Before continuing with The Lie series, I want to correct a mistake I made when writing The Debt earlier in the week. It was brought to my attention last evening that I had failed to post the first part of the series. I corrected my mistake immediately. Interested parties can now read a condensed version of the first segment by returning to the postings and beginning with The Debt. I would like to blame the mistake on a “senior moment” or something of that nature. The truth is I simply failed to post what I had written. Case closed. Let us now return to the subject at hand–The Lie.

That everything that takes place at the time one is supposedly “saved” is merely the initial step in his/her journey to eternal life is a Scripturally-based fact that the Institutional Church summarily rejects because it does not fit the church narrative–“It is not what I have always been taught.” The fact that the church has always been taught Satan’s Lie is also summarily rejected in spite of the mountain of evidence God has made available in His Word. In the Counterfeit Church’s (Catholicism/Protestantism) rebellion against her Maker she unwittingly left God and followed Satan whose words have “choked” the Word of God as detailed in the Parable of the Sower (Lk. 8:4-8). Satan’s “weeds” are the words he speaks through his false prophets who tell believers that his (Satan’s) words are in fact God’s Truth, and that those Words in the Bible that condemn church doctrine are Satan’s lies. In this way God’s prophecy that men would call “good” “evil” and “evil” “good” is being fulfilled. God’s inspired Word warns true believers that Satan’s “truth bearers” will draw believers away from God by presenting themselves as ministers of light laboring in a world of darkness. Their words of “righteousness” are in fact Satan’s weeds of rebellion which, if not recognized (by comparing them to the Bible) and rejected, will “overcome” God’s Truth in the same way that a rotten apple eventually rots the entire barrel. As the Serpent of Eden “chocked” the words God spoke to Adam and Eve, he continues the ploy today by convincing believers that serial repentance is all that is required to maintain what they have supposedly already received–eternal life. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

True repentance commands a 180 degree reversal of direction. A 179 degree turn will not suffice. One must affect a total reversal of life-walk as God tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore IF ANY MAN IS IN CHRIST he is a totally NEW CREATION, (ALL) OLD THINGS ARE PASSED AWAY, BEHOLD ALL THINGS ARE MADE NEW.”

The belief that serial sinning followed by serial repentance is an inevitable part of the Lord’s salvation package is the most powerful tool in Satan’s lie kit. Having based her supposed salvation on words spoken by her false prophets, and having bought the entire lie kit sight unseen, the Counterfeit Church is not aware that the devil’s weeds have strangled God’s Word. Having been deceived by his smooth, ear-scratching “truths,” she blindly follows him along the broad, heavily-traveled path toward the Lake of Fire, not realizing that she must COMPLETELY REVERSE COURSE in order to find that tiny, sparsely populated path-rarely-traveled that leads to eternal life. “Knowing” that they are already saved, “sinners saved by grace” never search for that path and therefore never “find” it (Mat. 7:13,14). Only a “few,” the Lord tells us, get on it and stay on it. The wide gate/broad way walker has his eyes on the prize (heaven) promised by Satan. The strait gate/narrow way walker has his eyes on the Word of God that will lead him to the earthly Kingdom promised by the King of that kingdom. To be continued. L.J.