An Empty Shell
8/7/14
Ever wonder why the Church is facing so many problems in
today’s world? There is a simple answer
to this question and if one accepts this answer it will rip their spirits apart
in pain and agony. The problem of this
answer is that many of the people involved within Church walls do not wish to
even address the question, and this evidence in itself is begin noticed by the
world yet ignored by the Church. It is
time that we turn our hearts back to God and to understand the path that the
Church is currently on and the change that is needed in order to resurrect our
mission within our hearts. We have
perfect examples that our physical eyes can see when it pertains to this
subject, yet we ignore the truth about our existence and our mission and press
to please the world. Repent, Church or
our hope in Christ will vanish just as our nations shall.
I have mentioned before that our town had a church fire
some years back. It occurred late one
night in one of our old churches, in which the building was a historical
landmark at the time. I remember
standing there on the street corner along with about two hundred other people
watching the firefighters do their job, and then listening to my father silently
pray for God’s Church and then testify that that was the first time that he had
witnessed a fire within that denomination’s walls in a long time. He was not referring to the building nor was
he referring to any portion around the denomination, but he was quoting one of
his sermons about the fire of God tempering our lives so that we may stand
strong when our enemy attacks our lives and how that holy fire has been lost
within our lives.
As the days and weeks past after the fire, many people
continued their observation of the building.
I remember that when I drove past that church during the day that there
would be someone standing around just gazing up at the burnt walls, talking to
someone else, taking pictures or some even crying. I figure that many of those people had some
type of history in that church building but I do know that there were those
that just came by to watch and wonder at the old building lying waste and empty
and without a true destination. At that
time the Church still had some punch left within her walls and she had not
really accepted many of the ways of the world, yet to my ignorance that opinion
was a superficial one from the Church for within her God was beginning to stir
up the embers to burn away the filth and vile worship that He smelled.
Look at how the people of the world look at the Church of
today. They stand outside of its walls
and stare with empty eyes and wonder how could something so small have such a
great affect upon someone’s life? They
open the doors of the church buildings now and sit in the pews with their
worldly ideas and beliefs and mock what God says about human life and sin. They are not ridiculed at all for their sins,
which they never should be but at the same time they are not told the truth
about those sins either and just allowed to feel free to object when a
challenge comes their way. What type of
power does the church have as those people stand outside and look up at the
walls of the Church and recognize nothing inside those walls. They are left just as empty and the contents
from within those walls so why would they even wish to be a part of the
Church’s truth, especially when the Church herself cannot even figure out the
truth any longer?
Recently I was scrolling through one of my social network
pages and I came across some pictures of some old church buildings that had
been built in ancient and medieval times in Ireland. They were beautiful pictures of some of the
landscape of Ireland and within this landscape were old stone churches that had
no insides to them at all and some of the buildings did not even have a
complete wall at all. While these stone
buildings cannot be expected to withstand centuries of wear and tear and
continue its complete standing but they were great to look at. It was obvious that these buildings had not
been used for quite some time and also no one had any intentions of reviving
them to their original status. Every so
often I would run across more pictures of similar buildings and would just be
amazed at their beauty and their emptiness.
Then one day God decided to show me something about those old buildings
and when He revealed it to me it literally broke my heart and I fell to the
ground and cried for a while. I usually
do not promote any social network in my articles but if you get the opportunity
to visit the FB page of “Pictures of Ireland” you can see for yourself the
gorgeous pictures of the old church buildings that I am referring here.
What God showed me was that He built His Church for a
reason and gave mankind the authority, through His Son, to proclaim His message
of repentance, redemption, restoration and His completeness for all of
humanity. We have overtaken His Church with our own individual and humanistic
motivations and have turned His Church and His authority into a bunch of
crumbling old stone buildings with no inner life residing within its
walls. God placed it within my heart to
look at those buildings in another light and ever since that day, when I see
one of those beautiful pictures of another crumbling church I cannot help but
think about the true condition of His Church today. Not just the buildings that house its members
but the Church herself and how those empty and desolate buildings represent us
as well. It breaks my heart to see our
current conditions being in this manner, but as I survey what the Church is
proclaiming I completely understand why God showed me this status.
A person could say that these old buildings are from a
time long past and that their emptiness means nothing to today’s world. And while that seems like a logical way of
looking at things let me direct your attention to the city of Colorado Springs,
Colorado and more specifically to a church building that was built in 1872 by
four brothers and was named Payne Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church and
it represented the first black church in Colorado Springs and it served as the
cornerstone for the black community of that town. It is now scheduled to become a brewery and
will be known as one of the largest breweries in Colorado. What happened to the life that flowed from
that place of worship and why does another type of flowing occupy it? Which kingdom wins in this situation and why
doesn’t it alarm us?
