judgmental Archives — truthmission.net

Antichrist

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. 1 John 4:1-3 (NIV)

2020 has been a rough year for everybody so far, but especially for Truthseekers. The media has degenerated from fake news to absolute lunacy. A pandemic, or at least the fear of one, has gripped the world, but the scientists can’t seem to get their stories straight. Worst of all, opportunists of the lowest caliber have used fear and racial prejudice to turn us against each other.

Why do I say that one is worst of all? Because if we create enemies for ourselves along the lines of racial differences, we will forget that we have a common enemy. Which is exactly what our real enemy wants.

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So, what does John mean when he talks about “testing the spirits?” Some people get a little froke out by this, but it’s not all that weird.

Three years ago, we covered this extensively in the Overcoming the World series. In Part 8, we discussed that when a thought “pops into your head,” it is likely a message from God if it is in line with scripture, illuminates the solution to a problem and leads to a good result for all concerned. If this out-of-the-blue thought does not meet those criteria, it did not come from God. So where did it come from?

The passage above makes clear that deceptive messages are from the spirit of the antichrist. Now this is the spirit of antichrist with a lower-case A, not the big baddie of Revelation (more on that later). John uses this term literally to mean a spirit that opposes Jesus. You can see from this passage that this is the spirit that controls false prophets.

However, the wording above appears at first to be too simplistic. Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that doesn’t, isn’t. If discerning the spirits were that easy, then why would we need to test them?

Well, have you seen what’s going on in the Church lately? It mirrors what’s going on in our country. Just as America’s greatest enemy has proven to be from within, so it is with the Church. Atheists are the least of our problems, annoying though they may be. They are a mosquito bite compared to the cancer that is eating away at the Body of Christ from within.

In the Flesh

To understand what it truly means to test the spirits, it is important to know that John snuck a coded message into verse 2 above. “Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” Pretty much every church identifying as Christian acknowledges that Jesus was an actual human born into this world. Yet sharp division remains on what the Church’s role in the world ought to be. So, there must be something more to it than that.

There is. It’s hiding in plain sight at the beginning of John’s Gospel:

In the beginning [before all time] was the Word (Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself.

And the Word (Christ) became flesh, and lived among us; and we [actually] saw His glory, glory as belongs to the [One and] only begotten Son of the Father, [the Son who is truly unique, the only One of His kind, who is] full of grace and truth (absolutely free of deception). John 1:1, 14 (AMP)

Jesus is the Word of God in human form. He is one with God Himself, which means that the Word is one with God Himself. Jesus is absolutely free of deception, which means the Word is absolutely free of deception.

Are you seeing where I’m going with this? Remember, the first criteria to judge whether a message is from God is if it lines up with scripture, logos, THE WORD, God Himself. Therefore, anyone who claims to speak on behalf of God but says something different than what God has already said—this is the spirit of the antichrist at work.

And we let it right in the front door. Because we didn’t want to be “judgmental.”

God’s righteous judgment

Wake up Truthseekers! Put on the armor of God and report for duty. John has already told us what comes next:

Next I saw heaven opened, and there before me was a white horse. Sitting on it was the one called Faithful and True, and it is in righteousness that he passes judgment and goes to battle. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and on his head were many royal crowns. And he had a name written which no one knew but himself. He was wearing a robe that had been soaked in blood, and the name by which he is called is, “THE WORD OF GOD.” The armies of heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. And out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down nations — “He will rule them with a staff of iron.” It is he who treads the winepress from which flows the wine of the furious rage of Adonai, God of heaven’s armies. And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written:

KING OF KINGS

AND

LORD OF LORDS.

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and he cried out in a loud voice to all the birds that fly about in mid-heaven, “Come, gather together for the great feast God is giving, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of generals, the flesh of important men, the flesh of horses and their riders and the flesh of all kinds of people, free and slave, small and great!” I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to do battle with the rider of the horse and his army. But the beast was taken captive, and with it the false prophet who, in its presence, had done the miracles which he had used to deceive those who had received the mark of the beast and those who had worshipped his image. The beast and the false prophet were both thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword that goes out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. Revelation 19:11-21 (CJB)

Can you see now why the spirit of antichrist is so intent on dividing us in terms of race? Because the devil knows well that when The Word Made Flesh returns, there will only be two kinds of people. The Army of Heaven, and Bird Food.

Now, I promised that I would get back to the Capital-A Antichrist.

What I did not promise was to reveal who I think it might be, because that is pointless speculation. Just as trying to figure out when Jesus is going to return is a distraction, trying to make news headlines line up with Biblical prophecy is also disruptive to the work we are supposed to be doing.

