Joshua-gate (the
Watergate of the Last Days)
Part1. The Great End Time Conspiracy!
March 18, 2008
By Ron and Karen Schwartz
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Have
you ever wondered why it seems as though God is not at work in our churches?
Or why it is that He does not seem to be actively involved in the “good”
they are trying to achieve? Have you ever wondered why it is that, though
Christians can sometimes see God at work in their individual lives, there
doesn’t seem to be any “tangible” evidence that God is working effectively
through the larger Body of Christ – specifically in Western churches?
Oh,
sure, some good is being achieved. You can’t help but achieve some good
when you pour in $100 billion. But remember, Christianity as it was
originally cast did not require 10,000 churches, 100 million Christians, and
$100 billion to see the mere handful of questionable “converts” that we see
today. Aside from the financial and physical efforts of men, where is God?
Why does it seem that He is standing on the sidelines as we strive to achieve
our religious goals alone?
Paul
wrote, “If God be for us, who can be against us
(Romans 8:31)?” Since Satan is very effectively winning on
every front, it is safe to ask the question: “Is God truly for us?”
And if God is not for us, then why? Perhaps
a better question to ask would be: “Is God working against us?”
In
the following stories, we will discover that God has actively worked against His
people repeatedly in the past, and it is happening again today. At
least today we have the opportunity to learn from the annals of history.
We can learn from past mistakes. Or are we just like the many generations
that preceded us, blindly walking into self-destruction?
Judges
2:7-23
7
The people served the Lord throughout
the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all
the great things the Lord had done
for Israel. 8 Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age
of a hundred and ten…
10
After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers [they
died], another generation grew up, who knew
neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did
evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the
God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and
worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to
anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his
anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He
sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.
15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them
to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.
16
Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these
raiders. 17 Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves
to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from
the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the Lord's
commands. 18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge
and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for
the Lord had compassion on them as they groaned under those who oppressed and
afflicted them. 19 But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even
more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and
worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
20
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, "Because this
nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has
not listened to me, 21 I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations
Joshua left when he died. 22 I will use them to test Israel and see whether they
will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did." 23
The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once
by giving them into the hands of Joshua.
We find encapsulated in this account the entire story of Christianity – at least as complete as it is today. Joshua, a type of Christ, brought the people of God into the Promised Land, which is a type of New Testament life – a life of promise. Armed with nothing more than the power of God, Joshua demonstrated to God’s people that entire cities (i.e., Jericho) could be taken for God without the need for them to lift a single spear because God was with them and so was His power. In like manner, Jesus stepped out of the pages of history demonstrating through His actions and through the men of His generation that all the powers of darkness were no match for a single man filled with the power of God. Like Joshua, Jesus and those of His generation defeated Satan and threatened to dismantle his kingdom upon this earth.
But just like Joshua, Jesus and His generation did not live on this earth forever. Following Joshua’s death, we find that “after that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers [they died], another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel… They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them… In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.”
Likewise, following the generation of Christ, a new generation arose who forsook the simplicity of Christ’s teaching and eventually created the institutionalized form of Christianity that evolved into the Catholic Church, which then ushered in the Dark Ages. Just as the generation following Joshua did, this new generation after Christ also set up new gods. They created gods out of “saints,” angels, and Mary, and they even set a man in the place of Christ. This form of Christianity was void of the power of God and at the mercy of Satan and his forces of darkness. “They were no longer able to resist,” and whenever they “went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them.”
But
throughout these dark years, there were those who cried out to God to intervene.
So, as in the generations following Joshua where God “raised
up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders,” God
raised up men who were considered “reformers” to deliver God’s people from
their captivity to Catholicism. In the days of Joshua, the people of God
“would not listen to their judges but prostituted
themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly
turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience
to the Lord's commands.” In the same manner, the generations
of the reformers quickly reverted back into institutionalized Christianity and
God was forced to raise up a new man. The addiction to institutionalism
was paralyzing. For each step that Christians took out of their quagmire,
they took two steps backward. Every time “the
judge [reformer] died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their
fathers.” Generation after
generation of reformers came and died for the past five hundred years until we
reach today’s apostate generation.
Today
there are no more reformers. We are like the generation following the
judges. During that era, “the
Lord was very angry with Israel and said, ‘Because this nation has violated
the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I
will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died.
I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the
Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did.’”
