Dear atheistic, communistic dictator: Having trouble with that dastardly underground church spreading like wild fire?
No matter how much you seize, imprison, torture, and execute those Christians, the church still keeps flourishing?
Christians getting in the way of your nation’s “progressive” progress?
Looking for a way to stamp out the spread of Christianity in your Orwellian utopia?
Well look no further than this blog post. That’s right. In this post I will show you in just two easy steps how to limit the spread of the church in your country in one generation so you can continue to build your effervescent dystopian society unhindered.
But, dear dictator, it is essential that you first understand two things before we proceed:
Firstly, up to this point you’ve been doing it all wrong. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church and history has proven that persecution only grows the church.
Secondly, God’s ultimate sovereign will and His predetermined plans will never be thwarted by any man, including you . . . with all due respect of course, dearest comrade.
If you can resign yourself to the fact that your current approach has been ineffective, and that you will never completely stamp out Christianity, then you’re ready to follow the two easy steps outlined below to begin stagnating the spread of the church in your country.
Let’s begin.
STEP ONE:
You must legalize freedom of religion. I know, I know, this sounds counter intuitive, but trust me on this.
Combined with step two, legalizing freedom of religion will ensure that the tares will greatly increase among the wheat since there’s no longer a sacrifice associated with “becoming a Christian.” Once the tares begin to outnumber the wheat, you will know that success (achieved without a single shot fired) is just around the corner.
STEP TWO:
In conjunction with step one, open up Christian bookstores in every city and flood the market with two waves of books. In the first wave push books by the likes of Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Beth Moore to skew their concept of what Christianity is. Simultaneously make available to them such television channels as TBN to tell them that God’s greatest desire for them is to be healthy and wealthy and that anything less means they are lacking in faith.
After the masses have consumed and adapted to a positive, self-help version of the gospel, then hit them with the second wave of book by the likes of Rob Bell, Dallas Willard, Doug Pagitt, Jay Bakker, and similar Emergents to encourage them to doubt everything the Bible says (or at least doubt what the Bible says about the sins they like to continue engaging in).
Allow Christian radio stations to function uninhibited. Encourage stations to fill the airwaves with their sugary, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend, contemporary, Christian pop music along with all the “positive and encouraging” Bible verses to boot (avoiding verses like Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Matthew 7:21-23, and Hebrews 10:31), offering contests to win theme park tickets, movie theater tickets, concert tickets, backstage passes, autographed CDs, day spa visits, and cruises, cruises, cruises.
All of this will drive these Christians to seek after increased comfort and greater self-preservation over and above everything else. This “laying down of one’s cross” to seek after comfort, security, and prosperity, of course, is the very opposite of what the Christian should be doing and is the antithesis of a “revolutionary.” A revolutionary, need I remind you, is one who would be willing to sacrifice everything to overthrow an oppressive government such as yours. The less revolutionaries there are, the greater your chance of retaining your power becomes.
Remember, your goal is not to make these people irreligious, because that simply doesn’t work (which is, after all, why you’re reading this). No, your goal is to inoculate them to the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the only religious faith that truly poses an ideological threat to your fragile utopia.
If you properly followed the above steps, then your subjects will not only have moved from the true gospel to a false one, but they’ll even reject the true gospel and not even be able to recognize it when it’s presented to them. This biblical ignorance will certainly spread like a cancer and be passed on to the next generation, ensuring your safety and security from an uprising or revolution for many years to come.
Left to human nature, men will inevitably take the path of least resistance. No dying to self and carrying a cross for them, only happiness, security, prosperity, and ease. And once on the hook, they will then follow whoever promises to continue to provide those comforts, even if they follow that leader to the gallows he has prepared for them.
Do you still doubt that my two-step plan will work? Do you still desire proof of its effectiveness? Then I need only to direct you to where this two-step process has been implemented already as proof that this works every time it’s tried: Look no further than the churches in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
Christ Alone Wyoming 
amen pilgrim, much to be reflected on here..
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Profound thoughts Pilgrim. Disturbing, yes, but true.
Todd
Texas
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…..and then all these Christians will rejoice when they take the mark of the Beast, worship him and say this can’t be the mark, as we would have been raptured already, away with your hateful conspiracy theories They will be full of joy when he who was given power over all Nations and tongues makes war with the Saints and overcomes them, at last rid of those pesky fundamentalists who hinder world peace and oneness. They will think they doing God a service.
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Excellent!! As my dad used to say, “truer words were never spoken!”
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anyone else stockpiling MP3 sermons against the day when it might not be safe to meet openly with other christians?
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Theologically, the prosperity gospel has always infuriated many mainstream evangelical pastors. Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose Driven Life outsold Osteen’s, told Time , “This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy? There is a word for that: baloney. It’s creating a false idol. You don’t measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of Christ who live in poverty. Why isn’t everyone in the church a millionaire?” In 2005, a group of African American pastors met to denounce prosperity megapreachers for promoting a Jesus who is more like a “cosmic bellhop,” as one pastor put it, than the engaged Jesus of the civil-rights era who looked after the poor.
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Perfect.
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again i ask, if we follow jesus by god’s divine choosing, why does it matter what the climate is outside? whether we’re being persecuted or living in overabundance are the people who are preordained going to choose god a and everyone else choose the devil. so it doesnt really matter that joel osteen is an illuminati puppet because hes decieving those whose going to hell anyway? i dont understand.
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Too true…! Thanks for the precious reminder!
