Matthew 24:2
“And because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold.’
Dear Saints,
One of the most surprising things to be discovered early on in our walk in Christ – amongst an infinity of startling discoveries – is how much spiritual warfare we become engaged in with our fellow believers. With those walking the same path and sharing the same faith as our own.
As the years roll by we mature in our faith and begin to see why this is so, and learn not to take it personally. For it is only SELF warring with that which is not SELF; the Original Lie of the devil warring against the Spirit of God within us. We come to learn that wherever SELF reigns, even in a devoted believer, this is where the devil gains a hold upon us. Our pride, our egoistic desires and insecurities, our vain hopes and understandings – these are the beachheads from where the enemy attacks from.
But as saints this should not dishearten us, nor disturb our peace as it would disturb those who are still wedded to the fallen world. For we have already been given the example of our Lord Jesus Christ during His mission here on Earth. We already know that spiritual attacks came not just from without His circle, but from within it. If Christ’s disciples were not plotting to betray Him for money, or squabbling over which of them was the greatest, they were trying to impress upon Him the vain understandings of man. These were all spiritual moves of the devil, launched through the SELF of those believers closest to their Messiah.
Mark 9:33-35
They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest. Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”
Matthew 16:21-23
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”
Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
This is the reason, strategically speaking, why Christ commands us to crucify ourSELVES daily. Putting to death the SELF is the only assured way to not give ground to the enemy. It is the only way to kill the snake within us and return to God’s will.
And when we consider what it means to crucify ourSELVES daily, we are reminded by Scripture that to be SELFless for the sake of our Father in Heaven and for our fellow human beings is the very definition of Christ-like LOVE.
Which should not surprise us, because love is the answer to everything.
Love is how we defeat the enemy within us and in others.
Love is how we deprive the snake of all weapons of vanity, of SELF.
Saints Betraying Saints
In Matthew 24, which records the words of Christ Jesus to his followers concerning the End Times, we read some of the most remarkable prophecies to be found in all of Holy Scripture. And these words are rendered all the more remarkable if we hold in our minds as we read them that they are addressed solely to believers in Christ Himself, and relate directly to the fate of Christ’s saints in the last days.
I will provide a portion of Matthew 24 below, with a few sentences highlighted which relate to the specific points I wish to make with this blog article:
As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel — let the reader understand — then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.
“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time.”
What is described here is a terrible, desperate Last Days hellscape in which believers in Christ are not only being persecuted and murdered for their beliefs – something which has been happening since the early days of Christ’s ecclesia – but are also turning against each other, hating each other, betraying each other. It is the very worst of times. Every man for himself. Believers falling away from the faith in vast numbers. Believers turned against other believers. Attacks and betrayals from those very people who are supposed to be your brothers and sisters of the faith.
Within this hellscape of dog eat dog and every person drowning in a dragon flood of lies, only a portion of saints hold fast until the very end, when our Lord returns in all His glory.
A Temple Of Living Stones
In both Scripture and Spirit, the Body of Christ is shown as being a Holy Temple of Living Stones, in which believers themselves and their faith in the Most High comprise the stones, and Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.
1 Peter 2:4-7
And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by people, but is chosen and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For this is contained in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a chosen stone, a precious cornerstone,
And the one who believes in Him will not be put to shame.”
This preciousness, then, is for you who believe; but for unbelievers,
“A stone which the builders rejected,
This became the chief cornerstone.”
Ephesians 2:19-22
So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
It is the faithful brotherhood and sisterhood of Christ’s saints who are the Holy Temple, and it is this Living Temple in which the Living God chooses to dwell within us in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Losing The Daily Sacrifices
In the book of Daniel, we are foretold of a time in these last days when some form of antichrist will desecrate the holy temple and set up the abomination of desolation.
Daniel 11:31
His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation.
There is a great misunderstanding amongst many believers as to what these words mean. Those with carnal eyes rather than spiritual eyes tend to view this as a material, physical reality being spoken of rather than a spiritual one.
