People are coming to Jesus in droves. A great awakening is stirring and people are finding freedom all over the place, even prominent figures with huge online platforms. This harvest of new believers who are eager to learn more about Jesus and His ways is awesome. Yet it also presents a challenge that the church hasn’t historically been good at addressing.
Charlatans, salesmen, and legalists are always waiting to pounce on new believers with perverted doctrines. Others have self-interested, often narcissistic desires to grow their churches instead of the Church, locally and internationally.
We the Church need to be prepared to counter that, and quickly.
Reconstructing The Landscape
Opportunists always emerge in the aftermath of war. Before the combatants can even clean their swords, the carrion birds circle the battlefield ready to devour whatever remains, and scavengers sift the pockets of the wounded. Polished salesmen with wide smiles emerge, all too willing to lend a helping hand. The survivors, happily emancipated from the bondage of the former regime, wonder what comes next.
“Grimly they came hobbling back to a desolation that had once been a land of grace and plenty…and with them came a new invader, more cruel and vicious than any they had fought: the Carpetbagger.”
This is a line from the beginning of Act II of Gone With The Wind. If you’ve seen it (or read it), you’ll remember that as soon as the Civil War ended, shady businessmen and politicians began cashing in on the new opportunities afforded by a societal blank slate populated by millions of newly freed slaves.
These former slaves had no idea how much power they possessed, and nobody north or south of the Mason Dixon was much in interested in instructing them in how to wield it.
History refers to this era of American history as Reconstruction, and it quickly led to what became the Jim Crow South, characterized by disenfranchisement, segregation, and an entirely different flavor of bondage. That came later, but the proximate outcome was an influx of carpetbaggers: savvy opportunists of various stripes who recognized the potential power a few million new voters offered. They showered them with pats on the back, and lead them by the hand…and usually off a cliff.
“What do we do now?” the freed men asked the carpetbaggers.
“We’re gonna give every one of you 40 acres and a mule, because we’re your friends. And you’re gonna become voters, and vote like your friends do.”
Modern Carpetbaggers
Every generation thinks it’s experiencing something unique, but history tells the cautionary tales. The enemy may be losing ground today but he’s seen all this before, and he has a tried and true playbook for dealing with it.
It only took a few generations post-Pentecost for the enemy to lead many of Christ’s followers back into self-actualized bondage. It was (and still is) little different from the Law that Christ freed them from.
The Church became a conglomeration of churches, with ideas and doctrines as varied as the languages they spoke and attire they donned. Instead of everyone being a priest, special individuals were ordained. They wore fancy robes and created weird rituals from out-of-context scriptures. They held secret councils that laymen weren’t privy to and began reestablishing the tables Jesus had flipped over. They built temples and put up curtains to replace the ones He tore down on the cross, and they established several new Holy of Holies to replace the one Jesus relocated into every believer’s heart.
They placed Jesus back in the position the enemy loved seeing him in most: bloody, dead, and hanging on the cross.
Churches of various denominations (even the “non-denominational” ones) became hierarchical organizations, convincing billions of new converts to disregard the duties Christ explicitly called them to.
Much like the emancipated slaves in America, the emancipated in Christ are almost immediately bombarded with perverted views about their identity and marginalized in their importance, because they are a threat to ruler of this world.
Seeking answers, they often encounter hucksters or false teachers who slap the passion right out of them at the first opportunity. Soon these new disciples no longer see themselves as priests with full authority in Christ to do what He instructed them to do, such as:
Heal the sick
Cast out demons
Baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Testify to the Truth
Worship
Prophesy
Preach the Gospel
Raise the dead
In other words, Basic Christianity. The enemy hates it.
Satan will do anything to thwart the unbridled zeal of newly passionate followers, and the most effective way is by unleashing the most devastating demon of them all.
The Spirit of Religion
It takes a lot of people by surprise when you mention that Jesus hates religion. It’s a fact though; His entire ministry was about dismantling it. This concept is perhaps harder for seasoned believers to grasp than new ones. The greatest obstacle for many new believers is to avoid getting snared by modern churchiness.
Some embrace freedom in Christ to the fullest—the freedom of 24/7 access to the Creator of the universe—and grow exponentially, in authority and mission effectiveness.
Others find that personal accountability and digging out roots is too difficult, and regress back to the comfortable confines of religious shackles that don’t too require too much of them. And there are plenty of options for new believers to land in that aren’t interested in renouncing the past.
In business terms: It’s much easier to be a line employee than to step into management. So these believers opt to work with a less demanding, entry-level supervisor instead of holding council with the CEO every day, because he won’t stand for their laissez faire efforts. He’ll force them out of the house to get their hands dirty.
