Loving The Lord, Yet Spiritually Bankrupt
We live in the day of apostasy, the day of God's LAST Message to the Gentiles, which calls His people out from a church headed for the Tribulation and a Lake of Fire.
Here is the spiritual condition of the church at the time of the opening of the Seven Seals (which was in 1963), as foretold by Jesus: 'Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked' (Revelation 3:17).
Now when anybody says, 'I have need of nothing,' he could very well be saying, 'I have everything, I don't want any more'. Any way you express this, it all adds up to the fact that the church is complacent. She either figures she has it all or has enough. What denomination is not claiming that it has the revelation and the power and the truth? Not one of their manuals say any different. They wrote it out just so, put their names to it and finished it all up. As if God just doesn't have any more. And there are those who just don't want any more, who would not take the Holy Spirit if God opened the heavens and showed them a sign.
They are all saying, and trying to prove that they have it all, or they have enough. Yet is that the truth? Compare this twentieth century church to the first century church. Go ahead. Do that. Where is the power? Where is the love? Where is the purified church that withstood sin and walked with faith toward Jesus? Where is the unity? You can't find it. If this church has all it needs, why were they crying out for more of God in the Book of Acts? They didn't have it all, and yet they had far more than they have today?
What God saw was entirely different from what they said they saw. They said that they were rich in goods and Spiritually wealthy. But God said, 'You don't know this, but you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked'. Now when a people are that way, especially naked and DON'T KNOW IT, there has to be something awfully wrong. Surely something must be happening. Is it not that God has blinded their eyes as He did to the Jews? Is the Gospel going back to the Jews? Is history repeating itself? I say it is.
God says this church of the Laodicean Age is 'wretched'. And this has nothing to do with the trials that come to a true Christian, for God describes a Christian in trial as 'blessed' and his attitude one of joy, whereas this description is phrased 'wretched and miserable'.
How strange. In this age of plenty, this age of progress. In this age of abundance, how can there be trials? Well now, it is strange; but when everyone has so much and there is so much more to be had; with the welfare state, all the inventions to do our work and so many things to give us pleasure, SUDDENLY, we find mental illness taking such a toll as to alarm the nation.
When everybody ought to be happy, millions are taking sedatives at night, pep pills in the morning, rushing to doctors, entering institutions, and trying to escape unknown fears by alcohol or drugs. Yes, this age boasts of its tremendous stores of worldly goods, but the people are less happy than ever. This age boasts of its spiritual attainments, but the people are less sure of themselves than ever. This age boasts of better moral values and it is more corrupt than any age since the Flood.
We talk about our knowledge and science, but are fighting a losing battle in all fields, for the human mind and soul cannot comprehend or keep abreast with all the changes that have come upon the earth. In one generation we have gone all the way from the horse and buggy to the space age, and we are proud and boastful about it; but inside is a dark void crying out in torment, and WITHOUT A KNOWN REASON, men's hearts are failing for fear and the world is so darkened that this age could well be called the age of neurotics. It boasts, but it cannot back it up. It cries peace, and there is no peace. It claims a great amplitude of all things, but keeps burning with desire like an unsatisfied fire! "There is no peace," saith my God to the wicked.
They are spiritually poor, blind to the signs of the time and not under the Blood of Christ. Naked, and not born again. At the end of the last Church Age a prophet was promised, but they are so sure they are right, they were blind to all that he was doing and saying, and in their blindness they will lose all.
What else can it mean? Can it mean that the Holy Spirit has taken His leave of this last day church? Can it mean that men have put God out of their minds to such an extent that it is happening even as stated in Romans 1:28. 'And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient'. It surely appears as if something like that has happened. Here is a people who say they are of God and know God and have His Holy Spirit, and yet they are naked and blind and don't know it. They are ALREADY DECEIVED. THEY HAVE THE WRONG SPIRIT. THE ELECT CANNOT BE DECEIVED, BUT IT IS EVIDENT THAT THESE OTHERS ARE.
These are they who have become blind because they refused the Word of God. These are they who have stripped themselves naked by leaving God's care and protection and sought to build their own way of salvation, their own tower of Babel by organization.
Oh, how beautifully dressed they appear in their own eyes as they form their synods and councils. But now God is stripping it all away and they are naked, for these organizations have but led them into the camp of antichrist, into the field of tares, right up to their binding and burning. Objects of pity indeed they are. Yes, pity them, warn them, still they go their way headlong to destruction, wrathfully turning away any and all attempts to save them as brands from the burning. Miserable indeed they are, yet they know it not. strat004.htm
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