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Hi Cassie, we don’t know who the elect are until they really are saved, many who are being deceived at the moment could still be the elect and brethren may have been given a part to Play by God in bringing the true gospel to them and waking them up by exposing the false gospel they follow.
Jesus said “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” so it does seem that if your not God’s you are the devils by default but just becasue people seem to be the devils at the moment does not mean they cannot be saved later. I was in my 40s before being saved.
As for the so-called illuminati and freemasons and people they deceive we should remember that:
“For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled”
“Therefore hath the Lord sent them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they might all be damned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness”
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Pilgrim, thank you very much for this post. For too long, the world has been trying extreme means to thwart Christianity when all along they merely had to give them enough rope to hang themselves. Now, much of what passes for true Christianity has their proverbial heads in the sand like the ostrich loudly proclaiming to all who will listen – “Nope, can’t happen in America!”
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Junglemissionary, you couldn’t be further from the truth with that last statement. It’s the true Christians that know and recognize what’s coming. It’s the false converts of Christianity — the ecumenical church that clings to a false gospel and has no eyes to see or ears to hear that have their heads in the sand. All things will go according to the divine plan, and the end is rapidly approaching. We know that. We also know that the true church will be persecuted during this century as in centuries before.
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Cassie, if I could respond to your question above — the key word that is probably confusing you in this is ‘choosing’. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, nor can he know them. The gospel is preached to ALL, because as Andrew pointed out, we do not know who the elect are. If I were standing on a street corner sharing the gospel with a large group of people and everyone of them walked away mocking, I would still have done exactly what the Lord told me to do. In Isaiah 55:10-11 the scripture tell us that when we share the Word of God that the LORD says, “…it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” If there were any of God’s elect in that group, those shared words would be heard and received, even if it wasn’t the very second they heard them. Now, about choosing — since the natural man (unrepentant and non-elect) CAN’T receive them without God’s intervention, they walk away and continue to mock in unbelief. Choosing is out of the question. God is sovereign and the bible tells us that ‘we (elect) were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Does that help any?
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Gay Genia wrote:
“the end is rapidly approaching. We know that.”
We do??!!
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Some quotes on sovereign election and mans responsibility:
“If, then, I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything is foreordained, that is true; and if I find, in another Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to imagine that these two truths can ever contradict each other. I do not believe that they can ever be welded into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the human mind which pursues them farthest will never discover that they converge, but they do converge and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.” – CH Spurgeon
“Side by side with the immutability and invincibility of God’s decrees, Scripture plainly teaches that man is a responsible creature and answerable for his actions. And if our thoughts are formed from God’s Word the maintenance of the one will not lead to the denial of the other. That there is a real difficulty in defining where the one ends and the other begins, is freely granted. This is ever the case where there is a conjunction of the Divine and the human. ” -AW Pink
C.H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. “I wouldn’t try,” he replied; “I never reconcile friends.” Friends? – yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together. -JIP
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Gay.Genia,
I did NOT say that true Christians are not aware of what is happening. My comment was that much of what PASSES for true Christianity is hiding its head in the sand. The world will always seek to persecute true believers because it hates our Lord Jesus first and foremost.
As for the end approaching, we can speculate, but we cannot know for sure when the end will be. We are not given the ability to set dates or to even presume upon sovereign timing, but we are commanded to always be watchful.
I hope this clarifies as I think you completely misread or misunderstood my comments.
TJM
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I guess I kind of get it but doesn’t it make trying to live your life right pointless, either god gives you the ability or not. And you can try to get it right all you want and you will never succeed. You can beg god and ask god and learn his way and still not be right because he has chose not to change you?
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“You can beg god and ask god and learn his way and still not be right because he has chose not to change you?”
Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.
That is not right Cassie. God uses means to accomplish his ends as shown in his word. If someone is living in sin and unbelief, God calls them to repent and believe the Gospel. If they say that they want to but can’t, they should humble themselves and ask God to grant them repentance and faith. If someone doesn’t even care enough to do that they should not blame there willful choices on God for they willfully walk in sin and unbelief.
God does not call those lost in sin to repent and believe in calvinism. He calls them to repent and believe in his son, to enter into the kingdom as little children, not as seminary graduates. I am not refuting the wonderful and Christ exalting doctrines of God’s grace, and his absolute rule in every matter, but head knowledge of these things without the reality is useless. It is true that calls people to himself, but he does it by way of command that we repent and believe.
Acts 2:37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”
If someone is humbled before God, believing the Gospel, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness (that comes only from Christ) that would be a good indication that God is working in their life.
God bless -Jim
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Just had gotten off of the phone with a fellow sojourner lamenting of the utter lack of discernment in the churches. This not our home for certain but now even the churches are at odds with the truth also.
RBC now proudly offers up books by contemplative authors. I asked if they could name one discernment ministry that had endorsed spiritual formation as biblical.
They lean only on their own understanding, no need to bother..
Places like this are so very refreshing to my soul. I do not know who will demand the end of D&C first the PC people or the churches and teachers and seminaries you expose..
God strengthen you for the task.
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silver,
a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Being correct on one or even on several aspects of faith cannot counter balance Rick Warrens more serious unbiblical positions. In his zeal for building bridges he has denounced those who elevate doctrine above unity. He has joined hands with both apostates and non-Christian religions to promote his PEACE plan. In the purpose driven life Rick never clearly declares the definition of the gospel or its absolute necessity for salvation.
The following statement is a not very funny joke. Anyone who is invited on the Opra show is suspect at best. Anyone who fails to get tossed off is even worse. Anyone who gets her embrace is ashamed of the gospel according to Jesus.
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