Counterfeit Christianity

Chapter Thirteen- We are the Worse of God's People

        God’s people in the days of Isaiah and later, Jeremiah, rebelled against God by worshipping Babylonian gods and goddesses and turning their backs to God and His righteous ways. Although God sent many prophets to warn them over and over again, the people were stiff-necked and stubborn. They ignored the warnings and eventually, God allowed His own people to be utterly destroyed, except for a small remnant.

        How could they be so stupid and blind? The book of the law was clear and God sent many prophets to warn them. We think we know better. Yet today, we are a thousand times worse than the people that God destroyed in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah. We are even more rebellious and stubborn. After all, they were under an imperfect Old Covenant. They did not have the promised Messiah, the cross of Jesus, His blood and resurrection life. They did not have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and a new heart and spirit. They did not have the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus. We do.

Although they had not yet received the promises of God, and Jesus Christ, the long-awaited Messiah, many moved in faith and pleased God. Many people of God in the Old Testament willingly suffered imprisonment, torture and death for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. In Hebrews, Chapter 11, from verses One through Thirty-two, the writer carefully chronicles some of the many deeds of faith done by God’s people under the Old and imperfect Covenant:

        Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

        Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruelmockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

        They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;(Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

            And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Heb. 11:33-40.

The heroes under the Old Covenant had much less truth, knowledge of God and spiritual power than we do under the New Covenant. The Lord came down from heaven to live a sinless life, suffer and die for us on the cross, so that we would have a better and more perfect way. He fulfilled all the promises made by God to Abraham and the people of God under the Old Covenant. This generation has received all of God’s promises of a New and better Covenant.

The people of God in the Old Testament could not be made perfect under the Law, but we can by the Spirit of God. That is why Jesus could say, “For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”  Luke 7:28.

            Nowhere in the Old Testament is the term “kingdom of God” used or mentioned. Yet, Jesus constantly preached and used the term, “kingdom of God.” It was not until the long-awaited Messiah came and the Holy Spirit of God was given to dwell in men that the kingdom of God became the central theme in the Bible.

But we reject the better New Covenant, give lip service to God and are worse than the people under the Old Covenant.

WE HAVE REJECTED THE TEMPLE OF GOD