I said Lord if this is you, you must confirm it because this is too heavy – too hard a thing to do.

After that session I stood up to go to lunch & my gaze fell on a certain person. By the way they dressed I knew who they were. (what denomination they belonged to). The Lord spoke again & said “there is your confirmation”. I understood what He meant. The beginnings of this group of Christians was founded in the miraculous, souls radically saved, healed & delivered – awesome. Today the vast majority of this movement is nothing more than a social welfare agency. The Lord said “that is the state of my church today”.

I remember a minister coming to our church years ago. He had been in the very top few individuals of this movement. Very senior position. He got baptised in the Holy Spirit & had to leave the movement because of that very fact – he saw the power of God manifest & what they (as a movement were doing) & could see no way of changing it even though he was in a senior position.

I was shocked when the Lord then said “Anything done in the name of without the power of Jesus Christ is a cult”. Wow very heavy but before you put an axe through your PC look at this referring to the condition of the end times

2 Timothy 3:5 (NCV) and will act as if they serve God but will not have his power. Stay away from those people. 

If God says stay away from them it must be for a reason. The reason being you can get sucked in by it also.

1 Corinthians 2:4 - 5 (NASB) and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

1 Corinthians 4:20 (NASB) For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power. 

I went home & studied what socio humanistic philosophy was. I was again shocked.

Humanism basically says we must help fellow human beings get a better life.

Humanism, Greek philosophical thought, Utilitarianism has become one of the prevailing philosophical strongholds of Western culture – and the premise of much of what we do as ‘church’.

Results of Humanism in the Church

1. Preaching. Because humanists emphasize humanity, its teaching is mostly about human relationships and social issues – how to get a better life. Rather than preaching on spiritual growth, the nature of God, sin and salvation, repentance and obedience, the subjects will be on helping people in need, supporting the poor and oppressed, peace issues etc. These are good issues in themselves, but they are secondary. Humanists emphasize the second commandment, "Love your neighbour as you love yourself." at the expense of the first commandment, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind." [Matthew 22:37-39]. If we look carefully at our church services we may be surprised to find out how human-centred our teaching and even our choruses are, even in churches that are evangelical. Too often our worship has become a time of sharing ourselves, and seeking our own blessing rather than experiencing and glorifying God. This is what we term ‘lifestyle preaching’.

2. Mission. Humanists see mission not as evangelism, but rather as helping meet human need. This covers humanitarian aid, social and political issues, but not usually the sending of missionaries for evangelism. The priority of the gospel is the great commission given by Jesus, "Go then to all people's everywhere and make them my disciples..." [Matthew 28:19]. Humanism may influence any church by cooling their zeal for evangelism, and causing few people to be won to the Lord by conversion.

What is the point of feeding the poor - & them going to hell? What is the point of giving medical aid - & them going to hell? What is the point of helping the suffering of mankind by any means - & them going to hell.

3. Spiritual growth. One of the reasons for the low spiritual state of many churches today is that some theological colleges and ministers teach more scepticism than faith! Places that should be centres for building people's faith and knowledge of God, sending out people who are full of the Holy Spirit and equipped with his gifts, instead undermine faith, and propagate doubts. Scholars who claim to be Christian and who are supported by Church finances, write books that deny the essential truths of the gospel, with doubtful evidence. Humanism can influence any church to be closed to the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, but to rely on practical means and human effort to express their Christian life. As a result there will be a lack of spiritual growth, spiritual gifts will not be exercised freely, and miracles of healing are not expected or acknowledged. The Word of God warns us of those who "will hold to the outward form of our religion, but reject its real power." [2 Timothy 3:5].

A must read or listen is from a sermon by
Paris Reidhead called Ten shekels & a shirt.

Full sermon :- PDF file

http://miraclerevival.com/PDF%20files/Paris_Reidhead.pdf 

Audio (MP3)

http://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/visit.php?lid=282

He says

“Would I be out of line if I were to talk to you for a little while about utilitarian religion and expedient Christianity? I would like to call attention to the fact that our day is a day which the ruling philosophy is pragmatism. You understand what I

mean by pragmatism. Pragmatism means if it works it’s true – if it succeeds it’s good. And the test of all practices, all principles, all truth, so called all teaching, is do they work? Do they work? Now – according to pragmatism, the greatest failures of the ages have been some of the men God has honored most.

