Repent, Change Our Religious Ways

By Glynn Adams

August 27, 2023

It is way past time we look at religion the way Jesus looked at religion.  Exactly what Jesus said in Matthew 23 describes the religious condition of the American Church today.  Jesus was talking to the religious leaders in Israel, the scribes and Pharisees, and we have become just like them in the American Church!!

“But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the Kingdom of Heaven from men, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel about on sea and land to make one convert; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.” (Matthew 23:13, 15)

The Pastors have shut off the Kingdom of Heaven message that Jesus preached and they do not preach the message of the Kingdom that Jesus preached.  Our religious leaders have made converts with their quick conversion methods and there is no evidence of a transformation or change in their lives.  Most believers know not their purpose in Christ nor are they taught to function and to walk as Jesus walked.  We are in a war good against evil and our pastors ignore it and can’t see the war!!!

The church in America does not live the life of Christ, we are religious and we think we are respectable and we are so deceived we do not realize we have lost respectability in this nation and among other nations.  We have become a mass media market to market our religious systems and not a movement to shake the world for Jesus Christ or to resist evil overtaking our nation and the nations in this world.   We display our false religion and entertainment ways on television all over the world while our nation is being destroyed.   We preach sermons to the nations that you can be free in Christ while at the same time our nation is a captured nation and in demonic bondage.

We are being lied to in our religious systems in America and this must stop immediately.  We must grow some backbone and confront these religious systems in accordance with Scripture.  In the Book of Revelation, Jesus addresses seven churches and told some what he would do if they did not change their ways.  “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, be zealous therefore, and repent. “(Revelation. 4:19)

It is time we scrape this false religion called Christianity in America.  Jesus did not come to earth to start a religion called Christianity.  He came to bring us a kingdom government and for His followers to influence this earth by doing the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven.   Where do we start?  In my last Article on NewsWithViews.com, I wrote about the Kingdom in detail.  We must forsake this false religion and embrace the Kingdom Message that Jesus preached while on this earth.  We have missed our total purpose for church.  We have allowed the Globalists-elites and their demonic hordes to influence our nation and turned it to evil while the passive institutional church allowed it to happen!!

Jesus said in Matthew 16:18b-19, “I will build My ekkelsia and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys to a religion called Christianity – No!!! – “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom and whatever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  We are going to have to restore the church in America to reflect the ways of the church Jesus built in the First Century.   We will restore the Kingdom, bind religion on this earth and loose the Kingdom of God on earth.

Again, I want to emphasize that most of our practices in the church have absolutely nothing to do with the New Testament.  You cannot find a Scripture that tells us to build a building.  Practically everything we do today as church goers came to us as happenstance.  Virtually all our major practices came to us within 50 years of the Emperor Constantine of Rome (AD124) or within 50 years of the beginning of the Reformation (AD 1517).   For years, no one has questioned our failing religious system.    After you read this article, I hope you have a crisis of conscience for you will know the pagan and non-biblical origins of all we do today in our church services!!!

But there is a greater tragedy here.  We take the New Testament and twist it, making the New Testament endorse what we do today.  This mindset – which is universal – is common to both layman and clergy………..this mindset has – and is – corrupting and destroying the church that Jesus wants to build!!!  We are left where many are questioning how our faith is practiced today because our pastors don’t seem to understand and have absolutely no idea how our faith should really be practiced!!

I want to briefly show you where the practices we do in a Sunday Services come from.  Space does not permit me to list all practices and to give all the details.  You can research to find out more.   First, the Order of Worship.  In most Protestant Churches it matters little if they are Baptist, Methodist, Reformed, Presbyterian, non-denominational, Charismatic or the “cutting edge” groups like Vineyard or Calvary Chapel – your Sunday morning service is virtually identical.

Some churches use contemporary songs while others use hymns.  Some raise their hands while others never get past their waist.  Some churches observe the Lord’s Supper weekly while others observe quarterly.  The Order of worship is written out in a bulletin while others the liturgy is unwritten, yet it is just as mechanical and predictable as it were set to print.

So where did the Protestant order of worship come from?   According to famed historian Will Durant, it came from the basic roots in the Catholic Mass which did not come from the New Testament but rather grew out of ancient Judaism and paganism.  In the sixth century, Gregory established the Mass and the high point of the Mass was the Eucharist, also known as Communion or Lord’s Supper.

In 1520, Luther launched a violent campaign against the Roman Mass.  In I523, Luther set forth his own revision of the Catholic Mass.  These revisions are the foundations of all Protestant worship.  Luther made preaching the centrality of the worship service rather than the Eucharist.  Luther’s belief in the centrality of preaching as the mark and climax of the worship service has stuck till this day.

In the end, Luther’s liturgy was nothing more than worked over Catholic Mass.  And it was riddled with the same glaring problems.  No Biblical basis and the congregants were still passive-spectators (except that they could now sing), and the entire liturgy was still directed by an ordained clergyman; the pastor had replaced the priest.  As one historian put it, “The pulpit is the throne of the Protestant pastor.”  In addition, the priesthood of the believer is totally ignored as no one is allowed to say anything during the service except what the pastor allows!!!  Peter says we are all priest but in services today, we must remain silent!!

Tragically, Luther did not realize that new wine cannot be repackaged into old wineskins.  AT NO TIME DID LUTHER OR ANY OF THE MAINSTREAM REFORMERS DEMONSTRATE A DESIRE TO RETURN TO THE PRACTICES OF THE FIRST CENTURY CHURCH THAT JESUS BUILT!!!

Other reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) who replaced the altar-table with something called “the communion table” where the bread and wine are administered.  He also had the elements delivered to the people in wooden trays.  Among other reformers were John Calvin, John Knox and Martin Bucer.

