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Read Revelation 17-18, and forget about the end times nonsense theories and be in prayer and ask God if this is you…. And if you will not then you have a bigger problem, pride….

To see if my premise is correct, let’s take a look at this passage in Revelation–a passage that a lot of misguided Bible teachers use to amuse and shift the meaning away from the truth and point of it.

The theme is this great ‘harlot’ blasphemes God and puts her trust in materialism and immorality and leads others to do so, too. In so doing, she is not ashamed, but rather boisterous and proud of sin.

Our first thought on this, well, that will happen in the last days, I do not need to fret. I certainly do not do that! But, we need to pray and think this through. Perhaps it is so. Read the passage, and seek Christ in humility, is there an application, am I being loyal to Christ or to myself and trends that would ashamed our Lord?

What is going on with the Revelation 17-18 passage?

John is clearly writing to the seven real churches and, consequently, to people in extreme hard times, then being persecuted by Rome. He was dealing with infighting, disloyalty, false teachers, church members being cut off from their families, social circles, and trade guilds so they could not work, this, starving out his people and preventing them from functioning and others forms of persecution. The main enemy from outside of the church was Rome. It was a blood-thirsty, pagan empire that oppressed its people, especially Christians, who were considered criminals and slaves and used for sadistic entertainment. Rome was extremely corrupt and fell because of it.

Yet, the enemy from within, which was even more dangerous, was false teaching and being treacherous to Christ by distorting His precepts and call.

Look at it this way. If you want your church healthy and lined up to God’s call, commands and precepts, you have to be loyal! That means being trustworthy, faithful and devoted to Christ as LORD and His Truth! That means more than just placing Him first or ignoring the relativisms in our society.

It means a defining quality that I am fully engaged to be in Christ, to follow Christ and lead others to Christ.

In contrast, if we are not loyal; then, we are betraying. As a pastor, my first and foremost job is to point people to The Shepherd. So, the point of this message is simple. We have to recover our churches from the desires of what I want, from the false trends, away from betrayal of Christ’s Lordship, to turn back to the true Truth of Scripture that glorifies Christ as LORD!

From our research we are seeing that, we got trouble in our churches–a lack of loyalty. A tough question needs to be asked of ourselves, are we being “harlots” with His Church?

Filed under: Leadership Issues, Research | Tagged: betraying, blaspheme, Christ as Lord, church fail, Church Growth, entertainment, harlot, immorality, Loyal, materialism, Revelation |