The Lost Truths of the Church

THE LOST TRUTHS OF THE CHURCH

Sandy Grissom

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Copyright 2016 by S.K.G. Haag

Cover image used by permission of: by Berthold Werner and used under rights of Public Domain.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter One: Genesis (The beginning of God’s creation)

Chapter Two: Shadows They exist only where there is light

Chapter Three: The Mystery

Chapter Four: Who is God?

Chapter Five: Why He created

Chapter Six: The Cosmos

Chapter Seven: Why does it have to be that way?

Chapter Eight: The Solution

Chapter Nine: How Then Shall We Live? Your Choice

Chapter Ten: The truth about resurrection

Chapter Eleven: In Death We Sleep

Chapter Twelve: What keeps us far from God?

In Summary

Bibliography

Preface

The church in the West has become anemic. It needs a blood transfusion. Sadly, that transfusion is available for all who seek it. Yet the church has done a poor job of relating what that really means for the believer. We rarely hear it preached about the power available to us from God. It is sad to note that new believers and believers in the eastern part of the world draw on more power than those of us in the west. We send missionaries to preach the gospel to those who have not heard about the work of Jesus. Yet those same missionaries often have little knowledge of the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. They are often surprised when miracles happen for those ‘uneducated in the knowledge of God’. We in the West have so diluted the power of God it is almost nonexistent here. We simply must get back to the simple basics of God’s Word. Nothing terribly complicated, just the simple Love of a God Who wants us to understand there’s a best way to live and a worst way, too, if that’s what we want.

This watered down way of teaching a congregation of believers is ineffectual to change a believer’s life or to make a difference in the world around him. It is a sad state of affairs when someone call himself a believer yet seeks counselling from a non-believer. It is impossible to change a person’s behavior on the outside and expect it to change on the inside. The world system would have us believe we can alter a person’s thinking that way and he will change. We can see by the prisons that overflow with criminals all the counselling in the world by non-believers makes very little difference in a person’s true behavior. It has no effect in the long term for the real person inside.

Any change is a lie and will cause the person internal conflict. He will lie to his counselor or to himself that he can control his bad behavior. He will conceal his original proclivity to misbehave. His thoughts will not undergo any change for the better. At times he will be so conflicted that he will rebel from external behavior teaching. A person must change on the inside so that it affects the outside. When that happens there is a release from wicked unprofitable behavior and that change is permanent. That is the simple way to explain what the church uses complicate language to try to tell us. They would say giving ones’ life over to God is a spiritual matter and that changes our physical corner of the world.

The world and our enemy, Satan, would have us believe our physical world and our physical existence is all there is. We live, we die and it’s over. If we are to leave any kind of legacy, we have to do it here in this physical plane. Yet the Word of God says the only true difference we make, the only legacy we leave, is one that makes a difference in the spiritual realm. Sadly, the church is so busy telling us how to not sin, they don’t remind us that it’s all about our life after we leave this physical earth. It is that we prepare for while we are here. And God set up the whole cosmos with a system that allows us to do just that.

It seems to me that the church is so fearful of losing members that it teaches about a God so weak He can do nothing to help us in our journey through this physical part of our existence. The world buys into that message. They think God can’t see what’s going on in our lives or that He cares what’s going on. Since they believe this lie they continue on in their selfish ways. We and they live in a world that says, It’s all about me. Few people including believers seek to know his neighbor well enough to understand what he’s going through. Definitely not enough to try to help him. We say we serve a God Who is all about relationship yet don’t seek to have close relationships ourselves.

The church in the western world teaches about God’s mercy but they have stopped or diluted down the teaching about God’s judgment. We consider ourselves saved and going to heaven. Perhaps we are but personally I have a deathly fear of not spending eternity with God because I did nothing to make a difference while I walked on this physical planet. We are not supposed to be so selfish we only care about our eternity while the world slips and slides its way into hell. We truly need to know about a living God yet His mercy should not overlook the truth that He is a fearsome, dreadful, awesome Entity.

Only when we understand that there is a great and powerful God out there running the show, even when we want to run it ourselves, will we let go of doing things our way and allow God to direct us to the destiny He created for us. Understanding this truth, that God is everything we need, will we seek to know Who He is in a deeper way. Only then will we seek the power He so mercifully will give us to change our lives for the better. And then go on to live in such a way that those around us are changed as well.

