The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 8 –3
The world is full of churches. These are not full of bad people, although they are mostly full of spiritually lazy people with souls who are asleep. Sometimes they are led by bad people, but more often than not the shepherds are just as blind as their sheep (Isaiah 56:10).
As you learned, the concept of church is just an extension of the OC idea from Sinai. It doesn’t matter which man raises up a church or how the authority is structured or how much truth they have… in every church the preacher performs the function of Moses: He comes (kinda) near to God, and relays (some of) the words of God to the people, more or less accurately, week after week.
Obviously, God never wanted a system prone to such errors in transmission; and yet, even I can’t deny that God has clearly used churches to do a lot of good over the years. For thousands of years many different churches have spread a great deal of the true gospel, and even if that gospel was often flawed, the truth was still sown among the world.
Why would God use them to do that, if the very concept of church is so wrong, so flawed, and so inefficient? Easy. God, as always, worked with what He had. The OC wasn’t God’s idea; but He made it work.
Likewise, a church in our time which keeps the Sabbath and other external laws you’ve seen in these lessons also serves God’s purpose and spreads His gospel. I’m not saying it’s the ideal way; we’ll spend most of the rest of this series talking about that.
But ideal or not, churches have been by far the most common method of transmitting the truth through the ages; and for the exact same reason God used Moses: because it is a reliable way that works even when most of the leaders are there for the wrong reason and most of the churchgoers are tares.
Remember, God could easily have a huge, powerful true church, protected from deception and guarded by noble angels and righteous men. He doesn’t have that; therefore, God doesn’t want that. God could “save” billions by simply revealing Himself to the world and commanding them in a deep, resonant voice to obey Him.
Many people would follow God even if they couldn’t see Him, as long as there was a powerful, charismatic, heroic man to lead them. After all, ancient Israel was willing to follow Moses (Exodus 20:19). But the problem is, once they get comfortable following him, they will follow that man into righteousness OR into sin!
After an incredible renaissance of truth in Israel under Hezekiah, Israel was so joyously serving God that they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread TWICE in a row, and there was great joy among all of them… (2 Chronicles 30:21 2 Chronicles 31:1). And after the feast was over, they went through the land and destroyed the idols of the pagan gods!
So these people were happy to follow Hezekiah into righteousness… but a mere 25 years later, these same people followed the next king, Manasseh, into serving false gods again! (2 Chronicles 33:1-9). So were these people really serving God all along? Or were they just serving their human king? Or were they just following the consensus of the herd like every other beast in the world?
But how could you have told that, say, 10 years into Hezekiah’s reign? How could you have guessed that these righteous, passionate, dedicated believers would follow Manassah back into idolatry just a few decades later?
Exactly. You couldn’t.
THE TARES
Remember the tares of Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Some people are sincerely trying to find the truth, while some are sown there by the devil in an attempt to corrupt and choke out the true Christians. And yet Jesus commands us not to try to root out and pluck up the tares, lest we accidentally pull up true Christians at the same time –since we, being human, can’t always tell the difference.
A tare is a useless plant (probably a poisonous plant called “darnel”) that looks very similar to wheat both when it’s a young grass, and when it’s a seed ready to plant. The only time when it’s easy to tell the difference is just before it ripens, when the head has a dramatically different shape and color.
When ripe, wheat is the color of gold, but darnel ripens more black in color. The symbolism there is pretty obvious, and makes it easy to tell which is which… after it has borne fruit (Matthew 7:15-20).
God can see men’s hearts, and doesn’t need to wait until they bear fruit to know why they’re going to church (1 Samuel 16:7). But we can’t, obviously. So how can we tell that these “believers” aren’t really believers? 1 Corinthians 3:13.
And yet, as long as there is a good leader over a loving, zealous church, there can be no “fire” of testing to force these tares to bear fruits. And so to show all of us whether these are our brethren or not, God creates situations that force all of us to bear fruit… so that even we can see their hearts! (Matthew 12:34-35).
And so after the deception, persecution, and false prophets do their work, we do not need to see the heart of the average Israelite under Hezekiah to know whom he truly served! We don’t need to guess about whether or not he loved the truth or his herd the most; because his works made that clear… after God allowed Manasseh to bring deception across the land.
