What if someone approached you today and said they’d been watching you? Before you could react, they asserted that they had been watching you all your life and knew everything about you. They knew what you had for dinner last night and breakfast this morning. They knew the grades you made in elementary school and the secrets you told on the playground. In fact, they confessed that they knew every secret about you, perhaps the last movie you watched, the last careless word you uttered, the last website you visited, everything down to the deepest hidden things about you. What would your response to this person be? Fear that someone was following you? Anger that your private life had been violated? Perhaps relief, that someone finally knew what it was you’d been going through? Now what if that person said they know you’ve professed Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, but everything they’ve observed in your life up to this point has not supported that profession. They’ve seen your unwillingness to read His Word, pray, let alone share your faith. They’ve seen how your heart is, they know the unconfessed sin in your life or the patterns of sin and disobedience, and they challenge you that your profession was superficial. That there is no way you could possibly be a Christian and live they way you have been. What would your response be now? Resentment because this person has no right to judge you? Anxiety because you’ve been exposed as a fraud? Or maybe pain and repentance because you know they’re right, that you have not been living your life in accordance with your profession of faith? Now what if I told you the person that knew everything about you and questioned you was Jesus Christ. Would that change your response? Would you insert a “but Lord” to His findings on your life? This is exactly what Jesus did in His letters to the 7 churches in Revelation 2-3 and it is exactly what each of us face when we meet Him at judgment. While these letters serve as a warning of judgment to particular churches, we can parallel their application to our individual lives.
In Revelation 2, John records Jesus’ letter to the Church in Ephesus. In verse 2 He writes, “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” Revelation 2:2-5 By all accounts, this church was a discerning body, able to spot deceptive teachers, unlike their brothers in Colossae or Galatia. But note the warning Jesus gives them, “you have abandoned the love you had at first.” Maybe this church at Ephesus is like you. You know the difference between good and evil, but your love for Christ has waned since your earlier profession. Your heart has grown hard and calloused and you’ve backslidden from Christ. Jesus is warning them, and us, not to presume that the way they used to live is good enough to get them into heaven. The mark of a true Christian isn’t a onetime profession of faith, it’s that you continue to believe. It’s not a onetime repentance and you’re done, it’s a continued repentance. Jesus is urging them to repent and return to Him, lest He take away their lampstand and turn them over to the hardness of their hearts.
Where do you stand today Christian? Do you have a hard, impenitent heart? Are you resting your hope of salvation on a “decision” you made years ago, while there is no evidence that you are truly saved? Jesus is calling you to repentance. He is calling you to return to your first love, your former works before it’s too late. Do not despise the chastening of the Lord.
Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
The video below discusses the importance of defending the faith. You can’t defend what you don’t know. As heard in the clip, biblical knowledge is not limited to pastors or theologians, as we are all called to contend earnestly for the faith. Matthew Henry states, “Ignorance is so far from being the mother of devotion that it is the mother of destruction; lack of knowledge is ruining to any person or people.” Instead we must “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV
Jude 3 “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”
This past weekend marked the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech and “coincidentally” was chosen as the weekend for Glenn Beck’s “Divine Destiny” and “Restoring Honor” public gatherings in nearly the same location as King. I’ve been warning about Beck and these meetings repeatedly on this site by defining the Political Gospel. While the population estimates for these events have ranged anywhere from a conservative 87,000 to an inflated 1,000,000 the issue here remains. This was less a political rally and more an introduction of religious ecumenism or perhaps more accurately stated interfaith pluralism. Somewhere along the last year or so Beck has transitioned himself from a political analyst/talk-show host/history buff into a religious zealot intent on using God as a platform for a political cause. As has been mentioned before, the problem with this strategy is that as a self-professing Mormon, Beck’s god is not the same God as that of the Bible. Likewise, to use politics as an avenue to draw in people of varying faiths, including Muslims and Jews whose roots can both be traced to Abraham, and link of all them to God is quite simply unbiblical. Or as one commentator stated Beck’s “conversion into a televangelist” seems more for the cause of promoting “God as a political savior.” Dr. Russell Moore, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary offers this statement, “Too often, and for too long, American “Christianity” has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it” and describes this weekend’s events as follows:
“A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital. The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that. If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.”