The church in the west gets people saved. That is if they have had a true spiritual conversion and are not just ‘playing’ church. Yet the church rarely reaches about the power available to us to change. We try to do it in our own power and fail over and over again. Why? Because we are trying to change ourselves from the outside to work its way inside. It doesn’t work for a long term permanent change. Only by drawing on the power of God can we change first on the inside. Then a great miracle happens. Without our even realizing it sometimes, we find our outward behavior has changed. Almost as if it did it without our knowing it. That’s the power of God working in our lives. That leads to other miracles, too. For that same power can be used for healing. Healing our financial situation, our relationships and so on as well as our physical bodies

Before you deny the power of God to work in this world, you might consider the evil one. He seems have power to cause bad things to happen. Yet the truth is he was defeated by the work of Jesus on the cross and in Hell. Now all he has left is deception. Yet he is very good at what he does. He lies in such a way that a grain of truth remains. We believe the truth and buy into the rest of what he whispers to us. That might be called power, I suppose. Yet if it is, his power is certainly limited. Whatever he might do on this earth is a mere shadow of what the All Mighty Powerful Creative Loving God can do for those who let go of their lives and let God lead them to a destiny they can’t imagine for its greatness. Not great as the world lies to us about greatness but great as our Creator sees it. It’s all about the spiritual realm, that supernatural place where God is, never about this natural, physical earth where we temporarily live.

Watered down feel good messages may keep people coming back to church Sunday after Sunday. But they do nothing to keep a person out of Hell. In addition, they do nothing to make a difference in the lives of those around us. Truly our mission while on this planet is to grow in God and to show those in our little corner of the world that there is a better, actually the only, way to live. The church deceives itself when it says they keep people out of Hell. But my heart simply breaks for all those seated in churches around the world, especially in the west, who think they are saved and going to heaven when they live like the unsaved person next door.

The church has failed to teach that getting a person’s life right with God is only the first stop. He must then let go of control of his life and allow God to lead him to his destiny. He must seek out what a moral God says is right or wrong and ask for the power to walk His moral way. It’s a process, a lifelong one, to work those displeasing to God things out of our lives. The church has sadly put degrees on sin. They tell us lying is not as bad a murder. BUT GOD SAYS anything that goes against the moral principles He has set up for this world is sin and that He views all sin the same. It is all disobedience to Him. Sin is sin and must be dealt with. The work of Jesus living a sinless life, His death on the cross and going into Hell made a way for us to be forgiven of our sins. Naturally, we are to not just be sorry for them. We are to ask for His help to work them out of our lives.

He legally overcame evil and yet we still live as if we cannot stop sinning. We have no power because we are not taught by the church that it’s there for the asking. God did what He did for us; now we have to accept that it is true and then live like it means everything to us. Because it does! He made the Way clear. He opened the door for us to walk through to victory in our lives. He showed us the straight path to take to our destiny. He says I did my part. Now you do yours. Yet the church has told us to sit back and wait for Jesus’ return. The Bible never told us to do that. He expects us to grow in Him so that we naturally change the world around us for the better.

The church in the west has been ignorant in teaching that salvation is enough. In truth, it’s only the beginning of our walk with God. This impotent teaching has caused the entire foundational basis of why God went to all the trouble of creating a moral, cause and effect world to be all but lost to two generations of people. Jesus gave us two simple instructions on how to live. He said, Love God and love people. Granted that’s not easy but it is certainly possible to live that way.

Yet how can we love God or people when we have no relationship with Him? We don’t know people these days like it once was. There was a time people depended on their neighbors for help knowing those neighbors could also depend on them. It isn’t the same these days. We shy away from anyone knowing us intimately. Knowing us so well they trust us to do the right thing. It takes time and devotion to God and people to truly love them. Many people are not willing to give God that time. They don’t understand that the rewards are so far greater than the time they spend seeking God. Spending time with friends. We are sometimes so busy considering what we want to say to people that we don’t listen to what they need to say.

We want to be independent of people, to make our own way in the world. We cannot or perhaps refuse to understand how selfish that is. God created us for relationship, with Him and with people. When we close ourselves off to relationships, our world becomes smaller than He wants it to be. We may toss away friends and even family members who don’t agree with our thinking. We in the church see them as enemies and want nothing to do with them. Yet how can we make a lasting difference in the world when we dismiss those who need us the most. We need to show them by our actions, by what we say, that there is a freedom, a peace in serving our God. Naturally, we don’t seek out to be with the unsaved. But God will throw people into our path. When He does, it’s our responsibility to plant a seed of goodness for him or her to take away with them.

Ignoring needy unsaved people is selfishness in the extreme. God doesn’t save us for ourselves alone. He saves us so we might influence others, too. Knowing we will be in heaven should not be enough for our lives. The unsaved might at any moment turn their life over to God. Wouldn’t it be awesome to know they did because of a tiny seed we planted by our actions? That we can have joy when grief would seem to serve better. That we can have peace when storms are all around us. That we can be courageous when others would run for the hills in our situation. We need to keep it at the forefront of our minds that our only enemy is Satan, not people. God honors who we are not what we do, when we are walking with Him that is.