For instance, whereas Noah was a mighty good ship builder, his main occupation wasn’t ship building, it was preaching. He was a terrible failure as a preacher. His wife and three children and their wives are all he had. Seven converts in 120 years you wouldn’t call particularly effective. Most mission boards would have asked the missionaries to withdraw long before this. I say as a ship builder he did quite well, but as a preacher, he was a failure. And then we come down across the years to another man by the name of Jeremiah. He was a mighty effective preacher, but ineffective as far as results were concerned. If you were to measure statistically how successful Jeremiah was, he would probably get a large cipher. For we find that he lost out with the people, he lost out with royalty, even the ministerial association voted against him and wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He had everything fail. The only one he seemed able to please was God……but otherwise he was a distinct failure. And then we come to another well known person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was a failure from judging all the standards. He never succeeded in organizing a church or denomination. He wasn’t able to build a school. He didn’t succeed in getting a mission board established. He never had a book printed. He never was able to get any of the various criteria or instruments that we find and are so useful; I’m not being sarcastic at all, they are useful. And our Lord preached for three years, healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people, and yet when it was all over there were 120….500 to whom he could have revealed Himself after His resurrection.

And the day that He was taken, one man said, "If all the others forsake you, I’m willing to die for you." He looked at this one and said, "Peter, you don’t know your own heart. You’re going to deny me three times before the cock crows this morning." So all men forsook Him and fled. By every standard of our generation or any generation, our Lord was a single failure.

The question comes then to this, what is the standard of success and by what are we going to judge our lives and our ministry? And the question that you are going to ask yourself, "Is God an end or is He a means?" And you have to decide very early in your Christian life whether you’re viewing God as an end or a means. Our generation is prepared to honor with single honor anyone that’s successful regardless of whether they settled this problem or not. As long as they can get things done or get the job done, or, "It’s working, isn’t it?", then our generation is prepared to say, "Well, you’ve got to reckon with this."

Now in order to understand the implications of that in the twentieth century, we’ve got to go back 150, 100 years at least, to a conflict that attacked Christianity. Just after the great revivals in America with Finney, the Spirit of God having been marvelously outpoured onto certain portions of our country, there came an open attack on our faith in Europe under the higher critics. Darwin had postulated his theory of evolution; certain philosophers had adapted it to their philosophies, and theologians had applied it to the Scripture. And so about 1850, you could mark the opening of a frontal attack upon the Word of God. Satan had always been insidiously attacking it. But now it was open season on the Book, open season on the Church, and Voltaire could declare that he would live to see the Bible become a relic and just have it placed only in museums; that it would be utterly destroyed by the arguments that he was so forcefully presenting against it.

Well, what was the effect of this? The philosophy of the day became humanism. And you could define humanism this way: Humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the end of all being is the happiness of man. The reason for existence is man’s happiness. Now according to humanism, salvation is simply a matter of getting all the happiness you can, out of life. If you’re influenced by someone like Nietzsche, who says that "The only true satisfaction in life is power and that the power is its own justification", and that after all, the world is a jungle. And it is therefore up to the man to be happy, to become powerful, and become powerful by any means he can use. For it is only in this position of ascendancy or as we saw in the worship of Molech that one can be happy. This would produce in due course, a Hitler who would take the philosophy of Nietzsche as his working, operating, principles and guide, and would say of his people, that, "We are destined to rule the world." Therefore any means that we can use to achieve this is our salvation.

John Dewey, then an American philosopher influencing education, was able to persuade the educators that there were no absolute standards. Children shouldn’t be brought to any particular standard, that the end of education was simply to allow the child to express himself and expand on what he is and find his happiness in being what he wants to be. So we had cultural lawlessness, when every man could do as seemed right in his own eyes and we had no God to rule over us. The Bible had been discounted and disallowed and disproved according to what they said. God had been dethroned – He didn’t exist. He had no personal relationship to individuals. Jesus Christ was either a myth or just a man – so they taught, and therefore the whole end of being was happiness.

Well now, the philosophy of the atmosphere is humanism; the chief end of being is the happiness of man.

