CORRUPTION

CORRUPTION

By Rick Mathes

1 Corinthians 1:10 Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment.

Corruptions on every front occur in the world and the church before our very eyes and we let them happen; everyone, whether in politics or in the pulpit is afraid to speak the truth because truth has been corrupted beyond recognition.

In either circle it begins by following humanist leaders. We call them liberals but the fact remains that they are conservatives with masks on. They are not just “Joe six-packs” in taverns or legislators in government; they are also graduates of seminaries.

They favor earthly, carnal, self-centered wisdom no matter how it’s packaged or marketed. I live in the real world but my heart is in the heavenlies. I see and you do too the nonsense that is offered as good-sense.

You can’t help but flounder in the flesh of relativism. It’s like throwing darts at a moving and changing target. There is no objective bull’s eye there is only bull s—t.

With an ever changing truth we give little or no thought for future judgment because what is there to judge? When there is no right there is no wrong and the lie becomes the truth. The Word of God warned us and the fulfillment is upon us. Why fear a judge of no laws or punishment. Muslims call it “kismet.”

The spiritual leaders flatter themselves by the attendance and wealth of their churches. All of hell has put its weight on their eyes to look outward instead of upward.

When you aren’t eye to eye with Jesus you are well on your way to sink to the depths of Satan’s evil abyss of fire. Faithfulness to Christ is measured by three words: repent, submit and obey If you will do these corruption wherever you feet are planted will flee.

Otherwise you are fragmenting the Body of Christ. You have corrupted to the point where you are not the solution, you are the problem. Guess what happens when you spit into the sky; it falls back on you.

CARNALITY

CARNALITY

By Rick Mathes

Romans 6:23 (NASB77) 23  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A carnal Christian is one who claims allegiance to heaven but lives only for everything on earth. The temporal toys are worth more than the eternal blessings later. Carnal Christians are just demons with a mask on. The devil has learned that to beat the church to death you must o it from the inside with a pillow instead of outside with a sledge hammer

A church with no real spiritual leaders is defeated before it has ever begun You would shudder if I told you of the experiences I have had with demonic churches over the years. I was even paid to get a Bishop and two Priests a hooker for the week-end on time I now the darkside of Satan’s synagogue well because I worshipped there for 25 years. Then as a minister for over 25 years I saw from the inside that all I saw on the outside was just a prelude to an orchestration of demons behind protestant altars.

Evil associations and personal material gain are rampant to those that gather under the cross to achieve worldly success. Why even the prostitutes in South America gather to pray to the Virgin Mary for a profitable evening!

The shallowness of this tragedy is the lack of a solid gospel message. The carnal church is built around doing instead of done All these empty lives are reinforcing each other with trivial distractions, plays, music, videos and laser shows to attract those with no spiritual insight to return next Sunday for some more entertainment, with an offering of course.

Endless hours are spent on the business plan and the sermon soon becomes a brief after thought. There is no love of God but there is an all-encompassing love of the world to build bigger and better buildings: for denominations to outdo each other in worldly attractions instead of the exercise of spiritual gifts. If you call yourself a Christian and you love this world more than the next, the love of the Father is not in you. You are a carnal, demonic moron.

DEED OF DAWN

DEEDS OF DAWN

By Rick Mathes

Romans 13:12 (NASB77) 12   The night is almost gone, and the day is at hand. Let us therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light

The darkness of days is rapidly being overcome by the dawning of our Lord’s glory and His coming kingdom. The long wait is almost over and the wait is certainly worth it. Our King is returning and the deeds of darkness will soon be exposed in the light of His searching righteousness.

All of our deeds are like weeds that can

Grow into flowers or grow into weeds.

The works of darkness can always be seen in the night because that’s where evil lives and grows. Mutant beings that have morphed into the gargoyle image and likeness of Lucifer and his fallen angels. Nothing pleases the former “morning star” more than for you to go about his damaging works and calling him your lord: certain hell!

All you’re present and former lusts rise up for battle and then comes the dawn and their flight to our Lord’s glory. His will is Divine in His elect and the gates of hell cannot prevail. The devil will drag your memory back to the sewer of every sordid affair you ever had and remind you of all the ugly details and sickening consequences.

Lying and anger are the right and left hand punches the devil uses to drive away godly saints that want to turn your hands from fist to hands up in worship. If only you will surrender to truth the peace of God will follow you all the days of your life. The deeds of evil fade away as the dawn and it’s light breaks over the horizon of salvation.

