I Love You, America, But Not Like That - Brian Zahnd

July 4th 2017
Happy Birthday, America. Today you’re 241 years old. I’ve known you for almost a quarter of your life, so I know you well. You’ve always been my home. But lately I feel something has come between us; there’s been some misunderstandings and I would like to clear the air.
First of all, I love you. Like I said, you’re my home. I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve always come home to you. There’s so much I admire about you. Your energy, your creativity, your entrepreneurial spirit. You invented the blues, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll. You’ve led the world for most of a century in science and technology. You even put a man on the moon! You came up with the idea of preserving vast tracts of your natural beauty through the genius of National Parks. (Some have suggested this is your best idea and I agree.) You’ve given us great artists like Walt Whitman, Harper Lee, and Bob Dylan. You provided refuge for great thinkers like Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and Abraham Joshua Heschel. You opened your door to millions of immigrants from around the world — the poor looking for nothing more than safe haven and a new opportunity. You welcomed the Zahnds from Switzerland at the beginning of the last century. Indeed, you’re at your best when you live up to the lofty ideals of Lady Liberty.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Yes, America, I love you…but not like that. Not in the way of supreme allegiance and unquestioned devotion. You see, my heart belongs to another. I’m a Christian and I confess that Jesus is Lord. The Savior of the world is the crucified and risen Son of God, not “We the People.” The gospel is the story of Jesus, not the American story. I know your 16th President claimed that America was “the last best hope of earth,” but it’s simply not true. The last best hope of earth is Jesus, not you.
Okay, brace yourself. I’m going to say some hard things.
Sometimes you embarrass yourself when you get drunk on hubris. At times you display an arrogance that borders on blasphemous. Take for example, The Apotheosis of Washington in the Capitol Rotunda. Obviously you know that apotheosis means to “make a god of” — because that’s clearly what you’re attempting to do with George Washington. You appropriated the Christian iconography of Christ ascended to heaven and replaced Jesus Christ with George Washington. Come on now! That’s a bit much, wouldn’t you say? Honored as the first President, fine. But made a god?! As if America is a divine creation or something like that. That’s a very unhealthy ego on display.
That’s what I mean when I say I love you, but not like that! If I loved you like that I would betray my baptism. I am betrothed by faith and baptism to Christ alone. Jesus told his followers, “whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, cannot be my disciple.” Obviously, Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to actually hate their parents, but he is making a point about the requirement of unrivaled allegiance. So, America, when people accuse me of hating you, please know it isn’t true. I don’t hate you. But I can’t allow you to rival my allegiance to Jesus. I can’t put you first. I have vowed to seek first the kingdom of God and you’ll just have to understand that.
Now that we’re this far into our difficult conversation I feel like I have to say some other things. It’s true that I love your energy, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. I love your amazing contributions to science and art. I love you because you’re my home. But there are things I don’t love about you.
Here we go.
I know you hate to be reminded of what you call “the past,” but the truth is it’s not past and you need to be reminded of it whether you like it or not. I’m talking about your twin original sins. The brutal enslavement of Africans for the sake of “The Economy” and the ethnic-cleansing of this land’s indigenous inhabitants. You seem willing to acknowledge the sin of slavery. (Though you still have a long, long way to go in righting the wrongs of racism.) But you appear incapable of acknowledging your other great sin — the sin of genocidal ethnic cleansing. You want to pretend it didn’t happen and get mad when I bring it up. But you’re going to have to face it. I don’t know exactly how you can atone for this sin, but I do know that you have to face the ugly fact that you built your nation on stolen land and buried bodies. You are Cain. You can receive the mercy of God as Cain did, but you have to be honest about what you did to your brother Abel. America, you’re my home, but my home is haunted by native ghosts.
So please try to be more humble. You don’t have to be great. It’s enough to be good. You don’t have to be so obsessed with being “Number One.” It’s enough to be a moral citizen among the community of nations. You don’t have to try to be “King of the World.” (Jesus already is!) And your obsession with possessing the means to kill — your trillion dollar war machine, two thousand nukes, billion dollar bombers, a new thirty billion dollar warship, and your 270 million guns! — scares me. It reminds me of something ominous that Jesus said. “All who take up the sword will die by the sword.” Please think about it.
America, I’m one of your citizens. And I love you like a sister. I’ll seek the common good. I’ll gladly pay my share to help provide for education, infrastructure, healthcare, emergency services, and everything else it takes to live in a civilized society. (I’d like for you to spend a lot less on bombs and killing machines, but I understand that’s not up to me.) Yes, America, I love you like a sister. But not like I love my Lord. Not like I love God. I cannot love you like that. I cannot pledge unconditional allegiance to you. But I can promise to be a good citizen by attempting to love my neighbor as myself.
On the Fourth of July I cannot worship you with the liturgies of civil religion, but I’ll gladly eat a hotdog in honor of your birthday and listen to some Johnny Cash. And better yet, I can pray that you would become more peaceable and just, more humble and kind. America, may God bless you to be good.
Sincerely,
BZ
(The artwork is The Apotheosis of Washington by Constantino Brumidi, 1865, as seen in the rotunda of the United States Capitol. In the fresco George Washington is depicted as ascended to heaven where he reigns as a god, flanked by the goddesses of Liberty and Victory, thus forming an American Trinity.)