There’s another group of people that have taken hum bridge with the liberals; this group are my people, the fundamentalists. They say, "We believe in the inspiration of the Bible! We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ! We believe in hell! We believe in heaven! We believe in heaven! We believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ!" But remember, the atmosphere is that of humanism. And humanism says the chief end of being is the happiness of man. Humanism is like a miasma out of a pit; it just permeates everyplace. Humanism is lie an infection, an epidemic – it just goes everywhere. So it wasn’t long until we had this, that the fundamentalists knew each other because they said, "We believe these things!" They were men for the most part that had met God. But you see, it wasn’t long until having said, "These are the things that establish us as fundamentalists!" The second generation said, "This is how we become a fundamentalist! Believe the inspiration of the Bible! Believe in the deity of Christ! Believe in His death, burial, and resurrection! And thereby become a fundamentalist!" And so it wasn’t long until it got to our generation, where the whole plan of salvation was to give intellectual assent to a few statements of doctrine. And a person was considered a Christian because he could say, "Ah hah" at four or five places that he was asked. If he knew where to say "Ah hah", someone would pat him on the back, shake his hand, smile broadly, and say, "Brother, you’re saved!" so it had gotten down to the place where salvation was nothing more than an assent to a scheme or a formula, and the end of this was that salvation was the happiness of man, because humanism has penetrated. The liberal says the end of religion is to make man happy while he’s alive, and the fundamentalist says the end of religion is to make man happy when he dies. But again! The end of all of the religion it was proclaimed was the happiness of man. And where as the liberal says, "By social change and political order we’re going to do away with funds, we’re going to do away with alcoholism and dope addiction and poverty. And we’re going to make Heaven on earth and make you happy while you’re alive!

Until we find it something like this: "Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven! You don’t want to go to that old, filthy, nasty, burning hell, when there is a beautiful heaven up there! Now come to Jesus so you can go to heaven!" And the appeal could be as much to selfishness, as a couple of men sitting in a coffee shop, deciding they are going to rob a bank to get something for nothing! There’s a way that you can give an invitation to sinners, that just sounds for all the world like a plot to take up a filling station proprietor’s Saturday night earnings without working for them. Humanism is, I believe, the most deadly and disastrous of all the

philosophical stenches that’s crept up through the grating over the pit of Hell. It has penetrated so much of our religion. And it is in utter and total contrast with Christianity! Unfortunately, it’s seldom seen. 

THIS IS THE BETRAYAL OF THE AGES! And it is the betrayal in which we live. And I don’t see how God can revive it! Until we come back to Christianity. As in direct and total contrast with the stenchful humanism that’s perpetrated in our generation in the name of Christ.

I’m afraid that it’s become so subtle that it goes everywhere. What is it? In essence it’s this! That this philosophical postulate that the end of all being is the happiness of man, has been sort of covered over with evangelical terms and Biblical doctrine until God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man, all the angels exist in the…..Everything is for the happiness of man! And I submit to you that this is Unchristian! Isn’t man happy? Didn’t God intend to make man happy? Yes. But as a by-product, and not a prime-product.

Now I ask you; What is the Philosophy of Missions? What is the Philosophy of Evangelism? What is the Philosophy of a Christian? If you’ll ask me why I went to Africa, I’ll tell you I went primarily to improve on the justice of God. I didn’t think it was right for anybody to go to Hell without a chance to be saved. So I went to

give poor sinners a chance to go to heaven. Now I haven’t put it in so many words, but if you’ll analyze what I just told you , do you know what it is? Humanism. That I was simply using the provisions of Jesus Christ as a means to improve upon human conditions of suffering and misery. And when I went to Africa, I discovered that they weren’t poor, ignorant, little heathen running around in the woods looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven. That they were Monsters of Iniquity! They were living in utter and total defiance of far more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed they had! They deserved Hell! Because they utterly refused to walk in the light of their conscious, and the light of the law written upon their heart, and the testimony of nature, and the truth they knew! And when I found that out I assure you I was so angry with God that on one occasion in prayer I told Him it was a mighty little thing He’d done – sending me out there to reach these people that were waiting to be told how to go to heaven. When I got there I found out they knew about heaven, and didn’t want to go there, and that they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it. I went out their motivated by humanism. I’d seen pictures of lepers, I’d seen pictures of ulcers, I’d seen pictures of native funerals, and I didn’t want my fellow human beings to suffer in Hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth. But it was there in Africa that God began to tear through the overlay of this humanism! And it was that day in my bedroom with the door locked that I wrestled with God. For here was I, coming to grips with the fact that the people I thought were ignorant and wanted to know how to go to heaven and were saying, "Someone come and teach us!", actually didn’t want to take time to talk with me or anybody else. They had no interest in the Bible and no interest in

