Mammon
The nature of the luke-warm church is that of being blind to their own avarice. Confusion abounds among those that cannot see past themselves but for those that have been preaching repentance and a turn from mammon all along, it is perfectly clear. The church has tried to serve both God and mammon, knowing Jesus said you can't. We have witnessed a great tragedy in the destruction of the World Trade Center but this is only the beginning of sorrows. The end is not yet but it is coming. Think of a drought so severe as to dry up the farm land and stop the power generators. The inflation alone will bring the world into famine. Think of catastrophes so widespread that a third of the people in the world will die? Frightening isn't it. All over money.
So, we are in the midst of a discussion on repentance. Fitting. We are not the only ones with a call to repentance, many know very well that this is the way to stay God's hand. You say that God is not to blame? I agree, but tragic as it was, the only god that the World Trade Center represented is the god of mammon. The only god that the Pentagon represents is reflected in the image of the beast. Whatever judgment that is represented in this evil is the natural result of sin and the love of money, the root of all evil. Of course it was perpetrated by evil people but the hedge around the United States was let down. No matter how much you love America, the message is still the same - judgment is coming against her. There are of course those that disagree but we do not see them repenting of mammon worship either. Repentance comes when we are aware of our sins and are determined to turn from them. Judgment is also coming to the church. Bible prophecy must be fulfilled. Repentance is what dresses ourselves in white, ready to meet the Bridegroom. "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." Revelation 7:13-14.
Can you recognize the blindness to avarice and laissez-faire oppression? Your eyes must be opened to the deception of foreign investments and development loans used as a bribe for cheap labor and enslave the third world in debt. It is past time to warn the church. Take a look at the multinational moneygrubbers spouting democracy and freedom to deceive nations and the military interventions to protect our economic interests. The bulk of the Christian church has supported this new world order as part of their mammon worship. Freedom becomes the license to exploit. Embargoes, trade sanctions, favored nation status and economic blockades are the nature of the beast that forbids countries to buy and sell in the world market. Many are still blind to it but it's there. Hey, many of us will die for taking sides against the new world order but Jesus has already given us the anointing to take the kingdom. It is very obvious once the blinders are taken off but God has sent a strong delusion for those who believe a lie. The saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever and ever.
There are many competing voices saying that this is not judgment but still they wonder why this is happening to a Christian America. These are the voices of the image of the beast, not the true God. God has blessed America but look at her now. She is the most amoral and violent nation since pagan Rome, mingled with the seed of mankind but still can not cleave one to another. America was founded upon Christian principles but now it is in money we trust. Hollywood has infected the entire world with the most vile sensuality since Sodom and Gomorrah and polluted the minds of our youth with violence and blood. Sin piles upon sin, too much never seems to be enough. All for the almighty dollar.
It is good and well to pray for the families of the victims but let us not forget the families of the survivors all over America and the rest of the world, they need to come out of the delusion. What delusion? The delusion that thinks that being liberal to the poor is evil. The delusion of the younger generation that votes against the elderly and the elderly who vote against the youth, all for lower taxes. Every move they make is for the sake of money. What part of your Christian faith is conservative? All of it? Conservative faith, conservative giving, conservative grace, holiness, prayer life, a life of conservative do as little as possible Christian service. No wonder God's people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, they worship a false Jesus.
We now have the greatest impetus to revival that this generation has ever known but we must look within ourselves first for this to happen. We must turn before we can ask others to turn. We must shake the mark of the beast from our consciousness and take upon us the seal of God. I say that Lucifer is the light that the church has been worshiping and calling him Je$u$. Money is opposed to God and considered unrighteous. What is being brought before us here is not the unrighteous means by which money is procured, nor the unrighteous use to which money is put, but the unrighteous character of money. In God's sight there is only dirty money. Money invariably leads us away from God.
It is impossible to serve God and mammon. Making friends of it describes the proper use of money to take care of our needs and the needs of others but by serving it, you become its slave. The essence of the present system is money. Whenever you touch money, you touch the world. It was money, which trapped the chief priest, and it is money, which has trapped our religious leaders of today. A man might serve two masters by dividing his time between them, but he cannot be slave to both, and slave is the word here employed. If both demand a total allegiance, the man must choose: he can divide his time, but not his soul. So Jesus here implies that mammon poses as deity, demanding a life-and-death devotion. Covetousness, which is idolatry, tells of the domination. Money makes a man slave indeed. It asks an absolute loyalty.
