God Has Left The Building - Michael Smith July 28, 2013

Are there times when God after growing a once thriving fellowship departs? Could it be true that He would write Ichabod, “the glory of the Lord has departed,” on the door? Would we even know if God has left if the church service continues in singing, prayers, fellowship, etc. How would we know?

By observing whether or not there is life. Life as described in the dictionary as enthusiasm, vigor, vitality, zest, zeal, lively; all of which can indicate the presence and joy of the Holy Spirit.

For some churches they are devoid of life, “God has left the building” long, long ago!  But some refuse to believe it! They continue following after those who exhibit the same spiritual actions and the same spiritual words of the same spiritual visions that has been exhibited before only now repackaged for the appearance of growth and the seeming NOW presence of God.

None of us would want to be in a church that God has left?  

Yet staying in these churches, instead of leaving, only props them up as a healthy church. Do not be deceived. If we choose to continue in these Ichabod churches, we will physically grow older while spiritually remaining stagnate.  From such as these flee. Surely if it was that bad, people would have left, right? Wrong, dead churches have a blind allegiance. For a myriad of reasons they will not leave, familiarity, fear, misplaced loyalty, soul-ties to name a few. Deception is difficult to acknowledge when the one deceived is yourself. It takes a view from the outside looking in with fresh eyes. Eyes not under influence of a dead fellowship with bad leadership.

Remember those who were questioning and warned you, you thought they were crazy, wrong, deceived, and the leadership told you to stay away from them. Go out and find them. Search for the people who were caring enough to warn you before they left. They will probably still be caring. Be aware though, an abusive or deceived leadership of a Ichabod church will do everything it can to discredit them and malign the character of those who left and you as well. If you decide to stay inside the dead church system, you could stay spiritually impotent for a lifetime. 

It is true that whenever someone exposes darkness and subversion inside the Christian establishment, the slander will come against that person. Whenever someone unmasks deceptive ministers along with the evil practices within the local dead church, the hounds will be sent out.

They will show their ferociousness, anything to shut out the Truth and maintain a facade, the lie! 

Those in “church leadership” positions of Ichabod churches, will try to silence anyone who would dare oppose or expose them, that same spirit is still very much alive in many churches today.  

By speaking against the stale dead church it becomes evident very fast just how little interest indeed many of your supposed Christians friends have in God’s Truth. Jesus Christ was hated and despised by most of the religious teachers and spiritual leaders in His day. Do you think that anything has changed regarding this in today’s churches? There will be those who seek to hold you back; those from your family, your church, and those considered friends. 

They will accuse you, slander you and discredit you, your choice to live by God’s Word will reveal enemies and persecution from sources you never dreamed of. You will be mocked and lied about. Especially by those in so-called “positions of church leadership.” This is all that these people know how to do. The very people who are supposedly in the best position to inform their fellowships the truth of a matter, turn out to be the very same people who will destroy and silence you if you allow them.

If they hated Him, they will hate you also. 

WHEN TRUTH BECOMES THE CRIME

When the truth becomes the crime

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Geert Wilders

Last Thursday a court in Vienna found lecturer and human rights activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff guilty of one count of “denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion” and she was fined the sum of €480. A relatively small sum, but she now has a hate crime conviction against her name.

Sabaditsch-Wolff's crime was to state, at a series of seminars about political Islam, that the Prophet Mohamed had sex with a child, his nine year old wife Aisha. Although acquitted of the more serious charge of inciting racial hatred, she was also convicted of being a “serial offender” despite this being her first offence.

Elizabeth is a regular writer at the Gates of Vienna who have written extensively about her case, links to their various articles can be found here, meanwhile American writer Diana West who runs the Death of the Grown Up blog has addressed the case in a recent posting “Willkomen to the Caliphate”, where she effectively argues that the conviction was in fact on the basis of Sharia law, not European law or what still passes for Austrian law.

It is interesting to note that the court did not find that the defendant had lied, at one point the judge stated that Aisha was 18 but later acknowledged that she had in fact attained that age at the time of Mohamed's death. Indeed the fact that Mohamed married Aisha while she was a child is largely undisputed and accepted as fact by most Islamic scholars. Marriage between an older man and a pre-pubescent girl was not unusual in Islamic culture during the prophet's life and remains so today in some Islamic countries.

The truth of the claim was irrelevant to the court. To convict Sabaditsch-Wolff, it was not necessary to demonstrate her claims were untrue, they were true, but merely to prove, as the court did, that she told a truth which some Muslims found offensive.

This was by no means an isolated case. Also last week French journalist Éric Zemmour was found guilty of incitement to racial hatred after telling a TV chat show that drug dealers were mostly "blacks and Arabs".

Once again, the truth or otherwise of Zemmour's claim was irrelevant to his conviction for he spoke a truth which French law bars him from speaking. It is illegal in France to reveal the race of criminal offenders, or to report rates of ethnic offending, presumably because to do so would be to reveal the truth of Monsieur Zemmour's illegal words.

Meanwhile in Holland it has been announced that the trial against PVV leader Gerrt Wilders for discrimination and inciting hatred will recommence on March 14th. As in the other cases mentioned, the truth or otherwise of Mr Wilders' words will have no bearing on his prosecution, all that matters is that they have offended Muslims and questioned the state dogma of multiculturalism.

Like Sabaditsch-Wolff and Zemmour, Wilders could join the growing group of people convicted of, and punished for, telling the truth.

In Britain, as we all know BNP leader Nick Griffin was subjected to a politically motivated criminal prosecution for making statements which have since been proven to be true. Mr. Griffin's claims that gangs of Muslim paedophiles have been grooming white girls for sex, have been echoed by ex-Justice secretary Jack Straw, and confirmed by various journalists and leading police officers. However, as Judge Norman Jones informed Nick Griffin at his trial, that he was telling the truth was no defence against race hate charges.

Indeed, had it not been for the wisdom of a jury, who acquitted Griffin against the judge's advice, he would have gone to prison for the New World Order offence of telling the truth.

In fact the situation is worse than the judge implied, Judge Jones understated the truth, for we in Europe have gone beyond the point where the truth is merely no defence against race hate charges, the truth itself is now the crime.

The mad Orwellian creed of multiculturalism, which our rulers have imposed upon us has produced a reality where, when addressing the subject of race and religion the only act left to us, which is legal and permissible, is to lie.

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