Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Deception #3

The other night, as I was sleeping, the Lord sent me a very short message in a dream. I could hear someone saying “the abomination in the holy place”. This was repeated around two to three times. At the very same time I was hearing this, I also knew the exact meaning of it – at least what the Lord wanted me to understand. The understanding the Lord gave me in this dream was – the holy place represents the Truth and the abomination are the lies that are now in the Truth’s place. I immediately woke up and thought how true this was for the current world we live in. The next morning I looked up the book of Daniel – for he prophesied about the abomination in the holy place.

Dan 11:31-32 - And forces shall be mustered by him, and they shall defile the sanctuary fortress; then they shall take away the daily sacrifices, and place there the abomination of desolation. Those who do wickedly against the covenant he shall corrupt with flattery; but the people who know their God shall be strong. NKJV

This abomination in the holy place and the taking away of the daily sacrifices physically happened in the first church times – around 70 AD by Nero. But in our time this is happening spiritually instead of physically. We are all called by God to be living sacrifices for Him. We must all sacrifice our flesh daily by being obedient to His will – out of our total love for Him.

Through the ages we have replaced the holy truth with lies. We have turned His truth into an abomination to God by adding and subtracting from God’s Word. Now most believe that we can have eternal life as sons of God without sacrificing ourselves to God’s righteousness. There is now an understanding that we don’t have to be obedient – because obedience would be works, and we are not saved by our works - so most have stopped their salvation walk in their tracks and have not become living sacrifices for our Lord.

Deception #3

The devil has been very proficient in promoting this lie – that we don’t have to sacrifice and be obedient to God’s will. Most associate sacrifice and obedience with works and because we aren’t saved by works, they then are then not required to have works. Because of this, people have decided that they will take the easy route and have salvation without having to sacrifice their current easy life style. There will be no picking up their cross – because it’s not needed. Why have people believed this – because we want to believe it. Our human nature (selfish nature) has fallen into the devil’s traps again.

While it is true that we can’t earn our salvation by works, it is also true that if we don’t have works; our faith in God is dead.

James 2:17 - Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. NKJV

James 2:19-20 - You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe — and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? NKJV

If a man says he has faith in God and has no good works, then that man is a liar.

1 John 2:3-5 - We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. NIV

Anyone that loves God will then do His will by sacrificing himself and being obedient to God’s every commandment. We show that we love God by sacrificing ourselves and doing the works that God tells us to do. Also when God commands us to do something, it will be our love for Him that empowers us to do that which he commands of us to do.

James 2:21-22 - Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? NKJV

We aren’t saved by our works, but if we refuse to sacrifice ourselves and do the works that God commands of us, then Christ is not in us and our faith is empty. And if our faith is empty, then we cannot please God.

Heb 11:6 - And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. NIV

Anyone not living in faith of God will not receive the rewards that God wants to give to us, which is being His son and inheriting eternal life. We must have a heart that only wants to please God to receive the honor of becoming one of His sons. Let us look into God’s Word and how God is pleased with Jesus at His baptism, and because He is pleased with Jesus, God sends the Holy Spirit to Him.

Mark 1:10-11 - As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." NIV

Jesus went through this baptism because it was to show how we would be baptized with the Holy Spirit when we became pleasing to God. We must first become pleasing to God in order for God to want to call us His sons and then baptize us with His Holy Spirit. When we first come to Christ to start our salvation walk with Him, we come as we are, but through our salvation walk with Him, He sanctifies us into someone that He is willing to call His son – if we are willing to be obedient and sacrifice ourselves to His will and purpose. So works is not needed to start your salvation walk, but good works must be the byproduct of your faith to become a son of God.

We have to stop fooling ourselves and stop listening to the devil’s lies. No matter how much we want to believe that we are secure in our eternity – if we are still not being obedient and sinning against God – we are still not of God, but of the devil. No matter how much we want to believe that our loved ones are secure in their eternity – if they are still not being obedient to God’s commandments – then they are showing God and the world that they do not love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and are not pleasing to God. A person cannot be reborn into God’s kingdom unless they are first willing to act like a son of God. No matter how much we want to believe that our loved ones which have passed away before us and want to believe they are now in heaven – if they had not come to the point of sacrificing all of them selves to God by having a totally obedient heart before they died, then they are destined to be judged into an ever lasting lake of fire. Remember God’s warning with fear and trembling.

