Chapter 5 - Our High Places
I rarely saw Benny without hearing
some piece of profound wisdom suitable to a sage. This day was no exception. With that
typical twinkle in his eye and that wry west Tennessee grin on his face, he asked me,
"Do you know how you can tell when something is an idol in your life?"
"No." I waited for his reply. I knew it would be good.
His grin widened. His words were slow but short. "By how big a
fight you put up when it's taken from you."
Many of the things we fight over are likely idols in our lives. We get
angry when something we adore is taken from us or when we fear that it might be taken from
us.
OUR HIGH PLACES
We, as with Israel of old, have our idols. Our idols are our high
places. Our high places are those things we cherish above our consecration to God. We,
too, have gone "a whoring" after the gods of our own making. We "burn
incense" to the work of our hands and the imaginations of our minds when we take
self-exalted pride in our accomplishments. Such things as science, government, the stock
market, religion, the arts, diets, entertainment, and sports can work for our good, but
they become idolatrous when we put our trust in them rather than in God. We make ourselves
out to be God.
This was the lie in the garden of Eden: if we could know as God knows,
we would become as God. So we, in Adam, became knowledgeable, and that knowledge became a
curse to us. We play God when we glory in our own intellectual abilities to figure things
out, reason things, understand things, invent things, and imagine even greater
achievements. We exalt that which we think we know above the knowledge of God. It keeps us
at arms-length from God and prevents us from entering into intimacy with Father-God, our
Creator. Puffed-up knowledge is the arrogance of Self, and Self is that high mountain upon
which we build our altars.
EXTENSIONS OF SELF
Our high places are extensions of ourselves. We stand back like a
master painter and survey the canvas of our works and sigh, "Ah! This is what I
did!" Our identities are wrapped up in our achievements. We want to be somebody, to
make our mark, to leave our fingerprint on something important. Our old man of flesh
natures are driven by the need for power, position, recognition, possessions, and
domination.
We bow the knee to those who are rich and famous, and snub, or at best
patronize, those who are poor and uncelebrated. We, as Nimrod, have journeyed to our land
of Shinar, looking to build a tower, a city, and a name for ourselves. Gen. 11. Those who
have "Ministries" do this as well.
CHURCH
AS AN EXTENSION OF SELF
This Thing we call church can be one such extension of
ourselves. It is one of those things we go after in our hearts because we love it
so. That is to say, we love the works of our hands and the imaginations of our hearts that
are expressed in that Thing we call church. We are in church because church
is in us. It is an extension of us. Therefore, we are serving ourselves when we
serve it.
"Ah, come on," you say. "You can't be serious. Aren't
you being too hard and critical of the church? I love my church. I have
life-long relationships in my church. We have a great choir, good preaching,
souls are saved, the Holy Spirit often moves in our services. The ritual and symbols make
me feel close to God. How do you account for the fact that God shows up in church?
How can you call church evil?"
Good Christian people go to church. In fact, the stronger they
are in their faith, the more likely they are to go to church. They identify
"going to church" with their faith. Their faithfulness to church
is often the yardstick for measuring their faithfulness to Christ. After all, the churches
even belong to Christians, at least in name and perception. God's presence is manifested
in some of these churches on occasions, but none of this means that these Things
we call church have been born of the Spirit. They are still idolatrous extensions
of Self.
God often blessed and prospered His people in captivity. God blessed
Israel on numerous occasions even though she was engaged in idolatry. Even when He
banished Judah to Babylon, He commanded that they build houses, plant gardens, eat the
fruit of them, and increase in families. Jer. 29:4-6. God even pronounced severe judgment
against those idolatrous Jews who tried to stay behind in Judah. Jer. 29:16-18.
"After seventy years are accomplished in Babylon," the Lord promised Judah,
"I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to
this place." Jer. 29:10. God had to visit His people in Babylon in order to deliver
them from Babylon.
