What is sad is that one has to leave their controlling, legalistic church in order to be conformed to the image of Christ.
You got people telling you that you must obey other men in these assemblies. If that were an absolute, then Christ would not have disobeyed the High Priests and Pharisees when he performed miracles on the Sabbath. Not all pastors are looking out for your spiritual welfare....that is a fact. And the rest of the five-fold ministry hardly balances the pastor in many cases.
In many assemblies, you have to play it their way or the highway. You cannot allow yourself to be conformed to the image of Christ without the pastor's permission. If certain pastor's perceive that you are sincere and may in fact exceed
their righteousness (
Matthew 5:20), some actually work to prevent this in you.
When one leaves these assemblies, they are trashed by many of the people there and cannot find another church that will accept them in unless those churches are bitter enemies. Sad...and truly a shame that it is, but there are Oneness churches in my region that are bitter enemies with each other. I believe that is what keeps revival from springing up in this dark place.
Some of you tell me just how Christ-like is that? Then those of you who think all "authority" should be obeyed call those who are not in good graces of those men in "authority" bitter, unforgiving, rebellious etc.
The people back in Christ's day understood all too well what going against those in authority would do to them. They believed Christ. He had tens of thousands following him, astonished at what He preached, recipients of His grace and healings.
Conspiracies have gone on for as long as man walked this earth. Who would have thought that the High Priests and Pharisees conspired together to kill the Savior. And they did it because they did not want to lose their positions with the Romans.
Why do "authorities" in a church system do what they do now to people?
Sometimes we are not rebellious when we leave a controlling, legalistic church system. Sometimes we are only trying to find Christ through a maze of churches that each and every one of them think that they are the one true path, the one road that leads to God.
Fact is, Christ is the only way, the door to God and we do not go through men to get to Him. We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
Threaded Mode