They that desire to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition. "For the love of money is the roots of all kinds of evil which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." In other words, if anything can lead us astray from God, money will but it is not the money that is evil but the love of it.
Mammon is the god of the world's leading religion. His chief temple is the holy city of New York at Wall Street. It isn't money itself that causes the trouble, but the use of money as votive offering and pagan ornament. Ask an American what money means, and 9 times out of 10 he will say synonymous with freedom, that it opens the doors of feeling and experience, that citizens with enough money can play at being gods and do anything they wish. The dreams of avarice glitter in the shop window and glisten with the displays of opulence. This peculiarly American form of idolatry pervades the whole of society; profit takes precedence over life and art and love; the freedoms of property take precedence over individual liberties.
People came to be valued for the money they command, not for their deeds or character. As their capacity to command decreases, so also does their stature as human beings. Without money it is all but impossible to aspire to public voice or persona in American society. Society in the US rests utterly and entirely upon money; a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury. Juvenal: "Money is mourned with deeper sorrow than friends or kindred." Diogenes is quoted as saying "It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little. Now, the love of luxury is an even more insidious kind of corruption than the love of money, because it draws more directly on a variety of entirely normal needs."
There are two choices that the church in all ages have had to make, to serve God or mammon. The god of this world has had his way in the church for so long that the kingdom has had to suffer tremendously through its witness. We are in the Laodicean age of the church in that the church has become rich, it is all stored within and precious little gets to the
ones that need it the most. We have magnificent buildings and outreach programs to proselytize, crystal cathedrals and steeples that reach into the sky like the tower of Babylon but as long as there is still poor among us, we have failed. We already had a great discussion on tithing some time ago, where it was mentioned that the curse of Malachi was directed not so much to the lack of tithing but to the unrighteous use of it.
I believe that the true God is just sick and tired of the luke-warm materialism that has reigned supreme in our churches and this is where the greatest judgment will be directed. Once the church finally makes up her mind which god to choose, there will be a monumental shift in blessings from the rich to the poor. This is the transfer of wealth that the prophets have been speaking of. Sure, God will judge the adulterers and the thieves and liars but He will also be judging those that oppress a worker's wages and sided with the money interests, who deny the homeless and widows and fatherless children and justice to the poor. God will especially be bringing severe judgment to those who have been saying that being liberal to the poor is an evil. Can you say that you have been a blessing to the poor? Or have you been conservative toward them? What is your voting record, do you vote out of compassion or your pocketbook? A great judgment is coming but also great showers of blessing to those that have been true to the call of compassion.
Up to now, the church has not been worthy. People go to church to be blessed instead of being a blessing. To be served instead of serving. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." It is spiritual blessings that are the most important but you must give. This is when the window of heaven will open up to pour out blessings that cannot be contained. This is the latter rain.
If we are to be restored to the faith of our fathers, we do not have to look far for the example of the early church.
A little extreme? Perhaps, yet our example. We have a mortgage and I am not about to throw my wife and family out into the street but the Lord teaches the rich man "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." That rich man walked away and prompted Jesus to make the statement that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven "but with God all things are possible."
We are still waiting for the "perfect to come." We are to die to become perfect and that also means the fleshly desire for riches. Giving away everything I have to be in the position of dependence on others does not make sense but I do know that I am to dedicate everything I have to Him and that means my material possessions as well as my spiritual ones, then and only then can Jesus use them to His glory, not mine.
Many pastors take pride in the way that their church is growing. So much so that they need to expand their building program to accommodate more luke-warm Christians. They say, Lord, Lord, but Jesus said: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Churches have a reputation of being alive when they are dead. Soon the Lord Jesus will be bringing these dead Christians to life and then shall we see the greater works and miracles that we are looking for. Then shall we see the transfer of wealth and the revival of the church and the stadiums filled and the conversion of so many.
Mammon is filthy lucre, money. It is an idol, a word which often occurs in the Chaldee Targums of Onkelos and later writers, and in the Syriac version, and which signifies 'riches.' Mammon is used in the book of Matthew as a personification of riches.
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many
wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
[179, 204, 355, 377, 385, 401, Luke 16:19, Acts 4:33-35, Revelations 3:2, Matthew 7:22-23, Matthew 25:43]
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