Matt 7:13-14 - Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. NIV

In this time that we live in, where our government and people are turning to socialist ideals, where everyone should have equal portions of the wealth – even if they have not worked for it, where common sense is almost dead - these same deceptive ideals and ways of thinking have permeated our churches as well. There is now a wide spread belief “that everyone that accepts Christ as Savior will go to heaven” – whether they have sacrificed them selves for God or not. Again listen to God’s warnings.

Gal 6:7-8 - A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. NIV

What we work towards is what we will reap. If our works are to please the Spirit (God), then we will reap what the Spirit has to offer, which is eternal life. But if we work to please our own human nature, then we will reap what our selfish spirit has to offer, which is death.

Salvation is the way, but not the destination. Salvation is the way to becoming a born again Christian. The destination is to grow in Christ (through our salvation) to the point where you are born into Christ’s likeness. Jesus is our salvation from sin and Jesus is also our destination (to become like Him). He is the alpha and the omega in our salvation. Jesus is the way, truth, and the life. Jesus gives us the way as a gift. Then we must grow in Him through His truth. If we grow into a person like Him – then we will be born into His Holy Spirit. If God’s grace has made you into a pure and blameless Christ like person, then praise the Lord. But if you are one of the millions that have been fooled by the devils lies – thinking you were born again from the beginning and now realize that you aren’t, then have hope because there is all the power of God’s grace available at your disposal to become born of God - if you are willing to sacrifice and die completely to yourself.


God’s and your servant,
Michael Reid

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Deception #2

Now it is time to bring to light the main deception that churches are believing and proclaiming. This lie is the main deception of the devil that has entered into our churches, because there are many other deceptions that have been created and proclaimed to keep supporting this main deception. This one lie of the devil has become the root from which a lot of other deceptions spring forth.

This one lie of the devil has become so devastating because it has become the foundational truth that most people believe in for their faith. So as I set forth to show this false truth as a lie – I know I will be shaking and/or destroying the very sandy foundations that most of our churches have belief in. It is not my intention to hurt people and make them angry, but this is what is called tough love. God doesn’t want any to perish, so He is sending me to proclaim His real truth - so that the real truth will take the place of the false truth and truly set people free.

This main deception has to do with when and how we are born again. We have been taught that everyone must be born again to have eternal life – which is correct. Where the deceptions come into play is the devil convincing us that we are born again upon our salvation (upon our first coming to Christ). No where in God’s Word does it link being saved with being born again at the same time. This is a lie and an assumption of our own selfish human reasoning to tie these two events together. Although these two events can happen at the same time if the person’s heart has been conditioned and made ready, for almost all the people in our day, they have to hard of a heart to be born again upon their moment of salvation. We see many examples in the first church times where people were born again upon their salvation, but these people were already trying to live a Godly life because of their faith and love in God. What we accept and live in now is much different then the first church times. Society has lost their love for God and we love ourselves instead. We also don’t fear God like the people in the first church times. And today our culture accepts and even promotes out of wedlock sexual activity, but back in the times of the first church people, they were stoned to death for these sins. What they understood as sins back then, the world now accepts and promotes. In the time we live in, we all collect a lot of sinful baggage that we have to get rid of before God will accept us to be born again (born of God).

The condition of being born again is outlined in the following verse:
(This is not salvation – salvation is free, but being born of God has a cost - our love)

John 14:15-17 - If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.

We are not born again by receiving Christ at the altar. We can only be born of His Spirit after God sees that we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. God is the one that sees our true heart – not any pastor, not any other person, and we can’t even see the true condition of our own heart (we are bias) – only God can. It is only God that chooses to make us born again when He sees us as worthy to receive His Spirit. What makes us worthy is our totally committed love for Him.