Satan uses people to affect evil in the world. But God uses the goodness in people to affect more goodness. Satan wants to kill, steal and destroy while God wants to bless us. Yet so many people refuse to let go of what we want our lives to be in order to allow God to create am even better future for us. What that means is that we are called to live a life that shows those around us there is a better way to live. In this physical world but more importantly in the spiritual world we will one day step across into. Our true person is a spirit created in God’s likeness and image. Our spirit connected back to God after we are saved can live on this physical earth as if we are already in God’s spiritual heaven. For the truth of the matter is, if we are walking totally with Him, we already are.

We don’t have to wait for freedom when we go into the hereafter. It’s really too late to make any changes then anyway. Certainly too late to affect any changes in those around us. We claim to love and care for those in our circle of influence so we ought to be living to show them we are changed.

Bottom line, the church has not taught God’s moral truth in the right way. We are told to live without sin when it’s an impossible thing to do. We are told to change outwardly when change can only come from the inside. We have lost the moral truth of Who God is and how He created this world to work. The entire foundation of why He created us in the first place and what we are here for has been lost by the church in the western hemisphere. There is a better way to leave a legacy behind when we leave this world. It’s a moral, spiritual, supernatural life that inspires others to reach out to God so they can do the same.

Life was not meant to be a struggle to survive, to simply hold on until Jesus returns. It was meant to cause us to seek the destiny God created us for and hen run toward it with everything that is in us. To seek with zeal the mission for our lives. It takes wisdom and knowledge and power to get there. That is where the church has failed so often. They have not taught us to seek what God wants for us instead of what we want for ourselves. Our way is way too small a way to live. His way is a glorious adventure.

My hope is that the reader will discover in this book the small bit of what I have learned so far about God’s intent for His creation. This foundation will then be a start on a search that is so rewarding it cannot be explained, only felt in awe. That is what destiny is all about.

Forward

It is no coincidence (if there even is such a thing) that the English word alphabet is the name and the first two letters of the Hebrew Aleph Beyt. Some scholars argue that Hebrew is the original language. They would say that the entirety of creation was spoken into existence using Hebrew. They believe God would have spoken to His created works from the beginning, then to Adam and later to His chosen people all in the same language. In addition, they remind us that words from many (probably all) of the world’s languages match closely to Hebrew ones. They match in meaning often as well in the pictographs they used.

I know some would argue that Hebrew came into being from other more primitive languages. Pictographs because they seem primitive must have come first, they argue. Yet why must that be true? Could a pictograph not simply be the shorthand of their time? I know that shorthand is not used in business any longer. But when I was in high school, it was important that business students learned it. Interestingly, my sister and I had trouble reading the other’s shorthand. Pictures would have been a lot easier to decipher.

Why wouldn’t the first generation of people, Adam and Eve, want to write out all that happened to them for future generations? Wouldn’t they want some way to quickly and efficiently jot down an abbreviated memory of an event? They would write it all out but then tell the stories to their children orally, too. They might well have made pictures for the children as a reminder of the story. Related pictographs would be a quick reminder of the longer event. It would be similar to a note written to ourselves not to forget something. We might write bread on a clean pad of paper. Now we don’t need to write Grocery List on the top of the page. We don’t need to write buy bread on Tuesday for you will be running out then. We don’t even need to write white bread or wheat bread or sourdough. The word bread is sufficient to remind us what we need without any detailed explanation.

Isn’t that exactly what text messaging does? Give a shortened version? We write CU for see you. BRB for be right back and so on. Even more specific are our road signs. We don’t have time as we are whizzing by to read a bunch of words. Shortened versions or quite often pictures alert us to whatever we need to be aware of. What could be clearer than the image of a deer on a road sign?

Hebrew after all is very precise. A missing or moved dot changes the meaning of a word. But a picture would be something anyone could decipher. After all, why not call a bird a tree and a tree a bird? As long as we all agree the flying creature is called a tree and he builds a nest in a bird, it really doesn’t matter, does it? Taken in that context, pictographs need not come before letters and writing just because it is elementary in design. It might be compared to print versus cursive writing. Printed letters are clearer than those written in cursive. If some cataclysmic event were to occur, would some way down in the future generation (should there be one) think cursive came first and then those clearer printed words?

It would be beneficial if we would open up our minds to ideas like this. Someone tells us how they consider things happened in the long ago past and we accept their version. Isn’t it wiser to expand our minds so that we might see things in a totally different light? It is my opinion that we have accepted what others tell us for too long. We have no way