Onward, Forward, Toward…

I recently received from a friend of mine an e-mail with a link to this article about a ‘21-day national fasting that began Jan. 1.’ (partial fasts, water fasts, Daniel fasts (only fruits and vegetables) and complete fasts) that is supposed to “Awake America” and major Christian ministries influential Christians have jumped on the bandwagon.

Months after the fast, Christians have the opportunity to attend the Awakening America Leadership Summit, which takes place in Northampton, Mass., in April. The ’significance’ of the location is that the location was where Jonathan Edwards pastored during America’s first Great Awakening more than 250 years ago. In other words, this ‘fast’ is now ‘validated by God’ because we have tied it to another action of historical significance that based on the ‘results’ was ‘validated by God’.

What is it with these national calls to mega fasts, super revivals, etc. that tries to justify that being tied to a revival of days past via the same city that the past revival took place at, an presidential election year, an anniversary that matches a critical biblical number meaning, a prayer/fast time lasting days determined by a critical biblical number meaning, an anniversary date of a past revival, or occurs on a catchy date (7-7-07 and 7 is God’s number) by saying that the ‘common thread’ to these things means that this ‘is God’ and our dream of the Christian utopia will come to past?

The answer is simpler than we believe. The answer is based on a four part ’systematic thought’ that permeates such thinking:

(1): The belief that Christianity is perfect and the people of the Bible were ‘perfected and pure’ people and someone or something after the times the Bible was written ‘corrupted’ it to make us ‘impure’ and ’spoiled the party’.

(2): The belief that this one thing of ‘impurity and imperfection’ is ‘holding God hostage’ and prevents him from ‘moving in our midst’. (Achan’s sin in Joshua 7 used as the basis)

(3): The belief that if we discover ‘the one thing’ and take an action against it, that we will create the ‘perfect’ Christian utopia full of ‘perfected’ people we want (called ‘God wants’) and we will be pietistic ‘Mega Christians better than every Christian on Earth today and had ever walked the Earth. If needed, we will use the labors of the ‘inferior mainline’ Christians to achieve ‘The Goal’. (2 Chronicles 7:14, Acts 2 used as the basis)

(4): The belief that by successfully revealing ‘the one thing’,successfully conquering ‘the one thing’, and successfully creating the ‘perfect’ Christian utopia ran by ‘perfect’ people; we will expect Christians who failed to do this (now deemed as weak, impure, imperfect, and inferior Christians) to surrender control over their churches and ministries to us and let us be ‘God’s Only Official Voice’ (since we ‘figured out the problem’, are perfect therefore can never miss God’s voice) and establish “The Protestant Papacy” and deem a building as our shrine and a city as our place of jurisdiction and calling it ‘holy ground’. If they do not voluntarily do this, ‘we (since we have the ‘hotline to God) can call down destruction to you because you are not ‘the Way’, instead you are ‘in the way’. (the Gospels, the apostle Paul as their basis)

Control…..

Something went wrong and someone did something wrong and therefore was not perfect. However, ‘our group’ is the only ‘perfect’ group who can ‘fix’ this (’repairers of the breach’) and when ‘our group’ fixes this, “your group” will forever be indebted to me and ‘our group’ will be immortalized for eternity because we brought forth ‘perfection’ back to Christianity……..

Let’s look at the success rate of this mentality of people, groups, etc. that thought they had ‘figured out’ what was ‘the one thing’ that ‘held God hostage’:

They came
They saw
They ‘conquered’
They ‘controlled’
They ‘corrupted’
They ’split and splintered’
They ‘disappeared’

And the area of impact and ‘revival’ was the same (if not worse) than before.

The cycle ‘repeats’ (Meet the new boss…. same as the old boss)

If this defeating ‘the one thing’ mentality works, then why have all these ‘rallies’ and then ‘repeated’ years later not worked? Why didn’t all the ‘awakenings’, dominionism, ‘manifest sons of God’ teachings, Finneyism, Promise Keepers Rallies, Latter Rains, Brownsville, the Moral Majority, the Psalms 66:12 prosperity offerings, the Christian Coalition, Joel’s Armies, New Apostolic Reformation, Fundamentalism, Joshua Generations, mega-fasts, rallies on 7-7-07, Believers Conference 2007-1975, ‘purging of the remnant’, eight years of God’s Official Party in office, or any other legalism, faith turned formula, or other gathering that professing Christians claimed would ‘work’; not work?

Because God wanted us to know that it is God and God alone, not God plus some esoterical / mystical man-made doctrine, that is sovereign and is in control. Because God gave us the scriptures that teach us how to walk over trials, tribulations and ‘fate’, not avoid, circumvent, eliminate, or go around and ‘rise above’ it. Because God wants sinners saved by grace to be justified by faith and not club members accepted by legalistic initiation and ‘loved’ by conditional obedience. God gave us the entire Bible to live out the Christian walk and gave us the book of Acts to teach us how to become the church and the letters to the churches to warn us of common apostasies (still running rampant today) and how to scripturally counteract them within the church.

We obey His Word. That is all we can do.