A PENITENT is one who is sorry.  To be penitent is to be sorry for doing what one should have not done.  It is from that word that we get the word “REPENT,” from whence comes the word “PENANCE” from whence comes the word “REPENTANCE.”  Repentance in the social/ legal sense means to feel a sense of sorrow for breaking a social law.  In this sense one is often placed in a penitentiary where the criminal will hopefully see the error of his ways.

RECIDIVISM is a word that is often used in the prison system.  This word refers to one who, having spent time in prison hopefully doing penance, has been released, only to break the law once again and is once again forced to do PENANCE in a penitentiary.  The stated reason for forcing law breakers to do time in a penitentiary is to create penance that leads to repentance (a mental construct), resulting in changes in the penitent’s physical actions–he stops breaking the law.  That is the way the system is designed to work.  But human beings do not always follow the script.  Recidivism takes place when the penitent, not being fully repentant, again breaks the law and again goes through the penitentiary system.  The system is designed to accomplish REHABILITATION–a REVERSAL OF THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS.  Without true repentance there is no rehabilitation of the law breaker.  This usually results in the criminal returning to the penitentiary, often several times.  These people are said to be “institutionalized.”  This is a condition in which they feel more comfortable inside the prison setting than outside of it.  The key lies in the quality of the penance–is it real, resulting in a total change in both mindset and lifestyle, or fake, resulting in the repetition of a previous mindset and lifestyle.

The same process takes place in the spiritual realm.  Romans 5:22 tells us that we “all have sinned.”  First John 3:4 tells us: “To transgress the Law is sin, for sin is the transgression of the Law.”  Isaiah 59:2 tells us that sin (breaking God’s Law) separates us from Him.  Sin begets sin.  False repentance removes us from God’s power and makes future sin a guaranteed reality.  This is what happens in the case of what I call the sin-repent cycle.  False repentance is based on the “fact” that, thanks to Adam’s sin transferal miracle, sin is inevitable, and therefore “natural” which makes the sin-repent, sin-repent, sin-repent cycle “natural.”  False repentance is as evil as the sin it produces.  I recently read about a dam break that took the lives of hundreds of people who lived down river from it.  Over the years the dam would periodically spring a leak.  Instead of fixing the leak permanently using quality material, the people would patch it with inferior material which had to be replaced after each break.  The people “knew” that the temporary patches would keep the water at bay.  One day the patches gave way and the dam fell apart.  The flood destroyed the town and killed a large number of people.  Such is the case with false repentance which corresponds to the inferior patches used on the dam.  Serial repentance kills the patient without him knowing it just as weak patch jobs killed the people who applied them.  Before the final breakdown the people below the dam were “dead people walking.”  Such is the case with those who live their lives in a constant sin-repent cycle.  This includes all “sinners saved by grace” who have turned the sin-repent cycle to a generational handed down “truth.”  They pay false prophets to cheer them on, confirm the rightness of their lifestyle and caution them that is is fruitless to to try to break the cycle.  As a result the cycle has become the foundational “truth” behind the “sinner saved by grace” movement that keeps Satan at the head of the Catholic/Protestant Church System.  With their prophets confirming their life choices every Satan’s sabbath, they go through life “knowing” that they are saved, born again, sanctified and rapture-ready–not one part of which is Biblically true.

This deadly heresy is the result of religious man’s refusal to study God’s Word with an open mind ready to believe and obey what is written therein (2 Tim. 2:15).  Because of their refusal to obey Him relative to the study of His Word, God has allowed multiplied billions of salvation seekers to commit spiritual suicide (2 Thes. 2:9-11).  I have noted several times on this website that if one is intent on spiritually hanging oneself, God will provide the tree, the rope and the stool.  This Truth is graphically brought out in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11 where the Apostle Paul wrote about those in the church who were under the spell of the antichrist whose spirit held sway over “those that perish because they do not love the Truth so that they might be saved.  And for this cause God will send them STRONG DELUSION so that they will BELIEVE A LIE  so that they might be damned.”  These are they who refuse to believe the Truth and who take pleasure in sin.”  Just as Satan cleaverly and smoothly guided Adam and Eve away from God’s Words (“disobey Me and you will die”) and to his words (disobey God and “you will NOT die”), he has, through his false prophets, has convinced believers to ignore those small, seemingly innocent words that totally change the meaning of what has been written.  For example, in Eden Satan inserted the word “NOT” relative to the death sentence God placed on anyone who defied Him.  The same trick works relative to Romans 5:22 where we are told that all “HAVE” sinned.  Satan has blinded man’s eyes to that word, which is written in past tense.  Satan has convinced salvation seekers to ignore the word and to read the statement in the present tense: “All sin and come short of the glory of God,” meaning that all continue to sin as a matter of Adam-caused fact.

Romans 5:22 reminds us that: “All HAVE sinned and (HAVE) come short of the glory of God.”  Notice that the statement is written in past tense.  Here is where Satan steps in and lures salvation seekers off of God’s path and onto his (Satan’s) path without them knowing what has happened.  This path-switch normally takes place early on in the life of the one who has supposedly been “saved.”  Church group-think works something like this: Due to Adam’s, sin-transferal miracle, man has no choice but to sin as long as he lives.  But all is well because of Christ’s death which nullified churchman’s sins as soon as he repents of them.  As I have mentioned before, I had an ordained preacher tell me that he sinned thousands of times each day.  He had what I call an “Elvis response” to sin.  The famous singer noted that His “friend” had died to make his (Elvis’s) sins go away.  I have found that Elvis’ take on the situation is en vogue church-wide.  Undoubtedly, so-called “Christianity” is the most convenient religion ever concocted.  Read The Real Elvis.  Key word–Elvis.

Through the teaching of Satan’s false prophets, those in professing Christendom are, like Elvis before his untimely death, looking to their friend Jesus to make it “all good.”  I will close this segment with Christ’s identification of His “friends” as recorded in John 15:13,14.  Here He is talking to His disciples: “You are My friends IF YOU DO WHATSOEVER I COMMAND YOU TO DO.”  What did He command them (and us) to do in order to be His friends? “SIN NO MORE” (Jn. 5:14; 8:11).  Obviously, Elvis, along with billions of fellow “friends of Jesus,” refuse to embrace the Lord’s Words.  As a result, God sends them “strong delusion,” thereby giving them enough spiritual rope to hang themselves.  L.J.