Cedric Fisher: "earnestly contending for the faith."

Month: June 2014

Fainting in the Day of Adversity

“If you faint in the day of adversity, Your strength is small.” (Proverbs 24:10)

I am quite skeptical about dreams and visions. When people begin telling me about their dream or vision, I do not immediately accept what they say. Instead, I pray and determine if their particular experience lines up with God’s word. The Scriptures do declare that in the last days the “old men will dream dreams and the young men will see visions” (Joel 2:28). However, there have been so many wacky people presenting their bizarre and unscriptural dreams and visions that we should be very careful about accepting them without due consideration.

That said, I had a dream the other night that I cannot get out of my mind. Of course, every true Christian should judge what I write by God’s word and the Holy Spirit. I dreamed that I was walking down the center of a street. It looked like it had not been well maintained and there was grass growing up through the cracks. Suddenly, two men appeared and begin approaching me. One seemed to be subservient to the other one. The dominant one held a filthy, white robe up and began speaking goobledygook. At first, I tried to understand him, but then I recognized the presence of demon spirits.

I said, “Shut up!”

He immediately quit talking and looked at me very astonished. When he opened his mouth to speak, I said again, “Shut up, in the name of Jesus Christ!”

He stared at me intently for a few seconds. Then a smile gradually formed beginning with his eyes and gradually flowing down his face becoming a diabolical grin. He seemed to recognize that I did not actually have the power to back up my words. I felt very insecure and wondered if I had the power to defeat the demon in him. He grabbed my wrist and we fought until he fell into a pile of garbage. The man that was with him stooped and checked his pulse. Then he said, “You killed him.”

At that point I woke up. Immediately, the Holy Spirit spoke to me the following. He said, “My people have the knowledge to discern evil, but they lack the power to do anything about it. So they fight in their own strength.”

I laid awake for some time thinking about the dream and what Holy Spirit had said. I wondered if I would have the strength to stand when the time comes. Do I have the strength right now? For several days I meditated and prayed about the message. I can now see clearly what God is trying to tell me.  The battle is the Lord’s, and we must not fight it in our own strength and by our means.

There are nearly 250 million professing Christians in the United Sates.  However, our nation is rapidly deteriorating into a hedonistic and antichrist culture. The political realm is overrun with individuals that wish to pervert and destroy democracy and personal freedom. Concurrently, Christianity is falling into near irreversibly decrepit spiritual condition. A significant number of Christians recognize that a dark and desperate period is upon us. They recognize the key players in the secular and religious realm that are doing the most harm. Some of them can even name the heretics and their heresies, and explain the nuances of their deception. But is there a significant opposition mounted against the encroachment by the evil empire of Satan? There are a several organizations, some books, a few websites and Facebook pages, but to date no organized Christian effort has successfully stopped or even slowed down the apostasy, much less made any significant difference in the secular realm. It makes me ask, “Where is our power?”

The opposition to the rapidly invasive darkness in the political realm is for the most part comprised of Roman Catholics, secular conservatives, and Fox News. Professing Christians have acceded to them the title, “Bastions of Truth and Goodness”. Further, professing Christians have placed their hope in these individuals and entities that they will beat back the armies of Satan and help Christianity win the culture war. They are collectively a wall of untempered mortar vainly posturing against authoritarian regulation. In my opinion, they will not be of much use against the coming persecution and possible annihilation.  They are as many Christians in the Early Church that put their hope in the pagan ruler and pseudo-Christian, Constantine. They trusted in him to deliver them from persecution and give them proper social status. Modern Christians are willing to trust and support anyone and anything that promises to deliver and protect them from inconvenience and suffering.

But what are modern Christians trying to preserve? Is it their passion and zeal for God? Is it their working to win lost souls, to minister to the tormented and bound masses, or their constancy of maturing into vessels of honor and commitment? Not hardly! They are trying to preserve Churchanity, which is the religion of meetings that have ends in themselves and all the trappings thereof. They have had several decades of a prosperous and comfortable life. Along the way they incrementally marginalized God and His will while they increased their interest in the cares of this life and the deceitfulness of riches, among other things. They do not know or have conveniently forgotten that they were repeatedly and prophetically warned to escape from their Laodicean condition, to repent of their heresies and flagrant perversion of God’s word, their flirtation and harlotry with the worlds system, and their woeful lack of production.

