Hashkama: Eggs and Baskets

It wasn’t my intention to write an article this week, but circumstances jogged me into putting some thoughts together – they are not prophecy, just my thoughts.  I had been looking forward to joining a Zoom meeting online, and to know what the speaker was teaching about the Covid effect on the Church in the UK.  Having logged-on and joined the meeting, it only lasted about twenty-or-so minutes for me.  The Wifi signal is appalling and it cut off causing the screen on my laptop to freeze.  I tried a number of times to re-join the meeting but failed.

Among many other things, the Zoom meeting speaker is suggesting that believers meet together in their home.  It’s not a new thing; the early church met in homes, breaking bread together.  It appeals to me because I have experienced this kind of deep fellowship, when we used to meet in what was called a house church.  The term can be misleading; I think it was used because of the “house-church” movement of that time.  The people we met with were an independent group of believers, not belonging to a house church hierarchy.  We used to meet together to worship on Sundays, but would also visit one another during the week days too, and hold “squash” meetings at various times.  Love was tested from time to time, but love prevailed.  It is a pity that the development of a professional clergy ever took place and that it spread even to the so-called free churches, though there were, and are, unpaid ministers too.  Bible colleges are another feature of church life, where people train to be paid ministers/pastors.  These centres of knowledge took the place of the Holy Spirit in leading one into all truth.  Perhaps this is a reason for the many conflicting opinions on some Scriptures.  If that all sounds a bit extreme, perhaps it’s because I have been locked out of “church” for a year, by a church hierarchy that I have never met. 

God trained His people for forty years in the desert; some would say that the Holy Spirit was teaching Paul for fourteen years for the ministry that was ahead of him.  His conversion was followed very quickly by his call to be Christ’s apostle to the Gentiles.  Paul knew and maintained always, that his commission came from the risen Lord whom he had seen on the Damascus road, without the mediation of the Jerusalem apostles – though the recognition of at least one of the Jerusalem leaders of his apostolic service was important to him, and his efforts might have been fruitless without that recognition.  We are not Lone Rangers, even though there will be times when we are alone.  Paul must have been allowed some time to come to terms with his new situation.  When the law was suddenly dislodged from its central position in his thought and life, all the elements in his thinking up until that point of conversion, that had taken place in relation to the law were shaken apart.  They quickly came together in a new pattern around the new centre of Paul’s thought and life, Christ.  His preparation, if we are going to call it that, was as much training on the job as it was quiet contemplation.  People saw the change in Paul.  He had been Paul the Persecutor, but was now Paul the Believer.  Believers today have to become the physical expression of the New and Living Way.  It is time for change, so that the Spirit of God can prepare us for what is to come.  Church has been like a man that lost both his arms and legs.  He managed to survive without his limbs, and to make a life for himself.  There is life, even without all the Body parts, but the Church is the Body of Christ on earth…there shouldn’t be any parts missing.  Because we have life and have learned to live and express our life over the centuries, we don’t miss the parts that never show up during our ‘church’ meetings.  Things are going to change.  Bible colleges will be closed down.  Believers will have to learn to turn to God for understanding and revelation (John 16:13), as well as for everything else.

I was remembering being taught about proverbs and sayings when I was a child in school.  One proverb/saying was, “Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.”  Someone said to me that people are not interested in meeting in homes because they love Zoom.  It’s wonderful, isn’t it?  Sunday mornings, no more getting ready for church, just switch on the computer, cup of coffee and a biscuit, sit back in your armchair and relax etc. etc.; just like watching TV.  I was reading about a GP that had worked at getting to know his patients really well.  He observed their body language, their eyes, their speech, he could see if they had lost or gained weight because he saw them regularly; he could tell if they were anaemic.  He knew so much about them just by being with them.  Covid put an end to that.  The surgeries all closed…and most have not re-opened.  We are missing so much by not meeting together in person to worship the Lord.  We can’t observe how people are physically or spiritually.  Zoom is a bit like life with no body.  We can get used to it; and it meets a need.  However, some get shut out, as I did when the Wifi signal failed, but the meeting goes on and you are hardly missed.  Some believers, particularly amongst the elderly, can never log on; they don’t know how to, so they miss fellowship altogether.  These are obvious problems, like missing limbs are obvious, but we can get used to it, and we can enjoy what sense of life we do have.  There can be problems with meeting in homes.  What if we don’t like the people (we are not supposed to think like that, are we?) in who’s home the meeting is to take place.  What if we don’t have transport if it is further away than one can walk?  Wherever we meet there are the problems of indiscretion, as experienced in the early church (2 Timothy 3:6), as well as those that teach strange doctrines (1 Timothy 1:3).  We will face these issues and others in house meetings; there will be those that betray you.  Focus on Jesus is essential in avoiding many problems, but not everyone that attends meetings are wholly devoted to the Lord.  Some will be tempted and want to lord it over others (1 Peter 5:3), becoming mini-gods in their own minds.  There will be problems, but we will be helped by the persecution that is at the door, and which will increase.  It is going to become dangerous to be a Christian in the Western world.  This is necessary for the Antichrist to come, and for his one world government to be implemented.  The West as we have known it must fall, and it will fall.  That does not mean that God has left His people, even if it feels like He has.  The persecution will weed out much of the fake in the Church, in both practice and people, as well as the prejudices we might have.  Morally and spiritually the West will resemble Rome at the time of Christ, but it will be much worse, because it will be as in the days of Noah, too (Matthew 24:37); when man’s every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5), and, the earth was corrupt and full of violence (Genesis 6:11).  Something we tend to read over but was equally in the days of Noah, is that the Lord was grieved and His heart was full of pain (Genesis 6:6).  This is usually missed in sermons on the last days and Noah.  It’s usually homosexuality or the Nephilim that take centre stage.  Humans in rebellion against God – and nature and the elements will appear to be in rebellion against man – except for the fact that it will be God’s judgment poured out as it was in the days of Noah.  The age of grace will end and the door to salvation will be shut by God Himself.

