The Great Western Heresy? Given Me a Break!

[HKHaugan]

The Great Western Heresy? Give Me a Break!

You are the reader in Jesus’ following prophecy. He said, "The prophet Daniel spoke about 'the hated thing that destroys [the abomination that causes desolation-NIV] Someday you will see it standing in the holy place. The reader should understand this (Matt.24:15 NIRV).”

What should you the reader understand? First, a bishop, a pastor, a denominational leader stands in a holy place, a successor to the Apostles, a proclaimer and protector of the Holy Gospel, carrying the message of the most important truth for all people in all ages, that through faith, you are personally and eternally saved in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Now, you the reader, read the words of the Episcopal Presiding Bishop in her opening address to a national convention, "…the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." Here in our time is “the abomination that causes desolation.” As Jesus said, “Someday you will see it standing in the holy place.”

Second, her subordinate bishops’ (standing in a holy place) silent acquiescence to her speech ‘doth make cowards of them all.’ Her denomination is not alone. Others join its feeble ranks of graying members and molded buildings. Many denominational seminaries given the responsibility of training new clergy have folded to ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ in secular academia and social pressures.

Third, leaving the authority of Scripture they now yield to the authority of secular law and interior man-made rules. Their leaders surgically excise the physical property from those who sacrificed years of income to build and maintain them in every present generation. They forget that church buildings were not built for the past but for future generations to make a relationship with Jesus the central message. They were not built for training in cultural compromise.

But ‘modernized’ leaders’ rationale? ‘Forget the faith once delivered. Forget Scripture. Be relevant. Preserve the property for bones and faded memories lying in graves. We will determine what faith means.’ So what remains? Museums, mausoleums and memorials without Gospel substance. The plaintive squeals of defensiveness echo from self-justifying clerics wrapped in the coils of cultural conformity.

When spiritual corruption is institutionalized and the words of leadership reshape a once beautiful witness for the Lord into a caricature of compromise with the world it becomes a visible symbol of the evil it once declared itself against. Like Adam and Eve, emptied of God’s Spirit after their fall from Eden, a denomination too can be a collection of mostly emptying buildings spiritually untended in the land of Nod east of Eden. Its leaders circle their empty wagons in vain to protect their physical assets much like chieftains of old that, after a battle, retrieved the weaponry and retreated to the safety of their moated fortresses. Sad figures they were, rationalizing their losses, refusing to face the reason for their failure, having expected their soldiers to blindly obey their conspiratorial evil. Sad figures they are today still refusing to face God’s truth so clearly woven into the words of the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight (5:20-21).”

Let’s look at what contemporary heresy really is. The ‘Great Western Heresy’ is that any bishop, any denominational leader, anyone claiming to be a Christian, anyone standing in a holy place, could say that personal salvation is impossible. That’s heresy. Stay tuned…….