Today
we live in a generation of Christianity virtually barren of God’s power and
influence. It seems that all we have in the form of leaders and reformers
are “wannabes” and pretenders. All around us are men (and women) who
claim to be prophets and apostles and modern day reformers but who are curiously
absent of God’s power. They retain large followings through promises and
predictions that never seem to materialize. They claim that mighty
revivals are about to occur. They claim that God is about to unleash His
might. They claim that God is about to raise up a militant church of
unbridled power. But all these men eventually die and go “to
their fathers” while the
institutionalized church spirals deeper and deeper into apostasy, and their
predictions of revivals and mighty power unleashed never occur.
We
are being lied to by a lying spirit in the mouths of many who claim to be the
prophets of God. Does
that sound familiar? Where have you heard it before?
1
Kings 22:20-23
20
And the Lord said, 'Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going
to his death there?' One suggested this, and another that.
21
Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, 'I will entice
him.'
22
'By what means?' the Lord asked. 'I will go out and be a lying spirit in the
mouths of all his prophets,' he said. 'You will succeed in enticing him,' said
the Lord. 'Go and do it.'
23
So now the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of
yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.
What
God did to those who claimed to be His people following Joshua’s generation is
not without precedent. We find the same thing in this account when His
people abandoned Him as their Lord. In Judges, we find that “the
hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them,”
and here He uses their own prophets to lure them into a battle that would end in
their demise. As the prophet foretold, “The
Lord has decreed disaster for you.”
When
we read the history of Israel and how they continued to fall repeatedly into
idolatry we must ask, “Why?” Why didn’t they ever learn that
idolatry brought with it destruction? The answer is really quite simple.
From their perspective, they were simply claiming the promises that were left to
them. God promised them this land. God said that He would fight on
their behalf. So why doubt Him? Similarly, our Christian leaders
point to the promises left to us: the scripture, and their interpretation of
prophecy. Consequently, their spiritual condition and the idolatry in the
church do not matter because they have the Bible to encourage them.
But
today, to the surprise of many, the hand of the Lord is against the arrogance of
the people who claim His name just as in the generations of old. Battle after
battle is being fought and lost today in every moral, political, and spiritual
field of battle. Contemporary Christianity, holding tightly to the
promises of God, is on the defensive and pushed back on every front. So
deceived are contemporary Christians by the lying spirits in the mouths of their
leaders that this generation still believes that they are serving God and that
God is for them.
Even
in light of this, modern day prophets continue with their message of how much
God loves their followers and how many great things He is about to do.
Therefore, contemporary Christians, content in their apathy and idolatry, march
forward into battles they are destined to lose. There is no way that God
is going to use this generation of apostate, self-serving, self-absorbed,
apathetic, and backslidden people to be the mighty army of the end times.
It will not happen, and the “prophets” who are filling your ears with such a
message are lying to you.
You
ask, “Why they would lie about such things?” Well, to begin with, who
would listen to them or contribute finances to their businesses if they told the
truth? Every businessman knows that the way to milk the public is by
giving the public what it wants, and Christians today want to be filled with
hope. So that is exactly what today’s hireling prophets give: false
hope. Today’s Christians and their leaders cling to the promises of God
the same way Israel did in Judges. They cling to the false hope that their
leaders peddle. They try to believe in the coming promise of greatness
that their prophets proclaim, yet in their hearts they know the truth: they are
a fallen people, full of sin and idolatry.
How
can we proclaim these things so definitively? It’s really quite simple.
The scriptures tells us, "Consider
this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue
(Psalms 50:22).” There is no rescue
for contemporary Christians who have abandoned God. They have but one
option, and it is not the option that is being voiced among our prophetic
circles. God also said:
2
Chronicles 7:13-1
"When
I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the
land or send a plague among my people, If my people, who are called by my name,
will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked
ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal
their land.”
Our
Western nations are being eaten away, devoured. The self-proclaiming
prophets and apostles refuse to speak the truth and risk losing their financial
support. Our churches and political action groups cannot save us.
There is but one response available for God’s people: humble ourselves,
repent, and plead for God’s mercy.
We
find it interesting that this verse says, “If
my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves…”
There is no humility spoken in the words of today’s “prophets.” They
arrogantly claim great revivals and that mighty people will arise. These
are not the words of humble men who not only acknowledge their own sin and
arrogance but that of those claiming to be God’s people. These
“prophets” speak of God’s power coming to His people as though they are
entitlements rather than the result of humility and true repentance.
The
“prophets” who plague the end time believers with prophecies of power,
greatness, and grandeur are part of the end time conspiracy of Satan. It
is “Joshua-gate.” God’s people do not need more prophets to tickle
their ears but true reformers to bring them humbly to their knees. It is
the only hope for God’s people and for their nations, and let’s just pray
that it isn’t too late.