Satan knows how effective a Christian who daily walks with Jesus is, so he’ll convince them to unilaterally disarm. If they don’t — if those Jesus Freaks act like the warriors they are — he loses.
A faith-filled child stoops down on the playground to lay hands on a friend’s sprained ankle because miraculous healing is at every believer’s fingertips.
But the spirit of Religion moves in and says that healing isn’t for everyone, or that praying for miracles is the purview of certain, credentialed leaders.
No. Basic Christianity says that’s our job; it’s right there in the instruction manual.
A friend and pastor recently told me his daughter said this about Christians who deny the working of the Holy Spirit though us:
“They say, we don’t need the tool, we have the instruction manual.”
But here’s the lesson: The instruction manual informs us about the tool, and how to use the tools, all of them, so get on it.
New followers need to know this. More importantly, they need to get excited about it, because it’s freakin’ rad!
“Don’t Mess With The Devil.” Why Not, Exactly?
The spirit of Religion wants Christians to fear demons and spiritual warfare. It uses scary vernacular like exorcism and manifestation that conjures up images of Linda Blair, with blood and holy water splashed power struggles. It’s no surprise that horror movies lean heavily into the witchcraft and satanic angles to scare the crap out of non-believers.
The reason is clear: The demons want you to fear them so you will avoid evicting them.
True disciples walking in His authority don’t fear the demons, and they don’t wrestle with them, either. They discern foul spirits at work in everyday conversations and counter those by simply and firmly commanding those entities to go.
Some Christians tend to do this with a lot of finger-waving and voice raising, but it’s wholly unnecessary. Your authority in Christ isn’t dependent on the octave you use or what you’re wearing. You can can cast out devils in a casual tone of voice, and even smile and love on the the afflicted person while doing so. In fact, it’s far more effective.
Sometimes quiet, ongoing conversations with people who understand things like trauma and generational curses are appropriate to reveal the depths of the deceptions. The enemy is crafty and revelation comes through experience, just as strength comes through exercise.
This is the kind of spiritual warfare Jesus modeled among personal relationships with our neighbors and friends. And it’s what his disciples taught. We need to equip our new converts to do likewise.
As for making disciples and preaching the Good News: The enemy knows that a personal testimony delivered genuinely by an unskilled speaker can break down barriers that hours of milktoast sermons by gifted orators can’t. New followers need to tell the world what they’ve seen and experienced, which means they need pastors and churches willing to scrap pre-rehearsed services and let the Holy Spirit wreck the agenda.
The enemy wants tradition, bigotry, sectarianism, and hierarchy. He wants smoke machines, seeker-friendly messages, and surface hat tips to a chill Jesus. A buddy who feels you, bro. Satan wants cheap trinkets made by persecuted slaves sold in church gift shops, and he wants ignorant men unBiblically lording over women instead of studying and understanding mutual submission and true Biblical manhood.
The enemy wants us fearing death instead of recognizing that Jesus conquered it; he wants us fearing man instead of dancing for our audience of One, and fearing ridicule instead of submerging ourselves (or others) in baptism for all the world to see.
Satan knows the best way to marginalize these new followers is to heap mountains of religion on them, to confuse them and place them under the thumbs of others. He began erecting layers of churchianity almost from the get-go, and not much has changed in two thousand years.
The enemy doesn’t want the newly emancipated slaves to know the full extent of power they possess; he fears them learning that Basic Christianity teaches that they don’t need priests, they are priests, that Biblical Israel is not a spot on a political map but an identity shared by all of those who follow Jesus, regardless of who their daddy was.
If you’ve made Jesus your Lord, you are a saint and priest in the kingdom of Heaven, fully authorized to approach the throne, to heal the sick, and yes, to even raise the dead if it suits Him.
We need our new recruits to learn the scriptures and boldly preach the word, to testify to the Truth without fear of man or man’s religion stifling them. We also need to teach them to be genuine, to admit when they need correction, and to avoid putting on airs trying to look like they’ve got everything figured out.
All across the globe, hungry followers are stepping into those baptismals. When they emerge with smiles a mile wide, we the Church celebrate and cheer them on. This is as it should be. But as anyone who’s been conducting spiritual warfare for any length of time knows: This is when the enemy usually strikes hardest.
Sometimes we recognize those attacks, but far too often Satan disguises them in the form of new shiny shackles of legalism and tradition that have nothing to do with Jesus.
This is when the spiritual carpetbaggers pounce. They’ll wrap an arm around the former slaves and escort them onto a different kind of plantation, where the Holy Spirit is recognized but unwelcome, where their talent is useful but only so long as it serves to put butts in chairs, and where they’re free to dance and worship however they want…just so long as it doesn’t disrupt the service.
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