There is no curse without a cause (Prov. 26:2).  Victimhood is a curse.  Churchman’s sin at bettal curse must have a cause.  The cause is strictly man-made and based on a lie.  In a place called Hippo in Northern Africa there lived a Catholic priest named Augustine.  At a point in his ministry there came upon the people an epidemic which was causing numerous deaths, many of them children and infants.  Parents of living children came to him asking him to baptize their children before they died.  Augustine, knowing that sin was the transgression of God’s Law (I Jn. 3:4), and knowing that baptism was designed to remove the past sins of the one being baptized, and knowing that the children had not broken the Law (sinned), nevertheless baptized them to satisfy the adults.  However, he had to concoct a reason for baptizing sinless children.  His solution was to declare that Adam had miraculously transfused his sin into every human being that would ever be born at conception.  Coming from a priest, it had to be from God.

When this “truth” came out, the church masses, seeking an excuse for their sins, embraced the “Adam made me do it” theology.  When the protestants left the Catholic Church they took many of her heathen beliefs and customs with them, one of which was the “truth” about why they repeatedly sinned.  It was because Adam had left his calling card with them.  When they sinned, they needed only to play that blame-game card.  It is still being played.  I had an ordained preacher tell me that he sinned thousands of times every day.  But all was well, one repentance at bedtime took care of everything.  Thanks to Adam, this “minister of righteousness” was good to sin as soon as he woke up.  Recall that Jesus told the rich man that “one thing (sin)” would keep him from receiving salvation.  Unlike

When Moses was leading the children of Israel he laid out for them the two options that God had given him.  They could obey God and live, or disobey God and die.  They could choose either life or death.  He admonished them to “choose life.”  This is the same choice we have today.  Faith and grace will not save the soul.  Only obedience to God’s Word in faith and in accordance with God’s grace will produce eternal life.  James asks: “Can faith save?”  No, it can’t.  Faith is the beginning point for the Christ-like “walk” one must continue on (1 Jn. 2:6) until the end in order to be saved (Mat. 10:22).  As Paul tells us in Romans 6:22, the outcome of HOLINESS and ONLY HOLINESS is eternal life.  Faith and grace play their part, but unless they result in holiness one will not be saved.  Satan has total faith.  He not only knows God’s Word, he believes it, and he is irate because he knows his time is short.  The demons have faith, and they tremble, knowing their fate.  They know because they believe God’s Word–the have total faith.  Their faith has not resulted in holiness.  Such is the case with the church.  In reality, Satan and the demons are ahead of the church in that they believe God’s Word.  The rich young ruler went away sad because he believed what Jesus said to him.  Unlike Satan, the demons and the rich man, the church does not believe God’s Words about sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.  Why?  Because Satan has deceived them into believing that, like Adam and Eve, they can sin (sow) and “… not surely die” (reap).  Why? Because they are victims, and victims are not responsible.

What Satan’s people are “fed” each sun god day (Sunday) is milk.  Paul told the Hebrews that they had to get off the breast and into “strong meat.” God said through Isaiah (28:9,10) that in order for Him to teach a person that person had to be “weaned from the breast” (of church doctrine).  Then He could teach the one who searches the Scriptures “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”  Then He repeated the statement verbatim.  The change from milk (church doctrine) to strong meat (God’s Truth) means the difference between life and death.  A human who consumes only milk will die physically.  The church member who consumes only church doctrine will die spiritually.  Only one of the first four human beings on earth dined on meat–“righteous Abel.”

A spiritual victim is suffering from a deadly self-inflicted spiritual wound.  Sin (and death) is a choice, as is righteousness (and life).  Let’s not commit spiritual suicide.  Let’s choose life. L.J.