Because musical instruments were not explicitly mentioned in the NT, Calvin did away with all musical instruments.  All singing was “a capella.”  Probably the most damaging feature of Calvin’s liturgy is that he led most of the service from the pulpit.  The church has never recovered from this!!!   Calvin and Bucer is credited with requiring the people to adapt a somber attitude when entering the church.

Then, pastors moved from preaching “real life and culture” matters to preaching to the lost.  Pastors exclusively gear their Sunday Morning services and sermon to winning the lost and using the song service to soften up the hearts of the lost.  This all begin with the Frontier Revivalists a little more than a century ago and later on by such men as Whitefield and preacher D. L. Moody.

Most of what we do in church today has little to no biblical basis.  Now I want to go back to the way church was done in the First Century.  This is the church Jesus built with the Apostles and it is still relevant to us today.  The great Bible expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones once said, “We are living in an age hopelessly below the NT pattern – – content with a neat little religion.”  Today, the reason believers say they go to church is 1) corporate worship 2) evangelism 3) hearing sermons 4) fellowship.  As strange as it may seem, the NT never envisions any of these reasons as being the purpose of the church meeting.  The notion of a sermon-oriented, pulpit-pew styled church service was alien to the First Century believers.

If the purpose of the First Century church was not for corporate worship, evangelism, sermonizing, or fellowship, what was it for?  According to Scripture, the governing purpose of the church meeting is mutual edification.  1 Corinthians 14:26 puts it plainly:  “What is the outcome, then, brethren?  When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation.  Let all things be done for EDIFICATION.”

Hebrews 10:24-25 puts it even plainer: “And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”  This allowed for every member to participate in the building up of the Body. (Ephesians 4:16)

In like manner, each believer who possessed a word from the Lord had the liberty to supply it through his or her unique gift.  A typical first-century meeting may have looked like this:  The saints raised the roof with their singing.  The group as a whole leads the singing.  Each saint offers a prayer.  Some give their testimony or what revelation they received, all as led by the Spirit.  Every person has the freedom to participate in the meeting.

All the biblical examples about the church meeting solidly rest upon the Headship of Jesus Christ.  The NT church meeting was based upon the “round-table” principle.  That is every member was encouraged to function in the church meeting.  The institutional church is built on the “pulpit-pew” principle.  It divides the members into the active few and the passive many.  The common practice of a professional minister assuming all the important activities of the church, while the rest of the saints remain passive was utterly foreign to the early church.

These early church meetings reflected the fact that the Holy Spirit so governed the early church.  The meetings reflected a flexible spontaneity where the Spirit of God was in total control.  Jesus Christ was free to move through any member of His Body as He willed.  And since He was leading the meeting, everything was done in an orderly fashion.  Such a meeting is unthinkable in the institutional church of today.  Most pastors as well as church goers fear trusting the leadership of the Spirit to direct and shape their church services.  If we do not know the Spirit’s working in our own life, how can we know it when we gather together?

Nowhere in the NT do we find grounds for a church meeting that is dominated, directed, or facilitated by a human being.  Neither do we find a gathering that is rooted in a pulpit centrality that is focused upon one man.  The early church made real the NT doctrine of the priesthood of all believers that according to Peter, it is the teaching that all believers are spiritual priest called to offer up “spiritual sacrifices” unto the Lord.

It’s ironic that today we are being destroyed for a lack of knowledge and God says in Hosea 4:6, that because we have rejected His knowledge and His law, He will reject you from being His priest and will forget our children!!!  We grow into God’s fullness when the different parts of His Body minister Christ to one another. (Ephesians 3:16-19)  The early church certainly understood the Headship of Christ that He leads His Body in all things.

Today, our institutional churches and especially the mega churches are essentially a nursery for overgrown spiritual babes.  It habituates God’s people into being passive receivers.  It stunts their spiritual growth and development and keeps them in spiritual infancy.  But there is something even worse.  When the Holy Spirit leaves a disobedient pastor or church, they are so organized they can keep on having church and don’t even know the Spirit has left them!!  Watchman Nee, after touring America Churches, was asked what he thought about the American Church.  He replied, “I am amazed how much Americans can accomplish without God!!!!”

The First Century Church met out of necessity. They were in a hostile world and they needed the edification, encouragement, being built up in Christ, the prayers and fellowship.  The early believers in the First Century saw the church, all in one accord and every citizen of the Kingdom was working through the church to make disciples of Christ, to enlarge their King’s Kingdom, and to influence the culture, government, and nation to the ways of God.  As the prayer says, Thy Kingdom come by doing the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven.

They would leave the house  and go out to share the Kingdom Message to the people and to face death or imprisonment but the joy and encouragement they received from one another made them faithful and aggressive warriors for Jesus Christ.   The early Christians had but one message – Jesus Christ.  As they experienced Him during their week, they came together to share Him with one another (there is over 59 “one another” verses, love one another, comfort one another, submit to one another, etc.) and then out to share the Kingdom and make disciples.  Here is what you are going to have to consider.  It has been clearly shown that our religious system in America was put together by man   Do you want to rest your eternal destination on what man has made or the Scriptures and the true church Jesus built?

We have the whole concept about the church that Jesus built all wrong.  Today we see it as a building and a place to go on Sunday to lift up our religion.  We must repent, that is change our religious ways because Jesus Christ and His way is our only hope!!  God bless, I remain His warrior and watchman, Glynn Adams (Thanks for Pagan Christianity, Rethinking the Wineskin by Frank Viola, Ekkelsia by Joe Nisola, Revival or We Die by Michael Brown, and Transformation by Bob Roberts, Jr.)