Your Best Life Now – Not
All over the world Christians are being persecuted for their faith. They are being imprisoned. They are being tortured. They are being killed. They are being horrifically assaulted, persecuted, attacked and targeted by various anti-Christian groups, chief of which is Islam.
Consider just one example which we are just now getting all the details on: around 150 people – mostly Christians – have been massacred in yet another Islamic terror attack. At least one online headline and opening sentence spelled out the exact truth about this: “Christians targeted in uni massacre – Islamic terrorists have murdered at least 147 people – mostly Christians – in a pre-dawn attack on a Kenyan university after blasting in the gates with grenades.”
Many other reports are refusing to mention how Islam is involved, or how the targets were specifically Christians. As another report states:
There are “147 fatalities confirmed in the Garissa attack,” the national disaster operations centre said in a statement, confirming the siege was now over with all attackers dead. “The operation at Garissa University College has ended, with all four terrorists killed,” the centre said, after the attack which lasted some 16 hours from before dawn until well after dark. At least 79 people were also wounded in the assault, which began when the first grenades were used before dawn to blast open the gates of the university, near the lawless border with war-torn Somalia.
In the final hour before darkness fell, Kenyan troops stormed the student dormitory where the gunmen were holed up as explosions and heavy gunfire rang out. Troops then continued to search the campus for any possible insurgents.
It was the worst attack in Kenya since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi by al-Qa’ida, when 213 people were killed by a huge truck bomb.
Franklin Graham said this about the terror attack:
This morning, Islamic terrorists from al-Qaeda-linked militant group Al-Shabaab stormed into a Christian prayer service at Garissa University in Kenya, began shooting believers, and rampaged across the campus. Tragically, reports say 143 people were killed and 79 injured in this brutal attack, plus four gunmen were killed. Their motives were unmistakably clear. The spokesman for Al-Shabaab’s military operations, brazenly admitted, “We sorted people out and released the Muslims.” A student who escaped told the Associated Press, “If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot.” Pray for the hundreds of students, families, and faculty affected by this attack. And continue to pray that the world will wake up to the threat of Islam across the globe.
And this is not just some one-off by “lone wolves”. Consider this headline also from the precarious scene in Africa: “UNHRC Confirms 200 Kidnapped Christian Girls in Nigeria Murdered by Devout Muslim Group.” There are such utterly tragic situations, yet how many Christian believers in the West even know about such things, let alone care?
Indeed, while all this is going on overseas, and while in the West anti-Christian bigotry and persecution is increasing at an exponential rate, we have false shepherds peddling their false gospels of happiness, success and prosperity. We have so-called Christian leaders who will never even mention these persecutions, trials, hardships and difficulties, which are in fact part of the normal Christian life.
They certainly never talk about sin, judgment, hell or the holiness of God either. All they talk about is me, me, me. They peddle an entirely me-centred gospel. It is all about how I can be rich, happy, have a good career, have the best car, have a terrific self-image, and lose weight for Jesus.
It has utterly nothing to do with biblical Christianity and everything to do with a man-centred, fleshly, compromised and carnal religiosity. They carry on week after week about how you can have ‘your best life now’. Try telling that to the 150 Christians just mowed down in Kenya. Try telling that to the millions of Christian martyrs.
Try telling that to all the Christians languishing in prisons, undergoing horrific torture and deprivation. Try telling that to the Indiana Christian family that just lost their pizza business because of the militant homosexual activists, and are receiving a barrage of death threats by the tolerance brigade.
Try telling that to the Christian family who just lost a loved one to cancer, or has been unemployed for months on end, or who lack basic housing, or are suffering greatly at the hands of misotheist tormentors. Everywhere Christians are suffering horrendously and undergoing the most severe trials and tribulations imaginable.
Yet all these sham preachers can offer them is their ‘best life now’ baloney. These phony preachers are multi-millionaires because of these hosts of deluded and gullible followers. They live in the finest of mansions, drive the fanciest cars, fly in the most luxurious private jets, and live the good life. Yet millions of unthinking Christians support all this.
