Demonize if you please, that old time religion

The future of the Church is not in question, but it's Holy Week, time to question what you believe.

In the western Christian world, it’s Holy Week, the week before Easter Sunday. I want to outline three encounters I’ve had in the last week or so dealing with Easter, and the western religion of Christianity. I say the “western religion of Christianity” because actual Biblical Christianity frequently bears little resemblance to what the vast majority of churches in America practice. This statement is not generally debatable among scholars—they agree. What is debatable is the value of adhering to Biblical context, and my position is that this is extremely critical to proper doctrine and teaching.

I’ve have three individual encounters lately that have moved me to write this today. For we live in a world filled with demons, but demonizing is not what you think it is.

Image: ChatGPT 4o

Jonah Goldberg, who is neither a Christian nor a particular observant Jew, recently wrote about governing among demons, except the demons are those of our own making, in demonizing people and ideas we don’t agree with.

“One of the problems with demonization, in the political science-y sense,” Jonah wrote, “is that it gives the demonizers permission to ignore not just the humanity of political opponents but any arguments they might offer.” I would agree here. If your neighbor says they will vote for a particular candidate you don’t like, and you call him a demon, any argument he might offer is dead on arrival.

Actual demons don’t like to engage in such time-wasting arguments, except for the fact that time wasted is time that those who aren’t awake to the precepts God wants us to follow don’t get to hear those precepts in order to wake up. And those who are familiar don’t get to meditate on the precepts, so that they can correctly hear and follow God’s principles and assignment for their lives. If you think God doesn’t have an assignment for your life, you’ve either not spent enough time studying, or you’ve believed doctrines of demons.

Actual demons are just fine with pretty much any political system we humans can concoct. They have their own political system, and it is ruled absolutely by their chief, Satan. Above Satan, there is God, who cannot be overthrown or denied. Humans have free will—the most unique gift God has ever bestowed on any part of His creation—so we are free to invent our own torments. Actual demons don’t need to torment us, though popular understanding is that they are here for that purpose, and that they rather enjoy it. Perhaps they do, but their purpose is not to torment those who believe. Their assignment is to keep us from knowing and acting on God’s purpose in our lives.

Demons have had a lot of practice doing that, and I believe their greatest achievement to date may well be the modern version of the western religion of “Christianity.” That religion is so divorced from Biblical context that what American Christians consider normal is actually aberrant, and the lexicon of the church is so foreign to what the original followers of Jesus knew, they’d recognize it more as heretic than faithful. To have so many sitting in pews and actively listening to doctrines that keep them from God’s purpose must make the demons feel quite accomplished.

Before you call for me to be burned at the stake, or before you hit “send” on that flaming email, please hear me out.

I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. American Christianity has been very effective. To God be the glory. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 9 verses 13-15, “As a result of your ministry, they will give glory to God. For your generosity to them and to all believers will prove that you are obedient to the Good News of Christ. And they will pray for you with deep affection because of the overflowing grace God has given to you. Thank God for this gift too wonderful for words!” It is through God’s overflowing grace, and the generosity of American Christians, that our efforts have enjoyed such tremendous success.

But the day is coming when that generosity will not be enough.

Saturday evening, our family held our Passover Seder. This is nothing unusual for Jewish families, for on Passover, most Jews celebrate at home, or with friends, at a Seder. As believers in Christ, we generally invite our Gentile friends who have never attended, because the Seder is, in my mind, the most complete and concise representation of the prophetic purposes of God, in the Old and New Testaments, that exists today.

As a result of the Seder, there are always questions. This year, the discussion revolved around whether Christ’s Last Supper was a Seder. The Biblical timeline in the synoptic Gospels indicate that yes, the disciples and Jesus celebrated a Seder after Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, one day before the events that culminated in the crucifixion. The day Jesus rode in to Jerusalem is celebrated as Palm Sunday. It is called that because the believers in Jerusalem lined the streets waving palm branches as Jesus entered, riding the foal of a donkey, and shouted “Hosannah! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!”

If the Last Supper was a Seder, and we just had the Seder last Saturday night, why is Good Friday on the Friday a week after the Seder? Why is Easter always on a Sunday? The simple answer is, it isn’t.