The Holy Spirit has often moved upon His people to save, heal, and
deliver them throughout the history of the institutionalized church system. The
Protestant reformation, the great awakening of the 1800's, and the Pentecostal revival of
the 1900's are major historical examples of how God sought to deliver His people out of an
old order to bring them into a new order.
A few churches have experienced what they call renewal. God is
filling the lamps of those willing to be prepared with enough oil to go the distance when
that last trumpet sounds. It would be a tragic mistake, however, to take God's anointing
upon His people as an endorsement of their idols. If the Holy Spirit is moving in your church,
He is not present to bless your idolatries, but to prepare a people unto Himself. God
cares for His people who happen to be in captivity to church. He is preparing His
bride. He has to go into these illegitimate places we call the church to prepare
her so He can take her out.
THE BRIDE IN HARLOTRY
Bill Shipman saw it this way. "It was almost like a vision,"
he explained.
I was there in the chambers and on the streets with them. I saw Jesus
waiting in a groom's chamber. The bride was in another chamber. He was preparing to go in
to see her. While He delayed, she was drawn to the window and became interested in the
activities in the street. The appeal of the street tugged at her harlot heart until she
wandered out there herself.
Soon after she walked out onto the streets she was raped. Her shame
deceived her into believing that she had no other life but to become a prostitute, which
she did. She was in a house of prostitution, locked behind huge, solid-oak, medieval
doors. They looked formidable. They were bolted through with a braided kind of thing with
copper on it and different kinds of ironwork.
Jesus went looking for her. He knew where she was. As He approached the
doors, demons howled and hissed at Him and tried to rush Him, yet were cowardly toward
Him. He opened the doors and went in. She was really a mess, and He pleaded with her to
come with Him. In her guilt and shame, she refused, and so He left.
He waited a time and visited her again. Still, she wouldn't look Him in
the face. Once again, He left her. As He was waiting in His chamber, fires of passion and
anger suddenly flashed in His eyes. He stormed out of His chamber and strode down the
street, approaching the house where His bride in harlotry abided.
Everyone saw Him coming. They fled to get out of His way. The demons
took one look at Him and ran ahead of Him to lock the doors, hoping to prevent Him from
entering. Without hesitation or pause in his stride, He hit those doors with the palms of
His hands. POW! They exploded. Splinters went everywhere.
He walked in and found her withered in shame. Her face was hidden in
her hands. This time was different though. This time He didn't ask her to come with Him.
This time He grasped her hand, led her out, and took her back to the bride's chamber while
she was still in her filthy, semen-stained dress.
I could see the passion and love He had for her in His eyes. Jesus saw
her only one way. He saw her as a virgin. Yet, she wouldn't even look at Him. He reached
out, touched her gently, and lifted her face toward His. Hesitantly, she slowly lifted her
eyes to look into His. He saw her beyond her shame and forced her beyond her shame. The
moment her eyes connected with His, they were filled with the same passion for Him that He
had for her.
I was right in there with them. I could almost see into their faces. I
backed off and saw that she had changed. She was beautiful. She had the same radiance as
did Jesus. They were one. There was no longing or attraction for anyone or anything other
than for one another. She had eyes only for Him. She looked like Him, and He looked like
her. They were standing in one light. He was not diminished at all, but she was increased
in Him. Even though she looked like Him and had the same fire in her eyes as He had in
His, she was still under His feet, still under His authority. That's what made it as
beautiful as it was.
I believe Bill's vision is from the Lord and reveals perfectly how He
sees His bride in harlotry and how He intends to come for us. Indeed, even as His bride,
we have played the harlot with our substitutes for Jesus. Perhaps even now we feel the
shock waves of His footsteps coming near to rid us of our shame and dress us in robes of
righteousness.
THE HIGH PLACE OF CHURCH
To substitute church for Jesus is idolatry in enormous
proportions. We are not to lift up church and make it the way of salvation. Jesus
alone is our salvation.
