Blessings to the Readers of My Site in the New Year 2011!
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Happy New Year 2011 to all readers of my site!
I don’t want to fall into the usual clichéd greetings and wishes, you’ve already heard plenty of them these days. So, without the cliché: I wish you constantly to sense the presence of God and the hand of God over you! Whatever happens, may you be spared the things you fear, may all the troubles of our difficult and unpredictable times pass you by! I hope that you and I will keep advancing in the knowledge of the Gospel truths, and then we will understand the spirit of this age, so that as we walk the narrow path we will not lose our bearings! For the enemy constantly changes his tactics and disposition (and he—the enemy—has Oh-so-much experience in this, a couple of thousand years at the least, and by and large all six, remember Diotrephes) in order to entice and deceive the children of God away from the paths of serving the Lord. I mean serving the Lord through the continual renewal of our inner man. So that we do not become slaves to men, especially if that man has a Bible in his hands. Because many mind-manipulators have appeared who operate with the Bible (remember that it is a double-edged sword—how deftly Sandey used it, how Shapovalov and the Radchuks still use it), loudly calling themselves “pastor!”, “bishop!”, “evangelist!”. And those who are more cunning, that is, more ambitious, additionally become “chairman!”, “president!”, and even… “apostle!” There are many such would-be leaders in our complex age who would “evangelize—or rather, zombify” you into slaves for themselves… not for the Kingdom of God, not for your obtaining eternal life, but simply to turn you into a subject of their own personal kingdom—that is, “their own church.” And to transform your good impulses (remember that term) into a means of their own prosperity and enrichment.
When they are together, in those things they call “federation”, “brotherhood”, and other religious self-designations for deception and an air of respectability, they talk among themselves like this:
- My church!
- But in my church!
- Well, in my church!
- I won’t let you into my church!
- I will not permit it in my church!
And so on through every case! Yes, these truly are “their” churches, not the Church of Christ; they are the absolute masters in them, not Christ! (?) They have arrogated to themselves the right to define history and to be the final arbiter of truth. Otherwise there would be no intrigues in these religious formations—that constant struggle for the “portfolio,” and in principle, to avoid this struggle and to preserve their kingdom for their descendants, this king—emperor (the one who is most cunning) surrounds himself with people personally loyal to him, reliable folk (as a rule, these people are somehow unprincipled and often amoral). And so it turns out that in a personal “church,” the pastor is the power, a harsh administrator (controlling and disposing of destinies), the chief steward—treasurer, and thus he personally controls and disposes of the money of the “heavenly bank.” A totalitarian society is evident. Only the members of this society often do not see it or do not want to see it! But if this were the Church of Christ, then the greatest would be a servant, and would only be looking for an opportunity to serve his neighbor and to show compassion and love. The life of a pastor in the Church of Christ is simple and transparent—an example to follow. In the Church of Christ there is no division into “trump cards”—those close to the leader, and those “not very high trump,” and those who can be ignored altogether, and those who are permitted things and those who are not. In the Church of Christ, all are brothers and sisters, and everything else is from the evil one. If you want to be great, be a servant! It’s that simple!
Not far from me there is a Reformed Church. I decided to take a closer look at this church, and to understand it I attended for over a year, and even now I occasionally drop in. The pastor there was Pastor Ken. I deliberately call him Pastor Ken here, and why? Because he took over this church when it had three hundred members, and in three years he tripled the membership. But that isn’t even the main thing. When I got to know him better, gave him my book, and spent some time at his home, I was greatly surprised! Pastor Ken lives in an old little house, drives an old little Honda—at least ten years old. And… he also does plumbing work on the side! (?) And this is a pastor? (At least in our Slavic mindset). I asked him a question: Your church has almost a thousand members, there are businessmen in the church, you ought to have a solid salary, yet you live unlike the pastors I’ve had to deal with from our Slavic immigration. For our guys, a thousand members, and Americans too! Well then, watch out, even Benya—the one they call Hin! Palaces and Mercedes—what’s a Mercedes? Then he wouldn’t even dirty his eyes with a Mercedes (as one of ours put it). Then it’s Hawaii and Bermuda, Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of the earth’s surface! But with our Slavic population, our “pastors” manage this quite well.
Pastor Ken answered me:
I must live for heaven, not for my own ego and belly; I must feel and know the difficulties of earthly existence in order to teach rightly and to feel compassion; I must be not a servant of Mammon, but a servant of the Lord and a follower of Peter and Paul, and they lived in need—therefore they knew what and how to teach. And for this reason, I must not live better than the poorest member of our church. If I want to live better, then I must take care that the poorest members of our church begin to live better. And that is not all! Sometimes you’d drive by the church at six in the morning, and Pastor Ken would already be there—holding a prayer breakfast with those who hurry to work that early, then prayer for the children going to school, then talks with those failing in family life, then prayer with the unemployed, and then toward noon he would go to his little business—laying pipes, even though he could have been making money from early morning! And that’s not all! Not a single day of the week goes by without some meeting at the church. Seven days a week, around the clock, Ken is a pastor. Truly, this is “a threshing ox.” Truly, this is a pastor, not a scheming parasite—a religious businessman.
Have any of you met such a man?
Yes, in the USSR such men existed!
I remember in Nakhodka there was Pastor Vasily Navarich. In his time he spent five years in camps on Sakhalin—logging. In Nakhodka, while serving as pastor, he worked at Zelenkhoz—mowed grass by hand with a scythe around the city, because there were no mowers then. He would put in his day’s work, and then in the evening he would visit families, always on foot or by bus, together with his wife. While I was serving my sentence, he visited my family every week together with his wife, and he helped them out of his own meager pocket. It was his rule to visit every family at least once a month, and there were over three hundred members! (?) Plus brotherly meetings, plus the council, plus three services a week! And… still being dragged to the KGB for refusing to register and for supporting my family! And no salary at all! That is a pastor! A man who threshed for the Kingdom of Heaven!
So ask yourself the question: where are you, and with whom?
I know! Many people don’t like what I write, because Christian morality has been consciously twisted by mind-manipulators.
Now everything is inverted: what kind of logic is that! That is, it’s okay to do bad things, but you mustn’t talk about them. The question is, what is worse—to do bad things? Or to say that someone is doing bad things? You can, of course, not wash your dirty linen in public (as many advise), but then we’ll be overgrown with filth! So, here’s to a year without filth!
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