A Calling For More Fearless Laborers

About one more month or so is left before the next chapter of my life begins up in Chicago, Illinois. I can almost sense the dry, humid 95 degree summer nights of Texas passing by as I will be spending my time, effort, ministry, and prayers up in a new land I have only visited once before in February (probably even more humid than down here, from what I hear). In preparation for two particular classes I will be taking I have been reading through the entire Bible. I have just finished the Old Testament about a week or two ago, and now am embarking on reading the New Testament. So instead of chapter after chapter, and book after book of pretty much, "You have all angered Me in your sin, therefore I will punish you in your captivity and pestilence, but there will come a day for a Savior," The New Testament to me is like a light at the end of the tunnel as grace was made manifest to us on Earth in the fullest through the Person of Jesus Christ.

For the last couple years I have met some pretty interesting characters when it came to the subject on spiritual things. Back in high school I met a kid who literally told me that he bases everything he knew about an afterlife on something so ever-changing as music. I have tried to reason with others who believe Hell is a place where the party never ends, literally. A common answer I get on the streets when asking people where they will go to after they die would possibly be, "It depends on what you believe," as if we are the authors of where we go, whether it be Paradise with many virgins, Summerland, Heaven, Hell, or even complete annihilation of thought and consciousness. Sad as it is for me to go out week after week and talk to people who are literally dead to any warnings of a Judgement Day, what pricks my heart the most would be talking to those nicely dressed missionaries who come to your door, smiling big and offering "new revelation" that God has apparently revealed. Truth be told, I am not just talking about the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but anyone trapped in the Kingdom of the Cults (Christian Science, Unity, Scientology, Bahai, Unitarian, Father Divine, etc.). It is one thing to deal with people who trust in their own presuppositions about life and death, but it is a totally different, emotional roller-coaster to deal with people who trust in another person's or organization's teachings about spirituality.

Back in my senior year in high school (which I would say would be the starting point of my future calling to the cults in general), there was a group that met by one of the pillars in the commons every single morning. Later on I found out they were all from the same Mormon ward just down the street. I finally had the chance to witness to one of these guys, to which I left the conversation with great sadness. She seemed to repeatedly say, "Oh that's what our church teaches too!" Now in the back of my mind I knew there was something off here. Either she was right and I was out of my mind talking to her about Christ, or a redefinition of terms (God, Jesus, sin, salvation, etc.) was in order. The latter was the case, yet it took me a couple more months to figure that one out. Define who God is to Mormon and they will quite literally tell you He was once a man, but through much diligence elevated Himself to Godhood. Jesus to the Mormons is one god among a pantheon of god, the spirit brother of Lucifer, and the product of sexual relations between Elohim and the Virgin Mary. Salvation, according to Mormonism, is clearly laid out in their own Book of Mormon: "...For it is by grace we are saved, after all that we can do" (2 Nephi 25:23).

Other opportunities have come to my door...literally. My neighborhood seems get a lot of Spanish-speaking Jehovahs' Witnesses (due to the local Kingdom Hall's ability to perform diagnostic tests of what the majority race and ethnic background is in each neighborhood in the surrounding area). On very random days you see a train-load of those ministers walking up and down the street with copies of "Watchtower" and "Awake" magazines. It is very humorous as to the approach of how they go door to door. As you open the door to a curious knock, you find either a man or a woman, or two women and a little 5-year-old child, as if the Jehovah's Witnesses slogan to you is, "Hell: a family-oriented community." You can see why I am so blunt as to make that claim, due to the fact that Jesus to them is not the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus of the Bible is God Himself in human flesh, whereas Jesus according to the WatchTower is Michael the Archangel who came to Earth, died and rose again as a spirit being, ascended back into Heaven, and came back invisibly in 1914 to establish His headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. Salvation is attained through your good lifestyle and works (including going door-to-door) and even then, no one is able to enter Heaven because it is filled up, but the next best destination that is available is Paradise Earth.

One of my biggest pet-peeves in all the world is to have someone say they had missionaries at their door, and yet they hid themselves within their own homes so that the missionaries would not know they were there. Why does this bug me? Simple...it shows that the Christian Church is scared of the cults. One lady went up to a minister and said, "Oh I have found a perfect way in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses!" The minister, curious about the lady's excitement, asked, "How?" The lady then replied, "As I see them walking down the street, I pull the shades and lock the door!" I CANNOT BELIEVE that the Christian Church has been reduced to a generation of shade-pullers and door-lockers! We should be a generation of opening the doors wide open, pulling them in by the arm, and saying, "WELCOME! Let me tell you about Jesus Christ friend!" For years, we as Christians have buried our heads in the sand, and hoped that the cults would go away like a bad dream. Reality tell us that they are the ones perishing...with Bibles in their hands at that! In this world you have Maharishi, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Maharishi Mahesh Yoga, the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Christian Scientists, and about +84 million people running around saying, "THIS WAY TO GOD!" There is only one way to God, according to the Scriptures. "Neither is there salvation in any other, there is no other name given under Heaven among men where by you must be saved [Jesus Christ]" (Acts 4:12). Here Peter was talking about the real Jesus, the real Gospel, the real Holy Spirit, and it's time that the Church stood up to answer the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Skeptic, the Cultist, and the Occultist, and say, "This is of Christ, and that is of the Devil, now let's take a stand on it!"

He who has ears to hear (or in this case, "eyes to read") let them hear to what the Spirit of the Lord says to the Church. The people in the cults are not the enemy. They're just pawns in the chess game of Satanic deception. They smile just like us, cry just like us, hurt just like us, and most importantly, sin just like all of us. They are human beings and the Church's brothers and sisters under Adam. We should not hide ourselves from them if we have a truth that is able to save their souls from Hell. We should all love them all a lot more. In the words of the late Dr. Walter Martin, "Will you not bear the voice of the Lord of the Vineyard? See these fields of the cults and the occult, and reach out to them in the name of Jesus."