, all believers, enticed like Adam into self-destruction Matthew 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

[[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. But if you would deepen your heart in God, then the roots of the ideology would remain shallow. 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 Deicide For must not those who steal from Him also kill Him that they might be condemned to hell or convicted unto salvation? See Luke 20:14, Mark 12:7, Matthew 21:38.

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. https://www.ft.com/content/6724580a-8d64-11e2-82d2-00144feabdc0#axzz2OqCb0LXC, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2012/mar/18/chris-smith/chris-smith-says-more-54-million-abortions-have-be/ 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, Overly generous estimations 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 devil Ezekiel 28:12-15, like the pharisee Luke 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 Word 2 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 you Joel 2:13-14. By The Blood of Jesus Christ He Will.