The world “sneaks up” on you because it is in you. I have some sound hypotheses based on scripture. That the world is in you is my hypothesis unless it has been removed by God. To validate that with some degree of certainty requires that the null can be rejected. The null of course is that the world is not in you. I submit that premise cannot be rejected.
There is much biblical evidence
that a Christian is one who rejects the tenets of the world. For instance, “You
adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is
enmity with God? Whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of the world is the
enemy of God” (Jas 4:4). Friendship with the friendship with the world is
basically enjoying material things that the world brings to you (komizo).
The adulterers and adulteresses
are paramours, “illicit partners,” of the things of the world. Friendship with
the world is against friendship with God. If a Christian is in a relationship
with God and accept His things, but all the while accepts the things of the
Devil and the world, then he is an adulterer, not against another person, but
adulterous against God. The “worldly” Christian is having an affair with the principal
power of the world, Satan, the “Adversary” of God.
The “devil,” the “Dragon” was
cast out from heaven unto the world (Rev 12:13) because there was an adulterous
situation. “The great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the ‘Devil,’
and ‘Satan,’ which deceives the whole world: he was cast out into the earth,
and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev 12:9). In this case, the “earth” is
used rather than the “world,” indicating that Satan is not the ruler of the
cosmos but only this planet (ge).
With that background, Christians
think wrongly. Adam and Eve were safe in Paradise in heaven, which was much
like the Earth, but it was not planet Earth. They too were cast out from
the Garden of Eden into the world (Gen 3:23-24), literally from the hedged in place
(ganan) to a place outside the “hedge.” Eden was literally a “place of
delight.” [1]
That “hedge” between where they
were is the “firmament” (Gen 1:6), an expanse between the “waters and the
waters” — the heaven and the earth (Gen 1:1).
That there was an Eden on Earth
is just a memory, a “shadow” of things that they once knew. Satan and his
demons attempted to establish a “heaven” on Earth. The consequences of sin
would not be in heaven but on Earth: death, mankind as gods, shame, fear, deception,
enmity, sorrow, reproduction, subservience, mortality, a woman’s desire for man
rather than God, thorns and thistles hindering production, eating of the
produce of their own hands, disintegration at death, and the additional knowledge
of evil (all from Gen 3).
Those things describe the “economy”
and “environment” of the Earth, and the Garden of Eden in the heaven would have
an opposing economy and environment.
The two were cast out onto the
Earth from the Third Heaven (2 Cor 12:2), all the while even the best of the
theologians did not catch that! Our progenitors were cast out into the Devil’s
world and herein we do the things the Devil would do (John 8:44).
With whom are Christians adulterating?
Their “father, the Devil” against their spiritual Father, Yahweh God.
As I have been writing, Adam and the
woman were once entangled with God, but after sin, they became entangled with
Satan as well, cleverly disguised as the angel Lucifer to disguise the cunning
of the “Serpent” within him. They were serving two masters, and finally one won
out (Mat 6:24). It is impossible to remain entangled with both God and Satan,
and that relationship is an adulterous one because Christians cannot have two
lovers at the same time!
Many Christians still flirt with Satan
(temptation) but they know that they truly belong to God. It is in our genetics
to flirt with Satan, but the more the flirtation, the more likely the action.
The world is in you. Original sin,
the genetic sin of the Wicked One (Mat 13:38). You know that the Wicked One is
in you by what you treasure; be it the things of the world, or the things
of God. The job of any Christian is to take God to the world, is it not? (Mark
16:15); God said nothing about bringing the world to yourselves, but that is
more so what even Christians do!
The null is what? The world is
not in you. How can that be operationalized? By what is important to you,
pleasure or worship. The evidence, even for Christians, is that pleasure is more
important than righteousness (“worth-ship”), traveling around the world to show
the worth of God.
Entertainment is of the world. It
is a reprieve from all its hardships as enumerated above. Entertainment takes
minds off sorrows, but also from God. Is it possible to enjoy God and the world
at the same time? You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). You cannot
deify avarice — the love of pleasure and money.
I watch many Christians during
worship and question what I am witnessing; is the congregation worshiping God
or enjoying pleasure. I try not to question the sincerity of believers, but one
believer (the woman) was the most gullible, she saw the “Image” (Nahas) as good
and partook of its knowledge of carnality. Oftentimes the most innocent are the
easiest to deceive. We need to test all things by scripture and to hang onto
what is good (1 Thes 5:21).
We are to test what we are doing;
does it conform to the world or to God? Is it really to magnify God or to enjoy
the service to please ourselves and the Wicked One?
Only each of one of us knows what
goes on within, but God knows too. For me, when I am enjoying the entertainer, I
often forget God. I propose that I am not the only one. Sometimes I enjoy the
entertainer more than God!
I seldom clap at the performance
but within I clap for God.
We need to examine; is the
service designed to please God, or to bring in the world to say how Christians
can entertain them. To be honest, I have visited many contemporary worship
services and just like me, God was forgotten in the crowd. When the church
begins to look like the world, the church should examine whose spirit they are
following.
Where to go? I have no idea because
there remain few churches outstanding the world, and more are joining it every
week. Should I get lost in the crowd or remain present in the Lord with a few.
It is not only contemporary
worship that should be tested but contemporary ideas. How often are you told
that abortion is wrong in the eyes of the Lord, and that so is homosexuality
and such? The church is afraid to teach the Word of God because the preacher
knows that of he does, then the building will be empty. Christians are more
concerned with hos full the church building is rather than how aligned they are
with the Will of God.
God will sort us out in the end,
and the numbers that show up so often are 3% in scripture, and for Noah it was
even less. Sure, God has abundant grace, but He is not a pushover God. He
judges fairly and impartially. Because a sinner goes to church gets him no closer
to heaven than going to the bar!
I reject the null hypothesis,
that “the world is not in you.” It is in you and God cannot be fooled. I often
find the world in me, and that is not a pleasant finding. Therefore, the
world is in you and it is also in the Church.
Sanctification is ‘set apart”
with the “sons of God” living within the hedge as if they are already in Paradise;
no longer a Garden for two, but a city for all who will go in. There is only one
Paradise, and it was never on Earth.
The “Bosom of Abraham” is in heaven
(Luke 16) and the Book of Jasher reveals it was never on Earth.
Archeologists have for centuries
looked for provenance that the Garden of Eden was on Earth; it never has been
but soon will be: Yahweh said, “I create new heavens and a new earth:
and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa 65:17). Only
Adam and the woman have experienced heaven and then lived on Earth. (Excepting Jesus,
Enoch and Elijah).
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