Either we or the thorns with us are going to be removed

When the first temple of Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jewish people were taken away into Babylonian exile, the Babylonian king, who conquered Jerusalem, repopulated the land with idol worshipers from foreign lands. Those idol worshipers were “forced” to worship the God of Israel, side by side with other idols, to save themselves from snake attacks that they were exposed to. God becomes one of their idols, therefore. After they bow to their wood, sacrifice to their stone, pray toward their gold, and worship their silver, then after they also worship the God of Israel. I guess the God of Israel is given the “honor” of being counted equal to their idols made of stone, wood, gold, and silver. Could we call them the children of Abraham? What about the faith of Abraham?       

 

When Jerusalem was being rebuilt and the new temple’s work was started, after 70 years of judgmental exile, there were two groups of strangers in the land. One group of strangers is made of Gentiles who worship of God of Israel based on the Law of Moses. Those people do identify themselves as people of God but there is no proof of their genealogy. Those people are accepted but not allowed to serve in the temple. Then there are those strangers who give the God of Israel the “honor” to be counted as one of their idols. They are sure that the God of Israel is as worthy as their stone idol, wood idol, silver idol, and Gold idol are. Those groups want to build the temple of the living God too. After all, they do worship the God of Israel, as a supplement to their gods. They, therefore, reason out that why not join others in building his temple to have entitlement to the land?

 

The children of the living lord, however, rightly said no! After all, our God is known to be jealous God. The children of the living God have to suffer a lot for this decision, but 70 years of practical education was enough to make them firm and the spirit of the living God was with them to affirm them. Whatever little trick those little strangers can plan and whatever suffering they engineer on the people of God was not comparable to the agony and pain the people of God suffered for 70 years of exile, because they stood against the commandments of the living God, and the Holy Spirit was there to move them, organize them, and lead them until the final stone of the temple is put in its proper place, as it is written.   

 

Now we are in a similar situation. The temple of the lord is made desolate by human education, and theology, or/and lack of it. The salt, and light of the lord are nowhere to be seen. We are hoping to build it back, so the spirit of the living God, the Holy Spirit, can take our life toward the lord. At the same time, we have two groups of problems. One side is lacking the gene of Jesus, as what they teach, preach, and grow toward is not of Jesus, who is the wisdom of God and logos of God. The word of God is nowhere to be seen in their assembly, while flesh and devil are pitching earthly things through them. We are fighting to plant the word on them, so they can be counted worthy. We are trying to arm them, prepare them, warn them, and help them, so they can be counted as the seed of Abraham, as seed of Jesus, and the seeds of promise. This is our fight; this is all we care about. This is the light burden of our lord on our shoulders which is to save our brothers and sisters. We are lost and found, we are wrong and corrected, and we are deceived by the evil one but still readmitted to the hand of the living lord, so we know them, we know their failure, and we know their problems well to be kind to their failures, with the hope they can weed the evil seed inside them to be planted with the holy seed of the lord, to be pure race of the lord who can be admitted to serve in the new temple of the lord.   

 

Then we have idol worshipers who add Jesus, and the heavenly father to the list of idols they worship. Jesus and the Trinity, each, have the “glory” of having a day of a month dedicated to each one of them in days of the month dedicated to different idols. Though the GOOD BOOK, the Bible, says salvation is by no one but Jesus, they have an uncountable number of idols that grant salvation. Normally, our effort was to snatch their followers from the grip of the devil, one by one, into the kingdom of God, and Jesus’s arm. Sadly now, we have people of the temple, offering the olive branch toward them to join the people of God as they are. They insist that this is because the idol worshipers do worship the trinity and accept Jesus as lord. Yet, they forget that the trinity is one God among many idols that they worship, as saints and angels; while Jesus is not the only road to salvation, in their supplementary books to the bible, their roads of “salvation” are as countless as their idols are.

 

They are not asking to join us, as they are happy with their idol worship, but they are being welcomed as one of us by spiritually lost people, who do not know their God and their faith. Now we are even saying the Holy Spirit should be given to them, as it should be given to us. They will be given the Holy Spirit to do what? To preach salvation is by our good mother. To preach salvation is by saints and angels, as it is by the lord. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to justify Jesus, not angels, our mother, or saints.

 

Now let us think about it. There are people in our faith that we try to correct because they focus on earth rather than heaven, and we rebuke them because they lack knowledge of the word of God. Then we have religious organizations who teach against the Bible by following supplementary books of their own. They make people worship statues, pictures, saints, angels, and also our good mother. They transform the living faith into a useless religious routine and they are responsible for the eternal judgment of hell on hundreds of millions of people who follow them. So, if the spirit of those lost children of our faith is questioned by many, what makes you think the spirit that should be given to idol worshipers is the Holy Spirit? But I tell you the truth, where there is a dead body, there are the vultures there. After all, why is the most lost, the most well come but those little lost, the less well come? If people who are preaching worldly things, like money, are unworthy of the Holy Spirit, why are idol worshipers the most welcome? Dears, what is wrong with you?