As the sun rises, the light of the Son blots it out! Such is the Glory of the risen King. All filthiness flees and the darkness cannot overcome the Shekinah Glory of His resurrection. The remnant of  the night yielding to the day is the grey of malice

You might not want to admit it but from time to time you secretly approve bad things happening to people you are not fond of. All this means is that you are not seeing them with our Lord’s eyes. If you were, you would grieve their fallen condition and not applaud their misfortune. Stay fast and continue from night to day and the bring morning star of Jesus will shine on in your life.

DECEIT

DECEIT

By Rick Mathes

Acts 13:10 and said, “You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?

The devil keeps his prey in sight and on friendly terms until the time is right to strike and make him a child of Satan. Jesus said, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” Satan is the wrong way, a father of lies and an executioner of your soul. When you sin you are declaring, “Satan is my Lord.” Let that sink in a minute.

The sewer of truth is deceit and we all have a place for it in our hearts that we are not willing to give up. It’s this resistance to repentance that hinders knowledge. Didn’t the Word warn, “My people perish for lack of knowledge?” The lies you choose to nurture keeps you from God. Oh how He wants to hold you in His arms and love you but the slime of deceit, dripping from your soul makes God gag.

It’s buying the lies Satan throws at us that leads to pride. We have success with a little lie; get more things so we escalate our lies and deceit to get a bigger slice of the world’s toys and trinkets. We become like a decorated Christmas tree blinking and beautiful. But when the decorations are put away we notice that the tree is dead. It was all a false façade with no living substance to sustain it.

Everything contrary to truth is a fraud. When Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Jesus didn’t waste is breath explaining it to him because all Pilate was doing was concealing that hate that throbbed through his heart. Most inquirers are only conceiving evil plans and distracting truth by semi-truth twisting or circular reasoning. It’s all relative they claim because they don’t want the light to shine on their darkness.

Lies and deceit can only encourage sin. They have no other motive but to slash that whip on the Lord’s back one more time. The dirty-duo grinds that crown of thorns into His head again and again. They thrust the sword of death into His heart again and again all because you have polluted your souls with unconfessed sin.

In the last analysis your heart hardens I was shocked to learn I had four hardened arteries. Within two days I was on the operating table and my physical life was extended. But a hardened heart has no cure but to repent, submit and obey Him. Otherwise you are going to burn baby burn!

CHURCH CORRUPTIONS

CHURCH CORRUPTIONS

By Rick Mathes

1 Corinthians 1:2 (NASB77) 2  to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:

Every denomination has a “Church of Corinth” that has drifted in its leadership and lost its first love and focus. There are a few basic corruptions that know no religious distinctive. When Satan gets his nose into your church fellowship, his body is soon to follow.

Following humn leaders, that are humanists, only provides you with a veneer of a carnal communityof self-gratification. The devil knows that to disrupt the church he needs access to the pulpit he is often relegated to a leadership position because of our shamefuil apathy.

When earthly wisdom is favored, spiritual absolutes are compromised and wateed down to relative absurdities. A twelve inch ruler is 12 inches long and not 11 or 13 inches long depending on your personal law or rule of measurement. The same applies to salvation. Jesus is the ony way and you can’t be part saved by believing otherwise.

Like a fish out of water, the Word of God. You are signing hour own death warrant or rather certificate of dying in flames continuing action. Without the “Rock that don’t role,” your faith will only have the substance and constancy of cotton candy. It will tase good but there is nothing thee.

There’s no sense o flattering yourself with self-gratifying deeds, prayers or rituals. When you are your own god, you will have to deal with your own hell all by yourself! Pride of self dropped Lucifer from the highest plateaus in glory down the rungs to the dungeon of glow-torch flames from hell.

The culprit is lack of discipline. You are sovereign over you. The sin you have you want becaue if you didn’t want it more than you do want it, you wouldn’t have it! It’s that simple. Love the Lord more than the sin.

All the above shaken up and spread out is a fragmenting of the Body of Christ. When the head is sick the whole boy suffers. When lall yur body parrs are bruised, battered and broken, they can no longer work together in harmony. The corruption of your church has polited you too. Don’t be a Corinthian Church that even 50 years after Paul wrote the third letter to them, things got worse because of the younger members disrespecting the elders.

BY YOUR DEEDS

BY YOUR DEEDS

By Rick Mathes

Acts 26:20 but kept declaring both to those of Damascus first, and also at Jerusalem and then throughout all the region of Judea, and even to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds appropriate to repentance.