One of these hucksters even markets his own board game! Yep, you can now get your own “Best Life Now” board game for only $10 (down from $30). As the blurb on amazon states:
The best seller by Joel Osteen is now an at-home experience like no other
Enables players to step beyond the one-on-one nature of the book and feel, touch and live Joel Osteen’s 7 Steps of living life
The game is both entertaining and educational
Take inventory of yourself and accountability of your actions
Each new plateau represents a challenge and a chance to open up and experience these steps first hand
Not only will sham leaders like this one day give an account to Almighty God for their frivolous, fake and fairy-floss “gospel” which is no gospel at all, but so too will all the millions of duped believers who suck up this humanistic mush. The Bible everywhere warns about false prophets who tickle people’s ears and tell them just what they want to hear.
Both the false prophets and their gullible and undiscerning followers are guilty of abandoning the Living God for an idol made in their own likeness. They party on and live selfishly while all around them true disciples of Jesus Christ are being killed and treated terribly.
As long as these folks can get their best life now, who gives a rip about all the millions of suffering saints and Christian martyrs? ‘I just wanna get stinking rich and have everything now. Why should I worry about all these other folks? They just do not have enough faith anyway, or are obviously living in sin.’
Right now hundreds and thousands of grieving Christians are mourning the loss of their loved ones in Kenya and Nigeria. They are true Christian heroes who know all about martyrdom and the sacrificial life. They know that true Christianity always involves carrying a cross and denying self.
It is time millions of deceived Western “Christians” learn what the biblical gospel is all about before it is too late. Why do these words from Amos 5:18-23 keep running through my head right now?
Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/gunmen-attack-kenya-university/story-e6frg6so-1227289519246
http://pamelageller.com/2015/04/unhrc-confirms-200-kidnapped-christian-girls-in-nigeria-murdered-by-devout-muslim-group.html/#sthash.TqBvv2H7.dpuf
[1307 words]
I was amazed to see an article in The Drum, an ABC publication on “one of the most shocking untold stories of our time: the global persecution of Christians.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-01/moore-why-dont-we-hear-about-persecuted-christians/5641390
Also – This article does not promise Your Best Life Now –“The frog must jump out of the pan, before it boils.
We should not let the possibility or even the likelihood of “failure” make us timid. Witness is utterly different from propaganda, more fragile but far more enduring.
For centuries, the early Christians endured far worse than we might face, dying in the Colosseum to the taunts of jeering crowds — whose grandchildren would flee the moral chaos of collapsing Rome and flock to the underground churches. All the persecution that a government like China can deal its native Christians has not stopped the church from exploding there, and striking fear at the highest levels of a totalitarian government. The battered church in Poland led the movement that brought down the Iron Curtain, through sober, persistent resistance.” https://stream.org/gay-totalitarianism-coming-persecution-christians/
Go ahead Bill, sound the alarm! If my wife would read what you have just written, she would say, oh that is where you are getting your information from, and your quotes. I have been crying the same thing everywhere, the same scriptures has been ringing in by being as well. They call me the “Prophet of Doom” sometimes in my household.
I always hear; I’m not thinking about other Christians suffering, and the suffering of poor and needy christians. I always hear; I’m concern with myself, and God wants me to have a good and prosperous life and be happy. I have always tried to show them what is written in the Bible concerning our calling. But it is always what their Pastors says, not what the Bible says, read it for yourselves I proclaim.
I just wish I could place your letter inside of the church bulletin this Sunday before anyone would notice it was there. Even the Pastor. I do think if i was a member of a local church and did that, they would burn me to the stake!…. And I would go willing.
Bill:
Thank you for your work for The Lord. Satan has blinded the west using his willing agents, the media. Here in the USA he keeps peoples minds filled with the Clinton’s, Obuma, Hollywood, and me, me, me. The trap has been set to eliminate Christians and Jews.
People think “it won’t happen here”, and until the killing starts they go their merry way.
Meanwhile, plots against Israel’s destruction continues with Obuma leading the way. We know God will save Israel and ultimately His own, but it will be a rough road to travel.
I just hope the people blindly following the false preachers open their eyes in time.
Very good article. I write about this all the time on my blog http://www.365devotiontochrist.com
Keep up the good work!
Luke 14:33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
Luke 14:27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
1Tim 6:6 But godliness with contentment is great gain,
1Tim 6:7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
1Tim 6:8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.