History: No Argument when a President tells it

And Now we come to Ephesians 6

Ephesians 6 - But it is the same use of faith as previously
As we come to this stage of our calling on earth people need.reminding.
How.did you receive salvation?
You heard the Word, it registered. You believed in your heart. You confessed.
Did you see anything first?
Exactly.

When you were.baptised in the Spirit, how did it happen? Did you see anything outwardly first?
You believed God's Word. Perhaps you were praising a God you cannot see or directly perceive
In your outward five senses.

In your outer world.of business,family, church. The testing ground of Ephesians before you
got to Ephesians 6, did you start to see victories because you saw things first, or because you believed in your God? Who made straight your paths? You? Or did you experience a straightening outside of yourself which you could never manage? Like power steering, yes you had a hand in something, but it of itself seemed to unlock things you could never of yourself have unlocked. Yes like Jericho you walked round that thing.....But no way were you responsible when those walls tumbled.

When in Ephesians 5 you awoke O sleeper. Did you awake by your own power, or.did you see your own death inside Jesus in Romans 6? In other words did this happen to you because you saw the outer first or because you saw it in God's Word and believed?

Sit and reign until all your enemies become your footstool.....

So that'll be some of my enemies Dad?

You heard me the first time Son

Ok Dad, Ill do it from here.

Based on all your experiences of faith so far, you begin to enter the big one. The one you were called for before the earth began. Ephesians 6.
How do you operate? Because, as Preterists you see all things already sorted with your senses and declare.it all over since 70AD? Or the same as ever before. With your senses you see nothing but trouble:
           A world in hoc to a few, who.seem impregnable. They have you on satellites. CCTV. They are about to chip you. If you are not in their secret organisational.structures it is hard to get a job. You have to advance their agendas, which are Bilderberg agendas.....more.military spending, more.conflicts, more terrorism, which means more "security" more Sercs, moreLGBT, more unisex, more transhumanism.....
But you have seen it before in your life now. Things never began with what you perceive. They began to change with the Word. The Ephesians 6 armour is you. Is.Christ as you according to Galatians 2.20.
As.He is so.are you in the world. This is your time to change the history of generations.
To say no to the same ever expanding cycles.
The Rock that smashes the feet of iron and clay
Is the same Rock on which the Keys.of the Kingdom opened the door
The Rock that Peter saw
God, in a man, incarnate
Now coming in you.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (a.k.a. Boyd Barrett) reviews Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God.