Many people have made an idol out of church just as the
Israelites made an idol out of the serpent in the wilderness. When the people accused God
and Moses of bringing them up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, the Lord sent fiery
serpents among them, and the serpents bit the people because of their grumbling. Many of
the Israelites died. The people repented, and God relented. God told Moses to make a fiery
serpent and set it upon a pole. All who had been bitten could look upon it and live. Num.
21:4-9.
That should have been the end of the story. But notice 2 Kings 18:4!
Hezekiah had become King of Judah, and the Bible says that he did what was right in the
sight of the Lord. "He removed the high places, broke the images, cut down the
groves, and broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for until those
days the children of Israel burned incense to it." They took an act of God and
made an idol out of it. In this same idolatrous spirit, people have turned the moves of
God into the denominations they later adored.
That which we call church today is an idolatrous system of
men's traditions which is spiritual harlotry. Church is what we do in addition to
being who Christ has made us to be in Him. If what we call church can be
incorporated, joined, named, referred to as it, and can be taken from us, then it
is not the real thing. The true ekklesia is a corporate body of people who are born into
it. They have taken only the name of Jesus because they are in a relationship with Him.
That relationship cannot be taken from them.
If church is not the real thing, then it is a
counterfeit. The problem with counterfeits is that they look deceptively like the real
thing. Church, as a counterfeit, is presented and perceived as the real thing.
Strangely enough, though, it does not even remotely look like the real thing.
Nevertheless, we have been beguiled into believing that it is.
Many people burn the incense of self-adoration to all that is
associated with this Thing we call church. They have made idols out of their
doctrines, forms of government, heritages, programs, rituals, liturgies, buildings, Sunday
morning services, going to church, budgets, personalities, the Sunday School,
youth meetings, missionary guilds, men's meetings, annual bazaars and events--everything
associated with church. They frolic around their corporate achievements: their
cemeteries, denominations, Bible schools, nursing homes, children's homes, hospitals,
missions, jail ministries, and prison ministries. These can be God-appointed ministries
and worthy causes, but they become idolatrous when we operate them to make ourselves look
good and feel godly. Busyness is not godliness. These institutions are often more about
those who operate them than about the ones they seek to serve.
Many of these church Things were originally started to meet
the needs of people but soon became ends within themselves. Many of the institutions have
become profit-driven instead of service-driven. Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for
man, and not man for the Sabbath." Mark 2:27. We have reversed that saying. Now, it
is as though we exist for the sake of church and not church for us.
Moreover, we may have the attitude about our church that it
has the right stuff. If possible, we competitively build a bigger and better steeple house
than the folks down the street. We plan our services and harbor the hope that we will have
the best show in town. Some of us hype our praise and worship, our prayers, our preaching,
and even our offerings to convince even ourselves, perhaps, that the Holy Spirit is upon
us.
We may devise programs in the name of evangelism and market ourselves
in such a way so as to corral more folks--to rope, throw, and brand them with our special
mark, to clone them like us. Yet, we want to stand out from the other churches in
town. We craft our creeds to distinguish ourselves from them. The names we give ourselves
reflect our separateness from them. We sometimes even brag about our differences. A young
man at a gathering of men sported a T-shirt which was likely intended to communicate an
innocent but catchy phrase; nonetheless, it revealed this separatist notion. It read,
"Vineyard Church: Experience the difference."
For many deceived hearts, their church is their plan of
salvation, and we have about as many salvation plans as we have churches. We
stress the necessity of church membership and regular attendance to church
and thereby communicate the subtle message that we are saved by these Things. We are
considered unscriptural if we do not go to church.
Many churches associate water baptism with membership in their
church. Some denominations (cults) preach that you are lost unless you are a
member their church. For some, acceptance into their fold involves strict
adherence to their rigid code of behavior. For others, acceptance involves strict
adherence to their rigid doctrine. "We have the right doctrine. Agree with us and be
baptized into our church, and you will be saved." How absolutely ludicrous.