Pray this: “Father God, by your grace I have been saved; Brother Jesus, by your stripes I have been healed: Holy Spirit, you know the mind of the Father and the heart of the Son, What does God want me to do?”

For openers, it is an answer to prayer when the Holy Spirit convicts you of the sin you have been hiding in that dark closet in your soul. Our deepest desire should be to be wholly holy. Any compromise is spiritual prostitution. A little lie with the truth or a little truth in the lie is deceitful beyond compare: neither integrity nor character. In either case the simple law of non-contradiction occurs: A cannot be non A. Sin is spiritual cancer and it must be removed or you will die and eternal death while still on your feet.

The Lord sees us in ways our natural eyes are unable to. If you could see my heart as the Lord sees it, you would run from me and I would be terrified to see yours. We really are sin-machines and our deeds show it. It is only in His shed blood that we receive a full pardon. When Father God looks upon us all He sees is His Son interceding for us. We truly are forgiven and our sins forgotten.

This is how it works; 1) You approach the Cross and as Jesus for forgiveness, 2) He will extend His blessing, 3) You receive the forgiveness (no guilt) and 4) You become a forgiver. The tough one is to walk away from guilt and become a virgin all over again. Flush your toilet and move on.

The vital life is exhibited by the works we produce. I know it’s by grace we are saved not by works but as James taught, if there aren’t any works there is good cause to question the health of this barren tree with no fruit. As the verse clearly teaches, we must repent, turn to God and prove that transaction by deeds. I wouldn’t trust it any other way.

God inhabits His praises like the fragrance of a rose. He also activates good works like a kaleidoscope of good deeds. I would rather see the sermon over hearing it, wouldn’t you? If you aren’t walking your talk, your talking is moot. It’s a waste of oxygen. The Comforter will bring you comfort in the highest degree.

The proof of repentance is a gift of the Holy Spirit. He is to infuse Christ and His efforts into you. You cannot do it without the Holy Spirit and it won’t get done without you. Your hands pick up the baton of continued blessing. Don’t drop it: press on!

CONQUERERS

CONQUERERS

By Rick Mathes

Romans 8:37 (NASB77) 37  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

C.H. Spurgeon: Jesus is the representative man for His people. The head has triumphed and the members share in the victory. While a man’s head is above the water you cannot drown his body.

All the hope of ministry lies in the

Spirit of God operating on the spirits of men.

Jess disciples in His absence. The Holy Spirit then is all the Christ we need until His return. We pay so little attention to the Spirit of God that maybe now, in this devotional, we can give credit where credit is due.

Can you even imagine they removed the head of a trained monkey and attached it to a headless body of another monkey and it retained all its knowledge and training! A surgeon removed the heart from a patient and put it into a pan and then returned and put the silent heart into the man again and it began to throb with life. Where is life if all our body parts can be replaced? In Christ!

This inner vitality from Him makes us “able not to sin.” We have put out the flames of hell and have been resurrected from the dead. There was a time we walked around looking for a place to be buried but we were cowards to take our life. Now we cherish the Lord because His is the way, the truth and the life. We can defeat the most evil demons of hell and not even fear Lucifer himself because we win!

Sin cannot have dominance over us any more than darkness can put out light. All of hell, all sin, all demons and Lucifer himself is nothing more than an itch on God’s nose! So why are you surrendering to the losers?

Finally, we have a Commander-in-Chief that leads us to certain victory. We join Him as family, His family and full heirs to His estate. It is this eternal Glory in His Kingdom that we pledge our life, liberty and fortunes.

It all begins at the beginning: we are more than conquerors because we put on the full armor of God and fight our battles on our knees in prayer. Imagine that! We have His ear, His full attention anytime we need Him. What more assurance do we need that the battle is ours?

STREET SMART

STREET SMART

By Rick Mathes

1 John 2:15-17 (NASB77) 15 Do not love the world, nor the things in the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life,is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God abides forever.

Fools go to fools and ask foolish questions of fools who give foolish answers for the fools to pass on to other fools. This is how the kingdom of Satan is preserved. You see it everywhere. Losers hang out with losers and continue the descent of spiraling loses. The rolling stone does truly gather the moss of earth’s excrement.

Much of this in enticed by Satan’s deceptions and temptations. The unaware and ignorant masses follow the hand that feeds them, the “feel good” goodies. One of my false shepherds from the abyss we called the “Candy Man” had all a blackened heart could desire: nails in the coffin of flames.