Buy or Download the Paperback

Call no man pastor

Chuck Lawless writes old school telltale signs "that you need to pray for a pastor"
10 SIGNS YOUR PASTOR NEEDS PRAYER By Chuck Lawless • August 24, 2017
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“I’ve seen the most patient, giving pastors surprisingly lose their cool when other issues are weighing on them.”
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“If we desire personal growth, we have to get around people who are or have already been where we wish to go.”
I write this post as one who has served as a senior pastor, associate pastor and interim pastor. I know the times when I desperately wanted the increased prayers of my church for various reasons, but I was too private and arrogant to ask.
Based on my life and years of interactions with pastors, here are some signs you might watch for:
1. Pulling Away From People
Pastors who begin to disconnect from their people are likely dealing with something. Whatever it is, seclusion is seldom the answer.
2. Disorganization in Sermons
Pastors whose sermons unexpectedly begin to lose focus need our prayers. Something’s likely in the way of preparation.
3. Less Passion in the Pulpit
This one’s a subjective assessment, but you know when your pastors lack the fervor they used to have.
4. Fewer Stories of Day-to-Day Evangelism
When we carry heavy burdens—or are even dealing with private sin—we do less evangelism. That’s not a good sign.
5. Difficulty Listening
You know the scenario: You’re talking to someone, and that person is looking right past you. Pastors who no longer listen well are probably dealing with something else in their head.
6. Quickly Becoming Frustrated
I’ve seen the most patient, giving pastors surprisingly lose their cool when other issues are weighing on them.
7. Unfinished Tasks
Leaders who are increasingly distracted often fail to complete tasks they almost always finished in less-stressed days.
8. Forgetfulness
It happens to all of us on some days, but struggling pastors are often more inclined to forgetting their commitments, appointments, etc.
9. Burdened Spouse
Sometimes you can first tell something’s heavy because you see the weight in the eyes of the pastor’s spouse. A family is at times more obviously burdened than the pastor is.
10. Denial
When seemingly distracted pastors deny they’re dealing with something, that very denial should be a call to prayer. Take the signal—and hit your knees on behalf of your pastor.
What might you add to this list?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well what I'd like to add to this list Chuck is that no scripture anywhere talks about one man heading up any church anywhere. I think you may have that confused with Jews, synagogues and Rabbis.
The "one man " technology was bought wholesale with Catholicism. in the Bible there are elders over local churches, plural, and all sorts of recognised ministry callings, all functioning along side each other.
Apostles ,prophets, pastors, teachers evangelists, discerners of spirits,administrators, helps. A pastor is not a designated head over anything, so right there most of your examples are registers of illegal burnout caused by nobody reading the scriptures and learning from the Holy Spirit what a church really is. But i guess Chuck , actually putting things right would be too much for your generation, so thirdlevel Christianity will have to wait , like the Israelites for the next generation down. When are you planning to die?
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Paul Noble
Paul Noble This list is like someone talking about crossing the Atlantic in a sailing ship when we have air travel!

Explaining why the last phase is taking some time.

Lara Croft passed through an unimaginable series of graphics until finally being reinvented as a feisty every day look female that both men and women would feel happy working with, and not just hormonal young men .

Anybody ever play computer games?
Or platform games on the older consoles.
The idea is you have to complete one level before you have collected enough skills and equipment to even think about the next level.

So think about the Israelites leaving Egypt. Now it's one thing bringing forth one family prototype in three generations.... Abraham Isaac and Jacob....

But rolling the whole thing out among was it by then 2 million including kids?
That is quite another thing.
Are you all aware exactly how long the Israelites were in Egypt? 390 years was it? I know the exact no. Of years prophesied to Abraham was fulfilled to the day!!!!

There's a tendency in bless me Christianity to forget that God Meant those years.
And back in Genesis, Frank Viola has pointed out God meant Adam to be face to face with animals that all had male and female as he named them....
But errrrr..... where was his female????
That cry that went up in Adams soul WAS Meant.
The cry that went up in Rachel and Leah's hearts as each taunted the other was meant. And they produced 12 progenitors of tribes between them.
Samuels mum was MEANT to cry to the Lord over her barrenness
In Isaiah 54.... Israel or the church is meant to be crying over her barrenness!!

And this was the real birth of Israel the nation. The birth of their faith muscle.
The whole scenario was the womb, the necessary womb.

This is such an important understanding. The way the devil drills into our mind, all day long the Lord is being cursed for all the groaning and writhing of this current creation....
For all the things that go wrong....
For how hard sometimes basic processes are....

