THE ARMY OF GOD

                                                                 The Army of God 

You know I heard this term batted around the “Church” today the Army of God and often wonder what does that mean? It seems we take a military flare to evangelism from songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “Stay on the Firing Line,” and others. And hear of this great end-time revival promised by the preachers and teachers of today, how the ranks of God’s Army will swell and we shall overrun the enemy, well, that is not what the Bible says. The Bible I read talks about a “falling away.” Paul in 2 Thessalonians shares, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” (2 Thessalonians 2:3) By this verse it sounds like there is going to be great deception on every hand and many Christians will fall away from the faith, then they will be deceived. This does not sound like the making of a great Army of God to sweep the earth. At this point in my article I must ask this question: What happened to the Army of God? There is something wrong with the Army of God or what the New Testament calls the Body of Christ today. Now I will NOT call it the “church” because we, you and I, are the church not some building or given denominational name. But, something is terribly wrong. What is it? The answer is not hard to discover. In fact, it is as clear as a bell. The Body of Christ has lost it's focus. It has forsaken the basic Truths of Christianity. Or, to be even more direct about it, the Body of Christ has left it's first Love, Jesus Christ, and has become centered in other things. What are some of these other things? Well, for one thing, the church has become focused on itself as an organization. This has been going on for two-thousand years. Another thing we, who make up the church, get focused on is the serving we do FOR Christ, rather than on Christ Himself. And thirdly, many of us simply settle for a religion centered around Christ, instead of a relationship in Him. God did not intend things to be this way. The early church was not like that. And, if we look back at this early church, we may discover the true intention of God for His Body, and an example for us today. Over two thousand years ago, a group of disciples, exhausted and frightened, huddled together in an upper room, waiting for what they were told would be “the promise of the Father.” What was this “promise of the Father?” And what impact would it have on their lives? The last three and one-half years had seen these disciples experience possibly every emotion on the spectrum. They had, at first, curiously followed a man named Jesus of Nazareth. Later, He would specifically call them to be His apostles and disciples. What an adventure they were in for! These disciples had seen Jesus perform miracles beyond anything they could have imagined. And His preaching! It was such a radical departure from anything they had ever heard before. They did not fully understand many of the things He had spoken to them. But, rather than be a cause for apprehension, this was a source of hope. For they had come to understand the most important thing of all: Jesus was God who became man. The Son of God. The Word of Life. And He had chosen them to be His messengers. In the last seven weeks, these disciples had seen Jesus crucified, buried, and raised from the dead. He had spent forty days opening the scriptures to them. And after seemingly only a few days they had seen Him taken bodily up into the heavens. Even before the crucifixion they had recognized that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matthew. 16:18) But, only now was it beginning to dawn on them what all of that meant. Only now were they beginning to see that their Messiah had come to redeem the entire world. So, they waited. They waited for this “promise of the Father,” which, said Jesus, you have heard of Me. “For John truly baptized with water; but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” (Acts 1:4-5) There is nothing recorded in the Gospels or the Book of Acts to indicate that Jesus explained to these disciples any more than that. There is no indication that they knew what to expect, or how to act. They were simply told to stay in Jerusalem and to wait. To wait for this “promise of the Father.” Now, it is so easy to fall into the mistake of placing ourselves in that upper room with the disciples with our frame of reference for Christianity, thinking that it was their frame of reference. But doing so is nonsense for we must remember that these disciples had no frame of reference for Christianity. To this point, there WAS no Christianity. On the day before Pentecost, there were no churches. Only synagogues. There were no ministries. No one was preaching Christ. In fact, the Bible, as we know it, did not yet exist. The New Testament was not yet written. The Old Testament was available, but mostly in those synagogues. With few exceptions, scripture was communicated orally. Rarely were copies carried around by the common man. When they were, usually what was carried was some portion of the Old Testament, rather than the entire work. So, if we place ourselves in the upper room, we must first erase everything we know about Christianity. We must pretend we have never been to church. We must imagine that we have never read a word of the New Testament. We must forget how a Christian is supposed to act, and how a Christian is supposed to talk. We must push away every religious tradition we have learned, and we must forget every religious bias we have acquired. Our entire vocabulary regarding the things of God must be altered. Now, of course, the adjustment we must pass through to be in that upper room involves more than just the things we must erase. There are likewise many things we must add. First of all, we must replace everything we have learned “about Christ” with something better: A personal experience with Jesus Christ Himself. After all these disciples knew Him as a human being. They had walked and talked with Him. So instead of only believing that Jesus died and was raised, we must imagine what it must have been like to have witnessed these facts first-hand. The disciples in that upper room had seen their lives shattered, their deeply rooted religious traditions overthrown, and their Master crucified. And then they had seen it all somehow made right through the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Now they were waiting for “the promise of the Father.” Here is the question: If we could start all over again, and erase the last two-thousand years of Christian history and experience, and get back into that upper room, waiting for “the promise of the Father,” if we could do that, would the result of our Pentecost be something we would recognize as the Christianity of today? Or has the Christianity of today, indeed, the Christianity of the last two-thousand years, strayed so far off course, that it barely resembles what God began that first Pentecost? Would the disciples recognize today’s Body of Christ as being the offspring of the church of their day? Written by David Stahl