Likewise, after you see your erstwhile brethren from what you thought was God’s church embrace deception, you won’t need God to point out the tares to you; for even you will be able to tell who is worthy of your fellowship, and who isn’t.
And that is why Paul said… “For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you” (1 Corinthians 11:19). Notice, he didn’t say “there must be heresies, so that those who are evil are made manifest”. No, the heresies exist not to show the evil, but to force the good to act against the evil… and thereby stand out. Everyone who doesn’t is, by their inaction against heresy, manifestly unworthy of Christ. (Matthew 10:33-40).
FIRST CENTURY CHURCHES
In the first century, the apostles were still alive. The people were only one spiritual generation away from Christ; and yet they still fell away (2 Timothy 1:15). Paul raised up a group in Ephesus (Acts 18:19-20), and spent three years personally leading it (Acts 19:1-10 and Acts 20:31).
Yet he knew as soon as he left, the group would gradually fall away from the truth he had taught them (Acts 20:17-35). What did he say would cause this? Acts 20:29-30. About 35 years later, after Paul’s predictions had a chance to come to pass, God addressed the same church at Ephesus through John in Revelation 2:1-7.
There, He told them to remember the original understanding and obedience they had abandoned, and repent. And He warned them if they didn’t, He would remove their candlestick. Now if you take the light out of a church, it ceases to be a source of truth (Matthew 6:23)… but that doesn’t stop the tares from attending long after the last true Christian has been choked out by the weeds.
We see an actual example of this happening in 3 John 1:9-10. This church, no doubt begun by the teachings of the apostles or their disciples, had started following a man named Diotrephes – one of those “grievous wolves” Paul warned the Ephesians about who would be “speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them”.
This man was not only leading the church away from truth, but he was putting people who stood up for the truth out of the church – and forbidding those who remained from associating with those true brethren. Just like most, if not all, churches do today.
Just like Hezekiah’s citizens, this church wasn’t following God, they were following their church leaders! Like literally every church in the world today does. Can a people who choose a false minister over truth and true brethren be true brethren themselves?
So here’s a fun question; assuming it was once a church of God, albeit in the OC sense… Is what began as assembly of true Christians STILL a church of God after all the true brethren are cast out of it?
What if only one is left? Or even five? If they’re the only true Christians in this group, why are they still there? Can a group of people who stayed behind just because it was once a church of God, or because they were too timid to object, or too frightened to stand alone without a herd be considered true Christians? John answers in 3 John 1:11.
Everyone believes they worship God, not their church; but show them a place their church disagrees with God, and almost every single one will find a way to believe their church, no matter what they have to do to God’s words.
And they do that… because she is the one they truly worship. Heresy exists so that all of us will have to make that choice. So that everyone, God and man, can clearly see how you will handle it when your herd veers towards the ditch. Because that’s something God must know about all of us before we die.
UNITY OF THE FAITH
Now if you go to churches and show people things they don’t know or, worse, show them they are wrong about something, they’ll naturally hate it. And they’ll try to get you to stop “sowing division and discord”, to “agree to disagree”, which, itself, is unscriptural (Amos 3:3).
They’ll tell you “God loves unity!”, based on Psalms 133:1. And surely God loves that! They also quote Ephesians 4:13, a common “favorite scripture” among people who love going to church… because all beasts know a herd is only strong if it’s united!
Those verses and the many others like them paint a pretty picture, but they are also clearly future tense! It is in the FUTURE that we will ALL come in the unity of the faith when the church of the firstborn meets for the first time, in heaven! But first, we must all GROW UP in Him ( Ephesians 4:14-15).
To do that, we must learn to recognize and avoid the deceptions of men and the false doctrines of their herds. We won’t come to “the unity of the faith” by compromising with the unbroken spirits trying desperately to protect their selfish hearts. Let’s face it, that has been TRIED!
What are the vessels of God? 1Thessalonians 4:4, 2 Timothy 2:20-21. How should we keep our vessels clean? Isaiah 52:11. Can we be saved by making peace at the expense of truth? Jeremiah 51:6. What must we do if we find ourselves among them? 2 Corinthians 6:17. What if you don’t do that? Numbers 16:21, 26. How do we follow the way of understanding? Proverbs 9:6.
