VISITS TO THE HOUSES OF GOD

During 2007 I traveled to 50 or so churches under vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and silence. I was forced to listen and listen I did. It was as if I listened with my blood. I know now, it was with spiritual ears I was listening. It is the way of the spirit of God to minister to those HE has ripped out of the life of experience and use to serve HIS cause.

I heard the sermons of the pastors and the prayers of the flocks. I sang the songs and watched. There was and is, in my opinion, SOMETHING WRONG. I have been ministered to, by God, never to act on my feelings or thoughts. The scriptural prophecy tells us as a reward for diligently seeking God one of the rewards is; you will not judge by appearances but by righteousness. As I listened to the pastors I was amazed by the Harry Potteresque tone of their sermons. It was as if God, the creator of all things seen and unseen, is a wish ATM machine whose password is; In the name of Jesus. A slot machine who only pays off based upon how much money is placed into Him. I found the pastors to be self righteous in the extreme. A judge, really, which is fine, if he were judging spiritual things but he judged behavior. This would also be fine if he brought understanding in his judgment.I heard none. Many members of the “flock” at the church socials following the services expressed a profound confusion. They had no idea how to pray nor did they understand what faith, a gift of God, is. They felt repressed at the level of their feelings and thoughts. The pastor, regardless of his lack of understanding of the knowledge he has learned could not express with poetic ideas his experience of God because he had no experience of the supernatural ministering of God but rather the doctrine of other men. This is what he has and therefore all he can give to anyone. The doctrine of men and not the experience of God in the form of dreams, visions, prophets, scripture and above all else the ministering spirit of God represented by angels. This is the message of the New Testament not behavioral modification. The pastor is only able to offer descriptions of God and not the WAY to God. He speaks of the history, persons and events of the OT and NT as a time gone by because in all my experiences in the religious community and the churches at large I heard no stories or understanding of the way God in his supernatural ways communicates to man. None.

When I related the super natural events which were made evident in my experience, I was thought crazy, prideful and persecuted. I was mocked and punished. There was a palpable motif of persecution in the air of the community in which I lived. I remember one man telling me; “you don’t want to glow too brightly”. On the whole, I found the Christian church to be rife with self will and a perfect manifestation of the prophecy of Christ’s warnings about men and their counsels written of in Matthew 23. More than one time I was aware that if Jesus Himself walked into any church on any Sunday, HE would be given a visitor’s package.

I bore witness to a situation in a church where the pastor’s secretary’s husband basically stole $100,000.00 from a widowed parishiner and the pastor counseled the victim to keep her mouth shut as he prayed over her list documenting the criminal neglect in the building of her house for which she paid money. The secretary’s husband was eventually arrested by the police. The widow was ostracized and questioned by the elders and told to withdraw the charges. She did not bring the charges. The charges were brought by the state in answer to prayer she and I made for 7 days offering the home to God and asking that his will be done.  I was astonished by the gossip I heard. The corrupt use of confidentiality on the part of the pastors and elders in their back room meetings based upon the scriptural idea; there is wisdom in the counsel of many was rampant. In a church of say 100 people, I thought it odd that “many” meant 5 people.

I worked for a national ministry whose methods of operation under the name of God were corrupt at every level. I found it peculiar that the self proclaimed “anointing” of God entittled these men, in their minds, to perks not available to others. Money offerings in the form of cash, automobiles, property even gift cards were used for the “leaders” personal use in the extreme. Money was regularly siphoned from offering boxes with no record of it having been taken.

The churches and minstries I have encountered, by the grace of God, were spiritual wastelands constructed by men who proclaimed a religion, refered to as a faith that as far as I observed led to nothing. The various ministries of these churches were led by individuals who manifested not particular gifts or fruit but rather extreme judgment which led to a destruction of what little hope the people who attended them possessed.

I am not being critical of the church nor the men who lead it. I am merely recounting for you dear reader what I observed. I am a Chrisitan. My entire life is devoted to God as a minister ordained by Him and confirmed by the fruit I bear. That and angels and scripture refered to in answer to prayer. The current church is a cease pool of man made doctrine and a group of men who have studied the Bible as if it were a computer programming book. These organizations are no different than a second rate business who speak about money more than anything else. They flatter one another with tittles and secretly deisre to move up the ecclesiastical food chain. They raise astronomical amounts of money to support ministries that do very little to genuinely help people on any level. I worked in the food banks, begged money and promoted ministries under vows of obedience. Leaders are well fed and well paid. They drive new cars or motorcyles. The ministries, in may cases, provide mortgages for their growing pastoral staffs. The leaders isolate themselves from participants in their ministries and churches. It is almost impossible to gain access to a Pastor to discuss spiritual issues. They are far too busy raising money or attending conferences to discuss with other pastors what God is doing. Whatever that means. As far as I know, God is the same yesterday today and tomorrow.

You may be thinking this is a hatchett job about religion and the people who run it. It’s not. I have recounted what I witnessed with my eyes while under vows of obedience, poverty, chastity and silence. This is a partial list as my work in ministry encompasses counseling pastors and their wives together and separately. The stories are tragic. They are beyond the scandals associayed with the catholic church in the 80′s. My point in writing this piece is not to judge or indicte but rather to explain how this could possibly be the case. This blog is being written to discuss the failure of the churches, people who run them and attend them to find contentment in God and why I believe church will be extinct shortly by an act of God.

More tomorrow…