But this is all to squeeze us like toothpaste into the next stage.
See Romans 8.

Then, we get to the second stage, where it's not just a long protracted cry for deliverance, but after Passover and the Red Sea, much like our own Christian lives we enter into specific test after test after test.
This builds a very specific faith....
For God the I Am to manifest Himself according to whatever is needed.
But overall El Shaddai..... the supplier.

It's only 11 days journey.
11 days nothing!!! What takes the time is building faith on the insides sufficient to be able to takeover a whole Land..... up and running.... current....and take it over from giants.

The first generation never dealt with their bitterness ..... their capacity to see evil....
So they ruled themselves out when faced with Giants....
They just didn't go up when they were meant to go up.

So you see what I am really saying about the Feast of Tabernacles.... going up into our corporate Land....

Our generation when faced with this message, fresh out of the charismatic move in the mid 70s...... no way were we ready for the next phase. And we found our own level, refused all the people bringing the thirdlevel message in the late 70s.... and there our generation has stayed walking round praise mountain for an endless 40 years without actually engaging with the thirdlevel..... as described most articulately by Norman Grubb in the book Yes I Am
second facebook post
Following on from what I wrote this morning......which has now magically reappeared....
I was.talking.of.Israel's history in terms of a computer game......Where when.one.level.or.commission is complete then there are the necessary tools.And.experiences.to begin coping with t he next step change.
Here's.another way to think of.it. ...think Kingdom materialising.
You remember, like the cloud of.rain that appeared.first as.a.cloud " the size.of.a man's hand." to quote the description of.Elijah as he prayed.
Now think of dimensions.
First a singularity.....a dot
Then a line
Then a plane
Then three dimensions......a full.city.emerging in 3D.
So.you have Abraham.Isaac.And.Jacob faithing in the concept of.Kingdom on earth
But died without ever seeing the city that comes.down.from above, as it says in Hebrews 11.
Then this single dimension of.the Kingdom.was.drawn not as.a dot, but now.a.full.fledged one.dimensional.line, as the rest of.Israel adopt the lifestyle.of the patriarchs.
Then eventually.Jesus.came. But there are.almost two Jesuses. There's the Jesus of.Nazareth Jesus.who.had an earthly ministry and who announced the Kingdom is at hand.
He.was taking the linear version of.the Kingdom and.yanking it kicking and.screaming in t o a.full two-dimensional blueprint......no longer linear but two.dimensions.....a plane.
Still not real life.though. Definitely on its way through ,because Jesus.is.in the midst in meetings.And.gatherings after Acts 2.
But Jesus isn't just the earthly Jesus. He sowed this form into the ground and.rose.again with a new.body and.a.New.form as the heavenly Jesus. In this way the Cross stands as the hinge point.
Jesus is.eternally the cornerstone of this.New Temple.
But guess what.....if.Abraham Isaac.And.Jacob needed.to be the people to bring in the nation of.Israel.by their believing
And if.the nation of.Israel were bringing in the Messiah and the whole new thing of the Kingdom in two dimensions...
.
You've now.guessed what the task of.the supernatural born church is.....?????
To believe in, to faith in the final.dimensions. of.the Kingdom......the full three.dimensions by which the Kingdom manifests in real time on earth.
It takes a mature church to be tasked with birthing it.
Now.can you understand the resistance against all.forms.of.church.......the attempts at killing it by religion......the temptation to get rid.of.church altogether here online.
But no, nothing less than a unified.psalm 133 church is being tasked with calling into being the cry of the ages
Lord. Thy Kingdom Come on earth as it is in heaven.
A.3D city in every locality on earth