Trust God and His Word this much—when the Antichrist reveals himself, if you’re still here to see it, you’ll know.

Reasonable: Part 3–What is Good

Love must be honest and true. Hate what is evil. Hold on to what is good. (Romans 12:9 NIRV)

Back in Part 2, we discussed how God gives various spiritual gifts to individuals, so that we can build up the Church, with each member doing its part, just like the parts of our body.

So what does it look like when the Church is functioning this way? It’s a lot more detailed than making sure the Wednesday night potluck goes off without a hitch!

First, we must remember that these are SPIRITUAL gifts, which means that there must have been a spiritual transformation that has taken place already. The greatest evidence of this is love.

Not feelings, but actions. There is no room in the body of Christ for hypocrisy or two-faced gossiping. We have to get this part right before we can move on with the rest of verse 9.

Hate what is evil

If this sounds familiar, it is because we covered this verse thoroughly in the Necessity of Being Intolerant series.

I feel like I should reiterate, though, that the Bible clearly states to hate WHAT is evil, not WHO. There are still too many people misinterpreting this verse to justify judgmentalism. We are not talking about hating people here. We are talking about behaviors and habits.

For more details regarding “what is evil,” I would encourage you to review the Necessity of Being Intolerant series, especially part 1. But for now, I want to focus on the rest of Romans 12:9.

Hold on to What is Good

Verses 10-12 contain several examples of what is good, the things that we should hold on to. Let’s break this down verse by verse.

10 Love one another deeply. Honor others more than yourselves.

What is good in this verse is humility. C.S. Lewis once said that humility is not so much about thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. When the members of the Church body are focused where they should be, they don’t just use “brother” and “sister” as honorary titles, but truly do treat everyone else in the Church as family.

Remember, false humility makes a show of itself to build up the person showing it, but real humility builds up others, and is not self-seeking.

11 Stay excited about your faith as you serve the Lord.

When you know your calling, your work should be a joy, not a grind. God’s part is to prepare the work for us and equip us to do it. Our part is to have a zeal to meet God where He’s already working and join Him in that work.

12 When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful.

Hope does not mean the kind of hope that is desperation mixed with doubt. This is a joyful expectation. You’re not wishing that something might happen; you’re eagerly awaiting something good that you are certain is coming.

Yet while we are hoping and waiting, sometimes we are suffering. When I first wrote this on 12/12/2020, many were suffering from the financial fallout of COVID-19. Many still are today.

Regardless of our gifts, one of the fruits of the Spirit that all believers receive is patience. Some older English translations actually use the word “longsuffering.” If we have joyful hope that what is good is on the way, this helps us to endure what is not so good.

And we endure these things by being faithful in prayer. No matter how grim our circumstances get, we always have the ability to exercise this discipline. God can handle our anger and our disappointment, but He also wants us to remember that what is good comes from Him, and always at exactly the right time.

(For more of what is good, come back for Part 4—The Best of Your Ability)

DN=: Part 8–Hate Speech

Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8 CEB)

All of humanity has a common enemy—Satan, the accuser. The enemy’s primary goal has always been our destruction, but he has been busy developing some new tactics.

First to review, you’ll remember that in Part 3, we identified “righteousness” as being a right standing with God the Father, which is made possible only through a trusting relationship with His Son, Jesus. Those with whom the enemy succeeds in denying this opportunity for righteousness will nevertheless still crave it.

However, since they have allowed themselves to be cut off from God’s saving grace, they are only able to manufacture a false perception of righteousness. In their desperate attempt to elevate themselves in their own minds, they find themselves compelled to disparage others in order to make that possible.

The enemy facilitates this process by helping those under his influence categorize people into groups and label them. Then he directs his unwitting followers to abuse the people in those groups by treating them unequally and criticizing them based on their differences.

Over time, these blanket condemnations become a habit, and hatred develops. If left unchecked by correction, it is possible for this hatred to swell into an epidemic of ignorant bigotry. This bigotry will then be projected toward the groups of people to whom they are trying to maintain their sense of superiority.

Combating this is a struggle we all share. And it is indeed a daily struggle. Seeing other people as individual human beings, instead of part of a labeled subset of humanity, requires a generous helping of both humility and critical thinking.

Knowing this, our enemy imparts his unwary abettors with a liberal dose of arrogance, which suppresses all traces of humility and artificially inflates their perception of their own intellect, eliminating the prospect of any critical thought taking place.

This is where the enemy plays to his greatest strength. He advises his impressionable followers, “If you can’t convince ‘em, accuse ‘em!”

And this is how it plays out.