Is not Jesus our Savior?
We have raised up shrines for ourselves, and we have become our own
corpses within them. We have enshrined ourselves with a grandeur we seek for ourselves.
There is no life in these shrines nor can there ever be. There is no hope of resurrection
life within them for they exist to provide something for Self. Resurrection life comes
through the denial of oneself and not to those who seek to save themselves.
OUR IDOLATRY IS SPIRITUAL HARLOTRY
When the bride plays the harlot, she becomes one with the harlot, and
distinguishing between the bride and her harlotries becomes difficult. If you play the
harlot, you become the harlot. The apostle Paul wrote, "Know you not that your bodies
are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the
members of a harlot? God forbid. What? Know you not that he who is joined to a harlot is
one body? For two, says He, shall be one flesh. But he who is joined unto the Lord is one
spirit." 1 Cor. 6:15-17.
Paul was writing to Corinthian believers who were, with all saints in
all places and in all times, the bride of Christ. A bride is feminine in gender. A harlot
is feminine in gender. I mean no disparagement against anyone who is sexually broken, but
when the bride of Christ joins herself to the harlotry of Self, she is operating in the
perverse spirit of spiritual lesbianism and practicing spiritual self-sex. We are more
"in lust" with ourselves than we are in sacrificial relationship with our
Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is jealous of that.
STRONGHOLDS OF THE MIND
These idolatries of Self are strongholds of the mind. A spiritual
stronghold is the preoccupation with an object, a person, or an institution; with anger or
fear; with a fetish, an addiction, or a sin. A spiritual stronghold is anything that
fascinates us, dominates our minds, and causes us to behave obsessively and compulsively.
These are things that rule over us. We seem powerless to do anything about them. Yet, we
cannot deny that these things are harmful to us or others.
A spiritual stronghold can also be the grid through which we see
things. Church is one such stronghold of the mind. We have been brainwashed into
believing that church as we know and practice it is what we ought to do. We have
never known anything other than church as we practice it. So, when I say
church is an idol and a stronghold in your mind, you may have a difficult time
believing it. You cannot see it. Even if you see it, you have a hard time accepting it
because of your programmed mind-set. Once you see the deception, however, receive the
truth, and begin to walk in that light, you find your mind changing. The stronghold is
being torn down.
Taking the bride of Christ out of church is not an easy
matter, because church is a stronghold in her mind. God has to take church
out of us, as well as take us out of it. Strange language is it not? For while
God is trying to take us out of church, we are trying to get people into it.
If we try to leave the stronghold of church before it has been taken out of us,
we will simply return to it.
Christmas.
Christmas is one of those strongholds of the mind.
It had not been celebrated in any form before the third century. Alexander Hislop
explains, "Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself,
a festival was celebrated among the heathen, at that precise time of the year, in
honor of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be
presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal
adherents of Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Roman
Church, giving it only the name of Christ."
3 {7} They took this strictly pagan celebration and put
Jesus in the center of it.
Rome instituted a mass which was called Christ-mass--shortened to
Christmas. Christmas has always been, is now, and ever shall be a pagan festival. It has
grown over the centuries to become the enchanting, magical, merchant-driven insult to God
that it now is. We are mesmerized by it. Hooked on it. Enslaved by it. In debt to it.
Dennis Loewen adds, "Christmas is another example of how powerful the false living
spirit of harlotry is. There is a spirit of Christmas. It is warm; it is wonderful; it is
good...and it is not from God."
The world loves Christmas as much as Christians do. What does that tell
us? One "Christian" celebrity said on national TV that Christmas is three
things: "decorating, gift-giving, and eating." We must know that what the world
loves cannot be of God. The apostle John exhorts us, "Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in
him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world." 1 John 2:15-16.
