Waging War on the Church of the Living Dead

 

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, The (church built) Zombie Apocalypse is upon us…, which can be viewed by clicking here. Not a lot here will make sense if you haven’t read part one, so I would recommend checking out The (church built) Zombie Apocalypse is upon us… before diving into Part 2 here. Thank you for your patience and interest in these things! ~ SAB)

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Their Slavery, Our Slavery, and the Nothing In-Between

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But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ~ Romans 6:17-18 (Bold emphasis added)

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As we progress through the subjects covered here and in future volumes, the fact that all are slaves – either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ – should remain in the forefront of our consciousness, etched prayerfully into a position of prominence so that we might better accomplish the very challenging goal of balancing three vital – and challenging – aspects of the Christian walk:

1. Personal Humility – We were zombies when He bought us. All glory is His. Put another way: Get over yourself, already!

2. Boldness in Christ – He has bought and equipped us for His purpose and mission. He has done these things perfectly; we are without excuse.

3. Fidelity to the Gospel – We have a duty to honor our King by proclaiming and defending His brutal, hated-by-the-world Gospel in its full, undiluted form.

We must remember that we were once just as dead in rebellion as any false convert, false prophet, or apostate teacher has ever been. And while this should make us gracious, kind, and even loving to His enemies (and ours), it in no way gives us license to adopt worldly definitions of grace, kindness or love as a way of avoiding or deflecting His definitions of those terms and applying them to the defense of His truth as He has commanded. We have been supernaturally saved for His purpose, and He has made plain that this purpose includes our proclamation and defense of His truth.

We are to do this with boldness and clarity, and we will suffer for our obedience to Him in this calling. We will be hated for it. We will lose family and friend relationships over it. And He will be glorified through all of this…which is the whole point.

Only with these truths embraced can we fully understand and obey His call to an action fueled by righteous anger regarding the false religion of American Churchianity.

In Apathetic Christianity, we will explore several biblical reasons for this righteous anger of God’s people against the zombie religion of American Churchianity, including:

Its adoption of secular principles and plans aimed squarely at deposing the family as the God-ordained center stage for worship and primary staging ground for worldwide evangelism, replacing it with…you guessed it…“church”.

Its deep desire to be loved by the world. You know, the world that hates God, holiness, truth, and those who love and stand for the same. That world.

Its obsessive drive to make the dead in sin comfortable on their way to Hell (and doubly so if they “tithe” reliably on their way down).

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Hell’s Escort Service

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“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” ~ Jesus (The Real One) in Matthew 7:21-23

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him” ~ 1 John 2:3-4

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Few systems of religion throughout recorded human history have been more effectively crafted to churn out the “workers of lawlessness” described by Jesus in the seventh chapter of Matthew than that of contemporary American Churchianity. It really does seem to have the whole black art of false assurance mastered; its capacity to comfortably escort millions to hell is without limit (or conscience).

When we use terms like “millions of workers of lawlessness”, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these doomed groups are composed of precious, loved individuals who are each made in the image of our holy God. Some are religious and some are secular. Some are our family members and some are strangers. Some are our friends and some are our enemies (whom we are to love). They are men, women, boys, and girls who, without the supernatural cure with which we have been entrusted and which we have been called to bring to them, are destined to face the eternal condemnation that we all once deserved.

They are teachers and preachers and pilots and homemakers. They are athletes and artists and leaders and soldiers. They are in your circle of friends and they are in your local congregation.

They even sometimes share a cup of coffee with you while telling you how doomed they are and how comfortable they feel about it. They won’t quite put it that way, of course, but, more often than not, you need neither pry hard nor peer intensely into their soul in order to see the truth that they tend to parade about quite effortlessly:

They are lost.

They are going to Hell.

And they are quite content.

Their religious leaders are paving this path to darkness and nurturing that contentedness, patting them supportively on the back as they take each successive step toward eternal damnation. Without divine intervention, these escorts to Hell will succeed. Fortunately, our Lord has just that sort of intervention in mind…through His chosen and obedient people.

His people and their love first for Him and then for the lost that He has called them to reach with His truth will be all that is needed here. This supernatural love and the action it inspires really is enough.

But wait, it gets better…and more challenging.

