The masses who have been lured into the Catholic/Protestant religious system live in an ethereal, Polyanna bubble where everyone gets along and everyone accepts everyone else’s theology.  It’s an “I’m okay, you’re okay, we’re all okay” world where everyone who wears a cross, goes to church on Sunday and owns a Bible is spiritually related to everyone else because they are all God’s people.  Though each group believes itself to be number one in God’s eyes, the other groups are accepted, though on a lower level and to a lesser degree.  As a result no open animosity can be detected among the hundreds of faiths, denominations, etc. that make up the church world.  For example, everyone acknowledges the religious standing of all others during Interfaith Council meetings.  Pulpit swaps are becoming popular.  Inclusion is the current theme.  Even Catholics and Protestants are coming back together as the chicks continue to answer the mother hen’s call to return to her nest.  Read The Ingathering: the Rise of the End-time Church.  Key word–Ingathering.  All is well within the Institutional Church System and there is no open animosity being expressed toward God’s people, at least not publicly.

But those minutely few who make up God’s church know that there is an all-out war going on behind the church’s facade of religious tolerance.  The war is between two totally different groups: Satan’s church and God’s church.  This war was predicted by none other than the One over Whom the war is being waged–Jesus Christ Who prophesied that His saints’ face-to-face enemy would be those who would falsely claim to be His saints.  He said that the war would be a church versus church affair which at times would result in the numerous deaths of His true saints.  The conduct of this war depends on the political situation existing at the time.  Today, the war is being waged in the attitudinal realm only because man’s legal systems do not allow the killing of those who march to a different Drummer.  In this age Catholics and Protestants cannot martyr God’s people because national laws do not allow it.  That situation will change.  As liberals gain more control over the world’s nations, professing Christendom’s tolerance of God’s people will gradually fade away.  This will give rise to an end-time, one-world church that will assume total dominion of mankind due to her affiliation with the soon-coming one-world government that will take control of world political, economic and military affairs of the world.  The Book of Revelation describes this future situation in vivid detail.

Meanwhile, the spiritual war in which professing Christendom finds itself will remain on the mental level where Catholics and Protestants will merely reject God’s people as fellow members of His family.  However, it is necessary that those in the Institutional Church know where they are headed if they remain within that “unclean thing” (2 Cor. 6:14-20) where there is no persecution, no rejection, etc., where all is nice and cozy within their religious safe space.  This posting will illuminate the smooth, unobstructed path on which those unsuspecting, Biblically-blinded souls are strolling.  Let us now note what Jesus and His apostles said about that path.

In John 16:33 we find Him warning His disciples that: “In this world you WILL have TRIBULATION.”  The “YOU” He was referring to included the disciples’ converts who would obey their words and live as they lived.  The Apostle Paul spoke to this fact in 2 Timothy 3:12 where he wrote that “ALL who will live godly in Christ Jesus WILL suffer PERSECUTION.”  The Apostle Peter wrote that those outside of God’s church would label those inside her as “strange” because of their totally different life-styles, beliefs and practices.  He noted that God’s people should not be surprised at the “fiery trials” they would endure for being different, and that they must expect to “partake of Christ’s sufferings” and be “reproached for the name of Christ” because the Spirit of glory would be upon them, making them unacceptable to those in the counterfeit church.  They were to rejoice in the persecutions they would endure for Christ’s sake (1 Pet. 4:4,12-14).  In Matthew 10:21,22,36 Jesus warned that the true saint’s enemies would include family members.

As was the case of the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, such rejection today comes from the most church-centered among us.  Recall that it was the priests who arranged the deaths of Stephen, Jesus and the apostles.  If the Romans had allowed it, the priests and their followers would have killed Jesus and the apostles themselves, which they did in the case of Stephen.  During the height of the Roman Empire the Catholic priesthood had the Roman military do their killing for them.  The Romans killed some 50,000,000 innocent people under the direction the popes and their underlings.  In the future the religious descendants of the same church people will have the political descendants of the same governmental people kill the spiritual descendants of same church people.  Most of this prophesied slaughter will take place during the final 3 1/2 years of this world.

In the meantime the counterfeit church will have to be satisfied with merely rejecting and ostracizing God’s people.  The Lord warns us that if we are accepted by those within the Catholic/Protestant church system, we are not accepted by Him.  If we are part of that system we cannot be part of His church.  In 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 He tells us that there can be no relationship between His people and the Institutional Church.  He commands those who would join Him to come out of her (the church) and to not “touch” her.  Read the series on Touching using that word as the key.  As that series shows, there is more to sinning than one is told in church.

Church people reject this message.  Though some know that it is God’s Truth, they cannot bring themselves to sever ties with Satan’s church.  There are two reasons for this: pride and fear.  Man is too proud to admit that he is wrong and has been wrong all along.  Secondly, man is afraid of being alone spiritually.  And alone he will be if he follows Christ.  I have shown church people God’s Truth in their Bible, only to have them reject His Words and cling to their group’s version of the gospel.  Read Galatians 1:6-9; notice the curse God places on their lives.  Their pride and fear keep them in Satan’s church system and away from the One they claim has saved them.  Please do not allow pride and fear to keep you from the Truth.  L.J.