Bilderberg, Chips and the Israeli army

It's not the fact that implanted chips are being rolled out in Sweden. Implanted pacemakers have been going for.some time as well as.many other surgeries.
I object to the fact that an unelected elite drawn from the Council of 300 gather together as the Bilderberg group and then without anybody else's discussions proceed to foist their decade-long plans a stage further into implementation.
If you search my Facebook timeline somewhere is a graphic of all the main 2014 Bilderberg determinations....or.Diktats.
Encourage the last few.businesses to take.chip.and.pin cards bringing the monthly costs right down.
Rollout payment systems on all.smart phones
Begin chipping the world
LGBT
And.doubtless the drive for.unisex, complete blurring of.the sexes.
I hadn't put two and two until recently , but everywhere you see the drive.for.unisex you see the same Elite groups at work.
Of course.a.country whose.landspace.is 80% owned by Rothschild is going to be the first to use.men and.women in their official army.....Israel. Traditionally men went into.war and allowed themselves to be psychologically tortured by it as frontline people. It does not help.a.nurturing society to.have the females all psychologically hardened and in many cases damaged then being the main ones.raising the next generation. It creates a.society that is detached and where the State itself acquires far too great an importance, as we saw.in Fascism and Communism.

Where administration becomes more than administration

Administration is administration. The elders in the gates.
But then Israel turned their back on the King who spoke through prophets.
We will have a king.
But they will tax you severely,.said the Lord.
Nevertheless we will have a king class, just like all the other people's.
And since that time it has been so. VAT now is taken upon a fifth of all transactions.
Just in our own lifetime this would have seemed ludicrous.
We have lived in a world of.the ruled over. And.barons have fought to reduce the kings powers.
In churches we are ruled over by priests,vicar and pastors and support them through an Old.Testament tithing system.
But basically it's all one reality, where we will not have God rule over us but choose the Oppressor in His stead. This must be the ultimate slap in the face for one who has provided us with all things and every spiritual blessing.
Now States are no longer administrations but oppressive in their own right, having failed to fight off oppressors, but instead are spiritually weak and are compromised by them.
Where weakness is ,spiritual compromise reigns.

Past the Foliage

Santo Calarco
2 hrs ·
Let's get real.
The absurdity of religion.
1. 15-year-old girl repeatedly raped.
2. Rapist sentenced to prison.
3. Soon after girl goes to a Bible camp and shes asked to repeat the sinners prayer to be saved.
She refuses… She is emotionally and spiritually damaged from the rape ... She Can't believe in this God who allowed her to be repeatedly raped!
4. She leaves the Bible camp gets hit by a bus and dies… She goes straight to hell for all eternity!
5. The rapist however says The sinners prayer in prison… He dies and goes to heaven.
This is what western religion believes!
What's my comment?
Yeah right!!!
The father of Jesus would restore both relationally and individually after death.
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Michael Albert Cuypers
Michael Albert Cuypers Hah@
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Paul Myers
Paul Myers The ♥️ of it all.. this thing called life..
The universe is a confusing place. No one asked to exist in the first place, but here we find ourselves in these bodies, going through much suffering, trying to find some meaning, and finally ending in wearing out and dying. While we can put our faith in a theory of the meaning of all this, there is no one who actually knows what the right theory is. All of us have different ideas of what God is like, or if there is a God at all. If we are honest, it's all up for debate. People don't reject the gospel because they know it's true and just don't want the truth. They are just sincerely convinced of something else, or perhaps they were presented a bad version of the gospel. Existence is perplexing. Meaningless suffering and injustice happen. We didn't ask for any of this. God remains invisible and debatable.
What's my point? The idea of a God who is angry with the human race is absurd. It cannot be stressed enough how absurd the idea of eternal torment is. Given our situation, that is the most absurd and unjust thing anyone could ever possibly think of. The idea is unfathomably asinine that there is a hidden God who is so angry at us little creatures for not getting him right when we are all just confused and indoctrinated into our particular cultural worldview. The fact that anyone ever believed in such is a testament to how gullible fear makes humans.
I absolutely believe in God, if you want to call it that. A personality and presence breathing through existence who gives reason to being and is summoning all things to a revelation of love. When this whole thing is consummated it's going to be bigger and better and more happy than any of us could have ever imagined. Meanwhile, we are in the middle of a cosmic drama and we have a part to play to awaken to the beauty of love and help awaken others, to ease suffering, and liberate captives, to be the face of God to each other.
~ Jacob M. Wright
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Michael Albert Cuypers
Michael Albert Cuypers Amen Jacob
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Dave Windhorn
Dave Windhorn In the end they will both love Jesus and each other because that's what it's all about!!
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Rodney Spencer Davis
Rodney Spencer Davis Alrighty then!!
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Chris Welch
Chris Welch The mists and the fogs are NOT about torment....
The mists and the fogs are about people who will press through
their own figleaves
will press through everybody else's foliage
will press through the Adamic to find the lifegiving Spirit.
Romans 12.2 as announced by Richard Wurmbrand simply talks straight to some of what Paul Myers just said....

