1 Corinthians 10:20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.
21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.
22 Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?
Since the fall, the human digestive system is not working perfectly and often vitamins and food are not fully processed. A man that has a portable toilet business said that vitamins do not always digest and some that were trapped by the grate you could still read the brand name. Corn on the cob is delicious, but it does not always break down completely. No one is going to suggest that we rinse off the vitamins or the corn and go for round two. No one eats from a sewer. Well, unfortunately, some folks are eating from spiritual sewers and even the table of devils.
Looks can be deceiving and an old looking rundown Mom and Pop restaurant can be where the best cooking and code of cleanliness can be found for their reputation is personal to them and they love what they do. You can walk into a very modern looking restaurant and not realize that the kitchen is a mess and the people cooking are sweating into the soup, sneezing into the salad, the wait staff are spitting in your coffee, etc. If I gave you more real life examples, you may never want to dine out again. That is why there are inspections and licenses have been lost and individuals jailed.
There are certain foods that I do not like, but my wife does. At times, she puts those ingredients in a dish along with other things that hide the taste of the things I do not like. I told her I am OK with that. She gets the joy of giving me something she deems healthy and I do not have endure something I cannot stand to taste. Hot sauce goes a long way at times to help that.
Sin and false doctrine are more often than not disguised so as not to have our spiritual taste buds react and spit it out. It can be coated with sugar or layered with some truth here and some truth there so that the lie is not easily seen. Take verses out of context or create a new definition of a word and you can easily eat something you would spit out and wonder why you have a spiritual stomachache later.
Back in the day before marijuana was legalized you might go to a college party and see two plates of brownies. One was brought by a sweet debutante and the other was made with marijuana smuggled in by the local pusher. It has been debated whether or not you could have gotten high as some feel that for the brownie to have enough Mary Jane to do that the flavor and texture would have made you suspicious or not go back four times. High or not, you ingested something other than what you expected. Tick off a girl and you might get brownies laced with a laxative and that would be a moving experience. Sometimes, when I hear about some of the things that are floating about in the theological world I wonder if someone has been eating LSD laced brownies.
We live in a world where if had you come back to my fifteen-year-old hippie self and told me half of what is going on in the secular and sacred world, I would have said that whatever you are smoking you need to ditch that stuff as someone has laced it with arsenic or rat poison.
Indeed, if you look in the Word you see six thousand years or so of God’s interaction with His people and you will not find things like we see in a large branch of Christianity. We must be cautious as there are many warnings about false prophets and lying wonders that started in the early days of the Church and would get worse as we got closer to the end. We are told that, if it were possible, those lying wonders would deceive the saved. That is why we cannot glad hand and fellowship with everyone that calls themselves Christian or Charismatic or believe everything that comes down the pike. If we are not careful we can be eating at the devil’s table and get spiritual salmonella.
Because of a desire to get away from what was deemed harsh Legalism and to bring in a gentler, kinder Christianity, we have swung the pendulum too far the other way. Scripture does say that the letter kills, but the Spirit gives it life. We have dumped searching the Scripture to develop sound doctrine that comes from the Spirit leading us into all truth and switching to a wildfire, subjective Christianity that leaves us open to the sleight of hand and every wind of doctrine. God gave us pastor-teachers to prevent that if we study and listen.
Ephesians 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
I am going to hopefully prove and reprove some things by shedding some light so that we do not have fellowship with darkness so that we do not provoke the Lord to jealousy. Christians are claiming that there are angel feathers falling in their churches. While we know some angels have wings we do not know if they have feathers as we know them. Isaiah saw the winged seraphim, but did not go into details about the wings. Indeed, they are spiritual beings and perfect so it would not seem that they would molt. While they can take hold of people like Lot and family, would they make their feathers solid and available and to what end?
If you want to know about colors of angel feathers and their meaning you can go to a psychic medium site or new age ones. You will not find anything like that in Scripture. While we are told in Hebrews that angels are ministering spirits to the saints the exact details are not given and we are exhorted by Paul to not worship them and if we get a message from a being that claims to be an angel that changes the Gospel they are to be accursed and they would be fallen angels, not ones sent from God.
If you go to a church where there are angel feathers falling you should leave. You should also leave if they have gold dust falling, mysterious appearing of jewels, orbs, glory clouds, oil flowing from people’s fingers and the pastor believes you can time travel or a leader claims they can take you to Heaven. Avoid a bible where the “prophet” says he is getting a special knowledge of Hebrew and then adds things that are not in the Hebrew text or claims to be translating from the original Aramaic when the Aramaic version that exists is a translation, not an original Aramaic text because there is none.