1 John 3:24 - Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Everyone that has been born again (born of God) will know it. Our spirit will testify to us by knowing we are totally a new creation, by God’s Holy Spirit being merged with our spirit. When we have been born again, we have become one with God’s Spirit. It is impossible for a person not to notice this change when they are born again. They know at that time that all the sinful nature and selfish desires are gone and only the desire to love God and others remain.

1 John 5:3-4 - This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.

When a person has been born of God, all they have is love for God and others. The love for self (selfishness) is gone. A person that has been born of God and loves God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength cannot willfully sin against God, because the Spirit is guiding their every thought and action. Of course, God will never take the choice away from us to sin against Him – even after being born again, but if we do we will be committing that unpardonable sin.

We have to stop proclaiming this devastating lie. Preachers and teachers of the church, stop telling people they are born again and a son of God when they come to Christ – we cannot make that assumption of what God has or hasn’t done. Preachers and teachers stop proclaiming to the congregations that they are born again when in essence most of them are not really born again. It is not the preachers or teachers job to proclaim someone born of God. God says we will know them by their fruits. If a person has all good fruit then it is a strong possibility that they are born again, but if a person still has some bad fruit (sin) – then we know they are still of the devil and not of God’s Spirit yet.

1 John 3:8 - He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

Proclaiming someone born again when they are still being controlled by the devil is devastating to God’s glory, devastating to Christianity, and devastating to that person you are proclaiming born again when they are not yet born again. This is why this lie works so well for the devil. The devil has gotten us to believe that we can be a born again Christian and still live a sinful life. The devil has gotten us to believe that we can still live in sin and have eternal life in heaven with God – God would never allow any sinful thing in heaven – no matter how much He loves His creation.

Why this lie is so devastating to the person being called a born again Christian, when they are not yet born again, is because they stop trying to be Christ like and become perfect in God’s love. If a person is running a race and they have believed they have crossed the finish line, will they not stop racing. This is what has happened. People have stopped growing and stopped being sanctified because they don’t think they need to go any further. They think they have reached the finish line (being born again), when in real truth they had just started the race and the finish line is still a long ways off.

Salvation is the way, but not the destination. Salvation is the way to becoming a born again Christian. The destination is to grow in Christ (through our salvation) to the point where you are born into Christ’s likeness. Jesus is our salvation from sin and Jesus is also our destination (to become like Him). He is the alpha and the omega in our salvation. Jesus is the way, truth, and the life. Jesus gives us the way as a gift. Then we must grow in Him through His truth. If we grow into a person like Him – then we will be born into His Holy Spirit. If God’s grace has made you into a pure and blameless Christ like person, then praise the Lord. But if you are one of the millions that have been fooled by the devils lies – thinking you were born again from the beginning and now realize that you aren’t, there is all the power of God’s grace available at your disposal to become born of God - if you are willing to die completely to yourself.

For more information on the born again process – click to read the message below on my web site.
http://webpages.charter.net/reidmike/Archives/BornAgainVersesEntireSanctification.htm


God’s and your servant,
Michael Reid

Deception #1

As I mentioned in my previous message: There is only one truth that works when it comes to aligning with all of God’s scripture. There are many denominations with many different versions of the truth and they can very greatly, but there are not a thousand different versions of God’s truth – only one truth. In my study of the different doctrines of the denominations I have studied, I have found that none of them are proclaiming this one real truth of God’s Word, even though some doctrines are a lot closer then others.

Deception #1

The first deception that God has laid on my heart to cover has to do with becoming a son of God and when do we become a son of God. Most church leaders teach us that when we come to Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins by repenting, confessing, and accepting Jesus as our Savior – we are then at that time called a son of God. So is this true? It is true that God desires all of us to become sons of Him, but is this something we become automatically by confessing our sins and confessing Jesus as the Christ – or are there actual qualifications by God to become a son of God. By the way, whether you are male or female, we are all called to become spiritual sons of God.