Not only does this supernatural weapon of liberation from slavery to sin and death known as the Gospel of Jesus Christ have the power to free the slaves of American Churchianity, it even has the power to save those who are at the helm – holding the wheel and guiding the ship, so to speak – of this God-forsaken system of man-obsessed religion. Yes, even the very escorts to Hell themselves can be freed from bondage and brought from death unto life, if only we will honor our King and proclaim His Gospel command to Hell’s escorts along with their (temporary) captives.

The challenge here again is to remember that the worst of this zombie religion’s gatekeepers is no closer to spiritual life than you or I were before He brought us from death to that life.

Really.

And we must act accordingly.

So when a guy like Rob Bell says something stupid and dangerous – and he will – remember: There but by the grace of God go I.

Same goes for Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, and the rest of the “top-tier” – or any tier, for that matter – cast of characters in the American Churchianity line-up.

They are our targets, along with their followers.

They are all targets for conversion.

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APATHY IS FOR LOSERS

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This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. ~ 1 Timothy 1:18-20

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Vince Lombardi, the legendary head coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” In this, he seems to prophetically identify the heart of a problem that has left actual Christians either foundering or floating aimlessly in a sea that has come to be dominated and defined by American Churchianity.

We will not confront error.

We will not take stands.

We will not name names.

We will not obey our King’s command to fight the good fight, wage the good warfare, and tear down enemy strongholds, bringing all things into submission under Christ.

And why won’t we do these things?

‘Cause they’re “not nice”.

They’re hard.

And we have become, as Lombardi described, losers.

We’re good at losing.

We like it. A lot. You might even say that, in many instances, we’ve come to love losing.

We definitely love it when we think it makes us look more humble or gracious or kind in the eyes of the world. And we really love to lose when fighting to win as He has commanded would actually cost us something we treasure – something we idolize – like status or peace or friendship or opportunity.

In this we have become that which we are called to destroy. We’ve become apathetic. In becoming apathetic we’ve become “good losers” from the world’s perspective, which makes us just plain losers from a Christ-centered perspective.

So now it is time to get with the program.

His program – a program for warfare.

Total warfare.

Warfare with a purpose.

His purpose. And His ultimate victory.

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WAGING THE GOOD (AND SUPERNATURAL) WARFARE

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For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ ~ 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

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We will not settle.

We will not compromise.

And we will not imagine for a moment that there is or was ever anything inherent within us that made us more worthy of salvation than any other zombie that there ever was.

We are here to win His promised victory by His grace and for His glory, and we will prevail against the very gates of Hell in the process. We will tear down every enemy stronghold between this place and that, grinding its ruins under our heels as we go on marching and bringing the walking dead to life in our wake. Our war against the zombie religion of Apathetic Christianity will be unlimited in its Christ-defined scope and unrelenting in securing its Christ-centered goals, because this is the only warfare that we can truly know as supernatural soldiers of the Sovereign King.

As we contemplate in these volumes the many battles that have come and gone, the battles that are upon us now, and the battles yet to come, we will examine several critical attributes and consequences of the religion of the enemy, including:

• Apathetic Leadership – Pastors, preachers, teachers, and leaders who scratch the “itching ears” of those who seek comfort apart from the Gospel of Christ and, in doing so, serve as willful escorts to Hell.

• Apathetic Family Life – Zombie religion’s abandonment of (and hostility toward) the family as the centerpiece for worship and development of true sons and daughters of Christ.

• Apathetic Education – Zombie religion’s embrace of nearly every secular standard and principle of anti-Christian indoctrination in the name of “education”.

• Apathetic Theology and Doctrine – Zombie religion’s growing disdain for sound doctrine and theology…and her growing adoration of all things “relevant” and hip.

• Apathetic Discipline – Zombie religion’s abandonment of biblical discipline and the unrestrained, immature-at-best hordes that naturally result.

• Apathetic Politics – Zombie religion’s embrace of such “progressive” notions as the obliteration of the God-ordained/defined institution of marriage and the “right” to intentionally target an innocent child for murder.

Ultimately, as we are about the business of securing the promised victory of our King, we will culminate this work by examining, exalting and celebrating the unstoppable, supernatural weapon with which we have been equipped to secure the sure and never-ending conquest to come: The perfect, whole, undiluted Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So pray hard, stay frosty, and saddle up.

Today we ride…

…it’s time to go zombie hunting…by His grace and for His glory…

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The above piece is a continuation of yesterday’s post, The (church built) Zombie Apocalypse is upon us…, which can be viewed by clicking here. Both parts are taken from the introduction section of the book Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity.

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© 2015 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.