The ‘daily sacrifices’ recorded in Daniel do not relate to a worldly temple in which real blood sacrifices of animals are no longer taking place. That is only the material understanding of the words. It is also the very counterfeit that is being enacted by antichrist forces here on earth in this very day, since they are blinded to the spiritual meanings of these things.
The spiritual meaning of this scripture is that the daily sacrifices in the temple refer to the saints themselves, the living stones, and how they are commanded to ‘crucify themselves daily’. It is the daily sacrificing of SELF which has been abolished here by the devil’s forces.
Romans 12
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.
Psalm 51:17
The sacrifices of Yahweh are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O Yahweh, you will not despise.
Our daily SELF-sacrifice is the truest form of worship to the Most High. And this is what is abolished by the final antichrist, who replaces this daily worship of SELFless-love within the saints with the abomination of SELF-worship, which causes only death and desolation.
Our daily spiritual SELF-sacrifice is replaced with empty and vain rituals which are nothing but an affront to the Most High.
Isaiah 1:10-20
“What good to me are the
multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the Lord.
I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.
Your hands are full of blood!
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
The Abomination Of Desolation
When we are told by Christ’s own words and by the words of the Prophet Daniel about an Abomination entering the Holy Temple of God and causing Desolation, we must likewise understand this through spiritual vision, not carnal vision.
The Abomination of Desolation is the worship of SELF itself. It is the original lie of the devil which caused man to Fall and which has caused such a nightmare for the human race ever since – this lie, this delusion, that we can live independently of our Creator’s will for us; the ultimate rebellion of Creation, as led by the arch-enemy of Yah.
It is this lie of SELF that leads us all unto death, even to the death of the world itself. SELF-direction separated from God’s will leads only to desolation, to an empty waste. It is an abomination to the eyes of the Most High.
In this particular reference to the temple, I believe what is being referred to here is the worship of SELF IN CHRIST’S NAME being set up as the HEAD of the Body of Christ. I believe this relates to the final prophesied Antichrist, who the majority of Christians – even amongst those of the Remnant – will worship, thinking they are worshipping Christ when really they are worshipping the highest expression of SELF in a perversion of Christ’s Image. The most diabolical counterfeit of all.
Yes, like worshipping a Golden Calf which they blasphemously call Yahweh. Only the Golden Calf in these end times is blasphemously called Jesus.
Many readers of this blog might well suggest that this situation is already happening amongst the majority of Christians.
The majority are already following a Christ who is actually a form of antichrist, a form of SELF-worship. Especially those who prescribe to either a Left or Right political ideology. On the Liberal Left, Christ is a nice guy who during His mission on Earth never became angry and never judged anyone for anything. His love forgives and washes away all sins regardless of whether any repentance is involved. And on the Right of the political spectrum, we see Christ represented in bizarre fashion by Donald Trump, one of the most antichrist figures ever to pretend to carry a cross.
But what of that portion of believers who do not prescribe to any of these political ideologies?
Unfortunately in these latter days, most are worshipping SELF yet do not even know it. For they have been born into the Age of SELF, trained in the worship of SELF from the day they were born, engulfed in the worship of SELF every moment of their lives through schooling and mass media and peer pressure. Most believers exist in a sea of lies and delusions in which the focus is always upon the SELF, always me-me-me, and only the most hardcore, the most devoted to God, are able to switch off and step out from this modern Babylon of confusions into a place of SELFless love.
The Hearts Of Many Will Grow Cold
The Abomination of Desolation relates directly to the saints in the last days, and how they allow an extreme version of SELF-worship to be set up as the head of the Body of Christ. Likewise, when we read those words of Christ telling us that in the last days the hearts of many will grow cold, He was not only referring to the world at large, and all the lost non-believers who are still living lives of iniquity. He is also referring to the saints themselves.
In the last days, the hearts of the majority of Christians will grow cold.
Why do their hearts run cold? “Because iniquity will abound”. Because of lawlessness. Because of sin.
