It is much harder to unlearn a falsity than to learn a truth, to kick a bad habit than to take up a good one.  There is a phenomenon called the “normalcy bias” which reveals that human beings want to feel comfortable–normal–in whatever they do. Change always produces a certain amount of discomfort–a certain degree of abnormality. For this reason God’s command to abandon a comfortable, though dead, religion is not well received by those who have been lured into the modern version of Christianity. This rejection of change rules holds true in spite of the Apostle Paul telling those involved in Catholicism/Protestantism to “Come out of her and be separate; touch not the unclean thing.” Then, and only then will God be our God and we will be His people (2 Cor. 6:17).

Why does God command those who believe His Truth to come out of the Institutional Church? He answered the question in the previous three verses where He asks what relationship do believers have with unbelievers (infidels), righteousness with unrighteousness, light with darkness, Christ with Satan, the worship of the true God with worship of idols? The answer, of course, is that there is no relationship. For this reason true saints are commanded to have nothing to do with modern Christendom. The fact that self-professed “Christian nations” have allowed masses of infidels from other religions to inhabit their lands is proof that they have descended into Satan’s religious sewer. As in days of old, the idiom that “As goes the church, so goes the nation” applies to the modern world. When a nation slips from worship and service to the Biblical God into the spiritual abyss that is false religion, it will have invariably been led there by a politically correct, compromising, “go along to get along” church system. The Lord has shown us the problem in His Holy Bible. Now let Him reveal the solution using one portion of that righteous tome–the Book of Jeremiah.

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Change your ways and your doings …. Do not trust in the lying words of your false prophets who say, The Temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord'” (is what is important) (Jer. 7:3,4). Here Jeremiah is warning the last day church about their leaders’ “lying words” which focus their attention on the church, the church, the church and not on the One Who supposedly abides there Who commands obedience, obedience, obedience. Ask any church member if he/she is a Christian and the reply will involve “belonging to” one of the hundreds of religious cults that make up professing Christendom. What one will NOT hear is, “I am a Christian because I believe and obey the God of the Holy Bible.” As the Messiah tells us, nothing else matters. There is no other criteria for receiving eternal life.

In verse 8 God tells us that those who call themselves by His name have gone astray from Him, and that they must separate themselves from false believers in order to qualify for eternal life. In this verse the Lord, through Jeremiah, condemns professing Christendom’s false prophets for leading their followers into the arms of Satan. In verse 10 Jeremiah voices God’s rejection of those who “go to church” where they perform religious rituals that satisfy the flesh but have no effect on the spirit. Having been deceived into believing that they are walking hand-in-hand with the Biblical God, these hapless souls go merrily through life, their heads filled with lying words, smooth things and deceits spoken by their hirelings whom they pay to scratch their itching ears. In verses 21-23 God, through Jeremiah, tells latter day false Christians to abandon their ritualistic religion and “WALK IN THE WAYS THAT I HAVE COMMANDED YOU SO THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH YOU.” The opposite is also true: If we fail to obey Him and it will not go well with us no matter how religious we may be.

As this series comes to an end, let us be reminded that the Book of Jeremiah was written for those within professing Christendom during the “LAST DAYS” just before the return of Jesus Christ. Let us also be reminded of what He told his God-chosen disciples as recorded in John 15:13,14: “Greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his friends. You (His disciples then and now) are My friends IF YOU DO WHATSOEVER I COMMAND YOU.” For those who refuse to obey His Words, JESUS DIED IN VAIN. These are literally “WORDS TO LIVE (ETERNALLY) BY.” L.J.