“An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2). “Deceiving and being deceived” (II Timothy 3:13).
I wrote something on this website calling for transparency and integrity from churches, using as a jumping off point the billboards up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast where casinos glorify the fun, the shows, the money, the jackpots, etc., they offer without once mentioning the addicted souls, broken lives and destroyed homes that accompany these enticements. In the piece, I was wondering what if the government’s “truth in advertising” laws required them to tell the full story.
That article was directed to the churches. But someone who found it on the internet jumped all over it (and in ALL CAPITALS!) and accused me of worse things when our churches ask people to give money.
When people cannot see the difference in a church and a casino, forget about trying to reason with them.
The mental capacities of some people have been so skewed by their calloused souls and hardened spirits that they look at black and see white, look at evil and see good, look at Jesus Christ and see darkness.
We should not let such people intimidate us. They have been around from the beginning and are instruments of the evil one, deceiving and being deceived. (In Second Timothy 3:13 Paul says, Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. A profound observation.)
On the night before He went to the cross, the Lord Jesus, seeking to prepare His little flock for all that lay ahead, said, “An hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).
That’s as bad as it gets, yet we see it happening all the time.