Sin, remember, is separation from God. Everything not of the Spirit is of sin, is lawlessness. And how are we separated from God? By going our own way in life. By following SELF rather than the Father’s will.
Again we come back to SELF.
The majority of saints in the last days are prophesied to abandon Christ’s core command to sacrifice ourSELVES daily. They will therefore become vain and cold of heart, and will be Judged accordingly.
When we are SELFless, when we sacrifice ourselves daily, we not only find protection from the devil’s influences by giving him no ground to possess – we also find that love for our Creator and for others abounds within us and flows in our words and actions like living waters. Our love shines so brightly it can be seen by others from afar.
This is because the more aligned we are in our hearts to our Maker’s will, the more we return to the uncorrupted Image of God, and so the more we are filled with the Holy Spirit. As a consequence, the fruits of the Spirit abound within us, such as a loving heart.
Conversely, when we are SELF-focused we become less loving, and our hearts can become hardened as a consequence. Because we are then very far from the uncorrupted Image of God. Since in our SELFishness we are not aligned with the Father’s will for us, we are not filled more and more with Holy Spirit, and therefore do not experience the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Instead we experience condemnation.
Romans 2:5
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
Only from a SELFless and living heart is our faith justified. And only through repentance of a living heart are we saved.
Romans 10:10
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
We are not saved by right doctrines and understandings of parables. Neither are we saved by good works or by going to Church on a regular basis.
We are saved by the contrite and Christ-like attitude of our hearts.
Cold-Hearted Saints
Constantly I am reminded of how in these end days the hearts of many will grow cold, and how this very much includes the faithful. For even now I can see it in the world at large. Many believers have become cold, cold, cold in their hearts, yet still believe they are righteously following Christ and His Way.
I believe this is the true reason why I have personally experienced such degrees of SELFish behavior in many saints in these last days. Christ’s prophecies are finally coming to fruition.
In my own experience, many believers will call themselves brothers and sisters in Christ with you, sharing much the same beliefs of faith with you – yet whenever you converse with them, it feels like being in the company of any non-believing stranger of the world you might happen to end up conversing with. There is no depth, no real relationship, no sense that they are your spiritual sibling of the Spirit. No sense of solidarity, or that these believers are standing side-by-side with you on the spiritual front-lines of a war for our souls.
Often in my early years as a believer, I would use a simple test of discernment when conversing with a fellow Christian. I would ask myself a simple question – does this person feel like a true brother or sister of the spirit?
Pretty much always, with only rare exceptions, the answer would be a very obvious NO. They might as well be any stranger you meet on the street.
Ephesians 2:19
“So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household.”
Do they feel like fellow citizens in the house of God? To be bluntly honest, many times my fellow-believers-in-Christ have in fact acted like my enemy.
Even many of the friendlier believers who I have known and conversed with for some years now, either face to face or via emails, have never once ever asked a personal question concerning my own circumstances – how are my children, how is life, health, my walk, my struggle? How are you doing, brother?
They appear on the surface to have a real Heart 4 God, yet seem to have very little heart for other people. Not even for their fellow comrades in arms.
When saints fall into this SELF-focused hardness of heart, this coldness of heart, as they are doing so more and more in these last days, they are in fact falling away from Christ and their discipleship. Because when we are reborn in Christ we are given a living heart to replace our heart of stone, and without this living beating heart of faith within us we are dead inside. Nothing of faith can grow.
Proverbs 4:23
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
May you be blessed with peace and understanding in these last days.
Colin Buchanan
thiswisefool@protonmail.com
Parables.blog — Heart4God — Truthvine.net
AS AN ADDENDUM TO THIS ARTICLE, I WILL ENCLOSE BELOW PORTIONS OF AN EMAIL THAT I RECENTLY WROTE TO A FELLOW BELIEVER CONCERNING THE ATTITUDE OF OUR HEARTS AS FOLLOWERS OF JESUS CHRIST/CHRIST YAHSHUA.
