The Age of Reason is a free Bible study/Christian history that shows how and why modern Christianity became apostate. |
View/save chapter in PDF format. |
When the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower in 1620 they, according to a
popular story, had a problem. They tried to grow crops in soil that was
infertile. They didn’t know the difference between fertile and infertile. Then an
Indian came along and saved their crop by teaching them to catch fish and plant
them along with the seeds so the crop would have flesh to eat in order to grow.
So, what is fertile soil? It is soil with dead things in it called “organic
matter.” Any dead things will do – leaves, wood, grass, vegetables, ants,
crickets, snails, frogs, mice, squirrels, raccoons, turkeys, deer, and even
humans.
We learn something
from this: In order to live and grow properly, crops need some living thing to
die for them in order to become food. In fact, all living things in God’s
creation, from grass to worms to fish to people, cannot survive unless they eat
some other living thing. It’s called the “food chain.” The carnal, physical,
old-man body must eat some other physical life form in order to live and grow. Which brings us to the other body, the spirit body.
The spirit body is a real body. It is the
pattern after which the physical body was made. Therefore things that are true
about the physical body are types or pictures of something about the spirit
body; in order to survive they both need something
alive to die in order to become life-giving food. Let’s examine the food that
sustains the spirit body.
The “Lord’s Supper” or “communion” has Roman
Catholics and Protestants divided because of confusion over what Christ meant
when He said to eat the bread that was His body and to drink the cup of His
blood.
Roman Catholicism developed the purest form of
idolatry with its doctrine. It says the wafer of bread at communion ceases to
be bread at all; it miraculously becomes
Jesus Christ! It may still look like a wafer but it has physically changed
into Christ’s flesh-and-blood body. Catholics are taught to adore, worship,
pray to, genuflect before, and carry in procession the “consecrated” wafer
because it is God Almighty! It does
not – like the statues of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph – merely serve as a reminder
of the actual person; the wafer actually is God. Pagan religions used to
make statues that became their deity. The statue was not just an image of their
deity; it actually was their deity. That pure idolatry is the essential core of
Roman Catholicism; they take a physical object and make it their deity. And
while people are no longer burned at the stake for rejecting that idolatrous
doctrine, it remains 100% in effect in the Roman Catholic institution today.
The Catholic doctrine of communion is incorrect.
The Protestants hang their hat on the word
“remembrance” in 1 Co 11:24,25 along with the fact that v.26 shows that communion is merely a picture of the Lord’s death.
To them the Lord’s Supper is just a reminder that the Lamb of God died for our
sins. Curiously, however, they try to turn this simple symbolic ritual into a
deeply mystical experience with a theatrical air of mournful gravity. In fact,
the way they handle the bread or crackers and wine or Welch’s with such formal
religious awe is similar to the idolatry of Catholicism. They are not
practicing idolatry, but they are trying to artificially create an atmosphere
laden with “religious meaning” – just as Catholics do with their sacraments.
Protestants are partly right about communion because it is a remembrance
of Christ’s death. But it is more than that.
Spirit
bodies, like physical bodies, need food to eat or they will die. But wait,
didn’t I say spirit bodies can’t die? Hold on a minute, don’t get ahead of me;
we’ll get to that.
Jn 6:58 teaches us
that the physical manna from God eaten by the Hebrews in the wilderness did not
give them everlasting life; it merely sustained, temporarily, their physical
bodies. Christ’s body, however, is the flesh, the manna, the bread, the food
from heaven that, if eaten, will enable us to live forever (Jn 6:47-58). Does that mean the Catholics are right, that we should
eat the actual physical flesh of Christ? Of course not; physical flesh does not profit spirit life (Jn 6:63). And we are told not to labor for physical meat (such
as loaves of bread) with the expectation that physical food will give us
everlasting life (Jn 6:26,27), but
rather to labor for the food Christ will give us (2 Ti 2:15). Having to labor for spiritual food, by the way, is
consistent with what the Bible tells us to do in order to feed the physical
body; we must work to eat physical food (Ge 3:19a,23b; 2 Th 3:10). Let’s now labor to identify our spiritual food.
One of Christ’s names is “The Word of God” (Re 19:13). He is also called “the
Word”, and “the Word” is God (Jn 1:1). The Word
became flesh (Jn 1:14; 1 Ti 3:16) and blood (He 2:14). But because Christ’s physical
flesh as food profits our spirit bodies nothing, we must see if there is a
spiritual meaning to Christ’s flesh. We already know that spirit means life,
that God is both spirit and life, and that Christ is “the living bread”
or “flesh” He gives for the “life” of the world.
