I have had many friends and relatives who are and were staunch in their principles, unwavering in their beliefs, solidly grounded in doctrines that were taught decades before and convinced of their RIGHTNESS. Some Died in their RIGHTNESS.
I was one of those. I was taught at the hand of a man I loved dearly. He's gone now. Pastor John. He taught me well, but some of what he insisted on was error.
Here's the problem. I was staunch, principled, unwavering and grounded in man's religious system. When I came into a personal relationship with Jesus, one that turned my world upside down, one that caused me to seek Him and Him alone I became less and less like that system and more and more like HIM.
Oh, I'm not there yet. No one is. But I'm closer than I would have been had I stayed in the system and not asked the hard questions that gave me life. Last Saturday Pastor Phil showed a clip of a movie in the mens fellowship. The Matrix. It's the idea that people on earth at that time were living in a false construct they thought was reality and real life while more brutal was real. That movie helped me grasp what was happening to me many years ago.
When I broke free of the constraints of man made religion I became a lover of Jesus. The matrix was revealed. It was religion.
Like in the movie, people who lived in the matrix thought everyone should live in the matrix. That if you doubted the matrix for reality you were in sin.
Such has been a short however vehement exchange with people who are uber-conservative Lutherans. Confessionals. I don't want to fuel any more fires. I have flamed them all I care to. I'm stepping back.
It gives me cause to relax since they are dying out. They believe they are right. They are dying to be right. Oh, I think many of them are sincere, some may even be believers in Jesus unto Salvation. But many will find themselves being ushered in the gates of Hell holding up a book of Concord claiming adherence to this should keep them out of eternal damnation. It won't.
I only want to be found in one book. The book of Life.
In all fairness, there are Confessional Baptists, Confessional Pentecostals, Confessional Methodists, Confessional Catholics, Confessional.......anyone.
They are all relying on a system fraught with error and human construct. Just like the Matrix. It's interesting that as I have studied and read the writings of Luther and Smith Wigglesworth how much alike they are. Decades and denominational differences are washed away by a passion to serve a holy God. In the end, only one thing saves....one thing...
NOTHING BUT THE BLOOD OF JESUS.
3 comments:
What church shows the "Matrix" in its curriculum?????? Too much world in your world, sir. Why don't you teach more instead of railing against your "hell-bound" friends? Me thinketh thou protesteth too much.
I'm confused, as usual. You say "When I broke free of the constraints of man made religion I became a lover of Jesus. The matrix was revealed. It was religion." Isn't being "a lover of Jesus" the same thing as "religion"? Aren't we all in our own little "matrix", i.e., belief system? How do we know "reality" from the "matrix"?
Chuck,
The Matrix of man made religion says that you have to follow certain rules, regulations, dogma, policies and traditions to fit in.
Like NEO when he was late to work if you remember the movie.
To be a lover of Jesus is NOT a religion. In fact, the more one is in love with Him the less he or she will look like any religious system.
The Matrix of Religion has as part of it's demonic basis a reality that is unfounded in who Jesus really is.
We will know reality when we have our eyes opened up (like Neo) to what is all around us. Control, do this, don't do that, Pigeonholing, trying to make people fit in to a system.
When a person realizes they are a stranger in a strange land with no obligation to anything but the kingship of Jesus they are at the beginning of breaking free from the matrix.
Some people are comforted by the Matrix of religious systems. Look at Cypher in the Movie. He wanted back in because it made him feel good.
There are biblical explanations of what it takes to see thru the world system and the matrix all around us. Jesus said, No man can SEE the kingdom of God unless he is born again. That's not Heaven (alone), that's seeing thru the matrix.
Plus, Paul writes: The prince of this world has BLINDED unbelievers.
That is what most religious people and people who do not yet KNOW Jesus (without a religious system) are living in. The inability to see the Matrix all around them.
Once you see it for what it is you end up like NEO at the last scene, Now that you know the truth, what are you going to do with it.
That movie for many people was a shattering of the mirrors all around us.
It was for me.
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