VIPs up Front, Holy Spirit in the Coat Closet

All sorts of fascinating stuff is going on.

I started bugging friends to pray in tongues, using timers. Some of them started doing it. Lives are changing. Unity is growing. Now some of them are going on without me.

I didn’t go to my weekly prayer group this weekend, because I thought they were going to talk about worldly things. It didn’t work out that way. One of my friends ended up running the group, and they did what I do. They worshiped and let the Holy Spirit work, and they had a great meeting. They didn’t need me. Thank God. This is what I was hoping for. I’m not the Holy Spirit. If I have to be there in order for things to work, the situation is hopeless. If I get mashed by a bus, the movement should go one as if nothing happened. I’m just one part in the machine.

I’m learning things about the church and what needs to be done inside it. The old churches, especially the Catholics, teach idolatry and apostasy. The new churches, like my own denomination (the Assemblies of God) are absolutely CONSUMED with greed and lust for power. They use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to glut their flesh and take advantage of God’s people. On the whole, the newer churches are better off, because the Holy Spirit still has a seat at the table. People still pray in tongues and admit God does miracles. They don’t pray to a mere woman or to so-called “saints.” So I think it’s possible to take people within the new denominations and break them loose.

I’m coming to some conclusions that I think are sound.

1. The idea that you have to give huge amounts of money to the church is just stupid.

According to Aaron, the Jews used to teach that 20% was a good maximum. I’m sure there are many times when the Holy Spirit calls on people to give more, but the most my church can count on from me from now on is 10%. If they were doing something remarkable with the money, it would be a different story, but they’re not.

We have been taught that God will make people prosperous if they give enormous, burdensome offerings. I can tell you for a fact: it’s not true. I believe God expects us to tithe, and that he rewards us for it. I am positive God rewards people here on earth for giving to the poor, because he promises it. But if your pastor comes begging you for $50,000 because he put your church in debt without counting the cost, he’s just wrong, and God is not going to give the money back to you, and there ain’t going to be no “hundredfold return.” If you hang around Christians long enough, you will meet lots of people who give to ministries but don’t do well, and that proves our doctrine is off. I can name names, and if money-crazy ministers challenged people like me, a flood of witnesses would come forward and bury them, bringing receipts.

No one ever teaches us to pay our debts to man before we offer money to God, but it should be obvious that this is required. Yet we are often encouraged to give money we don’t have, without asking ourselves what we owe. Why would God reward you for giving him stolen property? We teach people to max out their credit cards in order to buy ministers jets. That’s sinful, plan and simple. God hates debt. Jesus told us to avoid oaths (including the one you make when you agree to borrow money). How can any teacher tell us we should borrow in order to give? Seems to me that if you stiff Mastercard in order to give to Benny Hinn, if anyone should get the blessing, it’s Mastercard. They’re the ones who took the hit, right?

Rarely do we hear that God won’t give us money if we are greedy or irresponsible or covetous. If you have a lust problem, do you think God is going to make you the coach of a girls’ swimming team? If you have a gluttony problem, do you think God is going to give you an ice cream factory? Why would your father, who loves you, curse you with something that would destroy you? If he’s trying to bring you shalom, including prosperity and contentment, he’s not going to hand you a needle and tell you to shoot up.

Rarely do we hear that God likes it when we give to the poor. Over and over, we hear that God wants us to bless MINISTRIES. Coincidentally, ministries buy big houses and cars for ministers. The guys who tell us God wants us to bless ministries. No conflict of interest there. Perish the thought.

How often do we hear a minister quote God’s promises to help those who help the poor? Like once a month? Many ministers don’t want us helping the poor, because they see the poor as competition. Terrible thing to say, but true. Give Pastor X a hundred bucks, and he’ll take fifty for himself. Then his employees get thirty. Then the ministry gets fifteen. After that, the poor lick the dirty dishes.

Here’s what I believe. You give generously to your church, IF they use the money wisely. Otherwise, you give judiciously. You give generously to the poor, and you make very sure the charities you choose aren’t pocketing most of the cash. You take care of your family before the poor. Especially older relatives.

2. It’s not a numbers game.

Some ministers will do anything to get people to accept salvation. They will say homosexuality and fornication are fine. They will use worldly music that leads kids into sin. They will chicken out when it comes to politics, refusing to warn their flocks about the evils of voting the wrong way on abortion, Israel, the church, and sexual sin. They will welcome worldly teaching into their churches. They’ll do absolutely anything to appear cool and hip. They end up with churches full of people who think they’re in nightclubs. Their flocks stay ignorant about idolatry and other sins. In short, they turn their churches into extensions of the godless world, and they excuse it by saying souls are all that matter.

Souls are NOT all that matter. We are supposed to put people in touch with the Holy Spirit and teach them about sin. Jesus didn’t die to save the whole world. Some people are going to hell. We should be raising up real Christians. When you don’t do that, your church gets more and more worldly over time, and a generation or two down the road, it’s completely ruled by Satan. It’s better to have a good church with 200 members than a nightclub church with 50,000 members.

3. You should spend your time the way you spend your money.

If your church is doing foolish things, don’t volunteer. Stay home and pray. Sometimes you’ll want to be there so you can be a good influence, but you shouldn’t let them turn you into a doormat. People, especially kids, will think you approve of what’s going on. You can always find something good to do with your time; don’t let misguided people waste it and make you feel used.