There is a very large group and I suspect some spin offs that have clearly stated that they are going to study the New Age and “take back truths” that movement supposedly have stolen from the Church. How illogical is that? If the Church had the truth it came from the Word so it could not be stolen. It can be plagiarized, but not stolen. If it has been plagiarized it is also now twisted and is equal to pulling corn kernels or vitamins out of the sewer. Indeed, it is eating at the table of devils.
Do you want to be sure the Church has been practicing all the truth? You go back to the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, since guiding us into all truth is part of His mission. You don’t dig into the writings and practices of a false religion. Israel tried to incorporate pagan cultural and religious teachings into the worship of Jehovah and it got them judgment and exile. You cannot expect to gain blessing by digging into the sewer of the New Age thus eating at the table of the devils.
2 Corinthians 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
When Paul was inspired to write this passage, the New Age did not exist in its current form. He did have plenty of Greek and Roman deities and philosophies to deal with. All of these things were created by unbelievers. He said Christ could not have fellowship with them. When Paul spoke to these people, he went to the core issues of who God is and destroyed those various errors by presenting the truth. He did not look for truth in those theologies and try to bring any of those teachings into the Church. He sought to bring people out of those things and warned the Church of those who would seek to bring Gnosticism and other heresies into the Body.
Paul, through the Spirit, said to COME OUT, not go in! He never said to study their religions. We have the truth and if you are solid in the truth, you can detect error and deal with it without getting into the intricacies of their doctrines. Like Treasury agents who study the original so well that they can spot a counterfeit at a glance, so also, if we study the Word in the Spirit we can spot error, rebuke it and warn the Body. We will see that people clucking like chickens, barking like dogs, contorting themselves is not how the Holy Spirit functions.
David Wilkerson said that in all of his ministry he only saw one person go into contortions and it was because she was resisting the Spirit, not being filled. God was convicting her to dump a boyfriend and she was fighting it. Once she decided to comply with that conviction the contorting stopped.
Many times, well meaning people have misunderstood Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, when he said he became all things to all men. They have taken on affectations and other things to merge into the culture like an undercover cop. Paul, as a great teacher, took people from where they were to bring them to where they need to be in Christ.
Thus, he did not preach from the Law to the folks on Mars Hill, but pointed out their superstition and that the unknown God whom they did not want to offend was the true God. He had to get them to monotheism first. When he spoke to Jews, he used the Law. Some would interpret that passage so that Paul would have gotten a mullet or a punk hair style, painting his fingernails black and wearing black lipstick in order to reach that subculture. Some have cussed from the pulpit to relate to people whereas God took cursing out of my mouth the moment I was saved even though I was going back Monday to speak to a lost, uber-cussing group of military men who would have related to me cussing, but that is not how God wanted His message delivered.
Again, Paul addressed issues of the soul that are far deeper than cultural, sub-cultural or anti-cultural affectations. The Spirit speaks to the hearts of men when the Word is preached in His power regardless of carnal affectations and cultural “norms.” While we are to go to all people, we are not to literally become all people. Paul never changed who he was. He brought change to whom they were and they came out and burned their witchcraft and pagan books. Philosophers and Synagogue leaders came to the doctrines of Christ. They broke their idols all with Paul looking and acting like the man that he was in Christ. That is what we should emulate.
You may say, “I have never heard of such things.” They are not things far away. We had a lady visit at one of the first Tuesday night prayer meetings I attended here. She was excited about her church where they had gold dust falling and she may have mentioned some other things. I guess she came to report and recruit. When she left, I asked brother Terry if the pastor and the church believed these things and he said no. If he had said yes, I would have have never come back.
I have been to a meeting in the area where they were talking about oil dripping from people’s hands. One group has claimed to have statutes that drip oil, cry and bleed for centuries so that is not a new thing, but there is nothing in the Word about it. The pastor of the church was on TV telling how he believed we could time travel in Christ. It is nearer than you think.
We are in an age of massive apostasy as we head towards the Rapture. A false prophet will lead people to the Anti-Christ and lying wonders will abound along with many false prophets so expect to see much that cannot be verified by the Word as the Word has predicted. Indeed, some may have turned away from the faith because they believed things that were not true and when all of their declarations and decrees failed they got discouraged. Instead of turning from the error, they turned away from God.
2 Corinthians 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
You must be careful who you read or listen to on media because the lads and lassies are going to look good and talk a talk, but remember Satan was slick enough to deceive Eve as well as all of the lads and lassies in Matthew 7:21-25. You have to know the truth. You have to study asking the Spirit to give you wisdom to properly interpret the Word. He wrote it. He knows the Hebrew and the Greek, if you do not. He is the Spirit of truth, not deception. He will teach you, if you let Him. He is the only way that you are going to stand in the evil days we have and are coming. Seek discernment! Stay away from the sewer and the table of devils. Maranatha!!
