BODILY TENSIONS

“Churches that preach a ‘Holiness’ message are legalistic and place women in bondage.”

“‘Prosperity’ Churches are shallow and are mostly carnal.”

Pastors who emphasise ‘Grace’ in their messages are just telling people to go out as sin as they like.”

“All Mega Churches are business corporations, run primarily for profit and not for the interest of souls.”

Ever heard of the phrase, “give a dog a bad name and then hang him”? You probably must have heard all these aspersions made on various groups of churches (mostly made by members of each group with respect to the others), and you must be wondering which church is now the perfect church.

Amazingly, there’re still Christians today who believe that ONLY members of their church will be going to Heaven. But while the Bible accepts the reality of multiple churches (e.g. Rev 2,3), it still maintains that there’s actually only one CHURCH, which is the collective body of Believers worldwide.

There’s no such thing as an “Independent” church. We are all part of the same Body: the Body of Christ, which is explicitly defined as “THE church” in scripture (Eph 1:22-23; Col 1:24). (A church that forbids interaction with other Believers outside them has already become a CULT).

Let me define a church as any congregation of people who hold that salvation is attained by the Blood of Jesus AND NOTHING ELSE (very important). If there’s such a group, the fact that they commune with each other differently from your church doesn’t automatically make them evil.

Each sinner has a message that appeals to them, some are attracted by the message of prosperity while others are convicted by the spectre of Divine Judgment, etc. You cannot catch them all with your one style.

Like we learnt yesterday, there’ll always be satanically commissioned extremes of all the various church groups. There’re ‘Holiness’ churches who  teach sisters will go to hell for putting on trousers, “even if it’s under the skirt”, ‘Prosperity’ churches who milk the members dry for the Pastor’s lavish lifestyle  and ‘Grace’ churches that condone immorality. No matter the kind of church you attend now, there’s another one somewhere twisting the same message to keep people outside of Christ but still in “church”. They also exist to smear the reputation of each legitimate church group.

Therefore, as Believers and legitimate members of the Body of Christ, we must learn not to help the enemy in bringing down our sister churches. Of course, just as Paul confronted Peter in Gal 2:12-14, we still have the duty to correct each other in love when we see certain excesses, but we mustn’t forget that “though we are many, we are one Body in Christ”.

AMEN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

GREG ELKAN