If I am wrong about this, then where is their power? If 250 million professing Christians that claim to indwelt by the Holy Spirit, claim to have faith in God Almighty with Whom nothing is impossible, if they cannot be a force in the world against evil, why are many of them trusting that psuedo-Christians, heretics, secular people and organizations, cults, and other ones without the power of God can get it accomplished? Further, if all the ecumenism, the contemplative spirituality, the Emergent philosophy and world view, and Seeker Friendly nonsense, is ordained of God, and if they are true Christians, why cannot the apostasy and deterioration of society be ended or at least abated? The fact is that their philosophy of success appears to be, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

This indulgent, compromising, indolent, weak, and naked, Laodicean church does not really want a return to God and His sovereign authority over their lives, if they ever held that position. Instead, they simply want a return to blessings without commitment, power without full surrender, peace without true devotion, provision without true faith, and everything else God has to offer with little or no investment on their part. Frankly, they want a return to the influence that Christians had with society before their hypocrisy made them despicable. They are ignorant of the fact that influence was borrowed from a generation or generations now departed. Those past generations sincerely loved God and His truth. However, many professing Christians today have no love for truth, and strive to mute the voices of every prophet that warns them to wake up, repent, and return. This apostate generation is not attempting to preserve true Christianity, but to construct and maintain Laodiceanism, a hybrid conglomeration of Christianity and the world system. They are inviting some of the more offensive immoral behavior, such as homosexuality’ It seems that everything that was once considered vile is now being welcomed with open arms.

The present generations of professing Christians could have easily won during their turn at fighting in the great war against the darkness, but the majority refuse to do what is necessary. First, they steadfastly refuse to repent. Instead of repenting, they go to great lengths to gloss over their sins. They insist that their sinfulness is of no great concern to God. Instead of identifying sin, they re-labeled much of it as liberty.

Second, they refuse to pray or only pray when they are in trouble. Many of the ones who refuse to pray have turned to Contemplative Prayer, which is not prayer at all by any stretch of the definition. Instead, it is a process of complete and passive surrender to Satan.

Third, they refuse to feast on God’s word, either by reading and studying, or by hearing. Instead, they present their itching ears in numerous church buildings for the “Sunday Morning Scratch”. Other ones keep their eyes and ears glued to the television watching and listening to teleheritics. They know very little about God’s word and consider the ignorance bliss.

Fourth, they are completely unproductive. They have no desire to be a witness. The extent of their witness is to announce the name of the “church” that they attend. And they will not even do that if secular individuals are within earshot. Most professing Christians have never won a soul and have no plans to do so. They intend to go through life and stand before God with no record of duty or production.

Fifth, they refuse to stand up for the truth. They care not or are willfully ignorant of the fact that Satan’s agents are openly and tirelessly working to draw souls into the darkness. They will not equip themselves with knowledge and submit to heretics and their heresies.

Sixth, they refuse to take a stand for righteousness. The invasion of homosexuality into Christianity has met little resistance. Further, because few Christians make a stand, when someone boldly speaks truth about homosexuality, they are considered freakish, ignorant, or fanatical. Leonard Ravenhill was correct when he wrote, “Christians are so subnormal, that if they ever became normal, people would consider them abnormal.”