Romans 12 .2 says we are on a proof mission....not that we as flesh can prove anything...
But as Job says...in my flesh I will see God....
Or as the apostles put it
This life that we have touched tasted and handled we now pass on to you.
God is Spirit ....so thats the first hurdle when we a in the West are almost totally leftbrain.....
There's what Blaise Pascale calls "Le Pari" or Norman Grubb calls the risk of faith, the "freefall of faith".

But to say "While we can put our faith in a theory of the meaning of all this, there is no one who actually knows what the right theory is. " is absolutely not true at all. What is better to say is that LIFE presses us through into knowing bits of Christ.....not intellectually only...but as our very fabric, our flesh our substance.

In Ephesians 4 it says when each joint is working properly it supplies that particualr part of Christ certainty and Christ knowhow to build the rest of the Body.

A related link is here This Body (of Christ) has Apps
http://www.thethirdlevel.info/.../body-of-christ-has-apps...

The Body of Christ has Apps!
A blog about mature Christianity and 1 John 2
THETHIRDLEVEL.INFO

Yes It's time to go Beyond

Well you can't help be stirred by present politics in the media. It's like the whole of the bipartisan choice system, erroneously called democracy, is creaking and groaning under its own old age.
And in direct parallel, since all things are parallel, we have come to the end of pyramid church. Both systems, which in the Spirit are exactly the same under close Xray....now have one of those Diversion signs that says," you cannot cross beyond this point."
Here's the thing I feel God has slipped into my insides.
Corporately speaking the whole of history has NOT MOVED ON from the days of Moses going up the Mountain.
i will repeat that.
Essentially NOTHING has changed in the Spirit on a corporate level since Moses asked "who will follow me into God's Presence up in the Mountain?" and absolutely everybody stayed down below.
Ever since then we have remained below.
We have even caught glimpses of how things should be....namely the greeks seeing democracy....and
staying below, we have tried to shoehorn it into planet earth.
But the "glass slipper" won't fit ugly sisters.
Back up a little bit.
Jerusalem's gates. They all have meaning. Unknown to most of the earth's citizens we have been trekking round Jerusalem's Gates.
We now come to the 10th Gate.
The Gate announced consciously or not by people like Lance Wallnau and Ian Clayton and Justin Abraham.
The 10th Gate is the Gate of Miphkad.
Miphkad means judgment.
FORMERLY INHABITED BY ELDERS OF ISRAEL.
THEY HAD A BRIEF THREE THOUSAND YEAR ABBERATION.
THEY CHOSE KINGS INSTEAD.
MEANWHILE THE TRIBE OF DAN INVENTED GREECE, THEN DEMOCRACY. GOD CALLS THEM THE SNAKE IN THE WAY.
Somewhere in the middle of this time period....well make that , beginning 1215, then much more so 1600s onward....
KINGS started to lose their power to banking systems....
But have no mistake about it.....
The elders of Israel socalled (as in the protocols) and also the Jesuits.....which actually contain some of the same personnages.....
HAVE BEEN RULING OUR EARTH EVER SINCE.
In churches we have a mixture. We have a Pyramid Vicar or Pyramid priest or pyramid pastor, but we also have boards of elders, and denominational infrastructure.
Kind of 2 HOUSES battling out policy
Keeping a check on the other....
Remember this key principle....
Until the sons are mature God never gives over the world to anarchy.....He preserves a scaffolding until the Building has come
He instals a Master to lead us to Christ....
He instals NOT anarchy but a rule of outer LAW until the inner law has arrived.
Well that time has now come.
YOU SEE CONTINGENT UPON CHANGING THE WORLD SYSTEM is not Lance Wallnau's ideas of doing 7 mountain copies of what the Freemasons have already accomplished.....
CONTINGENT UPON ANY ADVANCE from this point....
Is US CHANGING SOMETHING from the days of Moses.
We have to repent of our Zeus mentality....
Our comic book hero ideas
Our gods
Our " Hey you go up the mountain for us"
"You face the blackness and the thunderstorms surrounding God's Presence"
WE HAVE TO RISE IN THE SPIRIT.
WE HAVE TO BE BORN AGAIN AND BAPTISED IN THE SPIRIT AND BE USING OUR GIFTS.
WE HAVE TO RISE INTO HEAVENS COURTS AND ACCEPT OUR RESPONSIBILITY OF BEING ACTUAL KINGS AND PRIESTS.....A WHOLE RACE OF THEM.
Greater things shall you do because I go to the Father
Whatsoever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven
Whatsoever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven
Whatever you ask IN MY NAME.......shall be done for you.
Essentially asking a pastor to rule over you, and that is not anywhere in the Bible....apart from obeying instructions to GET TO KNOW THE LORD HIMSELF.....thats all a pastor is....
But enthroning a pastor over a local body of Christ is nowhere to be found in the Bible....
And that whole spirit that drives that is the same spirit of 3- 4000 years ago of refusing to go up into the mountain ourselves and pushing Moses up there......" to be our spokesman"...
that is the spirit which maintains the current "order " in churches, and which drives the Old Testament Tithe paying mentality.
Giving is a lot more fluid and unspecified in the New Covenant.
Well it IS SPECIFIED....right here and everything comes out of it
Romans 12. 1
Therefore ....(ie because of all the teachings from Romans 1 through 11)
I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, [a]acceptable to God, which is your [b]spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this [c]world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may [d]prove what the will of God is, that which is good and [e]acceptable and perfect.
You are NOLONGER to be LEFTBRAIN LOCKED
it is up to you through the work of the Holy Spirit within you
to be working on Proverbs 3.5.7
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your insight, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.
The reason our paths have not substantially changed...
ie we have the same basic coarse management of our daily affairs, allbeit through ostensible bipartisan politics....
Trump v Clinton etc etc
is because we have not set our minds on the Spirit as Paul commanded
we are still leftbrain locked and trusting our own insight implicitly
and not obeying anything to do with Romans 12 .1 and 2
so essentially our churches are run the same as ever
and our natural daily lives are run the same as ever.
It's a change of consciousness we need. Galatians 2.20 consciousness.

