Following Judah's Lion

The Amalgam of Death

Christianity is not a religious amalgam. Christ cannot come in pieces. All other religions are false creations of man’s inward struggle to find a god he knows exists. You cannot find Jesus in other religions, and any teachings that appear similar are coincidental. The true faith of Christ stands alone, unrivaled, and supreme in all the universe. Jesus did not come to share redemption with anyone else and surely not the works of man.

But there is a movement afoot that seeks to diminish the Lord Jesus and compromise His labor of redemption. It is insidious and appears to be reasonable and compassionate. This movement is now running through many denominations and churches, and it is championed by deceived men who lift up their intellect to be admired of all men. The cross is ignored and scorned by this movement. This movement is ashamed of the cross.

Men now suggest that adherents to other faiths can be saved by their sincere obedience to that false religion. Good works are lifted up as a competitor to the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. And this movement has a chameleon-like expression that is both inclusive and exclusive simultaneously. While one set of voices contend everyone will be saved, the other voices shout out a moral gospel. But the end result is the same. The gospel is presented as an amalgam of many different man made ingredients.

But anything that is added to the simplicity that is in Christ is anathema. It is spiritual poison regardless of how it is presented. Our righteousness can never come from anything we do or say, and our devotion to the Risen Christ can never be built upon our moral stands. And even our thorough rejection of false teachers is still not our foundation for divine favor.

But as the world and the church attempts to create some tortured amalgam which includes Christ’s name, and though we forcefully reject such a falsehood, are our lives representing an amalgam? Are we completely surrendered to Jesus Christ or have we included other things that have a piece of us? I do not mean Buddha or Mohammed or parts of other religions, but I speak of time, recreation, and most of all money. Do these things have a say in our hearts?

Jesus gave all for us. I said Jesus gave all for us. What more can anyone give than their own lives? And how could God reveal His love for us more powerfully than dying in our place? And equipped with the glory of that knowledge, how can we parse out our surrender and submission to anyone or anything else? What sacrilege, what blasphemy, and what treason! Have we lost the vision of Him, and instead we gaze at the things of this world or even a petrified theology? Truth written upon tablets is dead. God desires Christ living in and through us which is profoundly more powerful than proving our orthodoxy by paper words. Instead of sinners asking us about our hope, we must go about proving our hope by systematized doctrines? And to the world it all collapses into some spiritual amalgam. Unremarkable, unrecognizable, and unredemptive.

And this amalgam continues to build all around us both openly and with a clandestine insidiousness. While Jesus has lost the preeminence in the church and in our lives we energetically pat ourselves on our doctrinal backs because we recognize Mormonism as a cult. How astute are we! And if this cult produces good, moral people and strong family units as well as an observable commitment to their faith, how is it that we are not driven to our knees in search of repentance and revival in our own lives and faith?

We remain satisfied with the current expression of Jesus Christ in our own lives? How can that be? How can we continue as we are? We have become part of this spreading amalgam with only theological words to prove the doctrinal difference. And armed with this doctrinal talisman we can live without God’s power and presence? While we shine our lights in each other’s eyes, the darkness all around us remains healthy and undisturbed. And we ridicule the Muslims for praying four times a day when the evangelical prayer closets are museum pieces.

And I believe this is the only answer to escape the growing amalgam - prayer. Not just “Poly want a cracker” prayer, or “Bless Aunt Julie and bless America” kind of prayers. But a committed retreat into a brokenness that prays without time constraints and with a pursuit of Christ that moves God’s heart. The church will have to learn to pray all over again since now prayer is little more than an asterisk in a sea of ecclesiastical energy and activity.

But until then the church will parade its prosaic expression of Christ which has been assimilated by the myriad of unremarkable expressions, and now holds down a legitimate booth within the fairgrounds of religious thought. Fill the doctrinal clown’s mouth with orthodox water and win God’s favor. The situation is desperate, however we are not. Things and events of this world consume us, but what place will they hold when the King returns? Again I reiterate, these things are not religious folklore or interesting stories which hold less weight than they did when spoken from the lips of the Lord Jesus or His servant’s pens.

And if we believe on Him and all that He promised, then we are obligated to live and speak and pray as if we not only believe it, but as if we are consumed with a passion to seek Him and be used in every way to glorify Him! If that is not our goal then we walk in religious deception which offers nothing more than some kind of dead hope and a feel good spiritual nostalgia. Men and women have joyfully given their very lives for Jesus and yet we enjoy a pleasure filled existence while still claiming a walk of sacrificial discipleship. Could there be any greater lie?

Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.

There is so much more to Christ in this life. Why do we settle for pottage when He has the grapes of Eschol prepared for us. And in a deeper and more colossal mystery He has prepared Himself for us. Eat His body and drink His blood! Look! We who believe the elements are symbolic have so depreciated their meaning and so diluted that observance that churches present a redundant and well oiled communion that is designed to constrict the time so that we can be dismissed at a “reasonable” hour. And that is what punches our membership card in the amalgam club - we do things that are reasonable and thereby avoid any reproach.

Away with all these new movements that attack the very Person of Christ! Away with these ecumenical bargains that join hands with idols! Away with these slick pastors whose crass language and strutting pontification draws men away from Christ! Away with debt ridden edifices that provide powerless and predictable gatherings. Away with all these politically active movements that are more concerned with elections than they are with the condition of God’s elect! Away with this prayerless, activity laden evangelical structures!

The Potter will have to break this ecclesiastical vessel in order to remake it in His image. But then again, God must be reasonable. He will bless this present amalgam, won’t He?

II Cor.6:14-18 - Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty