What’s Wrong With The Churches - Part 3
In the Book Revelation Chapter 1:4-20, there are seven letters written to the seven Churches of that day. John wrote Jesus’ words, the good, the bad, and the ugly in each of those churches. What if He were to have you write letters to each one of the Churches of today? What do you think He would say to them?
The Church as a whole makes up the body of Christ and Christ is the head of that body of believers. You would think all the pieces of the Church body would perfectly fit together, but they do not. They willfully fight against each other because their theology or doctrinal beliefs differ so greatly. Why is this so? Does Jesus approve of this? Did Jesus create it to be this way? These are very difficult questions and my answers to these questions will cause some disagreement. And, that’s okay for you to disagree, but test everything that is said by what THE WORD says and not what I say.
One of my first experiences with so-called religious intolerance came from a church and came through a Pastor of a small church in a rural community. My employer had transferred me to a small town in Southern Mississippi ( I am so ashamed of this town I will not mention its name ) and the only place we could find to rent was an older home on a dairy farm. One day, while I was a work, the Pastor from the local church mentioned earlier, came to my house to invite our family to visit his church this coming Sunday. My wife invited him to our home to visit and this Pastor had the nerve to preach to my wife that my entire family was going to hell because we were from a Pentecostal denomination. He had her in tears with all his ranting about how horrible these tongue-talking, snake-handling, holy rollers were. (I have never handled snakes nor have I rolled in the isles of any church, but I am proud to say I do pray through The Holy Spirit in a heavenly prayer language that The Father hears and understands.) This Pastor made sure to be gone by the time I got home because if he’d still been there by the time I got home I would have laid hands on him in a very non-holy way. Needless to say, we never attended that church and the community never welcomed us because we would not bow down to their church's doctrines.
We did start attending an Assemblies of God Church in town and we assumed that this church would be as open and friendly as the Assemblies of God we left back in the Delta. Wow, were we ever wrong! We were never accepted in this church, in the town, nor at my place of employment for that matter. My kids were never accepted at school either. I had never experienced this type of evil in one area in my life. Why were we not accepted? The local people did finally tell me that we will never be accepted here because there are only two types of people that are accepted. They said you can only be accepted if you were born here, or if you are a wealthy person. I could not believe what I was hearing. My oldest son was even ridiculed at school when he tried to be friends with the daughter of a state politician. She liked him and wanted to be friends, but the grade school kids would not hear of it and stopped that relationship before it could start.
At work, I was able to make some friends, but still, they let me know I was never to be a permanent resident there. They jokingly called me names like Yankee because I was from North Mississippi. They said it jokingly, but they meant it at the same time. They made it plain that they secretly hated me for being there. I felt like the civil war was still on and I was in enemy territory. I think the Lord allowed me to feel this so that I could only get a small taste of the evil that is in men’s hearts. This small town and surrounding towns all suffered from the same evils; inferiority, selfishness, jealousy, pride, arrogance, and intolerance for anyone different than themselves.
We lived in that town for about two years and one day my wife said she could not stand it any longer. She told me she was moving to Jackson whether I went with her or not. We did move to Jackson, Mississippi and I continued to work at my job in Southern Mississippi for another year and a half. I drove 90 miles to work and 90 miles home every day until my employer was acquired by their competitor. I asked the new owners not to offer me a job as I would no longer work here and they agreed.
The bad news about this chapter is it ends in divorce.
To be continued . . .
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