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BE WARNED
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, March 28, 2024 – I went down an internet research rabbit hole a few days ago that God had invited me to explore. I needed the information (initially I wanted it; then I realized I needed it) to confirm a few other tidbits that he’d floated my way. Putting the pieces together and seeing what emerged was a shock enough, but an even greater shock was the vehemency of God’s warning not to say anything about what he’d shown me.
I’ve never been one to keep things quiet. When I was a kid, my mother would get me to tag along with my older sister and her friends, knowing that if my sister did something she shouldn’t, I’d blab on her. In my defence, didn’t think of it as blabbing; I just relayed the information as I saw it. My mother well knew my need to narrate my every lived experience to the minutest detail and so used me as her secret information weapon. But my poor beleaguered sister never did anything wrong so there was never anything to blab. When my mother realized that she’d raised a saint (my sister, not me), my intel services were no longer required.
God often shows his children things that he doesn’t want them to relay to others, or at least not for the time being. For me, keeping quiet can be a struggle, so it’s not enough for God simply to remind me to keep something quiet; he sometimes has to shock me into it. He did that yesterday, and it smarted, as shocks are meant to. So I had a double shock whammy – first by the information that was revealed, and secondly by the stern warning not to reveal it to others.
The Bible is full of such shocks in the form of revelations as well as of warnings to keep things quiet for a time. God often revealed information to his prophets and then told them only to say that they couldn’t reveal what they’d been told. Even Jesus did that with his disciples (for instance, at the transfiguration) and with the demons who wouldn’t stop blabbing that he was the Messiah.
Why does he do that? Why does God reveal something to us and then tell us only to say that we can’t say what he revealed? So that our brothers and sisters will heed the warning and likewise not reveal what they’ve been told not to reveal. It’s a built-in warning system for his children, by his children, and among his children, protecting them.
The internet can be a very dangerous tool for born-again believers. As much as it’s useful, it can also lead to our harm if we don’t use it as God intends us to use it. I’m not talking about porn sites or about going onto the deep web and hunting down snuff sites – we know to stay away from those. I’m talking about information that is generally just under the surface and needs only a little prodding to be brought into the daylight. Much of that information we also need to let be, but if God points us towards it (like a clue in a treasure hunt), we need to treat it as reverently as we would his direct revelations and follow his instructions to the letter.
The reward for keeping quiet when we’re told to keep quiet is that God will entrust us with more and greater revelations. The punishment for revealing what God has warned us not to reveal can be harsh, up to and including spiritual death. Yes, God is our Father and he loves us unconditionally, but he also has unbending rules regarding revelations that need to be followed; if we choose to break those rules, we suffer accordingly.
When the sign says to stay away from the edge of the cliff, I stay away from it. I don’t get mad at the sign, I heed it. I’m grateful for it.
My brothers and sisters: Be warned.
A MESSAGE TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – When I was newly born-again, I thought all Christians were the same. I guess it was a hold-over belief from when I was an atheist, only instead of wanting to avoid all Christians (like I did as an atheist), I wanted to be near Christians and interact with them. I saw them all as my brothers and sisters, and I loved them all and accepted them all without question.
Then hard cold reality intervened in the form of denominational Christianity. Because I’d been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant, I started attending mass at Roman Catholic churches shortly after my rebirth. God let me go there because it was what I needed at the time, which was a daily dose of scripture and to be around people who at least believed that he and Jesus existed. So, for three and a half years, I attended Roman Catholic churches pretty much every day, until one bright sunny winter morning, God invited me to leave. It wasn’t for me anymore.
I then found myself without a church to attend.
I tried on several Protestant denominations for size, but none of them fit. They all had carved-in-stone creeds that they’d recite and which I didn’t necessarily believe. To be honest, I’m not sure what I was looking for in a church in those days, but I was certain that when I found it, I’d know.
In my long quest to find a church where I felt at home, I’d take comfort in reminding myself that Jesus didn’t have a place to go to either and that he was even kicked out of his hometown synagogue. He kind of synagogue-surfed after that (like I church-surfed), using the local synagogue of whatever town he was passing through as a pop-up classroom to teach people about the Kingdom. But he didn’t identify as a Pharisee or a Sadducee or any of the other splinter groups that had formed over the years into quasi-denominations of Judaism, much like Christianity has splintered in denominations over the centuries. Jesus stood alone in God’s Kingdom, which is God’s Church on Earth.
God’s Church is also where I stand.
But Jesus didn’t bash denominations, and it’s important that we realize he didn’t. (I had to learn that the hard way, but at least I finally learned it lol.) He occasionally schooled believers on the fallacy of some of their creeds, like he schooled the seven churches in Revelation, but he didn’t bash them. Each group has a perspective that suits certain believers, and God lets those perspectives exist. In the same way, God allows the four gospels to exist, some of which conflict with the others. God allows conflicting details because how many demoniacs kept breaking their chains (was it one or two?) ultimately isn’t important: what is important is the core belief of believers.
Which brings me back to when I was a newly born-again believer and saw all Christians as my brothers and sisters. In those days, I made no distinction between Roman Catholic or Orthodox Catholic or Russian Orthodox or Anglican or Baptist or any of the now hundreds of denominations that identify as Christian. All I saw was my family of believers.
I know that God sees us like that, too. He looks on our heart, not on our creeds. He looks to see if we truly believe or just say we believe. God will know we believe because we’ll keep his Commandments and do as Jesus taught us to do. That’s how you can tell believers from unbelievers, not by the denominational church they attend or the things they recite while they’re there. If they do what Jesus taught them to do (love your neighbours, love your enemies, treat others as you want to be treated), then God knows they’re genuinely his children and he accepts them as such.
I guess I wasn’t far off the mark when I was newly reborn, thinking that all Christians were the same. All genuine Christians, at their core, are the same, as they all strive to follow God’s Commandments and live as Jesus taught them. Their rituals may differ, their stated beliefs may differ, but their core is the same, and that’s all that matters to God.
I wish that we, as Christians, could look past our differences of rituals and stated beliefs and get back to seeing each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus and children of God. We sorely need to come together as a family, so that we can do what families do, which is to love and support each other. But most of all, we need to come together as a family for the sheer pleasure of just being with each other and enjoying each others’ company, which is what God wants us to do. Like a good and loving Father, God loves family get-togethers more than anything else, which is why he’s planning a big party for us for when we get Home.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if believers of every denomination would just get together and worship God as believers rather than as Roman Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, etc.? In God’s Church, which exists in the spiritual realm, that’s how we appear – stripped of our denominations, clad uniformly in clean white linen, and united by our love for God and Jesus. There are no denominations in God’s Church. I wish there weren’t any here in the earthly realm, either, but since there are, I wish we could look past them.
So this is what I pray: that before everything goes to hell in a handbasket (which it will, according to scripture), we’ll all get together as one family of believers, leaving our denominational differences behind and embracing and loving each other as the brothers and sisters we are, as the family God made us.
How powerful our witness would then be!
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 