The western Christian religion celebrates Easter, which is not a Biblical holiday in any sense, on a Sunday because the western world has no context to celebrate the Resurrection any other way. Biblically, the only calendar recognized in the Old or New Testaments is the lunar calendar, the one Jews still use today. The lunar calendar pre-dates the written Scriptures. Knowledge of it as assumed. But the western Christian religion does not know this calendar, and cannot follow it. So every feast, assembly, and precept of the Torah (the Law), the Prophets, and the inspired canon of the New Testament is lost and must be interpreted and spoon fed to believers. This opens the door to tremendous error, into which the demons have poured their own doctrines.

Not only have the times and seasons of the Bible been lost in context, but the languages and words of the Bible are similarly lost. First, the Bible was translated into Latin, the “Vulgate” translation, from the original Aramaic, Hebrew, and vernacular Greek. The public at large did not speak or read Latin, which was the official and legal language of Rome. Therefore, the public lost any ability to directly study scripture, outside of the Jews, who still had the Torah, Psalms and the books of the prophets.

Then, the Vulgate was translated into the “King James Version,” which contains many errors, and in some cases, was purposely botched to avoid difficult doctrinal discussions. There are many better translations. But if you find a ministry that is translating discovered manuscripts of New Testament books written in Hebrew, many modern Christians would consider it weird or unnecessary. It is neither, because the Bible must be interpreted as it was written to be understood. If we lose the context or lexicon—the very language—then how can we preach what it says properly?

The answer is, we can’t. And we don’t. Western Christianity is a religion filled with rites, ordinances, and holidays that bear no resemblance to how they were originally written or understood by those who wrote the Scriptures, and some are simply creations of men—as much the result of free will as our own forms of government, which come not from angels, but from ourselves.

Demons spent centuries trying to eradicate Hebrew from the world, so nobody could read the original Torah or scriptures. The Jews stubbornly refused to abandon it. So demons and people aligned with demons tried to eliminate the Jews. God did not allow it to happen. He is still not allowing it. Not only that, but Hebrew, once a language confined only to reading the Torah by Jews, is now spoken by millions in Israel as that nation’s official language. What is intended by demons for evil, God uses for His purposes.

As for doctrines, Biblical knowledge and context is the key to truth. Most Christians who study the Bible know that Easter is not a feast in the Bible, but Passover is the context of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice as the Lamb of God, replacing for all time the Paschal Lamb that was killed (simultaneously with his death) at the Temple in observance of the Jewish feast. At least Resurrection Day is a real holiday with a contextual connection to its Biblical feast. But Christmas is not.

December 25th was arrived at in some way, and I won’t debate its origins here. However I will say that Christ was not born in a manger on that night. One of the questions that arose from our Seder noted that going down the contextual road where Resurrection Day is celebrated at its proper time and in its proper context would lead to cultural, umm, problems. As it was told to me, “once you go down that road it’s kinda tricky.”

You bet it is. Any church in America that got rid of Christmas and Easter would end up preaching to a big empty room, or to a closet. In Matthew 10:16, Jesus told His disciples, “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.” Wolves sow doctrines of demons and rob the sheep of the shepherd. They spoon-feed their own doctrines and cherry-pick Scriptures to support their own purposes, not God’s. But getting rid of the cultural ties is a two-edged sword, because it means the Christianity most Americans know would become as dead as a stone, and those good pew-occupiers would lose their generosity and fervor for God, such as it is. So the wolves get to live among us. For now.

In another story I heard from a teacher on Jewish roots, even the most anointed and gifted prophet must learn not to turn off the audience. In this story, a man with a wonderful prophetic gift didn’t dress or keep himself in a way that most people would consider acceptable. The teacher told the man that he has this gift, but unless he enjoyed preaching only to the clothes in his closet, he would have to improve his appearance. The man took his advice in the spirit it was given, and enjoyed success.

Paul wrote in Romans 12:18, “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.” Going about telling other Christians that their religion would be seen as some pernicious cult by first century believers is not the way to win people to follow Christ more closely. But the fact that it’s true does describe the weakness of that religion and its inability to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, and the rather bad problem of being conformed by the world, whether that means going “woke” or to the other end of the political spectrum. Our kingdom is not of this world, in any case.