4. A church that doesn’t promote from within is out of God’s will.

If your church seems to do a whole lot for the pastor and his family and friends, while ignoring gifted or helpful people who are not in the inner circle, something is wrong, and you need to pray for change. God doesn’t send talented people to churches so they can be milked like cattle, while connected but clueless people get endless support. That’s how the godless world operates. People cheat the gifted and keep them down. They take their achievements. They take their creations and the money they generate. A church that works that way is an extension of the world. It’s the church of Satan. If your church doesn’t reward you and work with you after a reasonable amount of time, cut it off. God prunes unfruitful branches, and you’re not expected to be nicer than he is.

5. A church should have open books.

If you pay the bills, you have the right to look at the books. A pastor who won’t publish an annual report, with details, is slapping the face of the people who feed him. There should be no such thing as blessing without accountability. Did your pastor fly to China and take his family with him? Maybe you paid for it. You have a right to know.

6. A church that takes “wisdom” from the ungodly world is serving Satan.

Remember how it worked in the Bible? The Holy Spirit filled people, and they did miracles. They took away people’s pain. They gave people peace. Naturally, people wanted to learn from them, so their lives would be improved.

Now we don’t do that. We look to see what wordly people are doing, and we say pathetic things like, “God doesn’t want the WORLD to get all the benefit of this stuff.” So we find ourselves doing yoga and using visualization techniques. We steal positive thinking doctrine from Dale Carnegie and the Scientologists.

WHO WANTS THAT CRAP? It won’t heal cancer! It won’t give you a personal relationship with God! What does it have to do with Christianity? NOTHING. If anything, it puts distance between you and God. He wants you to be blessed through faith, not gimmicks and idolatry.

The history of the church is a story of revolution. God comes and puts things right, and man corrupts it. God comes and throws out the men who usurped his power, and he puts things right again, and he puts better people in charge. Man corrupts it. The cycle repeats, over and over. Right now, the Spirit-filled churches are swimming in their own filth. We love wealth. We love seeming hip. We love cameras and stadiums. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit might as well be hogtied. And believers are being swindled. Eventually, they will rise up and demand accountability. What will our money-stuffed evangelists say? They can’t preserve capital; they destroy it. They can’t repay, because they waste what we give them. They don’t build anything profitable with it.

A capitalist who takes your money may build factories that take raw goods and add value to them by turning them into manufactured items. A ministry doesn’t build factories or other wealth-generating apparatus. They take from givers, spend, and then take more. They sink money. They can’t repay what they take, because they don’t create anything.

7. A church that takes from the poor and gives to the rich is sick.

If your church feeds donated money to wealthy singers and speakers, paying them handsomely for showing up and drawing crowds, there is a problem. In fact, I take a dim view of any event you have to pay to attend. Perry Stone doesn’t charge people to go to his conferences. If you show up, you’re allowed in. Why would I charge to introduce people to the Holy Spirit? God didn’t charge me. Why would I bar the door with a toll, when God held it open for me?

Also, if your church asks volunteers to inconvenience themselves and spend money in order to help rich friends of the ministry who aren’t involved in events at your church, look out. If you volunteer to help your church, it doesn’t mean they can ask you to trim the pastor’s hedges or deliver his pals’ luggage from the airport. Volunteers should only be asked to do things that benefit the church. Anything else is corruption. How would you feel if you found out Barack Obama was sending the Secret Service to wash Barbra Streisand’s car?

8. A church that doesn’t welcome criticism is in Satan’s control.

If you read the Bible, you will see that generally, God’s servants were critical. They didn’t show up to tell people they were doing great. They told them to repent. But these days, some churches tell their flocks that anyone who points out an obvious and shameful problem is a Judas. Clearly, you can’t run a church when everyone criticizes without letup. But a church that bans criticism is doing the same thing the Nazis, Communists, and Islamists have done. Satan likes to protect his lies, so when he gets control of an organization, the first thing he does is ban free speech. If you can’t speak up in your church, it’s not because God wants unity. It’s because Satan doesn’t want to be exposed. Cockroaches instinctively fear light.

9. A church that kisses up to the rich is in error.

If a rich person shows up at your church, and the pastor automatically puts him in the front row, look out. He’s blessing someone Satan has already blessed. He’s saying wealth is proof of God’s approval, and that people who are not rich are inferior. The perversity of this mindset should be obvious to a small child, yet pastors don’t see it. If your pastor brags because a celebrity showed up in church, it’s not a good sign.

I think there is going to be a tongues movement. God doesn’t wait around forever while man runs the church and fills his pockets. God is going to reach down and create a church within a church and a nation within a nation. We will be persecuted by the church the same way early Christians were persecuted by Jews. We’ll communicate through whispers and glances. And slowly, we’ll cut out a big portion of the people and churches that are currently held captive. I see it happening around me. It’s not going to stop. God ordained it, so man can’t oppose it.

Like Samson, Spirit-filled people will shake themselves and use the strength of the Holy Spirit to snap the cords that bind them. Believers who refuse to listen will be like Samson after Delilah shaved him. They’ll be defeated by the world, blinded spiritually, and put to work grinding the world’s grain. God’s strength will not be in them. That’s what I believe or at least expect.

I feel like I know where I stand now, with regard to the church. I am at peace. I am not going to strive with my earthly tools and fight incompetent and corrupted people. God will clear a path for me, if I listen to him, and he will clear paths for my friends. His sleeper cells will be preceded by powerful spirits that serve God.

It’s a wonderful thing to witness. I’m so glad I didn’t have to spend my whole life being defeated by people who claim to serve God yet oppress his servants.