God Wants the Church Divided

There is currently a new division happening in the church on a global scale in preparation for the soon return of the Bridegroom.

Purifying Division:

Current cultural and geopolitical issues are forcing churches to reveal their true colors. This is causing the fence-sitters, those who don't take their walk with Christ seriously, to choose a side. This is good. The church needs this; at least the church in the United States does. For as long as I can remember, forty-ish years or so, the church in our culture has been in a place of great comfort and little conviction spiritually speaking. I know there are always the outliers, churches here and there taking it seriously,and you can definitely point to the Jesus Movement as a genuine revival, but in general we have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to being radical in our commitment to Jesus.

Jesus wants a chaste Bride:

Enter stage left the COVID 19 pandemic. Out of nowhere Christians, and churches, were forced to answer the question, Will I obey God rather than men? (Acts 5:29) At first, this took us all by surprise. We didn't know what to make of it. After all, most of us had never experienced anything like this before. The fear tactics employed by the media, in direct collaboration with the government, globalist organizations, NIH, WHO, etc, were on an unprecedented level. Daily case numbers and death counts were pushed out continuously by news outlets, pictures and videos of people in China in body bags, a constant barrage on social media of ailing people in hospitals on ventilators clinging to life, as well as a massive censorship of the truth, were all used to get us to respond with great fear to a virus about as deadly as the flu.

The overreaction, I believe pre-planned, by the government was to mandate people to follow orders even if they were unconstitutional, dangerous, more damaging than the actual virus, and just plain foolish. Just do what we say in order to love your neighbor they said. Put on a mask, take a vaccine, close your church; we just need your cooperation for two weeks they said. Failure to comply meant certain penalties depending on which state you were in, and two weeks quickly became two years.

Once we knew this wasn't about a virus, I believe after the first two weeks, definitely after the first two months, we all had a decision to make. Will I radically cling to Christ and His Word or will I obey the mandates of men? This was a great divider.

Some churches never adhered to the mandates, they stayed open; some opened as soon as they could, some stayed closed even after the restrictions were lifted, and some simply shut down for good. How churches responded to COVID 19 was a catalyst for a new cleansing.

New Cleansing:

God wants His Bride pure. Jesus said this to the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. I believe this is God's message to the church today that He spoke through the COVID 19 pandemic. Thankfully some of us heard the message.

Other new cleansing issues I would add to the list include Black Lives Matter, Abortion (although I know this isn't new), the Transgenderism Movement, the complete Marxist takeover of public education, and so called climate change. I pray the churches that support these issues would be zealous and repent. If that doesn't happen, I pray a mass exodus from these churches would result.

The most current issue regarding division involves the Nation of Israel; God's chosen Nation. The Jews are God's chosen people, they are the apple of His eye, He has a passion for them, and He has a future plan for them. Churches that don't support, or worse, speak against, Israel in the current war against Hamas (Iran) are going against God's desire.

Jesus said this in Matthew 10:34 Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. God wants division, the good kind. Division from the ways of the world that result from a radical commitment to following Christ and being surrendered to the Word of God. As Christ continues to purify His Bride the pressure to conform to the world will only increase. Be strong in your commitment to Christ and be on the right side of the divide, the Biblical side.