Should we stay and bicker with people after the first and second admonition? 1 Timothy 6:5. Even if that means being completely alone? Jeremiah 15:17. How does God feel about those who “lean to their own understanding”, and choose the law of God as a companion over a corrupt church? Psalms 1:1-3.
We, as individuals or as a group, will come to the unity of the faith by actively practicing the laws of God, by using Matthew 18 and separating ourselves from those who hate the law of God. We cannot have a unity of the faith with the faithless. That, too, has been tried.
A GODLESS CHURCH OF GOD
In spite of all their sins, 3 John 1:9-10 still calls this dead church an “ekklesia” of God, even though the context shows that Diotrephes is a false minister, and had cast all the true brethren out of the church. So… is this still a church of God?
Absolutely! If that’s a surprising answer, it’s only because you still don’t really grasp what ekklesia means. Remember: stop thinking of ekklesia as if it were a church! The Greek word doesn’t mean a group of faultless saints; it doesn’t even mean a group of people who are halfheartedly “trying” to obey God!
It simply means a people whom God has called, in the past tense! People who were offered a chance at salvation… a chance which some or all of them may have already rejected! These people who followed Diotrephes were still the ekklesia of God because they were STILL a group of people who were once called by God!
The fact that they all rejected the call does not mean they never had been called! The calling is a historical fact, and can never be changed! Remember, Satan is still the anointed cherub (Ezekiel 28:14), and Saul was still the anointed king (1 Samuel 26:9), long after another was appointed in their place (1 Samuel 15:28). Sin doesn’t change the historical fact of their anointing, or their calling!
So when someone is “putting them out of the church” clearly “the church” has come to mean something different to them than it meant to God! Which is, of course, because God never wanted churches on the Earth in the first place.
So let’s ask a different question; can a fallen minister of a false church cast true brethren out of the calling of God? Romans 8:35-39. Of course not; no man can un-call you! Not even a hypothetical true minister!
Men can put you out of a church, and often will (Matthew 10:17). But no man can put you out of the ekklesia in heaven because you aren’t even there yet! You’re still on your way, like every other member of the heavenly church! (Hebrews 11:13-17).
And so if a false minister casts you out of a church, even if it were once a true church in the OC sense… be thankful! (Matthew 5:10-12, Acts 5:17-41). Because it means you are now “manifest”, clearly visible against the backdrop of their heresy; or at the very least, their apathy.
It was from once-called, stiffnecked, fossilized old bottles like these (Luke 5:37) that Diotrephes was casting the true brethren, precisely according to the prophecy in Luke 6:22 and Hebrews 10:24-29. But he was not putting them out of the true church of God, for that, as I’ve said perhaps too often, does not exist on this Earth.
THE FOOLISHNESS OF CHURCHING
Throughout history, in every era, God has given one or many men a great deal of understanding, then used those men to build a following which does great things. Usually, they build a church since that’s what they think He wants, even though it isn’t what He said (Matthew 28:18-20).
Many people learn the truth through the work of such men, and many more reject it; both of which serve God’s purpose (2 Corinthians 2:14-16). But no matter how good or how devoted these men, over time, the zeal of those churches wanes and sin and compromise creep in –after the death of the founder, if not before (Deuteronomy 31:27, 29).
Any way you look at it, churches are a poor tool for spreading the truth. It is prone to mass deception (Titus 1:11), peer pressure (Ezekiel 32:2), and fracturing (Matthew 26:31), vulnerable to power-hungry members (Acts 20:29-30), full of hypocrisy and traditions that interfere with the keeping of the laws of God (Matthew 23). And these are the “good” churches!
But here is the secret that no one seems to know; the inevitable corruption in these churches serves God’s purpose just as much as the initial building of the church did! Churches are meant to be flawed, and because of what they are, they can’t be anything else!
It is not in spite of those things, but because of those things, that God uses them on the front lines of the gospel! (1 Corinthians 1:21). For it is the very foolishness of a flawed church, and the hypocrisy and corruption in them, that allows God to save those, and only those, who believe!
