All For the Sake of Unity

Today there are many religions, many denominations—just like there are many countries and peoples. For the world to be united as a one world order there has to be a gathering of all peoples, nations and countries; and we have seen this over the years, beginning with the United Nations, which formed the global society that we have today. So too, to have a one world religion all the religions have to come together and unite as one religion. We saw the beginning of this when the Catholic Church held the first ecumenical council in the early 1960s with Pope John XXIII. This began the era of ecumenical unity. Since then every religion and denomination has come together to form the framework of this new one world religion. Yes, even your religion. No, it has not come as far as the global unity has, but the framework is in place, and every year all religions have come closer and closer to uniting. They are looking at what they have in common and then compromising for the sake of unity. The Scriptures that they use to come together are John 17:11, 20-23: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one… My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Yes, it is hard to believe, but the Bible tells us that this will happen, and it is happening, but to the harm of each person in every congregation. We want to take a look at a few things in this brochure.
In our brochure “Globalism,” we stated that peace and love (or should we say tolerance) is what we must achieve to unify us. The thinking is that we all base our religious beliefs on truth and so all religions are true. But we know that the very little that may unite us is not the truth that saves us, that being that Yeshua/Jesus is God wrapped in the flesh of man, and He died for us and was buried and rose from the dead and He conquered Hell, death and the grave. In our brochure “Is the Cross Politically Correct?” we see that today the cross is not preached, and even less is it preached that we too must crucify our flesh, thus dying to ourselves. We must lose our lives to save them. The topic of sin is almost absent from the mouths of our preachers today. In our brochure “Where Did the Kingdom Go?” we also see that the goal of our faith is not only salvation, but to advance the Kingdom here on earth. We see that today these terms and Biblical truths are not preached, and if they are they are watered down in their truth and meaning. In our brochure, “Where Did the Blood Go?” we ask this question about the teaching of “grace only.” Why do we not say that we are saved by the shed blood of Yeshua our Messiah? Because this is unpopular, and we see that in all of these basic tenets of the faith, to be united with all of the faiths of the world we must stop teaching that which separates us.
Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:3-4, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” They will find teachers who will teach according to their own desires. This is what we find today.
People are not coming to the saving truth of the shed blood of Messiah. They are not coming to repentance or to the cross of Messiah. They are coming, the few that do, to a watered down version of the gospel to appease and to tickle the ears of the few. Church attendance has not gone up, but instead people roam from church to church finding the right teacher who will tell them what they want to hear, the kind of music they want to hear and the freedom they want to live their lives by. We have become weak and in so doing we can not fight the spiritual battle that needs to be fought. The birth pangs of Messiah have begun and they will increase as the time grows closer to His return. The Bible tells us of a great falling away.
Yeshua tells us in Matthew 24:10-14, “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.” This apostasy, the great falling away, is taking place more so today than ever. We see a great deception, a great darkness, a lie that has been taught for years that people have slowly boughten into. So many pastors today do not believe in the basic truths of the gospel. They are false shepherds who are leading the flock astray with words that sound right and yet they lead to a shallow, rootless congregation. And many today who sit in pews even deny the very foundation of the faith because of the teachings that only tickle our ears. The Bible warns us against such wolves in sheeps’ clothing, against such false teachers and prophets.
2 Corinthians 11:13-15 warns, “For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” This unity of religions and nations will usher in the Antichrist. Paul also tells us in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12, “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
For years now this sugar-coated gospel has been taught so that today many new believers do not know what is actually required of them by our Messiah, and so many who have sat in pews for years have become tone-deaf due to the lack of the truth of God’s Word being preached. We have accepted the lies and deceptions for the comforts of a social gathering we call church.The book of Revelation warns the churches about their sins and the need to repent. In the church of Laodicea, which has been considered the end times church, Yeshua tells them that they are neither hot or cold and that they, in other words, need to stop sitting on the fence and choose if they are either hot or cold because being lukewarm will cause Him to spit them out of His mouth. He finds them guilty of worldliness.
“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”What about you? Do you need to return to your first love? Do you need to return to a closer walk with the Father? Do you need to begin with repenting because you are neither hot or cold? Take some time and consider all that has been spoken of here and ask yourself, have I been compromising my faith, my beliefs, my walk, because I have become comfortable and complacent and have allowed myself to fall into a spiritual slumber? Remember, Yeshua is the Good Shepherd and He is gathering His sheep. Ephesians 5:13-16 tells us, “But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that is illuminated becomes a light itself. So it is said, ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Messiah will shine on you.’ Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”