It
will come as both a surprise and a revelation to most Christians to learn the
truth. That “in
his anger against Israel [or contemporary
Christians] the Lord handed them over to raiders
who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no
longer able to resist. Whenever Israel [or
contemporary Christians] went out to fight, the
hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them.”
What Christian today would believe that “the
Lord was against them to defeat them?”
None! Because there are so few prophets or church leaders who are speaking
the truth. The conspiracy of Joshua-gate is so well hidden.
Mixed
Theology
Have
you ever wondered why Israel never learned? It seems obvious that if you
are going to worship an idol, it would enrage God, would it not? So why
did they continually tempt God?
It
is really much more subtle than that. The Israelites believed they had
never really abandoned God even though God said that they did. Each time
the prophet came along telling them that they had abandoned God, they laughed at
him or killed him. They deceived themselves into believing they had not.
They still circumcised their sons. The priests in the tabernacle (or
temple) were still making sacrifices, and after all, isn’t that what God
wanted? God was being appeased, wasn’t He? To them, the essence of
the covenant was being fulfilled, so certainly God would overlook their idols.
Consider
the following story:
Judges
17:5-13
5
Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some idols and
installed one of his sons as his priest. 6 In those days Israel had no king;
everyone did as he saw fit.
7
A young Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, who had been living within the clan of
Judah, 8 left that town in search of some other place to stay. On his way he
came to Micah's house in the hill country of Ephraim.
9
Micah asked him, "Where are you from?"
"I'm
a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah," he said, "and I'm looking for a
place to stay."
10
Then Micah said to him, "Live with me and be my father and priest, and I'll
give you ten shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food." 11 So
the Levite agreed to live with him, and the young man was to him like one of his
sons. 12 Then Micah installed the Levite, and the young man became his priest
and lived in his house. 13 And Micah said, "Now I know that the Lord
will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest."
In
this account, a Levitical priest went looking for a place that would support
him. He eventually hired out his services to work alongside the idols in
Micah’s home. He saw nothing wrong with this as long as God was being
served.
Does
this sound familiar? Today’s churches believe that if they can just find
a man to act as a priest for them, then everything will be perfect. These
men (church leader-pastor-priests) are hired by churches and work alongside all
the other idols in the church. And the church members feel that now -
because they have a priest - God will be pleased with them because this priest
will make sure that everything is done that needs to be done to appease God.
It is history repeating itself.
God
brought reformers to free His people from Catholicism just as He once brought
“judges”
to free them from the “raiders who plundered
them.” But just like Israel, who
finally reached a point where God would no longer help and instead worked
against them, we fear that the time for this generation has about expired.
Contemporary protestant churches may not have idols of saints and Mary that
stand alongside their worship of God, but they still have idols nonetheless.
They worship their beautiful buildings, their scholarly pastors, their great
social programs, their public standing, and all the good they believe they are
doing. They believe that God sees and approves of what they do and
therefore overlooks their idols. They believe all His promises are waiting
for them to claim because they have pastor-priests, because their churches grow,
and because they tell each other that God is with them. But where is God
really?
There
are groups that ignore their spiritual condition altogether and believe that all
they need to do is “name it and claim it.” They believe that the God
of Israel who punished His people for their sin is gone and in His place is a
genie who now awaits their command. These people have no concept of Bible
pattern. They are lied to by their leaders and have become blind followers
of the blind.
But
where is God in our Western nations? You certainly cannot see Him working
on the behalf of Christians in society as it continues its spiral downward into
depravity. You cannot see Him at work in politics as laws and government
become more and more hostile toward Christians. It is becoming more and
more difficult for individual Christians to see Him at work in their own lives.
Most Christians join a local church with its pastor-priest in order to find
security. They simply take by faith that God is still with them even
though they can barely (if at all) see Him at work in their own lives. So they
continue to pour their money and support into their churches in the hope of
buying favor with God through their priest. But has this ever worked?
Even the Israelites, as they lay under the sword of their captors, continued to
tithe. This did not impress God then, and it will not impress Him today.
It will take more than 3% of your paycheck to appease an angry God.
In
the generation of Christ, they did not ask questions such as “Where is God?”
and they did not migrate from city to city trying to find answers. They
could see the hand of God actively at work amongst them. Why don’t we?
The answer is self-evident. It is because this generation thinks a whole
lot more of itself than God does.
Christians
of this generation grade themselves on a curve.
They simply try to emulate the most popular (pseudo-spiritual) person they know,
and if they reach that threshold, then they believe they must also be spiritual.
