Friday, July 15, 2011

confusion, part four

To recap, in part one I started the post with this:
“'For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.'
Working from the premise that deception is a product of confusion about truth, this passage foretells of a great confusion in the world; a confusion that not even the elect would escape save for the supernatural hand of God"


The forth "confusion" I would like to profile comes from more clandestine measures. Such measures make them more dangerous because of the difficulty in detecting the poison that they spread. This confusion comes from assemblies that are on the surface, and in statement, doctrinally sound. On the inside however they have become increasingly ashamed or afraid of doctrine in practice. They have succumbed to the fear of man, and the fear of division, and though they have not perpetrated the lie that truth is unknowable, they have placated the lie by simply avoiding the discussion altogether. These assemblies have chosen instead to focus on man or US, how God is interested in US, how God wants to know US, and bless US, and how WE are important to God. Now while this is true, and it isn't entirely doctrinally unsound, it misses the more important point that these things are not true because of anything we bring to the table. Rather, they are true because of the glory it brings to God. And there is a huge difference. In these assemblies there is a very real feeling that we are redeemed of God because it was the just and right thing for God to do. Such thinking brings about a hideous confusion because it is so close to the truth but veers quietly away from our true state at the last minute. That it is not readily obvious that confusion has even entered the mind and our midst makes this confusion especially dangerous.

Furthermore, this confusion is supported and masked by the comfort of our emotions. These assemblies are very concerned about feelings: good feelings about God trumps the truth about God, and good feelings about ourselves trumps the truth about ourselves. The leaders of these assemblies bend over backward to make God "likable" within the confines of the vain thinking of this age and in so doing confuse many about the Gospel and lead many astray.