5 WAYS CHURCH ATTENDANCE CAN HINDER MISSION - Karina Kreminski

Chris Welch :Do I believe in Church attendance?
Not sure. I believe in many people living and worshipping together as they discover Galatians 2:20 consciousness.
Is that the same thing? Not yet,on planet earth.


This article is courtesy of Missio Alliance, an organization dedicated to equipping the church for fuller and more faithful participation in God’s mission. For more resources, including articles, videos, podcasts and more, go to MissioAlliance.org.

Going to church is one of the spiritual disciplines that forms us into Christlike people. As we meet with others, pray, engage in hospitality, encourage one another and read God’s Word together, we are shaped into the people of God.

James K.A. Smith, in his article “Alternative Liturgy: Social Media as Ritual,” says that these kinds of rituals or liturgies shape our imaginations:

Liturgies are covert incubators of the imagination, because they play the strings of our aesthetic hearts. Liturgies traffic in the dynamics of metaphor and narrative and drama; they are performed pictures of the good life that capture our imagination and thus orient our love and longing. By an aesthetic alchemy, liturgies implant in us a vision for a world and way of life that attracts us so that, on some unconscious level, we say to ourselves: ‘I want to go there.’ And we act accordingly.

As we practice the discipline of gathering as a church, our imaginations are meant to be fashioned and fueled. We begin to long for a certain kind of world as we engage in worship. Hopefully we long for the alternate reality we call the rule of God, expressive of shalom, which is about peace, justice, wholeness, reconciliation, mercy and truth. Then, as we envision it, we begin to practice living a life in that reality.