When one of these people attempts to engage a Truthseeker in debate, he quickly discovers the futility of this venture, since the primary objective for Truthseekers is to end arguments, not win them. Since the arguer finds that he cannot claim the logical high ground, he will then attempt to lower the ground beneath his opponent by attacking his character.

But here is the twist! Since unwarranted character assassination would make him guilty of judgmentalism, he must first deflect his own guilt by accusing the Truthseeker of being judgmental himself, thereby forcing him into a defensive position. With any luck, the Truthseeker will take the bait, lower himself into the argument, and thus become that which he has already been accused of being.

On the other hand, a mature Truthseeker will not take the bait, but will simply hold fast to the Truth, and not change course.

When the arguer sees that his attempts at both logic and character assassination have failed, he plays the only card left in his deck by attacking Truth itself.

He does this by labeling the Truth “hate speech.”

DEFENSE OF TRUTH DN= HATE SPEECH

The irony of this concept of “hate speech” is that the people most commonly accused of hate speech are in actuality the ones most commonly on the receiving end of it.

For centuries upon centuries, Christians have put their trust in the eternal God, in his indisputable and unchanging Word in which He is revealed, and in His universal promises and plan for all of mankind. In a world where people follow after every wind of change, no matter how ludicrous, we build our lives on the solid rock of eternal unchanging Truth, passing it down from generation to generation.

But instead of a fixed and eternal rock, our faith is now portrayed by our degenerate culture as an ignorant and hateful tradition. We are even demonized for faithfully carrying out our most important responsibility as parents, the passing on of our faith to future generations, with the charge of “indoctrinating” our own children!

If parents should not be the ones most responsible for helping to frame the basic worldview and shaping the character of their own children, then who should? The enemy has some ideas about that.

(And you’ll hear all about them if you come back for Part 9—Brainwashing.)

DN=: Part 6–Judgmental

Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.

You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!

If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you’re from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won’t give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.

If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.

Romans 2: 1-13 The Message

Sorry for the long quote there, but I wanted to point out two phrases in the very same passage: “Judgmental criticism” and “righteous judgment.” Both phrases have forms of the word “judge” in them, but they are very different.

It should be clear from the context that righteous judgment belongs to God alone, for God alone is righteous by nature. Because of His unattainable righteousness and holiness, He alone has the authority to judge in the sense of meting out justice for our sin.

As we have talked about in Part 3, righteous DN= self-righteous. The only way that a person could attempt to judge another’s destiny would be from a position of self-righteousness.

But as we have also discussed, self-righteousness is unrighteousness. How then can the unrighteous judge anyone? Indeed, they have already been judged themselves, not only for the sins they themselves have committed, but by the greater sin of attempting to push God out of the Judgment Seat which is rightfully His.

This is the difference between judgment and being judgmental—it’s all about who is passing the judgment. God is qualified and has the authority to judge sin. We aren’t, and we don’t.

EXERCISING JUDGMENT DN= BEING JUDGMENTAL

Although self-righteous, judgmental criticism is a problem for all people, the distinction between God’s judgment and man’s judgmentalism is relatively clear.

What is not as clear as it needs to be, however, is the difference between judgmentalism and exercising sound judgment.

My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion. Proverbs 3:21 NIV

One of the complications of the English language is words with multiple meanings. “Judgment” is one of those.

God will sit in judgment of us all; therefore, we should not stand in judgment of one another. Yet we are to preserve sound judgment? How does that work?

It’s really not that difficult when you stop to think about it. If your judgment is toward a person and stems from motives of criticism and self-righteousness, then you are being judgmental. This is the bad one.

However, if your judgment is focused toward an action or situation, and is based upon wisdom, common sense or sound reasoning, then this is the good kind.

Where the problems arise, is when a spirit of offense prevents the person being judged from distinguishing between the two.

Good judgment vs. bad judgment

If someone attempts to shame you for your sin, make you feel like a bad person, tells you you’re going to Hell, calls you a name, places a group label on you, or blames you for something for which you are not directly responsible because of your association with that group, then that person is being judgmental, and your offense is justified.

If, however, the other person is attempting to help you correct your behavior respectfully, sharing from his or her own experience a bad result from their having done something similar, calling you by your own name, looking you in the eye, emphasizing the solution instead of the problem, but most importantly, is focusing on the behavior without attempting to analyze your motives or your character. . .then you need to work past the emotional reaction of offense and listen to what you are being told.

Chances are this person knows something you don’t. And they are exercising sound judgment, without being judgmental, by telling you that.

(Coming up next, STORYTIME! Going to do something a little different for Part 7–Hatred.)