Having A Christ-like Attitude Of Heart
In this recent email exchange, a fellow believer made an interesting assertion in response to something I had mentioned. I had previously written how “It is the Christ-like attitude of a believer’s heart that I now consider to be paramount. Not whether I always agree with their theology.”
His interesting response to this was that the Apostle Paul would likely not have agreed with me.
Since this is a matter that occupies much of my walk, this dichotomy of attitude of heart versus doctrine, I felt a need to provide a full answer.
This led to the writing of an email that I would like to share with you below. I have edited the words slightly to preserve the privacy of the brother I was corresponding with. Also I should mention in fairness that the believer agreed with my response to him, and explained that he had not properly understood the meaning of what I had previously said. But I believe the words are still worthy of being shared for the benefit of others.
Dear ______
There is a lot to unpack here. I will try to keep it brief (knowing that every time I say that, the opposite tends to happen…).
“Well, I’m not sure Paul would agree entirely, judging from his writings.”
The Apostle Paul would have agreed with me entirely. It is attitude of heart that is paramount, NOT THEOLOGY.
This is why Paul wrote that LOVE (selfless charity to others) was the WHOLE OF THE LAW. Paul did NOT write that Theology and Right Thinking was the Whole of the Law. He said that LOVE was the Whole of the Law. He even, explicitly, wrote that our acts, words, and doctrinal wisdoms meant NOTHING if not undertaken in LOVE.
AND LOVE MEANS ATTITUDE OF HEART.
I would urge you to read Paul’s writings with this in mind, and see for yourself just how often he wrote about ATTITUDE OF HEART, compared to how often he wrote about right doctrines.
What Paul wrote was that there is no point in knowing all the right doctrines if the attitude of your heart is not a Christ-like one. LOVE means to be SELFless for God and others. And he wrote that without love, we are not truly walking in Christ.
The widow offering what pittance she could for the Temple collection to the poor was blessed above the rich man not because her THEOLOGY was all straight and correct (a woman in that period would likely not have been able to read, let alone have access to Scriptures) but because of the LOVING ATTITUDE OF HER HEART.
Here is a question to ask yourself – did Christ teach doctrines, or did Christ teach ATTITUDE OF HEART?
Or did He teach one aspect more than the other?
Did Christ teach doctrines to the poor and lost more than he taught the following: SELFless love, humility, repentance (which are all attitudes of the heart)?
If you read these words and are tempted to think therefore that Right Doctrines are not crucial, that is only the worldly 0/1 false binary mentality we have been trained into following – it is either THIS or it is THAT. No, to say that attitude of heart is paramount to our walk is not to say that doctrines therefore are not important. As you rightly say, Paul himself wrote a great deal against doctrinal errors and correcting the beliefs of the ecclesia.
It is only that Right Doctrines do not enter us into the Living Kingdom of Christ. Only the SELFless, loving, humble, repentant attitude of our heart enters us into the Living Kingdom, right here and now.
You mentioned:
“It’s not just that I disagree on theology [with these people]. It’s that we are of different spirits. I think I’m of the Spirit, and they think they are of the Spirit, but we can’t be both right when it comes to matters of zionism, freemasonry, new age… regardless of how “Christ-like” their attitude is.”
In some way I feel you may be putting the cart before the horse here. From my own limited vantage, I would suggest the reason these people have not been shown the truth of all these things you mentioned is because they DO NOT HAVE A LOVE FOR TRUTH. And love for truth is of course an aspect of ATTITUDE OF HEART. It is the Christ-like attitude of your heart that enters you upon the Kingdom – ENTERS YOU INTO THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH. The Holy Spirit relates to us ONLY if the believing and faithful attitude of our heart is correctly aligned with Christ to receive these truths. If we are of Christ, LIKE Christ, then the Holy Spirit will lead us into truths and right doctrines. However if we are SELFish, if we WANT to believe certain things and not others because of convenience to ourselves, then we are not being of the Spirit. We are being of the SELF.
These people you describe are not in error because they believe the wrongs things.
