The Kingdom of God

Have you ever heard someone say something like, "Well, nobody really knows anything factually about God, what he's really like, or how he thinks about things, etc.?" It is a very common mentality among men, and in fact I've heard things like that from people more times than I can remember. It is nothing other than pride saying, "If I don't know, then nobody knows." And I have seen this very same kind of mindset among God's people more often than I could ever count, about various things within the kingdom of God. So many people say things like, "We're all sinners," or "We can't actually get sin literally out of our lives," and things like that. It's the same pride saying, "If I can't quit sinning, then nobody can." I've encountered this spirit of pride in the body of Christ the entire thirty two years that I've been in Christ, and it is a lie. People are so eager to use the word "we" when they speak of their shortcomings and their habitual failures of God's holiness. Why? Because it soothes their conscience to just assume that everyone is like them when they are failing in sin continually. Folks will routinely put whoever they are talking too in the same company with them when it comes to not fulfilling God's will in their lives. Oftentimes they even dress it up to sound like it's a GOOD thing that they're sinning on a regular basis. I just don't allow anyone to get away with that kind of deceitful behavior with me. My calling is to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them," and I am busy fulfilling that calling (Eph. 5:11). But why is this mindset so prevalent among God's people? It is because the body of Christ is under dominion to the traditions and doctrines of the modern Christian religion, which religion is CONTRARY to the true "faith that was once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3). If you pay close attention to the speech of most people in Christianity you will find that Christianity has actually taught people to believe that you are not righteous UNLESS you are a sinner, and I mean a sinner presently. That's exactly right my friend, and I've seen it over and over and over again. I wrote an article on this page several months ago about "defenders of sin," and it was about how God's people have been conditioned to crusade for the notion that you have to be in sin to actually be righteous in the sight of God. Of course the whole idea behind this mindset is that NOBODY can truly be free from sin in the heart, mind and soul. That is in fact the bottom line of the whole modern Christian religion, and that is why the whole thing is an abomination to God. Yeah, I know that everybody who's a "Christian" thinks that they're in the faith of Christ, but Jesus encountered the same thing with GOD'S PEOPLE when he was here. Those who were in covenant with God then thought that they were upholding the law of God that was given by God to Israel for the old covenant. They were wrong. Dead wrong, and Jesus made sure they knew it: "And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among [religious] men is abomination in the sight of God" (Lk. 16:15). What was he talking about? Things like this: "But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition" (Mat. 15:3-6).

Christianity has made of none effect the whole reason that Jesus came to this world and suffered, died, and rose again to accomplish; which was and is to eradicate sin from the hearts and souls of men; as the beloved apostle clearly stated: "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, EVEN AS HE is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil" (I Jn. 3:6-8). That is really plain reading for anyone with an honest heart. But Christianity has taught nothing but deceit to its adherents, mainly by its false substitutes for the true new birth experience. Jesus died and rose again to provide a baptism by his own hand that literally washes the inner man clean from sin by "living waters" from heaven (Jn. 4:14; Jn. 7:38). That baptism gives the true believer power over the very nature of sinning while renewing the heart and mind in the "divine nature" which abides in the Father and the Son in heaven (Acts 1:8; Rom. 12:1,2; Tit. 3:5; Heb. 9:14; II Pet. 1:4). The baptism that Jesus baptizes with is the entire reason that he came to this world, because it IS the only experience of faith in him that literally takes sin away from the heart and soul (Mk. 1:7,8; Acts 1:4,5; Acts 2:4; I Cor. 6:11). And that baptism, which is the ONE baptism stipulated by the apostle Paul in Eph. 4:5, is the same Spirit baptism that first came at Pentecost; and it is still evidenced initially by the sign chosen by God, which is "speaking with other tongues, as the Spirit gives the utterance." Christianity has replaced that baptism, at least as being the new birth experience, with the scripturally unfounded doctrine of "getting saved." There is absolutely no record in the Bible of ANYONE EVER "getting saved," but nonetheless it is the universally accepted "new birth," including among those who HAVE gone on to be baptized with the Spirit. And because it is, God's true Spirit baptized people have been conditioned to believe that their sins were taken away before they actually were. And because of that they have also been conditioned to REMAIN in sin even though they have received power to NOT remain in sin. The body of Christ has fallen into Christianity's sin trap which the apostle Paul both warned of, and refuted: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized (with the Spirit) into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:1-4).The whole "saved by grace" mindset of today, is that we DO magnify God's grace by actually remaining sinners. And in that passage is manifested yet another of Christianity's sin traps, because the baptism that Christianity recognizes is NOT the SPIRIT baptism that Jesus died and rose to provide, but rather the one that symbolized and led the way TO his baptism. Water baptism, which was of the law, never took away sin; and if it had then Jesus would not have needed to come (Mat. 5:17; Mat. 3:15; Gal. 3:21). Not only so, but if water baptism could take away sin under any circumstance, then Jesus died in vain (Gal. 2:21). So if the mystical "getting saved" is the born again experience, rather than the Spirit baptism that puts one into Christ and literally washes away sin from the heart and soul; and water baptism is the baptism of the faith of Christ, then its absolutely no wonder at all why everyone is trained to believe that being in sin is a normal trait of a believer in Christ. Never mind that the Bible clearly shows that it is the baptism of the holy Ghost that puts anyone INTO CHRIST, and never mind that the scripture says, "Therefore if any man BE in Christ, he is a NEW creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become NEW" (I Cor. 12:13; II Cor. 5:17). So because God's people today have been conditioned to "never mind" what the Bible truly teaches, it is as it was in Jesus' day, that the body of Christ has been taught to make the true faith of none effect by the traditions and doctrines that have been dictated to them by the reigning religious order. And trust me when I tell you, we cannot afford for that to be a part of THAT religious order. Amen.