Christ, and they love their sin and wanted to continue in it. And I was to that place, at that time, where I felt the whole thing was a sham and a mockery, and I had been sold a bill of goods! And I wanted to come home. There alone in my bedroom as I faced God honestly with what my heart felt, it seemed to me I heard Him say, "Yes, will not the Judge of all the earth do right? The heathen are lost, and they’re going to go to Hell, not because they haven’t heard the gospel. They’re going to go to Hell because they are sinners, who love their sin! And because they deserve Hell. But……I didn’t send you out there for them. I didn’t send you out there for their sakes." And I heard clearly as I’ve ever heard, though it wasn’t with physical voice but it was the echo of truth of the ages, finding it’s way into an open heart. I heard God say to my heart that day something like this, "I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen, I sent you to Africa for My Sake….They deserved Hell! But I love them! And I endured the agonies of Hell for them!!!! I didn’t send you out there for them! I SENT YOU OUT THERE FOR ME… Do I not deserve the reward of my suffering? Don’t I deserve those for who I died?" And it reversed it all!! And changed it all!! And righted it all!! And I wasn’t any longer working for Micah and ten shekels and a shirt! But I was serving a living God! I was not there for the sake of the heathen. I was there for the Savior that endured the agonies of Hell for me, who didn’t deserve it. But He deserved them, (the heathen). Because He died for them.

Do you see? Let me epitomize, let me summarize. Christianity says, "The end of all being is the glory of God." Humanism says, "The end of all being is the happiness of man." And one was born in Hell, the deification of man; and the other was born in heaven, the glorification of God^!”#*

Utilitarianism pays no heed to motive. An action or behaviour is judged not by its moral value but by its effectiveness in producing results.

Pragmatism

The slogan, "Truth is what works" captures the meaning of pragmatism. It is related to utilitarianism, but is used as a construct to arrive at what is true. The sole test of truth is whether it works. If the practical consequences are positive, it must be true. For example, if a particular program increases revenue and church attendance it must be right. Or, if a ministry is attested to supernaturally what they’re saying has to be true. In other words, the beneficial results authenticate the particular model, message, or ministry.

Pragmatism says, "By their results you shall know them". Absolutes are lost, truth becomes relative, and spiritual discernment goes out the window^.##

Consumerism

When the goals of a society are reduced to personal peace and affluence it becomes not only utilitarian and pragmatic, but also consumerist. The church is reduced to a middle-class club for religious consumers and is programmed, not to make them holy, but to keep them happy^.##

What are its effects on the church? It becomes corporatised, market driven, and streetwise. The presidency of the Spirit is usurped by human skill and politics. True men and women of the spirit are marginalised – "the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac" (Hos 9:7 NIV). Churches become goal-oriented, program-based, and politically correct. People are viewed as "tithing units" and are valued for their economic worth to the church ‘vision’. Pastors are driven in this cultural milieu by their own need of self-worth, empowered by boards, congregations and denominations to produce results, with their success primarily measured, to put it crudely, by "backsides on seats and bucks in the plate." Like the world, any program or model that delivers these kind of measurable results is legitimised and pursued with zeal^.##

"I am rich…and have need of nothing"

Worshiping the Gods of This Age

What a parallel to the Western church worshiping the gods of this age! We have bowed to the Baals of productivity and power. Seduced, we have pursued our plans for growth - to be the largest or fastest growing denomination - to build the largest buildings, the biggest congregations, and the most successful programs. Of course, we say, "It’s for the kingdom". But we are self-deceived. We come near to the Lord with our mouth, but our hearts are far from him. We hold our worship events, our conferences, celebrations, and services - but he says, "I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. ...Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps" (Amos 5:1,23).

God sees through the volume of words and music to the heart. We say "I am rich…and do not need a thing". But, Jesus says we are deceived, "##…you do not realise that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked" (Rev 3:17 NIV). 

The Sin of Pride

Behind idolatry is the sin of pride. The Lord declared through Amos, "I abhor the pride of Jacob and detest his fortresses; I will deliver up the city..." (6:8 NIV). Our fortresses of pride – of self-sufficiency and independence do not impress him. The Western church has come under a dealing of God because of its spirit of pride. Our cities have been delivered up. And more importantly, the city of God itself - the church, has been overrun. The wall has been breached and we have been occupied. Many have a vision for cityreaching - but how can we deliver the city when the city of God itself is captive?^##

Download Complete 7 parts Here