THEY ARE IN ERROR BECAUSE OF THE SELFISH ATTITUDE OF THEIR HEARTS, WHICH HAS LED THEM INTO EMBRACING MANY UNTRUTHS, AND STOPS THEM FROM BEING CORRECTED.
Do you see what I am trying to say?
Our Right Thinking, our right understandings of truths and doctrines, ONLY COME FROM THE CHRIST-LIKE ATTITUDE OF OUR HEARTS as led by the Holy Spirit. Anything else is SELF-striving, and ‘leaning on our own understandings’, and walking by sight, not spirit.
“The people I confronted here about ——— told me they were siding with the woman believer because she basically had a nicer attitude than me, and they thought she had the Spirit.”
I see what is occurring here. This is what i call ‘The Religion of NICE’, which is the socially-engineered-religion that has taken over the Western World and most of all Christianity. It is liberalism of the Gospel. Liberalism of Christ. Jesus Christ the NICE guy who never got angry and never whipped anyone or cursed anything and certainly never caused division amongst so-called believers nor called people out – to their faces – for their transgressions.
NICE means you never judge a person’s ways or cause them upset by unsettling truths because that would be ‘unkind’. It means you TRY to be nice always. But none of this has anything to do with having a ‘Christ-like’ attitude. Or as the Bible would put it, ‘living in Christ’. NICE is NOT Christ-like. This is a modern perversion of who our Saviour truly is, and therefore who our Father truly is.
Having a ‘Christ-like attitude’ does not mean to be NICE. It means that we do all things in humility and love and discernment. And we do all these things not because we are TRYING TO (striving to), but because they are FRUITS of the Holy Spirit – ‘fruit’ implying that they are living things, as opposed to SELFish dead things gained through SELF-striving.
DISCERNING TRUE SAINTS
When we try to discern who is living in the Spirit of Christ and who is not, NICE signifies very little. Yes as believers we must be gentle, caring, compassionate to others – and if we are not exhibiting these fruits then something is wrong in our walk – but we must also be many other things too. The Religion of Nice knows none of this.
The woman you refer to as being NICE – again what has this to do with living in Christ? I have known plenty of NICE New Agers in my time. I know plenty of NICE people who are not followers of Christ. Many people are outwardly NICE while being inwardly wicked.
When it comes to doctrines, doctrines ARE significant when trying to discern these matters. Doctrines show us how much of a LOVE FOR TRUTH a person has in their heart, and how much they are sacrificing their own SELF daily so they may be led into more truthful understandings. If their doctrines are wildly in error, and they show no sign of correcting them or being corrected, then they likely have no real love for truth or SELF-sacrifice. So they cannot truly be of the Spirit.
But ultimately, discerning TRUE disciples of Christ is not a mental exercise on how right their doctrines are in accordance with your own.
It is observing the FRUITS of their behaviour and speech and thinking (of which doctrines are only one aspect).
Are they truthful? Are they faithful? Are they loving? Are they humble? Are they repentant of their sins and follies? Are they righteous? Do they try to follow the Spirit within them in all things? Do they show good works? Do they have a heart for God?
My point is that you do not discern whether this woman is a true saint or not solely by her doctrines. Doctrine plays only one part of discernment – and having some wrong doctrines does not automatically disqualify a believer from the Way. Errors can often simply mean a lack of maturity. I have carried wrong doctrines and errors in my earlier years as a believer. I may still carry some now. But the errors were largely because I was a baby Christian and still learning how to walk, still being led into truth. The errors did not mean that I WAS NOT A SAINT.
What would have disqualified me as being a true saint would have been if the attitude of my heart was wrong. If I was still SELFish. If I was arrogant rather than humble. If I had no real love for others. And if I had stayed stuck in the errors of my understanding – if I had failed to GROW AND MATURE.
We can discern whether this person is a true saint or not, and whether she is truly of the Spirit, by discerning whether there are FRUITS of the Spirit within her.
Does she walk in Christ or does she not?
Colin Buchanan
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