{I have decided, from time to time, to post certain items that I sense (through my Spirit, hopefully) speak to many of the issues I write on. These will be short snippets (NOT ALWAYS), and I’ve decided to call them, “A Deluding Influence” (2 Thessalonians 2: 11)}
In the following Pew Forum article is yet another example of the strong delusion being sent, by God, to those apostate (fallen away) believers who end up denying His Son, the Christ.
February 19, 2010
Spirit Quest
by Charles M. Blow
The New York Times
I recently met a young woman who was just back from a monthlong Costa Rican vacation. She said that she had gone in part to connect with her spiritual self, to shed the moral strictures of her youth and to find her place of peace as an adult. In her mind at least, it had been a successful trip. She was a new woman, spiritually awakened.
She told me that she had gone from religious to nonbeliever, and then to spiritual. Putting aside the fact that most young people probably couldn’t afford to take a monthlong vacation in a foreign country, and the fact that her spiritual awakening was admittedly spiked with copious amounts of Costa Rican rum, her story struck me as increasingly normative rather than anomalous. Many young adults seem to be moving away from organized religion while simultaneously trying desperately to connect with their spirituality. (emphasis added)
Jesus rebuked the scribes and pharisees, saying,
“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. 44 “Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. 45 “Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; AND THE LAST STATE OF THAT MAN BECOMES WORSE THAN THE FIRST. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation (age-ending generation, including us).” (Matthew 12)
This young woman has simply gone from the Spiritual deadness of her “religion” (the nominal “church”), the false representation of our Lord and Savior, to the pitiful state of the unregenerate:
…For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, THE LAST STATE HAS BECOME WORSE FOR THEM THAN THE FIRST (the seven demons). 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT,” and, “A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire.” (2 Peter 2)
For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a terrifying expectation of judgment and THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES. 28 Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know Him who said, “VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY.” And again, “THE LORD WILL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE.” 31 It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10)
She claims to have escaped the “moral strictures of her youth,” and found, instead, true “spiritual peace”. Unfortunately, however, this Spiritually devoid, and scripturally ignorant, person, has simply jumped from the spiritual frying pan right into the flames of the evil one. She has removed herself from the deadness of Satan’s “religious” substitute for the Lord, but instead of seeking the Lord’s Way, Truth, and Life, singularly, she has simply turned to the enemy of our Lord and believed his (Satan’s) lies. Therefore, the one demon (a “religious” unclean spirit), she had expelled from her life, has now come back with a vengeance, and brought seven of its friends to place this woman in a worse Spiritual state than before her supposed “spiritual enlightenment”!
I am not sitting in judgment of this poor woman, nor would it be possible for me to do so, since I am only a man, and I have, also, experienced almost exactly what she is experiencing now! Many years ago, when I was a very young man, I walked away from Catholicism, and, at the same time, I also walked away from God. Truly, I had shed the demon who had held me in bondage to its apostate “religious” lies, but I had, then, invited seven more demons, worse than the first, to invade me by walking away from God, and denying His Son. This walking away from, and denial of, the Lord, for the next sixteen years, would lead me down a dark, and evil, road, which would, in the end, allow me to harm people I loved, and almost destroy my life; in this world, and for all of eternity.
I thank the Lord that His irrevocable call was on my life! And, after those horrible years ended, and I was laid-low, broken and battered, the Lord graciously brought me back to His Truth and Life: the Truth and Life of the Christ that I had never heard from the pastors, ministers, and priests, of Christendom.
I pray the Lord’s irrevocable call is on this woman’s life, as it was on mine, especially if, like me, she was unaware of the Lord’s truth at the time she walked away.
Let my poor Spiritual example, and this woman’s, be a warning to all of you: when we escape the clutches of the apostate, nominal “church”, or whatever other evil is keeping us from the Truth, Life and Love of God, we must, then, cling tightly to the Lord so as not to allow the evil one any room to deceive us! Believe me, our Lord’s sanctification (salvation of the soul) can be very extended, and painful, when we have allowed the evil one to work in, and through, our lives for so many years! So for any of you who are not only contemplating walking away from the nominal “church”, but also the Lord, I hope you will take what I have said, here, to your heart and mind, and cling to the Lord, until He brings you back to His will, and purpose, for your life!
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