HOME GROUP MEETING 18 FEB 25

Home Group Meeting: 18 February 25 Judging vs. Discernment A. We live in a day and age where RIGHT and WRONG no longer have any meaning – or at least the goal is to try to make them have no meaning. Instead of absolute Truth, we are being told that there is only relative Truth, that is, Truth is whatever you think it is – or Truth is what you believe. In some peoples mind, the answer is that you really cannot know the Truth – even some professing Christians say this. In effect, what we are seeing is a world that more and more intends to do what is right in it’s own eyes. B. As a logical outcome of this nonsense, people are being told that they should, "not judge." If I say that Robert Schuller is a heretic, some are offended, because we are not supposed to judge. But read the NT. Did Paul name names? It is certainly possible to become a person whose has appointed himself the judge of everyone else, and to set oneself up as the superior person – there are many, "discernment ministries," out there doing that. But according to the Bible, we are not only to preach the Truth, but we MUST also preach what the Truth IS NOT. Read the epistles. Everyone of them was written to combat error. One way or another they all come back to that. In the end, you really cannot preach the Truth unless you expose the error. Your message won’t be clear otherwise, and because many are looking for affirmation of their error, they will otherwise try to make what you say agree with them. C. People like Robert Schuller, Joel Osteen, and many others on TV today, are leading millions astray. They have already rejected all counsel and appeal. I know this because they themselves have bragged about doing so – and ridiculed their critics. It is far beyond that point. Thus, in accordance with Matthew 18, and other teachings of the Bible, they ought to be named before all. I am not naïve enough to think it will do any good. But that was never a criteria given by Christ for doing it. We are to name them in order to separate light from darkness, and in order to protect the Body of Christ. D. But nevertheless, there are thousands of Christian people who will say that this is, "judging." Yet they themselves, if they gave it any thought, would see the folly of such a claim. For example, let’s suppose someone does object when I say that someone’s conduct or teaching is right or wrong. Suppose they say that this is, "judging." I submit that such a charge is, itself, hypocritical. Why? Because they are saying it is wrong to say something is wrong – and by doing so they are saying something is wrong! So THEY are now judging ME. They are violating the very principle they demand – that we never judge anything! The point is, once you condemn someone for judging, you are judging. It ought to be obvious that there is something flawed in the kind of reasoning that eliminates all moral reasoning from our thinking. It just doesn’t work, but creates a moral and logic circle that cannot be resolved. E. The fact is, once you eliminate morality from our thinking, you eliminate all sanity. Once you eliminate the possibility of Truth from our thinking and reasoning, you create a moral vacuum. In fact, it really isn’t possible to eliminate morality, Truth, or right and wrong from a person’s thinking. The reason you can’t eliminate those things is that we are MORAL CREATURES. We have a built in moral nature – even if it has been twisted through sin. Morality is woven into the fabric of what we are as human beings. F. If you examine yourself, you will see that this is true. You make moral or value judgments continually. You do that even if your judgment is nothing more than about how you feel, what you like, or whether it is a nice day outside. How much more we do this in relationships! The moment we don’t like someone – even if we don’t say or think it, maybe we just feel it – we are making a judgment OF THEM according to how they affect US. You cannot escape this. It is how you function – right or wrong. G. You and I are continually making choices as to what to say, what to think, and how to act. We may not make those choices with a moral yardstick next to them, or even give them much thought. But most everything we think, say, or do is based on our inward sense, or upon our inward desire, to do right and wrong. H. Human beings were created with a moral fabric – and this functions whether we care about God or not. In that case, it will not function according to the Truth, but it will function. People may try to deny absolute Truth or right and wrong, but they know better. They WILL react the moment someone does wrong TO THEM! They DO make moral judgments all the time. And as I mentioned earlier, even if I deny the existence of right and wrong, I am making a moral judgment in doing that – I am saying that it is RIGHT to say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. This is self-contradictory and hypocritical, and frankly, it is so obviously so, that God holds us responsible for proclaiming such a lie. I.The fact is, there is NO escape from right and wrong. And the reason is not only because we are made moral in nature, but more so because we are created totally accountable to God. Accountability to God is a knowledge that is built into us. The fact that many neglect it, deny it, and push it away to the destruction of their conscience, doesn’t change anything. In fact, the necessity of DEALING WITH IT BY PUSHING IT AWAY proves that morality is IN US. J. You and I have never been given the right to decide Truth. You and I have never been given the right to determine for ourselves right and wrong. In fact, you and I have been told that we are forbidden to do those things. Rather, we have been told that we are accountable to God, and if we want to live, we need to turn to Him.