14 And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
Not everyone preaching something is preaching the truth. In fact, the pool of truth-proclaimers shrinks every day in America. That is because our culture doesn’t want to hear the truth, because the truth would mean we had to give up our toys. The message preached today ranges from man-caused global warming to all-roads-lead-to-god because we are god. The packaging is becoming more and more sophisticated, but the message is empty. I am not advocating reading from the King James only, or throwing out all choruses and sticking to hymns. But unless we examine what we are doing, the message we are proclaiming, we become an agent of Satan, peddling a false hope. We need to be sensitive to those who are outside the family, but not to the point that what makes us a family is given away like some amusement park prize won in the bottle toss of life. We have the light, let us shine it. The light itself will attract seekers. For the sake of our multimillion dollar facilities with requisite mortgages, we leave out the uniqueness of Jesus and the offensive nature of sin. We sing all the popular songs and smile our whitening-strip smiles, but reconciliation with God, who needs it. We are all accepted by a loving God. Sin is old fashioned. It doesn’t exist anymore. We are in a different era. Everyone and everything is welcome. And once you get here, don’t bother changing, because god loves you just the way you are. I could go on with examples of watering-down gospels being preached, but I won’t. Instead I will give the core of the Gospel. If you are not hearing and preaching this, then you could be missing the mark. Every teaching does not need to be this, but it had better be there prominently. Ready? We are out of relationship with the Holy God. We are dead, blind, deaf. We can do nothing to get in right relationship with God. God came to fix us. His name was Jesus. He lived a perfect life and freely gave up His life. When He died innocently, He died in our place. He took the punishment we deserved. He made it possible for us to be in relationship with God again. If we believe this to be true, then we enter into a new relationship of trust and action with God. In that relationship with God, every human need is met, and we live a life wanting to please God. That is it. Many other things could be stated, but none are as important as these. Without these, we are messengers of Satan, spreading darkness instead of light. Two questions: is the church you are attending proclaiming these things and are you living these things?
The Arnold Journey 