Comments from Beck hide the dangers of such an unbiblical spiritual alliance, “When people came together of different faiths in the Spirit of God … the first thing they did was pray together.” This sounds great when you hear phrases like “Spirit of God” and even one speaker at the event, Pastor Paul, who declared, the “gospel of Jesus Christ should be the central focus of every settlement.” I agree, the Gospel of Jesus Christ should be the central focus, however, Mormons don’t believe in that Jesus, Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Son of God, and Muslims believe Jesus to be a prophet, but in the middle of this crowd are the undiscerning “Christians” who think everyone is talking about the same God. One such person was interviewed by the Washington Times and offered this statement, “I’m all for everything Glenn Beck stands for — I’m for God. I believe that we as a Christian nation have dismissed Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior. If we don’t get back to God in this country, then we are in big trouble.”1 And she is absolutely right we have dismissed Jesus Christ (though are far from a Christian nation), but Beck, et.al, do not recognize the same God or the same Jesus, so to follow Beck and think that everyone is talking about the same idea is pure ignorance. It all sounds great, but it’s just not truth.
Observe the following comparison:
Mormon founder Joseph Smith stated, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!!! . . . We have imagined that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil, so that you may see,” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 345).
Isaiah 57:15 reads, “For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Additional Scripture proofs are Psalm 90:2, 102:27, 1 Timothy 1:17)
Unmistakably 2 different ideas about who God is.
Pastor Ken Silva, of Apprising Ministries, describes the “Jesus” of Mormonism as follows:
I am the Jesus Christ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). My original Church went through a total apostasy and I took the Priesthood from the earth. In 1820 by one account—as there are nine different accounts—I appeared, with Heavenly Father, to Joseph Smith who would be the prophet to restore my Church. I told him that everything the historic Christian Church had taught was an abomination in my sight and that all who believe in those doctrines are corrupt. I am the spirit child who was born first to Heavenly Father, whose name is Elohim, and who has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.
Elohim was once a man who lived on the planet Kolob. He died and was resurrected by his father—after earning his way to godhood—as did his father before him, and so on back. Heavenly Father pro-created all of us through sexual relations with one of his celestial wives, and we are all his spirit children. I was born first; next was Lucifer, and then on down the line comes you. When the head of the gods—of which there are countless numbers—called a council of the gods I came up with a better plan of salvation than my brother Lucifer did. So I became the Savior for Heavenly Father’s children on earth. I was conceived for my earthly mission when Heavenly Father came down and had sexual relations with his daughter the Virgin Mary.
I sweat great drops of blood for your sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. Then on the cross I finished my work; and because of that atonement, all persons on this earth are going to be resurrected. And so now you have a chance to earn your way to becoming a god, just like me, by working the Gospel Principles taught by the Mormon Church. But be careful because my blood was not sufficient to cover some of your sins as my prophet Brigham Young once taught for me. He said, “There’s not a man or woman who violates the covenant made with their God that will not be required to pay that debt. The blood of Christ will never wipe that out. [And y]our own blood must atone for it.”
Clearly this description is contrary to Jesus Christ the Son of the One True God who stated the “gates of Hell” would not prevail against His Church. This is not the Jesus Christ who has always been with the Father, John 1:1-3, who was a born of a virgin, Matthew 1:23, a product of Divine conception of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 1:20, made himself nothing to live as a man, Philippians 2:5-11, who endured the cross, Hebrews 12:2, to be a propitiation for our sins, 1 John 4:10, and rose again now seated at the right hand of the Father, Hebrews 1:3. Christians THIS is who Jesus is, not the “Jesus” that Glenn Beck or Mormonism proclaims. The Apostle Paul specifically warned of how easy it is for people to follow those who teach false Christ’s in 1 Corinthians 11:4, “For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.” This is precisely what is happening today in America and specifically at the events from this past weekend. And all who proclaim this false gospel will be accursed, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:6-9
PLEASE take time to watch the video below to see further evidence of the blurred lines that Mormons make between their religion and Christianity by Dr. James White.
