Living A Religious Lifestyle Blinds Many Christians

Revelation 3:15-17, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. 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:”

Some of the worst Christians I know faithfully attend church and live a religious lifestyle. They read their Bible. They pray. Sadly, they are shallow in their walk. The Harvest Baptist Church on Guam definitely comes to mind. I attended Harvest for an entire year in 2014. I made friends and thought I had a church family. Sadly, their ungodly senior pastor Marty Herron is a selfish man (in my humble opinion), who lives a religious lifestyle, who doesn't genuinely care about people, as I found out painfully when he forced me out of the church in 2014. And then three times in 2017 Pastor Herron (and his associates) refused my apologetic and humbly pleas to simply return to church services. What kind of pastor and church rejects humbly people who plead for help? They are blinded by their religious devotion, failing to see how far away from God they really are. None of those ungodly men ought to be involved with Christian leadership. God will judge between me and them (Romans 14:10).

Some of the worst Christians I know faithfully attend church and live a religious lifestyle. My former wife definitely comes to mind. Since divorcing me in 2006 (I tried to stop the divorce but she refused in writing), the closest she has ever come to an apology is to go from blaming me, to blaming three other women. Kindly said, for somebody who lives a religious lifestyle 8,500 miles away, you'd expect more. I don't even go to church, because Harvest Baptist Church since 2014 hasn't allowed me too! That is on them. I hope and plan to move away from Guam very soon, God willing, with His help. My neck injury makes everything difficult, and I have no one to help me with anything. I am praying for God to show me where to move.

I am not condemning my former spouse, but I would never remarry someone who cannot even apologize. Her attitude is all wrong, but because she attends church regularly, her religious lifestyle blinds her to how far away from God she really is. No one is close to God who lacks humility, regret, remorse and a contrite spirit. Psalms 34:18, “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.” I fully share the sentiments of the famous preacher John Wesley (1703-1791), who when asked about his wife divorcing him said: “I did not abandon her. I did not dismiss her. I will not recall her!”

I live with a broken and contrite heart. I pray for Harvest all the time. I pray for my former spouse all the time. I pray for my family. I pray for my web visitors. I pray for myself least of all. By God's grace I hope to find a wife in 2021. I am so sick and tired of all the phoniness in professed Christians today. I fully understand that there are no perfect believers. We are all imperfect humans. Even the best Christians still live an unacceptable lifestyle of sin!

That is one reason why the whole concept of so-called “Lordship Salvation” is a theological fraud. No one, and I mean no one, can live above sin. The very idea that a person who is genuinely saved must at least try to live above sin is absurd. Even one sin is too much sin with God (James 2:10). Does it really matter that one Christian chooses to sin more or less than another, concerning salvation? No! It does not. Our attitude toward different sins, and the ethical lines we choose to draw as believers, and what we accept into our lives, varies greatly from one person to the next.

But God's plan of salvation is rock solid clear, plain, simple, free and not open to interpretation or negotiation. You get saved by receiving Jesus as the Christ, the only begotten Son of God (John 1:12-13). You get saved by receiving Christ's sacrifice on the cross as payment for your sins (John 19-20; 20:31). You get saved by putting your trust (confidence) in Christ's death on the cross, burial and bodily resurrection three days later (1st Corinthians 15:1-4). The heresy of Lordship Salvation is subjective, but the truth of salvation is declarative. That is, the hoax of Lordship Salvation drastically changes and varies from one adherent to the next, but the free grace Gospel is what it is—a declaration of divine unchanging truth!

Just because you lust, gossip and refuse to love others at church, doesn't make you any less sinful than the person who rapes, murders and steals. However, the Bob Jones' crowd don't even want to do right! They don't want the truth! That's very different than being less than perfect. I make no claim to being a good Christian, but I want to be. If there is any goodness in me at all, it is the presence of God's Holy Spirit working through me (Galatians 5:22-25). But dear reader, there is a world of difference between an imperfect believer, versus someone who simply is indifferent, who doesn't care one way or the other. 

Humbly said, all my life I have seen religion blind people, like they're wearing blinders. Since in their own mind they are doing what they think they're supposed to be doing to please God (read your Bible, pray and go to church), they cannot see the forest for the trees. One good thing about not being in church regularly, like I haven't been since Harvest Baptist Church on Guam excommunicated me in 2014, is that I constantly see how horrible I am as a sinner. I want to move very soon. I need to find a solid church, where I can have a church family, and hopefully find a loyal woman to marry, who won't bail ship and quit down the road.

The Bob Jones University crowd have turned Neo-evangelical over the past 50 years. So much so that they now preach hardcore Lordship Salvation, promote the Devil's Bible revisions, and bid Godspeed to deadly unsaved false prophets like Pastor John MacArthur (the modern-day godfather of Calvinism, aka, Lordship Salvation). They just don't care! The Bob Jones' crowd, which includes the shameful Harvest Baptist Church of Guam, merely go along to get along with social trends, theological trends, and moral trends. That is why their female students now dress just like the heathen world.

My theological battle with the Bob Jones' crowd would have ended years ago, had they simply loved me as a human being. Instead, Marty Herron quit in his arrogance and moved to Iowa. Now he can corrupt young people in a Neo-evangelical cesspool of iniquity called a “Bible college.” It's too bad they still can't figure out which Bible God actually authored! The new senior pastor, Gary Walton, is too immature it seems to know what to do, so in typical BJU fashion he does nothing! The fake Bibles keep being used and promoted. The fake gospel of Lordship Salvation is still preached, at BJU and Harvest. No one cares about THE TRUTH! No one cares about right doctrine. Nothing matters to them, except their paychecks!

I love everyone and am not trying to be a jerk. But if anybody has been the jerks in all this since 2014, it is the arrogant fake pastors of Harvest Baptist Church on Guam, who didn't even have enough decency, faith in God, courage and humanity to allow me to quietly attended church services, even after I humbly begged and promised not to cause any trouble at Harvest. That just proves the type of shallow religious people they are, who don't truly walk close to God. When they think they are seeking God, they are merely playing church and living a religious lifestyle.

A person who truly walks with God WILL:

1. Use and promote only the inspired King James Bible.
2. Reject all of the Westcott and Hort corrupted Greek texts (i.e., all modern Bible revisions).
3. Love God above all else (and that means loving Jesus).
4. Love people unconditionally (and that includes everybody, not just your clique).
5. As a pastor, never tell someone who is broken, humble and remorseful that they cannot attend church.
6. Forgive everyone even before they seek it.
7. Preach the free grace Gospel.
8. Contend for the faith against all falsehoods.
9. Love righteousness.
10. Love the truth.
11. Choose more often than not to walk in the Spirit.
12. You will CARE!

Those twelve things are all qualities of a truth-seeker! They are all qualities of someone who has a humble heart of love toward God and one's neighbour. All this phoniness in Baptist churches today is not of the Lord. All of these dozens of English Bible versions are not of the Lord. Lordship Salvation is of the Devil. Calvinism is of the Devil. Therefore, until they repent and go back to do the first works (long ago in 1950 when Dr. Bob Jones Sr. was still alive here on earth), Bob Jones University will continue to pull on the same rope as the Devil. Sadly, Billy Sunday was right: “Most churches are nothing more than four walls and a roof.”