Tares exist, the Devil himself is allowed to prosper, precisely to force you to make this choice, time and time again, until God knows for sure that you’re following Him and not merely a herd named after Him!
Will you follow Diotrephes? Will you remember the miracles he worked, the love Diotrephes showed you, the friendship you have with your brethren in that church? That church which is, for all practical purposes, your family? Or will you remember how Jesus answered His own Diotrephes?
“Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10). Will you react as Jesus did, as your perfect example in all things, to your brethren who support false teachings? Mark 8:33. Or will you instead make excuses for them? Isaiah 5:18-23.
THE BEAUTIFUL TARES
The institution of church was blessed by God at Sinai, even though He knew it would create an environment where heresy could be spread along with the truth… again, so that those golden heads whom God approves of can be clearly seen against the black background of the rest of the tares.
This doesn’t mean that deceivers and blind leaders and tares won’t be punished; far from it (Matthew 18:7, 5:19). But it does mean that, like the Devil they ultimately serve in ignorance, God uses their lies and selfishness to identify and separate His children… and to bring grace to everyone else.
That’s why tares are a good thing, which God not only permits, but often sends Himself in order to see who ELSE is secretly a tare! (1 Kings 22:22-23). These lying spirits are the enemies who sow the tares among the wheat, the same enemies as the evil birds who pluck up the grain which fell by the wayside.
Remember, the grain is by the wayside; it’s almost on the straight and narrow way, but not quite! But the edge of any trail is never clearly defined; how can you be sure where exactly the path ends and the jungle starts?
That means that excluding grains by the wayside from the Kingdom would be a judgment call; and why would God make such a narrow call, when He can simply expose those grains to deception and let them choose whether to follow the narrow way… or an evil crow? Thus making a clear division between those who love the truth and those who do not!
In this way, they make the judgment for Him, by judging themselves unworthy of the gospel (Acts 13:46), which is precisely what the Jews, who had been by this very same wayside ever since Sinai, had done. They heard the truth (John 7:38-40), and they had to hear the deception as well (John 7:41-49), in order for God, and all of us, to know whom they truly served.
The vast majority made it clear that they would rather follow their traditions than their Lord (Luke 6:46), which made Jesus’ decision for Him. Some said they weren’t convinced, but would hear Him again (Acts 28:23-29), and eventually the Churchians cast the Christians out (3 John 1:9-10). And it has been the same in every church ever since.
Why did Jesus come? Luke 12:51-53. Everyone thinks the opposite; but Jesus came to sow discord and continually divide the true brethren from the false (Matthew 10:32-38). And that means, inevitably, dividing the Christian from the Church.
That is why there MUST be heresies in the church. There MUST be deception; there MUST be leaven and tares. There must be Diotrepheses and Judases, Jezebels and Simons, in order to make those who love the truth visible, and to deceive the rest so that He can save them in the second resurrection (1 Corinthians 5:5).
Because that’s the beauty of all this; the false Christians really haven’t lost anything. God offered them an opportunity, they failed, and they missed an opportunity to be a firstborn child of God, but that’s all. The second resurrection isn’t such a bad place.
So when you see someone deceived by God, rather than weeping for their lost salvation, rejoice for the mercy of God that protected their soul from their own rebellious heart and arrogant spirit by putting it back to sleep!
WHY CHURCHES DIE
If you ask someone why their church is less than it should be, they will always blame the leaders –never the people. And it is true the ministry is to blame for what happens to their flock. And it is true when the leader dies or falls away from the truth himself the flock usually withers. But that isn’t the reason why it withers.
Why do groups fall away? 2Timothy 4:3-4. Who plugged up the ears of the people? Zechariah 7:9-13. Why did they get deceived by the corrupt ministry? 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12. Who are the brethren of God? Matthew 12:50.
Always remember: true Christians will not follow a false minister. Yes, Diotrephes came in and spread heresies but the people tolerated it. Actually, the people ENCOURAGED it, or he would never have been able to rise to a position of such power! (Jeremiah 5:31).
So God sent them a delusion so they would believe his lies and be deceived, consumed by the evil spirits and carried far away from the narrow way that leads to life. Both to make their choices clear to everyone, and more importantly, so that they could still have a chance at salvation in the second resurrection.