The metropolis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has been in
the news lately concerning its questionable financial and moral ethics within
the confines of its Archdiocese. Many
stories have been accredited to this organization and while many good deeds
have been provided for the inner city they have been totally overshadowed by the
immoral acts of priests and the laity within the infrastructure. One cannot ignore the obscenity that has
transgressed the walls of those buildings nor can one accept the policy of
acceptance and hiding these acts for decades.
Now some of these beautiful buildings are being lay empty because of the
declining numbers of followers and worshipers that wish to attend the provided
services. I personally am not Catholic
but I do not see this as a Catholic problem, I see it as a Church problem whose
spiritual eyes have been turned away from God’s truth. Instead of the public and secular media
having the free for all to annihilate this Archdiocese for only the bad things,
why haven’t we originally focused upon the good towards people which would have
kept us from this type of publicity in the first place? Once again the question of which kingdom wins
in this situation and begs to be answered and understood.
Just last week I read that a Diocese in New England is
closing some of its church buildings for good.
Some of the people are distraught because they have attending worship
services in these buildings for decades and now have to change churches because
of the declining numbers of people.
Along with the reduced number of people comes reduced finances and once
a proud Diocese can hardly afford to keep all of its doors open much
longer. Some of these buildings are now
up for sale and will be sold to the person or group that wishes to do whatever
they please with the building. It is
hard for me to believe that God takes this situation lightly and will no doubt
remind us of our actions in the near future.
Is it true that our declining attendance in church is due to the fact
that we are increasingly becoming a nation that does not believe in God? With the population of this country still
increasing it looks like there is no other explanation that can be legitimately
offered for this reason. Really? The richest country ever to grace the planet
does not care enough to find it necessary to fulfill enough of its mission to
keep its physical doors open? Which
kingdom is winning?
The question that remains is this: do we recognize that
the pictures of the abandoned old stone walls of these churches resemble our
lives as the current church today? This
is one of the more sickening questions that we even have to address about
ourselves? It is the world that we are
supposed to recognize being in this condition, not the Church. The next question that follows is this: will
the Church ever understand that we are in this condition or have we gone too
far down the worldly road to recognize this truth? These are tough questions but they are ones
that need to be asked and addressed for if we do not then there is no reason
why we should keep any church door open for the mission of the heart is
dead.
What is the difference of how these buildings came to
be? Nothing! All stand empty and void of the mission that
they were commissioned to complete.
Compare this with our lives for it is our rear ends that occupy these
seats and pews. If we throw away all of
the denominational garbage and focus on the true meaning of the Church then we
can grasp this concept of why God chose these pictures to get His point across
to His people. These decrepit old
buildings is a direct reflection of what truly lies within our walls, not only
in the church buildings themselves but also within our hearts, and together
these two settings paint a valid portrait of what the Church is like when it is
gazed upon by an on looking world. This
tears me up inside to think that the Church is in this shape. And knowing that this is how God is beginning
to see this progressive conditioning as becoming our norm goes beyond words. How can we continue to crank out priests and
ministers who have no desire to keep the Word of God hidden within their hearts
so that they can provide the full truth with a clear conscious? What is the difference from abusing ministers
versus us allowing our hearts to accept the world’s standards within our
churches? Nothing!! All of these questions and the true answers
reflect a sick and dying Church that needs to repent and to allow God to
restore herself back to life again.
I have written about the completeness of God in some of
my past articles but it is a topic that I must bring up again because it is
very important that we understand how God’s completeness works. Yes the country that we live in has never
been bigger and richer, nor has each individual country had more opportunities
to provide for their inhabitants. Yes,
poverty and illness still riddle the world and there are still governments that
do not allow their citizens to enjoy the freedoms that others reside in, but
the potential is there and we still do not take the true measures to secure
those benefits for people. God
understands this and while we have been generous with our wealth to those who
agree with our philosophy we have held back those spiritual blessings and
physical gifts based solely upon our selfish creeds.
God began His investments in humans so that everyone
could experience His blessings. Even
those who did not believe in Him He sent His messengers to be a witness to
their societies and while some believed some did not and God allowed it to
occur. God also understood that those
who He called His own would reject Him and this too He allowed due to free will
and choice. But in every instance God at
one point had to reel in the human and to once again show the human who was in
control. It was up to the human to
understand this action from God and to understand that the ways of the human
are not the ways of God and that in order to live a proper life we need to keep
the ways of God.
The Bible also mentions an entire desolate land mass of
dry bones which basically reiterates the old stone buildings in the pictures
that I saw. Those buildings at one time
represented life and so did those bones that were just lying around in the
ground. Don’t you think that it is time
to restore life back into these church walls and into the walls of our
hearts? There is nothing wrong with
accepting sinners into the church, that is what we are supposed to do but if we
allow them to sit there and not be told the truth, our walls have been knocked
down a little bit more and our mission stalled even further. It is time for us to clean the Church and to
restore the holy cleanliness one again so that we can apply the Word of God to
each person who seeks it and to stand up strong against the attacks that our
enemy brings. God is faithful and just
to hear our prayers and He is also just to restore us from our faults.
DLB
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