 

People are selling oil. We say what abomination. People are making gospel music like dance music. We cry fault play. We list failures, and rightly we condemn. Then we have the Pope who makes people bow to pictures, statuses, saints, angels, and so on. We have priests who teach books completely contradictory to the gospel. Yet we want them as one of us. Why? We even want the Holy Spirit, which we expect to come in higher dose into the faithful, very soon, to be given to them too. Why? Some of us even say, that as protestant churches will preach the gospel to the world, the Orthodox and Catholic churches of Ethiopia will also do the same. Our mission seems to be an Ethiopian thing rather than a gospel thing. It seems that our thorn, which grows with us, is making our speech than the spirit of God in us.  

 

Is what we preach and what they preach compatible? They have their idol worship going on, and we know how to save people from them. Many elders of the faith did that for decades to build the assembly of the lord that we have now. Now we want them to be one of us? So what are we doing by being protestant? If they are going to heaven, as we are, what is our purpose? If you can be orthodox and catholic to be saved, what is the purpose of the protestant moment? What is wrong with you? If our faith was as simple as that we could simply become their priest to gain the world and God at the same time.

 

Is drinking from their wine and enjoying their fest on this earth more important to you than drinking from the wine of the lord and being part of the fest of the lord in heaven? What is for a man to gain the whole world and to lose his soul for eternal fire? When we are thinking of rebuilding the faith back, the first thing that comes to your mind is to add idol worshipers to our list because they also add the lord as one of their gods. What is wrong with you? Don’t be King Solomon. You built the temple of God at your young age, now you are building a temple for their idols? For what? Because you are in love with idol worshipers!?    

 

The wise king, King Solomon, who is married to idol worshipers against the law, instead of converting those women toward God with his God-given wisdom, ends up worshiping their gods against the will of God. Why are you going in his footsteps rather than Jesus’s footsteps? Yes the girls are funny, lovey, and you want their company, but God is God. You are who you are because of God who isolates you from them. If God isolates you from them, I don’t think God is delighted when you define yourself as one of them.

 

If the Holy Spirit was coming only on those who denounced their old religion to live under the faith of the lord back then, if the holy spirit did not come on Popes and priests of the Orthodox and Catholic churches back then, if God demanded new baptism (in water and spirit) and discipleship of the lord, back then, to be reborn in spirit as follower of God, why is it now you want everyone to be faithful no matter what kind of idols they worship as long as Jesus is added to the list? What is wrong with you? If King Solomon is shameful, to go against God who gave him all, why it is ok for you to prostitute against God because you enjoy the nationality and company of the idol worshipers? Not only this is evil and wrong to preach, but it this evil and wrong to preach at the wrong time. This is the wrong time, to be this evil.  

 

Judah was not the first person to steal from God, yet he ended up being the one who sold the lord to his killers. Was he the worst sinner of all of us? Let us notice the fact that he killed himself after returning the money because he was so sorry for what he did to an innocent man. He was evil but was also sorry then after. He, therefore, does not seem to be completely evil, as many are in this day. How many of us will kill, sell, hang, prosecute, and mistreat good and innocent people then we will sleep forever without thinking about it? Let us look at ourselves, and let us see our sins, our judgment, and the way we treat innocent people around us, not with ignorance but with knowledge of their innocence, and how many of us do feel deeply sorry for that? Was he worse than all of us, therefore? I doubt it. He is an evil person, who is given the privilege of to be disciple of the lord. He was wrong when it was not time to be wrong. He was wrong in the time of Jesus while being a disciple of the lord. That is the wrong time to be wrong.

 

If you know Jesus is around, you have to know it is the wrong time to be wrong against Jesus. We all rebel against God because we are sinners by nature. Yet there is a wrong time to rebel against God, say when the work of God is expected in very near time. If we believe this is the time that the work of God is expected to happen, therefore, this is not the right time to rebel. Children of Jacob were worshiping idols in Egypt, but there was a wrong time to worship idols. When God is saving them from their enemies, to take them to the Promised Land with his mighty hand, it is the wrong time to be wrong. That is why if we are expecting the work of God in this age, and we know God is preparing the way forward, it is the wrong time to be wrong.

 

This is the time to remove the thorns that grow up with us and which are making us fruitless, in terms of quality and quantity. Love of wealth, love of this earth, being completely distorted by earthly things, and being of flesh are the thorn that makes us fruitless. This is the time to remove the thorns of flesh and to grow in spirit. In this age, either the thorns that we love or we are going to be removed from the picture. The great man of God, Billy Graham, did question the charismatic moment to be a friend of idol worshipers back then. God did not look to his sin only to ignore his achievements and works. After all, you can sense the lord in his life and talk even in a book, and it is easy to know that man is a man of God. Yet, he did fade away over time, as the charismatic moment, with its all problems, take lead in the world. The work of God does not need the blessing of anyone, except God. The choice is do we stand with God or against God, but the road of God will not be determined by our ignorance. I hope we stand with God.