The fact that most of what people do at Christmas has its roots in this
pagan mid-winter festival should be reason enough for Christians not to do it--the tree
and lights, the candles, the mistletoe, the exchange of gifts, the yule log in the
fireplace, the cakes, the goose, the drunkenness, and even the date of December the 25th.
The fact that this season is so merchant-driven today should add to our disdain for it.
However, the real slap-in-the-face to God is that we love these soulish things more than
obedience to Him. They are emotional strongholds in our minds. We would lack sound
judgment to believe that we can relentlessly celebrate these days and seasons and stay
free of their captivation.
The idea of not celebrating Christmas carries such an affront to others
that most people could not give it up even if they were convinced that it was an
abomination to God. We are thought leprous for not going along with it. We are pleasers of
men rather than of God.
I have heard the clichι once my childhood to "put Christ back
into Christmas." It is often inscribed this way: "Put Christ back into
X-mas." Even though the X probably stands for the Greek letter chi in Christ,
we tend to think of it as X-ing out Jesus. Well, for years I have been thinking it and now
I dare to say it: Instead of putting Jesus back into a pagan festival where He never
belonged in the first place, let us take Him out of it altogether and give it back to the
world to whom it belongs. After all, the Bible never called for this celebration, and
Jesus would never impose such crazy-making bondage upon us. Paul wrote, "It was for
freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again
to a yoke of slavery." Gal. 5:1 NAS. This is what we should teach our children.
Christmas is one of those "high places" that most of us seem
unwilling to tear down, even knowing how God might feel about it. Our minds are made up.
"I like Christmas," one young mother told me. The rest of her sentence was
implied, "So I'm going to do it." We build manger scenes in our yards and erect
glow-in-the-dark Santa Clauses next to them. Buddy at the checkout counter illustrated
this mix very simply. He had a Santa Claus hat on his head and a W.W.J.D. (what would
Jesus do?) band around his neck. Buddy, Jesus would not have worn that hat.
After I told a dear old lady why I no longer do Christmas, she
responded, "But I don't think of pagan gods when I look at my Christmas tree. I think
of Jesus." That seemed reasonable to me. I asked God about it. He answered.
"What would you think if you caught your wife in adultery, and she answered, 'But,
honey, I was thinking of you the whole time'?"
Many people reason, "we do it for the children." If Christmas
is idolatrous for the parents, then why would the parents want to sacrifice their children
to these idols?
Easter.
Easter is equally idolatrous and chilling. Most
Christians affectionately use the term Easter in association with the precious
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ with no regard to the fact that Easter is the
English word for the goddess Ishtar (also called Astarte and Eostre in other pagan
cultures). Ishtar was celebrated as the queen of heaven. Much of what we do at Easter time
also has its origin in paganism. The date on which we celebrate Easter does not regularly
coincide with the resurrection of Christ, which occurred three days after Passover. Lent,
the sunrise services, the dyeing of eggs, the bunny rabbits are all unscriptural
abominations to God.
So, how did we come to do those things? Alexander Hislop writes,
"To conciliate the Pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy,
took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated
but skillful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult
matter, in general, to get Paganism and Christianity--now far sunk in idolatry--in this as
in so many other things, to shake hands."
3 {8}
Dennis Loewen observes, "The harlot
isn't picky about these things. She will lay down with anything as long as it is another
Jesus. She reasons, 'Why bother with these details?' God, on the other hand, does mind.
How could anyone read the scriptures and see Him otherwise?"
EMPOWERING OUR HIGH PLACES
We empower those things we bow down and pay homage to. We release God's
power in our lives when we bow down and worship Him. Likewise, we empower our idols when
we bow down to them whether they are men, buildings, institutions, ideas, science,
opinions, demons, or that Thing we call church.
Patrick came to town to start a new church. As is often the
case, the Lord's anointing was present, and people freely entered into praise and worship.