Christ differentiated between physical water and
spiritual water when speaking with the woman at the well (Jn 4:10,13,14).
The woman wanted some of this water that gave everlasting life, still thinking
it would affect her physical body by
making it thirst no more (v.15).
Christ tried to get her off the physical and onto the spiritual track (v.23,24). Then
the disciples showed up with physical food for Christ (v.31). But He told them He had food to eat of a different kind (v.32). Like the woman, the disciples
focused on the physical (v.33). So
Christ got them onto the spiritual by explaining that doing God’s will is
the spiritual food He’d talked about throughout the chapters containing Jn 4:34 and Jn 6:38.
Christ the Word brought us the word of God from
the Father (Jn 7:16; 8:28; 12:48,49; 14:10,24), which
constitutes God’s will for us as recorded in His Old and New Will and
Testaments. These words of God that He has given us are spirit, and they
are life (Jn 6:63). And that is the
spiritual food that nourishes our spirit bodies. The words of Scripture are the
meat, the flesh, the milk, and the food for which we are to labor. And we eat
that meat by doing what it says, by doing God’s revealed will. So, somehow
when we eat by doing the word of God,
we are eating the spiritual flesh of Christ the Word of God. That is the only
way to grow mighty in the spirit. What does that mean? It means we are not
called to learn the Bible. I say again, our job is not to learn
the Bible; our job is to do what the Bible says. That requires
learning the Bible, but we should only learn the Bible in order to make it part
of our lives, hearts, and minds. Let’s look at it another way: Learning the
Bible does not constitute growth, even though most Christians think it does.
Learning the Bible is the prerequisite to growth, but knowledge is not growth.
If we do the words in the Bible we will be working for God
and He will give us growth. That’s the only way it happens.
The Lord’s Supper has three meanings. The first
is His death. He gave His life for the church and we are to do the same. The
second meaning builds on that death because He has given us His flesh so we can
eat and grow: We are the seed planted in this infertile world and He is the
Fish. The world cannot feed us; we must eat the Fish. If we do properly eat Him
we’ll find our growth is not all that happens. We’ll find there is a third
meaning because His flesh/word – like the fishes and loaves – will multiply so
we become able to feed/share Christ/the word with others. That is, as mature
members of His body/flesh, we find the lesson of the Lord’s Supper is to feed
others by dying to self by living for Christ and His church. Therefore, to
newborn babes the Lord’s Supper is a reminder of His death. To young Christians
it’s about eating/doing so we can grow. To mature Christians it’s about feeding
others. This obviously is not to imply that mature Christians no longer have to
eat/study/do the word; doth not nature itself show that even mature people must
eat to live? I’m just emphasizing our duty to follow Christ’s example by giving
our lives for the brethren (Ro 12:1; 1
Co 11:24; 15:29,31;
1 Jn 3:16).
---------- page
2 ----------
Because we must work in order to eat in order to
live, we have a works religion. Even before
his fall Adam had to work to eat to live in the very same way we are to
work: He was required to be an obedient doer of Ge 2:17. (And this
verse still applies to us today. Let them that have ears to hear, hear.) When
Adam quit being a doer of that Scripture, he was cut off from the food of the
tree of life and he died.
Dying to self means learning to control or
overrule the carnal mind and body. That is why we are commanded to occasionally
fast from physical food. However, because it is so important to remain
spiritually strong and vigilant by feeding daily on the word of God we are never
told to fast from our spiritual meat. Eating the word of God is how God
nourishes our spirit body and teaches our soul the proper way to think.
If you stop eating the word of God you will,
without spiritual nourishment, begin to shrivel on the Vine because
backsliders, rather than receiving nourishment
for their soul, receive “leanness”
from God (Ps 106:15). If you
backslide long enough you will fall from the Vine and lose your submissive
attitude toward the Scriptures. At that point, without His Headship, without
His guiding hand on the tiller, it doesn’t matter what course you take because
it’s you doing it on your own. You are independent; you are carnal. Therefore, because of Ro 8:7, even if a fallen Christian
lives by the Bible he is not serving God because it’s not the works themselves
that matter, it’s works of obedience. If you’re not attached to the Vine, God is not your
boss – you are! Therefore anything you do is credited to you (God
is not glorified) because now, whether
you realize it or not, you’re trying to establish your own righteousness –
something that comes only from obeying Him. Your spirit body is now a devil, an
independent angel. You starved yourself to death even while you were attached
to the Vine of Life Himself because you ignored the milk from the spirit body
by choosing Reason from the Natural body.