God will not let Satan deceive anyone who hasn’t already rejected many important truths of God on his own. Read Hosea 4:6. This verse is addressed to those would-be saints… and if they had not “stopped their ears” when God spoke to them, God would not have “stopped His ears” when they spoke to Him (Zechariah 7:13).
But because THEY rejected HIM, because they denied HIM before men, because they couldn’t stand up to their family, their herd, and their false preacher, He will reject them! And, in His mercy, send them a strong delusion to believe a lie so that He can later forgive them.
Because the people “heaped to themselves [false] teachers”, and “would not hear sound doctrine”! They STOPPED their ears (their spirits) from hearing the words of the apostles, because their souls didn’t love the truth. And therefore they are not brethren of Jesus, nor of ours. And so they will not become priests of God in the first resurrection. But they may yet be His children in the second.
THE BLAME DOESN’T MATTER
People blame pastors because they are, in a sense, the soul of the congregation. And so their “itching spirits”, never accepting blame themselves, blame their incompetent soul; and their selfish hearts would “not endure” good statutes, so of course they blamed their soul’s bias and unfairness in choosing those statues.
And it is the soul’s fault, for a soul that truly served God and no one else, would not need his spirit’s or heart’s support to rule righteously. But the people hardly have the right to complain about that, for if the spirits and the hearts were righteous, they wouldn’t have imprisoned the soul and done their best to hobble it… and then gone looking for a soul they could tolerate to follow instead of their own.
So all three bear the blame, but it doesn’t really matter who deserves more. Because as you learned in Lesson 6-8, in the end, you get what you want. If you let the fear of being put out of church keep you silent (John 9:18-23), then it’s proof that you fear the herd more than God.
That may be because your spirit loves them more than your soul loves truth, or because your beast loves them more than your soul loves truth, or maybe just because your soul loves them more than it loves truth.
In any case, it tells God what He needs to know, which is that you are not first resurrection material. And that means the best way God can use you for the balance of your life… is as a tare yourself, used to test those who still have a chance at that crown.
It will then be your turn to spread deceit, to help God see whether their heart and spirit has closed their eyes; and if so, you will help make sure they stay blind, so that they and their leaders can fall into the grave with the rest of the unbelieving world (Matthew 15:14).
…But your deception will also help them rise from that same grave with the rest of the unbelieving world, with a new chance to learn the truth; in a world where there finally are good leaders.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Churches serve two purposes for God, first, they spread the truth; yes, mixed with error, but still, the truth is spread. And that is a light to the world, however dim, and some people do find God in that light, and start walking the path towards Him.
But the far more useful purpose of a church, far more important than the things they teach you, is showing you what not to do. They provide an example of how not to follow God, primarily so that God can see if you will say something (Matthew 10:32), or pretend not to notice (Job 31:34).
And both of these functions are vital; because if you will not believe the truth because it is brought by a poor and ugly servant, you are not worthy of it; and if you will believe lies, even if taught by an angel, you deserve to be deceived by them.
God needs His Kingdom to be full of those things that cannot be shaken away from the truth (Hebrews 12:26-27). So He will shake the Earth, even the heavens (the angels) to see who is following Him for the free food (John 6:26)… and who will cling to truth against man, devil, and especially against a church.
It’s easy to grow dependent on your mother, easy to become attached to your church. And God made sure the church is flawed precisely so that you will be faced with this choice, to see whether you love HIM or her more!
The one scripture for this lesson is a particularly well-known one that, as usual, is not well known at all. In Matthew 13:30, God tells us very clearly that the tares are gathered together FIRST into bundles for burning.
Breaking down those rather obvious symbols, burning is testing (compare to 1Corinthians 3:12-15, 1 Peter 1:7, etc.), but think about it… where else would you find a bundle of false Christians… if not in the end-time churches?
Churches, which put a large number of probable-tares into close company, where the heresies fly thick among them, providing all of those suspected tares with one last chance to make themselves manifest before they are burned with the rest of Babylon.
So the question is… are you a grain that mistakenly fell by the wayside? Or are you a tare that belongs there? Churches are how God tells.