However, this ideal does not always manifest itself. In fact, I think “going to church” can sometimes run counter to this purpose of transforming God’s church into a people who embody shalom.

I often wonder whether the practice of “going to church” is shaping Christians into people who flesh out the practices and posture of shalom in our world, or whether the practice of going to church inhibits that purpose. I know this sounds like a contentious statement. We know the benefits of church attendance, but could there be pitfalls and temptations in the practice of “going to church” that can draw us away from the mission of God?

Here are four ways church attendance can be a stumbling block for mission.

1. We can feel as though “going to church” makes us good Christians.

Christians have been taught to think that if we attend church regularly, we are obeying a well-established rule set out for us so that we might become good Christians. This is potentially legalistic and can take the place of a meaningful relationship with God.

The temptation can be to think that if we go to church, we are then doing enough to be followers of Jesus. The focus here is primarily on attending church rather than engaging with God’s mission. Of course, the two things should not necessarily cancel each other out.

2. Church participation can keep us busy and therefore satisfied.

Churches have many programs, events and weekly meetings that Christians are expected to attend. Our culture places a high value on busyness, so sometimes it can seem that if we are busy, it means we are living meaningful lives. This attitude has infiltrated the church. We believe that if we are busy, then we are hard at work for God at ministry.

Sometimes, however, church programs are more about keeping the internal machinery of the church going—that is, survival. When this happens, and Christians get caught up in this busyness for the survival of the church, it hinders God’s mission. We might feel satisfied that we are doing “God’s work,” but it can in fact be shaping us to be inward-oriented rather than missionally focused.

3. Church can foster a sense of dualism.

We are very good at discerning the Spirit of God in our churches, but we are more ambivalent about what it looks like to discern God’s Spirit in the world. How is God active in our neighborhoods? Where is God in our workplace? Is church ministry elevated above the call God has placed on the lives of doctors, cleaners, architects and technology consultants, for example?

Going to church can sometimes foster a sense that we are moving into, and then out of, God’s presence when we enter and leave the gatherings. This stops us from participating in God’s mission in our neighborhoods and society.

4. Going to church can make us feel safe.

Church can make us feel comfortable. On one hand, this is for meeting together as Christians. We gather to practice the habits of an alternate world, and we get a glimpse into the coming kingdom. That ought to fill us with hope, longing and comfort.

However, if we are not prepared to interact with a world that is broken and sinful, if we fail to see brokenness and sin in the church, if we stop lamenting and crying out to God for a new universe, then we are being shaped into safe, comfortable Christians who will avoid the radical call to join with God in his mission.

5. We can turn into hearers, not doers.

When we attend church, it can be a consumerist experience in which we listen and receive doctrine. This fosters a passive stance. We evangelicals love our theology, worship songs and doctrines. But what produces transformation is taking action and putting into practice what we hear on the platforms of our churches.

We become witnesses to the gospel as we embody the gospel, not merely talk about it. In this way, a watching world will point to us and say, “There is the gospel among those people. There is shalom. There is the reality of another kind of world.” An embodied apologetic is important in a world that is highly suspicious of the church today.

Am I saying that we should stop going to church? No. But I do believe that we can rethink what gathering as the people of God looks like, and the structure of our gatherings can reflect this.

The practice and structure of church gatherings must not disable our mission. The church is God’s light in the world, and it exists for the purpose of God’s mission, not for the sake of itself. When going to church becomes an end in itself, it frustrates mission.

We need to gather as the church to worship God together—but worship is always about being formed by the Holy Spirit, who sends us out on mission when we leave where we meet. That’s what makes the heartbeat of the church quicken, when it is motivated by self-sacrificing love, so that our world sees the attractive face of Christ in the people of God. As we practice the values of the reign of God, we are transformed into those who truly see and hear.

As Sarah Bessey says, “We’ll practice the ways of Jesus, over and over, until the scales fall from our eyes and our ears begin to hear.”

As God’s people, this must be the purpose of our gatherings.

Karina Kreminski is lecturer in missional studies at Morling College Sydney in Australia. Before that, she led and pastored a church for 13 years. This article was originally published on MissioAlliance.org.