It is important to realize what an independent
angel – a devil – is. In order to do so we must remember what Reason is: Reason
is carnality, it is thinking independently from God, and it is blindness.
Carnal Christians usually do not realize they are offending God by using
Reason, because Reason blinds them into thinking the issue God cares about is right and wrong rather than authority. That makes them think good works will justify them and prove
they are good servants of God (Mt 7:22).
But works are only good if they are obedient
works done while you are in God’s good graces, in the favor of God,
attached to the Vine. If you are still attached to the Vine, your works of
submissive obedience glorify God and show you to be a good and faithful
servant. We can learn a lot about carnal Christians by examining Satan’s
service to God.
That’s right, King Satan, the king of the
Kingdom of Heaven who is warring against God, is today serving God. Let’s prove
that with two quick examples and then get into what’s going on and why.
King Satan still goes before the throne of God,
because God is the King of kings. The two of them converse easily, and God
gives Satan orders and restrictions about things God wants Satan to do (see Jb 1:6-12; 2:1-7, and compare 2 Sa 24:1,2 with 1 Ch 21:1,2). On the surface it looks like the two of them get
along pretty well – but not when you understand Biblical principles like
authority and carnality. Understanding those things – and applying them to
Satan – allows us to understand what carnal Christians are doing today and why
they are so evil in God’s eyes.
Satan is carnal; he
uses Reason. He wants to continue to serve God forever…but he also wants a
measure of independence so he can have the Freedom to think and have opinions,
and he wants the right to have personal possessions. Satan thinks those desires
are minor because in the main he just
wants us all to get along with each other. In other words, Satan thinks the
war he is fighting is a gentlemanly one: he and God are civil with each other,
God gives Satan jobs to carry out, and Satan performs those duties thinking he
is proving he is a worthy servant of God. From a carnal perspective, Satan’s
position doesn’t seem all that “bad.” After all, he’s not making hateful faces
at God and trying to overthrow or kill Him. But didn’t Satan and his fallen
angels fight against God in the beginning when God used the Deep to flood and
destroy the earth? Yes, but that battle may not have been the kind of battle in
which the combatants were trying to kill each other; it may have been a
conflict of ideologies. It is possible Satan was husbanding the garden of God
(Eden) to the best of his carnal ability. And he and many angels (the other
carnal ones) thought everything was working out pretty well – just like King
Saul thought the world’s first Thanksgiving feast to praise God for His
blessings was a good idea; just like David thought his idea to replace God’s
tabernacle with a “better” temple was a good idea; and just like Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and 250 of the most renowned Christians in the
world thought they could make the world a better place (all of which we covered
in chapter H2). How did God react to these innocent, well-intentioned, and
peaceful ideas? With righteous anger that caught His carnal children by
surprise: He violently destroyed Eden, He got rid of Saul, He sent Nathan to
rebuke David, and He killed all of the respected Christians and their families.
What this all means, of course, is ideology is what God is interested in,
and His ideology is all based on authority – not on right and
wrong. The forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil made
the people above think they had good ideas that would please God. But He was
violently enraged because those things threaten to undermine the authority of
the one and only God Almighty. And that same forbidden fruit makes Christians
today think they are pleasing God. But they aren’t.
When we are carnal, we think the above servants
of God had good ideas and good, peaceful intentions. And we think God overreacted
with anger and deadly violence. But once we understand and apply the principles
in the Bible, which means we understand why the issue of authority makes
carnality violent enmity against
God, we realize why all of the above were and are evil and absolutely
unacceptable. That’s why Satan thinks his service to God and his “peaceful”
attempts to prevail over the church by getting us to be Reasonable enough to
“all get along” are good. And that’s why today’s carnal Christians think they
are doing good. But it is all an abomination to God
because – on an ideological level and according to the rules of this war – it
threatens to displace God’s monarchy with us, a multi-headed democratic beast.
In sum, we must grow into successful
servant-warriors. We must eat if we are to live, and we must work if we are to
eat. Therefore we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Ph 2:12). Learn to discern: The eyes
are the windows through which the soul looks and learns. The ears are likewise
portals of learning for the soul. But we have two bodies with eyes and ears. We
must not let our souls get the wrong inputs. Let them that have ears to hear,
hear.