They delude themselves into believing that the most spiritual person amongst
them must be God’s standard for spirituality. However, in actuality, the
most spiritual people amongst the arrogant leaders of contemporary Christianity
are sorely lacking. In many respects, this situation is similar to the
lowing of academic standards for our children each generation. What is
considered an “A” today was only average fifty years ago. Christianity
has followed suit. You may be the most spiritual person in your church,
but just remember: the king of the fools is still just a fool.
Conclusion
Do
you sometimes wonder why it seems that God has forsaken you? Then you are
not alone. More and more Christians of this generation are asking the same
question. Have you ever wondered why it seems that you just can’t seem
to find a church where the power and presence of God is “really” active (and
we are not talking about pretenders and counterfeiters with all their hype)?
Once again, you are not alone. Have you ever wondered why there is such a
great migration and exodus from traditional churches as Christians search for
something real? Yes, you are not alone. More and more, God is not
just forsaking this generation; more and more He is actively working against it.
And now, it is not just churches that are beginning to experience it.
Individual people are, too.
There
may still be hope. Humble yourself before God. Lay down the idols of
greatness, self-sufficiency, and self-success you have in yourself and cry out
to God. Your answer does not lie in your church or the plethora of
Christian leaders that abound everywhere. No, such things are not the
answer for our predicament.
Our
modern day “prophets” and church leaders have learned that Christians want
to hear messages of prosperity, hope, and “peace and safety.” These
“prophets” plague the prophetic and apostolic circles of contemporary
Christianity. They compete to see who can come up with the most unique
form of blessing for today’s carnal Christians. Do you know any prophets
like this? We are certain you do. In fact, these are about the only
prophets you do know.
Prophets
who speak the truth have little or no following. And those who consider
themselves prophets know this. So they sell themselves out in an effort to
find popularity. If we truly live in the era of the Laodicean church, then does
it stand to reason that God would be speaking all these blessings? The
modern popular “prophets” say yes. They point out that even during the
most backslidden time in Israel’s history, God retained a remnant. We
find it interesting that modern “prophets” attribute “remnant” status to
anyone who listens to and follows them. But this is poor criteria for such
status, especially since there is virtually no spiritual difference between
traditional churches and the Christians who have attained their “remnant”
status. Do you really believe that God honors their membership? It
is double talk. It is deception. It is Joshua-gate. Those
who believe that God would bless this backslidden generation are fools.
As
long as Christian leaders continue to attribute greatness to themselves, taking
or accepting titles of grandeur, there can be no humility. The people who
follow these men emulate their aspirations toward greatness and believe that
they are a great people, too. As a result, each “prophet” or church
leader and those who follow him are deemed to be “great” and “blessed by
God” regardless of their spiritual condition. This is true both in the
prophetic community as well as the more traditional churches. Everywhere
in every Christian circle of the West, you will find this same arrogance.
No one believes God has anything but favor and blessings for their group.
But
if we are right (and would to God that we are not), then none of the efforts
that today’s Christians are making through their allegiance, support, and
financing of their churches will buy them anything. If we are right, then
God is beyond sending Christians any more “great” reformers or prophets to
try to turn His people from their idolatry. If we are right, then the
prophets and popular church leaders who parade around our countries talking of
the great things God is about to do are simply liars. If we are right,
then today’s great Christian leaders are no better than the Old Testament
priest who attempted to appease God while being himself another idol whom the
people worship. If we are right, then there can be only one thing that
will make a difference to God, and it is not tithing, church attendance,
submission to authority, or church support. It is humility that will lead
to true repentance.
We
ask you to stop wondering why God seems to be forsaking today’s churches and
the Christians who fill them. Stop trying to find security in a church
that is filled with compromising, apathetic, self-absorbed, backslidden
Christians. They are no better off than you. They are also simply
hoping to find hope and pretending to have faith. Down in their hearts
they know the truth: God is walking farther and farther away.
At
no time in Christian history has there been such an explosion of new churches
springing up everywhere, fueled by Christians roving here and there trying to
find God. Today’s great migration of Christians is the result of the
famine of God’s presence. Today’s churches can sing songs, collect
tithes, and prophesy until the cows come home, but it will not draw God’s
presence. Today it will take humility. Today it will take
repentance. Today it will require laying down idols – especially the
idolatry directed toward Christian leaders – and returning to God.
When
you read the following scripture, just remember that the vast majority of the
scriptures we quote to sinners in our acts of evangelism were actually written
to God’s own people:
Isaiah
55:6-7
Seek
the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil
man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord,
and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
kmsrjs@triton.net (use the same address for MSN Messenger)
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