Relationships were forming. The vision seemed, at first, to be targeted toward building up
the people into Christ. There was liberty. Then came the desire for a building, then the
need for a loan, then the need for more money, and finally a drive for membership. The
people found themselves drawn back into that which they had tried to come out of. Patrick
was taking them back into what he came out of, because what he had come out of had never
been taken out of him. Instead of building a people, he was consumed with building a church--his
church. A few discerning people who went to his church left when they
realized that staying served only to endorse and empower his idolatry.
We empower the idolatry of church when we attend its
services.
We empower the idolatry of church when we contribute to it.
We empower the idolatry of church when we insist upon using
the term church in reference to the body of Christ.
We empower the idolatry of church when we ask one another
where we go to church?
We empower the idolatry of church when we measure other
people's spirituality by where they go to church.
We have our high places; yet, we know God's heart in such matters
because He clearly told us, "You shall have no other gods before Me." Exod.
20:3.
The Holy Spirit may lead a mature, liberated believer to attend a church
and perhaps contribute to it for a purpose known only to God and that believer.
If, however, that believer becomes joined in his heart to that system, once again lifting
it up, he has returned to the idolatry and spiritual harlotry of it. He is
deceived. One who feels called of God to stay in or return to one of those harlot church
system situations has to be honest with himself regarding his true motive lest he say,
"God told me to" in order to justify the harlot desires of his heart.
AUGURING OUT THE IDOLATRY
For the most part, first century believers went from house to house
which may be an ideal plan for gathering even today. More and more believers in
relationship are being drawn into each other's living rooms for praise and worship,
sharing the word, breaking bread, prayer, and fellowship. These settings can provide
tremendous liberty in the Holy Spirit, create opportunities for each one to use his or her
gifts, draw them closer together in relationships, and maintain support for one another in
times of need.
However, we must understand that our salvation does not depend upon
meeting in home groups anymore than belonging to church. Our salvation is in the
Lord. We can make an idolatrous thing out of home groups just as easily as we can out of church.
The problem is not in having a building or not, having regular meetings or not, having
programs or not, or having structure or not. The problem has to do with what is in our
hearts about those things. It may be possible to have all of those things and not become
joined to them, though I doubt it. Sooner or later, without realizing it, we make a Thing
of them and begin go after the Thing rather than the Lord. That is how our harlot hearts
work. For, after all, those things came out of our hearts. I think it is most unlikely
that we can organize ourselves as a group of believers with a building, a name, a bank
account, belief system, and such without those things sooner or later becoming a source of
pride in us as idolatrous extensions of our fleshly need to exalt Self.
I find that there is a mix in many churches. There is both
flesh and Spirit because, until now, God has responded to His people wherever they call
upon His name. He responds in spite of the fact that we have made these Things idols in
our lives. He responds to the Holy Spirit and His nature within us. Nevertheless, He
despises our flesh and our idolatries. I dare not touch what God is doing in any person or
church. I desire only to augur out the idolatrous part of it all and expose our
harlot hearts that we might repent of that.
If you are in one of those Things we call church and are truly
growing in the Lord, I would not want to say leave it physically, but abandon any idolatry
of it. And beware! Phil Perry observed that "the more the Holy Spirit seems to be
moving in one of those Things, the more deceiving it is. People see all that God is doing,
and fail to see all the things that are wrong." The "things that are wrong"
are terribly wrong. The snare is still set to trap you and engage you as a slave to the
system for life. Many groups may have begun in the Spirit, but are continuing on in the
flesh. Gal. 3:3.
We are to be a people who are led by the Holy Spirit in all that we do,
say, and are. We are to worship Him in spirit and truth. Anything, including church,
that hinders us from doing so cannot be from God.
Our high places are our Babylonian lovers, and church is the
modern day Babylonian captivity of God's people.
Footnotes
{7}
Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux
Brothers, 1959), 93. Hislop's book is quite exhaustive, well documented, and convincing.
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{8}
Hislop, p. 105.
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