There are other professing Christians (smaller in number) that can recognize the evil that they do not wish to make friends with. They are able to identify the ways and means of that evil, and the individuals involved in it. However, they appear incapable of successfully opposing it. Many of them seem to have no taste for the battle. They would rather complain and turn the job over to someone else. But what is the consequence of depending on people that are not ordained by God to fight that battle? The consequence is that instead of a militant overthrow of Christianity, there will be a smooth and cancerous dissolution of what little viability that is left. The residue of Christianity (the religion) will still merge philosophies and doctrines with a one world religion. We are actually witnessing at this very moment the formation of a one-world religion that will be ruled by the False Prophet. Christians that abdicate their spiritual responsibilities in favor of cheering on the hodgepodge crowd, which is nothing more than a pasted together army of weaklings, are unwittingly or wittingly assisting the formation of a one-world government.

Finally, there is the remnant. They are the smallest group of Christians. They are speaking out, standing up, praying faithfully, and refusing to give ground to the enemy. These are the ones that will not yield to the demands of the hirelings that they accept the perversion of Christianity to make it palatable to a hedonistic culture. They are presently accused of being homophobic haters void of love, among other false accusations. However, the hireling’s version of love actually has the same definition as the word compromise.

The remnant will not accept the new world religion and its leader. They will not bow to Baal or kiss his ring. They know the truth and would rather suffer persecution and even death rather than deny it. Satan attacks them with every dirty trick because he cannot conquer them. They are not losing the battle as the deception thickens and the apostasy increases. They know that the battle was not about preventing the endtimes from occurring, but about remaining faithful to God no matter what the cost.

In conclusion, I must say that when professing Christians decided to make it a battle between flesh and blood, they begin to fight on Satan’s turf and according to his rules. When they understand and receive this truth, then maybe they will understand how wrong they are. God is able to give us victory if we are willing to do it His way. If not, we will fail miserably.

Each person must discern for themselves whether this is truth or not. One thing is true, and that is we cannot deny the fact that it is a war and someone is going to lose. I see nothing in recent history that inspires me to declare victory for professing Christians that have more confidence in the power of Roman Catholicism, politics, and the news media, than they do in the power of God.

As much as we would like to have rest from the constant pressure of this war, there is much more benefits in the knowledge that we have not deserted from God’s army. Sure, it is difficult to stand and oppose the darkness even in the relative safety of a free nation. However, it will be much more difficult to remain in denial when it all comes crashing down upon humanity.

Although we may unable to prevent the darkness from covering the earth, we must not wrestle against flesh and blood. Instead, we must fight this battle God’s way. We must pray, stand, never back down or give up, and we will have a crown to lay at the feet of Jesus. Further, our champion is Jesus Christ. He showed us the way to follow God. There is no mention in the Scriptures of Him turning to the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of man for help. I know some Christians that are of the same determination and they are a great encouragement to me. I also take comfort in the fact that the battle is the Lord’s. When we stand, He stands with us.  When we fight, He fights with us.  And when we are slain, He gathers us up into His eternal kingdom where death can never go.

How Can They Escape from Deception?

There is no doubt that the a significant number of the current leadership in Christianity are drunk on deception. They are grieving the Holy Spirit and the hearts of the God’s remnant. They remind me of politicians and celebrities that commit egregious acts and shrug off public protest and outrage as if they are immune to it. They are citizens of the no-accountability society that is pervasive in the secular and religious realms. Their new liberty to embrace the apostasy and ignore the voices of godly people calling them to account for their actions is not a special privilege from God. Instead, it is the searing of the conscience, desensitizing every thing in the spirit that would know conviction. It is a fast track to eternal hell.

Presently, they are jumping on that long, black, train to apostasy. In their deceived minds, they believe that their emergent, contemplative, blasphemy, perversion of God’s word, genuflection of the Pope, and ecumenical love affair with Mormonism and Islam, is a new wave of the glory of God. What it actually is might accurately be described as toxic spiritual cloud from Beelzebub.

It is easier to become deceived than to escape from deception. So how are these people going to escape from deception that is so severe that if it were possible the very elect would be deceived? Someone who has unwittingly accepted deception might hear the truth and be delivered. However, there are seasoned ministers and professing Christians willing discarding the truth in favor of falsehood. Can these ones actually recover from the final snare of deception that has come upon the whole earth? If I was in a dungeon, I would not trade places with them.

 

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