Satan has the same MO (method of operation) he has always had from the beginning. He was most successful with Adam and Eve, he failed miserably with Jesus in the desert and he had me fooled and in his clutches for 25 years.The first thing he does is to capture the focus of your eyes on the sin he knows you are most likely to weaken to. The he gives you just enough taste to create an insatiable appetite for more. Then he finishes you off with being so ashamed that you did the deed that you are too prideful to make it known much less to repent of it.

The eyes are the “window to the soul”. The look isn’t the sin the lingering is. As you fix your gaze, you deepen your addictive sensitivities and your knees buckle to face Christ.

Was Jesus able to sin? Yes! But in the Spirit, He was able to not sin as you are when you are “born again” and baptized in the Trinity of God.

When you are “street smart” you have an uncanny ability to sense and see the trouble brewing and headed your way. Capture that “Kodak moment” and see the punch coming, then counter-punch with the Sword: the Word of God. “It is written, it is written, it is written!”

It’s your perseverance in being adept at knowing Satan’s turf that will alert you to the survival skills you need to survive the temptations of the evil one. Just consider the whole issue a testing from the Lord and press on in the most dreadful of situations.

When you walk by, Satan better tremble because your “Home Boy” is the King of the hood!

WHAT IS MAN?

WHAT IS MAN?

Psalm 8:4 (NASB77) 4   What is man, that Thou dost take thought of him? And the son of man, that Thou dost care for him?

Man lives on the fragile edge of life. His future can cut either way as God permits. The dilemma is in what he is made of. Prior to the fall he was God’s image and likeness but after the fall a deadly transformation occurred. The man became a monster!

His heart is wicked beyond measure and there is no good in him at least not enough good to be worthy to step into the Lord’s presence. Unless the mind is in motion the body and soul won’t respond. When you are blind to the Holy Spirit the Bible is just a volume of useless words. In this condition your affections are prostituted from our Lord’s approval to the devil’s revelries and shameful enjoyments.

The blind mind, paralyzes the body, pollutes the soul and enslaves the will. Satan knows exactly how to take you down. His only goal is to strip ou of every shred of righteousness so that your condition is deplorable and so unattractive that Christians will pass you by in your anguish.

The moment of truth comes when you realize you cannot better yourself. In a thought, you are not able to not sin. Helpless to every temptation, you are merely a puppet in the hands of any demon assigned to you: a plaything for sordid amusement. You cannot, I repeat, you cannot no nor ever work out your salvation by what you do. It is by our Lord’s gracious mercy alone that you can be spared an eternal death in the furnace of hades. Your only relief is to be born of God.

To survive man must have an understanding of the Word and be supernaturally enlightened. His heart needs to be renewed and his will emancipated. Then he will be able not to sin in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Face the facts:

Jesus saves us from the:

  • Penalty of sin
  • Power of sin
  • Pollution of sin

Be the man of God He created you to be and break the cuffs that are leading you to Satan’s mansion, the Department of Corrections.

BLOODY FOOTPRINTS

BLOODY FOOTPRINTS

By Rick Mathes

(Author of “Allah or Jesus”)

Luke 23:26 And when they led Him away, they laid hold of one Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus.

What was going through the thoughts of Simon as he stepped into the bloody footprints of Jesus? He couldn’t help but wonder why this innocent man was being put through this torturous execution. There must have been a look or a word from our Lord because in time, both of Simon’s sons became the first Bishops of color in this new world conquering religion.

Let’s put ourselves into Simon’s sandals and carry our Lord’s Cross. How can we do this? Pick up and continue His love for His brethren. We don’t necessarily need to like each other but we must love each other. Love is not an emotion, it is a decision. The emotion may or may not follow. The last beatitude is persecution so let’s get used to it and carry His Cross, the weight of Hell’s effort to trash His atonement.

Don’t forget that He walks before us. He is leading us to quiet waters through the reconciliation with the Father through His death; His final sacrifice. The Lord, the real Lord is our Shepherd. We don’t follow Father Lucifer anymore. Our old shepherd only let us to death, insanity or incarceration.

It’s by His grace, will and strength that we can carry His cross, keep the faith, fight the good fight and finish the course. We press on because we know where He is leading us to. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is our partner and the burden is light yoked to Him.

It is only for a short time of three-score and ten that this burden is ours so let’s give it our best shot. The consequences of our sin is truly a heavy load but we did it to ourselves and the least we can do is pick up our cross and follow Him. The reward, like childbirth, is well worth the pain. What a privilege it is to take it to the Lord in prayer.