As Christians, our battle is not with flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities of the unseen spiritual world. Yet we spend our time demonizing other flesh and blood people. Can a Christian have a demon? I heard one preacher answered, saying “a Christian can have whatever he wants.” But one who has the Spirit of Christ cannot be possessed by a demon spirit, according to most theologians. However, that Christian can believe doctrines of demons, and can allow demons to seize their emotions and mental well-being, due to fear, or doubt, or the desire to please other people over God. In Matthew 13, Jesus told the parable of the tares (weeds) and the wheat.

“Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.” (Matthew 13:29.) Those who preach doctrines of demons will be sorted by God.

And those who hear those doctrines must be led by the Spirit of God out of error and into the light. So for now, Easter and Christmas must remain, for they are the periods of the best time for pastors to share the message of the Gospel. Hallelujah for those who hear and respond!

Friends, listen to me and study the Scriptures yourself to bear me out if what I say is truth.

We are in a period now where knowledge is increasing at a breakneck pace. We are overwhelmed with facts, as well as fabrications. How can anyone formulate a consistent worldview incorporating “new” information when we can’t trust the source or context of anything? The Bible, and its original context, including the Old Testament, is the basis for everything Jesus preached, and what He died and Resurrected for to vouchsafe salvation for those who believe in Him.

There is coming a time when the Church will be tested, and sorted, and harvested by God’s harvesters. There is coming a time when great deception will overtake those who fail to understand the assignment and gifts given to them by the Lord and Master of the universe. There is coming a time when caring about whether we celebrate Easter on the right day, or celebrate it as the right feast, or whether we celebrate the birth of Christ on December 25th is a real issue for believers.

At that time, to side on the unpopular end of the issue, to take the road less travelled, the narrow path, will be the one that God desires for believers. For those who take the wide road will pour out their demonization and anger at the remnant. They will shout, amplified by the demons who adamantly oppose God’s purpose, that these believers are the heretics, while they themselves are led by wolves away from the shepherd.

There is coming a time when the promises of God in Joel chapter 2 will occur.

²⁸“Then, after doing all those things,
I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy.
Your old men will dream dreams,
and your young men will see visions.
²⁹ In those days I will pour out my Spirit
even on servants—men and women alike.
³⁰ And I will cause wonders in the heavens and on the earth—
blood and fire and columns of smoke.
³¹ The sun will become dark,
and the moon will turn blood red
before that great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.

The only way believers who wish to be free from the aberrance of the religion of western Christianity will be to hear from the Lord, as He pours out His Spirit. Those who value their own religion the way they’ve always done it, will choose to ignore the prophesying and the dreams and visions. Those who hear and obey will side with God. I believe that one day we will have Bible-believing churches filled with God’s spirit, power, signs, wonders and miracles, who do not celebrate Easter Sunday or Christmas—they will celebrate the Passover, and the Biblical feasts. People will not believe the miracles, and members of those churches will be accused of being in a cult.

That day is not necessarily today (why not today?), but it will happen, as surely as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, because it was prophesied to happen, in that way we would recognize the Lord’s arrival. And when the Father is ready for Him to arrive again, we will see these things come to pass.

So if you see believers questioning the doctrines of the church or why we do things the way we do them, don’t demonize them. Answer Biblically. (I am not talking about those who deconstruct the Bible or say “Jesus never mentioned homosexuality.” Jesus kept the Law, all of the Law. Jesus did not overthrow the Law, and His sacrifice did not overthrow the covenant with Israel, God’s chosen people. And yes, “Replacement Theology” is a doctrine of demons, just like the ordination of homosexual pastors is.)

This is Holy Week. It is the season of God’s payment of our debt. One day, that payment will be redeemed, and we will be expected, like the parable of the ten virgins, to have kept the Master’s oil for the time when He comes for His bride. Remember, the Master, the BRANCH (Isaiah 11:1), came from the original vine, and He will bring that vine back through His own reconciliation, to Him. Gentiles are grafted in. Gentiles who celebrate the Jewish feasts, by their own choice, not by obligation, are not being legalistic. They are simply contextualizing their faith in the proper way. They are minding their lamps so they have oil for when the Master returns.

Anyone who tells you differently may be believing the doctrines of demons, who have robbed the Church of so much of the richness of God in context and lexicon. And in turn, the Church has robbed the Jews of their place, which God Himself is restoring. Watch and see the salvation of the Lord.

Put another way, as I’ve heard so many times in the last year, including from our own Susan Bagwell, “Wake Up!”

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