Well we are back thinking about oppression and Antichrists.
The good news here is that we do not need to fear. We can look at the new teaching and ask if it is of Christ. And we know what the church is commanded to do, which is believe in Christ and love one another.
3:19And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. 24All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.
4:1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. 4Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
As I think of this, the verses about our thoughts damning use are confronted by a simple fact. God knows our heart better than we do. He is fully aware of the various tendencies we have: that we lust, that we covet, that we are undisciplined, gluttons, and hateful. He chooses to show mercy regardless of our state.
And we are also shown the test of the spirit. If you deny Christ, you are not of God. Simple?
Well, no. Because this is subtle. Consider this interview of Jack Busby.
How important in all of this is our Judeo-Christian heritage?
Huge! I’m not religious myself. In fact, I would consider myself an atheist. However, I have a huge amount of respect for Christianity. Judeo-Christian values are the backbone of this country and our society. It’s important we respect something that has been so integral in the building of our society, democracy and institutions.
Now, I have sympathy with the New Culturalists. Any thing that pushes back at the Leftists hemogeny (which is frankly antiChristian) is attractive. But Jack sees religion as a tool that binds the people together for the nation, not a source of the nation itself. He does not comprehend that as God can raise a people, he can also cast them down.
The trouble, for those who consider themselves bright and not needing a God, is that there is a spiritual world. The Religious impulse is almost universal: the non religious express it all too frequently in a fanatical worship of politics, ecology or some other ideology. But all not spirits are benign. There is evil and good in all aspects of our existence.
We are commanded to test the spirits and, by extension, the ideologies of this world for a reason. There are too many places we can fall into error, and find ourselves trapped, justifying our position by more and more bizarre justifications, and increasingly shrill demands for tolerance.
