It would be bad enough if the world had simply eroded belief in God. Evolution as the source of life makes so much more sense than Creation – if you want to be your own God.
Unfortunately, the churches in our day have also done their share to erode belief in God. Oh, they still talk about God. They still read the Bible, at least as an introduction to the sermon. They still pray. And they still defend the faith, at least when another denomination believes something different than they do. They even sing praise and worship songs, in between arguing about what another band or songwriter got wrong.
Whether our travels are mental or physical, once you get the basics wrong, its easy to keep going down the same road. The destination you expected never materializes. Your GPS is busy looking for a clear signal, and you are wondering if that old road map you saw in the trunk is still there.
Maybe you even pull over, get out and check the trunk for that map, while muttering, “Just where in the bleep are we?”
Our alleged “culture” seems to have reached that point some time ago. Boys and girls are made of interchangeable parts. Just cut and stitch, mix and match, and make sure teachers tell the children about this great new discovery! You can be whatever you want. It’s a free country, but if you question this new discovery, you will be canceled, stamped, mutilated and stuffed into a closet where the sun don’t shine.
With God out of the way, His Creation is free to do anything they want. Right? Maybe that is what has been wrong with the churches all these years! They just haven’t figured out how to get God out of the church! Who knew it was so simple! With God out of the picture, men and women can do anything they want. They can even do it in church, and convince unbelievers that it is perfectly normal! What a concept – fill those pews!
We’ve argued about these things in churches for generations. But are they really the problem?
No. The real problem is that in our efforts to make God more like us, we have made God more like us. We live and breathe and have our being predominately in the natural world. But the natural world is only half of existence. It is probably way less than half of God’s existence.
A God who exists only in the natural realm, works only in the natural realm. He is just like us. Perhaps bigger. Perhaps smarter. Perhaps more muscular and powerful. But he lugs around the same toolbox we do to fix stuff when it breaks.
A God who exists primarily in the supernatural realm seems foreign to us. He lives far away from us. When He hears our prayers, he makes a note to stop by the next time he’s in the natural realm.
Jesus, of course, demonstrated that this is not true. His conception was supernatural, even though He lived in our natural, physical world. Yet most of the things He did for people He did by accessing the supernatural realm, which then fixed what was wrong in the natural realm.
Ah, but the skeptic, and the skeptical church, says don’t be ridiculous! He was God! Of course He could do those things! Yet Scripture tell us, “He set aside His Godly prerogatives.” That being the case, how did He do it? And, how can we do it?
A church that focused on how Jesus, living in the natural world, performed supernatural miracles would be well on the way to ushering heaven into earth. It wouldn’t be running around, chanting “Well, you know, it’s the end times and everything is going to get worse and worse, and then the end will come!” Oddly enough, the people doing this are believing God for a supernatural solution (the rapture) as the only answer.
What if the rapture is far in the future, and comes only after the church (collectively the Bride of Christ) demonstrates God’s power and love in the here and now, natural world, first? Is Jesus waiting for His Bride to awaken to the spiritual reality that He demonstrated?
What if this is precisely the period of time we have entered into now? How many battles with the enemy did God lose in the Bible? Where in Scripture did He leave his children to fend for themselves against the demonic realm? The Bible is filled with the supernatural actions of a supernatural God. The blind received sight, the sick were healed, lepers were cleansed, and the dead were raised. What would our world look like if the Bride of Christ accessed the same supernatural tools in our world today? How might that change our world?
In the meantime, consider that the evil we as God’s creation are now confronting is going to be dealt with by the Creator, himself, in a supernatural event. Evil’s defeat will be painful, crushing and humiliating. God’s will is what is going to be done, and God will be glorified through it all. God may well have a Noah’s Flood level “catching away” event in the future, but it won’t happen until the Bride has had her chance to show her husband-to-be just what she can do with the in-dwelt Holy Spirit in the world. Remember who her husband-to-be is. It’s not like she is in this fight alone. This time is opening to us, now. The Bride is a force to be reckoned with. The evil we see today all around us will not survive the encounter. The pharaohs you see today, you will never see again.
Armageddon Story, The Creator Returns, by Craige McMillan.
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