WHY SO MANY DIFFERENT CHURCHES?

Jesus said, Upon this rock I will Build MY CHURCH …. Go read about Gods view of that church which He owns. The one He began on the day of Pentecost! The one he bought with his own blood, the one he commands to come out and be separate, to be holy, reserved for him as a bride adorned for her husband…. Read Paul’s epistle to a less than perfect rendition of that church in Corinth as he tries to explain it in the simplest terms, something we should all understand… it is a body, the body of Christ! A body that is to mind the same things, embrace the same things, profess the same things and love the same things…. One that values each member and their corresponding role… How did things get so complicated… Where did we go wrong?

May I suggest the protest-ants left Rome and created the same monster… every church organization known to man has its popes, cardinals, bishops and priest. The imprint of papal hierarchy is everywhere we turn. The Apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree.

Interesting to me is a global religious organization that smashes a television on stage at their big meeting and turns around to upgrade all its video production equipment the next year to create an online presence with the very thing it’s elders rejected and used as a pretense by which to split off and form yet another organization. I’m not fault finding, I am merely pointing out the nature of the beast. At best, another organization or another church cross town will only stall the Inevitable slide toward worldliness by a generation or two. Let me explain:

It’s normally the conservatives that break off, (and they become the moderates of the new organization) Since moderates and liberals outnumber the conservatives 2 to 1, they get the buildings and the guts of the organization, while the conservatives stand on principle and begin again.

From them evolve the ultra conservative right and in a generation the more liberal left. Every church body on the face of this earth has these three sects alive and well in their midst. It is a natural evolution of things that began in the early church. Sects, Schisms, Infighting, different opinions, convictions and different standards from day one. It cannot be helped.

Eventually, the next generation of conservatives will either leave to start again or expell the moderate and liberal thinkers. It will be clean for years after the split but eventually the new generations will take it off course to an acceptable more palatable place and call it grace. Hence; John Wesley’s “Methodist” Church that now ordains Lesbians and Homosexuals leaving the “Methods” of Holiness, the very essence of their moniker in the dust.

On the liberal side, the moderates now find themselves to be the conservatives and a well seasoned and established elder suddenly finds himself “The Grumpy Old Man of Pentecost”, cast from the church and institutions of learning he built by the new forward thinking moderates. He didn’t change, the church around him did. Now the former liberals with no standards left from the elders who ordained them are the moderates. Hell then drags in a new sect of liberals that no longer believe the message and seek to appease a sin soaked society to fill their coffers with Gold and their pews with people.

That’s not “about right” it’s right! I have lived long enough to see Anointing replaced by Talent, Calling by Position. Consecration by Entertainment, Repentance by Acceptance and the Word of God, with Philosophys of Man. It is the benchmark of humanism pawned off as religion and paraded around as the church. It’s Ishbosheth in place of David. It’s the Flesh impersonating the Spirit.

I hate to say it as much as you hate to hear it, but God help us if we do not see it and truncate ourselves from it.

Cedar Hill is an autonomous church, not affilated with any larger denomination or organization. I came here 12 years ago broke and broken, vomited from the mouth of the religious system I am exposing here. You can’t see it until you get away from it, far away! We are not a corporation or association that belongs to the state. We are the Chuch that began in the second chapter of the book of Acts…. A First Century Church to a Twenty-First Century World! We are part of the Body of Christ. The Bible is our by-laws and the early church our pattern. I did everything possible to remove Rome from the equation but still we struggle because it’s not so much Rome as it is humanity… both fallen humanity and redeemed humanity, doesn’t matter!

The cure as I understand it, after years of dealing with it is found in the 13th chapter of Corinthians, a love based world view that deals with each other as the body in the previous chapter. The mature Christian has put away childish things and emerged as an ambassador of Christ, a member of that body who deals with shortcomings, issues, and problems from a foundation of Love…. And now abideth faith, hope, and charity…. The greatest of these is charity. Theirs is the heart of a true shepherd, the greater good off the body, verses their own individual preference and fleshly will.

Technology in itself is amoral, neither good or bad. The heart however is desperately wicked. Who can know it? The tongue is a fire,a world of iniquity… it defiles the whole Body. Technology is ever changing so that the rules and safe guards applied at its inception cannot be enforced today. Some may be able to table the internet, I did for years, preaching against it as the mark of the beast! Today, without it, the business world comes screeching to a halt, without it, the economy crashes, and a lot of good Christian people are unemployed. A Elder told me years ago, “Brother you are not keeping them from the internet with that doctrine, you are just making liars out of Gods people”. He was correct as Elder’s often are.

Most of us could live without social media, but people please here me…. Flesh does not change, not now not ever! Your fight is between you ears and in your heart. Flesh will always distance you from God. A new church cross town or a new organization or a new demonization does not change that fleshly heart. Only God can do that.

So before I build Ishbosheth’s cage and hire in his keepers, I had best find David’s heart for God amidst all his mistakes and sins, and realize as he did when the rocks rained down upon him, it is pride and human arrogance that fights for preeminence and jockeys for position. It was David’s heart that doesn’t want to slay Absolom and instead realizes His own sin put him in that position.

If Jesus Christ himself could not stop Judas from demonic possession, what makes me think geographic relocation or a fresh start will will change the heart within me that wants to draw the sword and slash at my brother.

This, O’ gentle reader, is why I keep to myself, why the church I pastor is autonomous, and why I have long since given up fixing everything in everybody’s life, choosing rather to concentrate on the man who confronts me in the mirror each morning. I wish you well in your every endeavor. Blessed are the peacemakers.