Rom 8:13-14 - For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

When we first come to Christ, we are all saved from the power of our sinful nature, we no longer have to sin, we now have the power of God’s grace to conquer all sin in our life. But the big question is – will we decide to use this power over sin and die to our own sinful nature. If we choose to kill every sinful thing in us, we will then live. If we do this and are fully led by the Spirit of God, then we are the sons of God. Almost all people when they first come to Christ don’t qualify to be the son of God. God accepts us where we are at upon our first coming to Him, but He will not be content to let us stay there. He will change us into the likeness of His Son if we let Him.

Rev 21:7-8 - He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

It is very clear in the verse above, that it is only the ones that overcome their sinful nature that God will call His sons. It is also very clear that God will not call His sons - the people that haven’t overcome their sin and they will suffer the second death. So again unless a person has overcome all their sins at the time of them being saved – they are not yet a son of God.

Titus 3:7 - so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

We only become heirs of eternal life by becoming God’s son. But notice the word “might”. Even after being justified, inheriting eternal life is not a sure thing. We only receive an inheritance if we are God’s son.

Salvation is the way, but not the destination. Salvation is the way to becoming a son of God. The destination is becoming a son of God (being Christ like). Jesus is our salvation from sin and Jesus is also our destination (to become like Him). He is the alpha and the omega in our salvation. Jesus is the way, truth, and the life. Jesus gives us the way as a gift. Then we must grow in Him through His truth. If we grow into a person like Him – then we will be His son. If God’s grace has made you into a pure and blameless Christ like person, then praise the Lord. But if you are one of the millions that have been fooled by the devils lies – thinking you were a son of God from the beginning and now realize that you aren’t, there is all the power of God’s grace available at your disposal to become His son if you are willing to die completely to yourself.

God’s and your servant,
Michael Reid

A Prophet's Note

Eph 4:11-16 - And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head — Christ — from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

In today’s world of human understanding and reasoning, we accept people with some Godly gifts, but not people with gifts from God that go against our own human reasoning, understanding, and logic. How many people today would accept an apostle or a prophet of God? People will gladly accept any apostle or prophet if they proclaim what we already believe as truth. But what if God has sent these apostles or prophets to His people to bring back the truth and get rid of all the deceptions that are laced within the beliefs that people believe as truth? In this age, are people only willing to believe what they want to believe and only willing to hear what they want to hear? God calls to come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God so we can become the perfect man – where we measure up to the fullness of Christ. How can we become Christ like when we currently believe in the deceptions of the devil? The current gospels taught in most churches today are made up of half truths and half lies. Let us turn from these lies and find the real truth again.

How the truth has been changed since the first churches (during the Apostles time) is by our selfishness listening to the devil and changing the definitions of the terms in Word of God. We have grouped all these terms together where in God’s Spiritual reality they all have different meanings. Today all the following words mean almost the same thing to our churches today: saved, born again, life in Christ, born of God, son of God, Christ like, justified, sanctified, having eternal life, disciple, salvation, inheriting eternal life, relationship with Christ, in Christ, etc… Why do we believe that all these terms have close to the same meaning – because we want to believe it. The selfish human nature wants it all and it wants it all from the start. We don’t want to think that we have to be holy like God. We don’t want to think we have to give up all our sinful ways. We want have our cake and be able to eat it too.

Well I want to tell you – I have been sent by God and have been given the gift of the truth (the one and only truth of God) – and the truth that most of the churches are proclaiming is not the truth. That is why the church is in such a hypocritical state. Our churches for the most part belong to the devil and what they are proclaiming is some of the real truth mixed with deception. It only takes one or two words to change the truth into a lie. We have made so many assumptions in our understandings of God’s Word and this has led us to where we are now.

So now that I have told you that I have been sent by God to bring back the truth – it is up to each person that reads this letter to decide. Are you prompted to get more into the Word to find the real truth or are you going to reject what I am saying and stay comfortable with your own human logic and understanding. God’s ways are not our ways. There is no free lunch when it comes to inheriting eternal life. Salvation is free, but becoming a son of God so you can inherit eternal life will cost you everything in this life.

The Jewish leaders that lived when Jesus Christ walked this earth thought they had it all figured out too. Instead of accepting the real truth, they crucified the real truth to a cross. Are you going to find the real truth or will you crucify it?

God’s servant and yours,
Mike Reid