Paul could preach about issues that we today are being hauled away by the police for teaching on.  This will increase further and will become much more aggressive and brutal.  In the last article I spoke of how Chaim Weizmann tried to warn the Jews in 1933.  He said: “every day I feel more and more that a ring of steel is being forged around us…it is all inescapable.”  We can take this as a warning of what is happening to Christians in 2021.  Anti-God legislation is chaining up those who trust Jesus; ungodly education in our schools, colleges, and universities are educating and preparing the young for the Antichrist rebellion against the Almighty God.  A news report stated that in the USA, in the Rockwood School District, teachers are being told to give fake curriculum to parents who complain of ‘indoctrination.’  The real curriculum is focussed on “Antichrist” activism and issues of “white privilege.”  I was told of a school in the UK where they have an LGBTQ club for the kids.  They also wear badges showing how they like to be referred to.  So, for instance, if they want to be gender-neutral they have a badge to wear.  These children will soon be adults, some becoming managers and leaders in society.  These are small examples of what our children face in our education systems today.  The effect will be that of Luke 12:53, and the kind of society described in 2 Timothy 3:1-5.  This isn’t a study far into the future; this is on our doorstep now.

How long it will take before Christians are blocked from using the Internet I don’t know, but it will happen.  On Saturday 1^st May 2021, the communist authorities in China are continuing their persecution of Christians, and Christianity.  They have removed Bible Apps and Christian WeChat public accounts.  We will not always have Internet access, and we will not always be able to legally meet together, in church buildings or homes or gather together anywhere.  We can’t put all our eggs into one basket, but should be open to the leading of God’s Spirit.  We might think we do that now, but I challenge that thinking.  We are creatures of habit and we don’t give that up easily.  Life on earth is changing, not simply in preparation for the Antichrist to appear, but because the end of all things is near (1 Peter 4:7).  Jesus is coming back.

The Woke threat

Originating from Critical Theory, wokeism challenges existing power structures and seeks to dismantle what are viewed as universal truths.[i]  If it is left unchecked, the new religion of Woke will undermine the foundation of not only the USA, but the Western world.  Woke is completely incompatible with Christianity, and its purpose is to replace it.  It is already seeping into Christianity.  You can’t believe in God but not believe in absolute truth because one negates the other. Yet that is what is beginning to happen.

Wokeism is much more effective than secularism because it fakes being able to fill the so-called “God-shaped hole” in our culture.  It has its own interpretation of justice, righteousness, sin, and judgment.  Converts to the new religion find meaning in the ultimate aim of dismantling what they see to be oppressive power structures to create their utopian society.[ii]  It sees the West as fraught with oppression from racial injustice and gender norms, that subjugate portions of society, therefore, it must be destroyed.  The new religion relies on control and power to impose their ideas.  Persecution comes to those who resist, and so major corporations, politicians, mainstream media are all capitulating.

I don’t know if anyone is listening, but the warnings of this threat are in its early stages of seeking to replace Christianity.  Its introduction sounds somewhat similar to that of forty-years ago when the age of Aquarius was coming in to replace the Christian era.  What is being referred to as the “Third Culture,” as we have seen, is actively hostile against Christianity.  We saw how it considers sexual “freedom” and “authenticity” to be vital to personal and social flourishing.  Biblical morality is seen as dangerous to society and potentially deadly to LGBTQ individuals.  I have included some links below where you can read more about this.[iii]  What we are hearing from the various activists from the world of politics, sport, and entertainment, has nothing to do with justice and righteousness as set out in Scripture.

Other dangers the world faces include famine, pestilence, natural disasters, and war.  China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, all are capable of taking the world to war.

We are by no means in a festive season, but there is a prayer I would like to end with.  It is not a great speech form the Church Fathers; for something different, it is a prayer that the cowboys used to pray at their rodeos.  You can think it through and apply it to your own situation.

The Cowboy’s Prayer by Clem McSpadden

Our gracious and heavenly Father, we pause in the midst of this festive occasion, mindful of the many blessings you have bestowed upon us.

As cowboys, Lord, we don’t ask for any special favours. We ask only that you will let us compete in this arena as in the arena of life.

We don’t ask that we never break a barrier, draw around a chute-fighting horse, or draw a steer that just won’t lay. We don’t even ask for all daylight runs.

We only ask that you help us to compete in life as honest as the horses we ride and, in a manner as clean and pure as the wind that blows across this great land of ours.

Help us, Lord, to live our lives in such a manner that when we make that last inevitable ride to the country up there, where the grass grows lush, green and stirrup high, and the water runs cool, clear and deep, that you, as our last Judge, will tell us that our entry fees are paid.

Amen.

Blessings and shalom

Malcolm [1^st May 2021]

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[i] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/critical_theory

[ii] https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/

[iii] https://www.christianpost.com/voice/preparing-for-a-threat-that-seeks-to-replace-christianity.html