Marks of God-hating Christians (Part 1)

Marks of God-hating Christians (Part 1): In the Great Divorce, late C. S. Lewis explored the concepts of heaven, hell, and the choices we make in life. Recently, a believer posted a comment to a YouTube video, which shocked me to my marrow. This person said he was sharing Christ with an acquaintance who happens to be a “Catholic”, and the response he or she got from this seemingly lost fellow was, “I don’t need Jesus. I am a Catholic.” One has to be utterly delusional to believe that he or she would enter heaven without Jesus.

Those of us who read the written word of God know that there is no other name given among men by which we can be saved except the name of Jesus (Acts 4:12). Even the Lord Himself declared in John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

 The intensity of deception by the devil has divided Christendom into camps of those who identify with Christ, yet hate God and His word. The camps are built around the following demonic doctrines among others:

i. Existence of a Purgatory;
ii. Sabbath Observance as Day of Worship;
iii. Mary as C-Redemptor With Christ;
iv. Predestination;
v. Once Saved, Always Saved Theology;
vi. Replacement Theology;
vii. Cessationism; and
viii. Extra-Biblical Revelations.

The Lord said in John 14:15, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments. Verse 21 says, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.” So, how is it possible for a Christian to hate God? Jesus said in John 15:18, “And if the world hates you, know that it hated Me before you.

If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” In John 7:7, the Lord explained that the world hates Him because He is testifying against it.       

How did the Jesus testify against the world? He was the word of God made flesh (John 1:14) and the word He spoke were energised by the Holy Spirit. He spoke the word of God. If this is true, why are there many doctrines in the church questioning the inerrancy of the Holy Bible as the word of God?

Why are many so-called Christians rejecting God’s word in favour of these demonic doctrines? In this edition, we x-ray four of these errors or demonic doctrines, namely, Purgatory, Sabbath observance as day of worship, Mary as Co-Redemptor with Christ and Predestination.

Purgatory

This is a Roman Catholic doctrine that questions or seeks to rubbish Jesus’ atonement on the Cross. According to its proponents, it is a place where departed souls are cleansed of their sins so that they can be completely pure and ready to enter God’s presence. But what does the written word of God say about the atonement? Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This is echoed in John 1:29, “On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.”

 Hebrews 9:15 says, “And for this cause, He is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. Hebrews 10:10, “By the which we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all.”

Similarly, 1 Peter 3:18 affirms, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit. Our Verdict: Jesus’ last word on the cross, “It is finished” wraps up our argument that anyone who believes in the doctrine of purgatory hates God and has made himself or herself His enemy.

Sabbath Observance as a Day of Worship

The devil likes to mess with the minds of gullible people and cause them to accept fads without questioning their veracity or alignment with God’s written. This is the case of the Seventh Day Adventists. They are convinced that those who meet for fellowship on Sundays are going straight to hell because according to them, Sunday is for the worship of the Roman sun god. So, they trumpet “Sabbath Observance” as the only visa to heaven. These folks care less about the atonement Jesus made with His blood.

But what does the Scripture say about the Sabbath? Exodus 20:8-10 spell out the Sabbath requirements – “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates..” There is no place in both the Old or New Testaments that God designated the Sabbath as a day of worship. The only time holy convocations were held on the Sabbath were during the three God-ordained feasts of unleavened bread (Passover), feast of weeks (Yom Kippur) and the feast of Tabernacles.

       In fact, members of Seventh Day Adventist would have been stoned to death in ancient Israel for breaking the Sabbath protocol by travelling beyond approved distances to attend their church meetings! I used to wonder why early Christians met for fellowship on the first day of the Jewish week, which is Sunday, until the Lord opened my eyes to the truth I shared here.

They could not have held their fellowship on Saturday for the simple reason that people were not allowed to travel long distances on that day as part of the Sabbath restrictions. Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2 clearly indicate that early believers held their meetings on Sundays. Our verdict: Anyone who holds on to the errors and demonic doctrine of Seventh Day Adventist, which promotes Sabbath observance as a substitute for the blood of Jesus and a prerequisite for salvation is God’s enemy.

Mary as Co-Redemptor with Christ

         There are some weird teachings about the person of Mary and the role she is playing in man’s redemption that are clearly demonic. Old Testament prophets foretold the birth, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. The only place virgin Mary is alluded to, but not by name is Isaiah 7:14, “Therefore the LORD Himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, And shall call his name, Immanuel.”

Even Peter, whom the Roman Catholic Church designates the “First Pope” said in Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” The Catholic Church not only venerates (worships) Mary, but gives a totally different picture of her humanity to sustain this delusion. It claimed that Mary was born without sin, contrary to Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”

The Catholic Church also asserts that Mary died a virgin, despite many Scriptures to the contrary. For instance, Mathew 1:24-25 state: “When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and embraced Mary as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.” Other Scriptures that made reference to Mary’s other children are Mark 3:20-21; 31-35; John 7:5; Mathew 13:55-57.

In fact, Mary was not mentioned again in the New Testament after the Day of Pentecost. It is noteworthy that she was among the 120 believers who received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on that day. Invariably, the Mary venerated by Roman Catholic Church is not the Mary of the Bible. Our verdict: Anyone who prays to Mary or worships her in any form of shape is God’s enemy.

Predestination

This is the most atrocious lie ever told against Almighty God. Although many Christian leaders are linked with this demonic teaching, it has been popularised by late John Calvin and his followers. Essentially, they assert that God decided those to send to hell or heaven before the foundation of the world. Obviously, advocates of this evil doctrine twist Paul’s writing in Roman’s 8:29-30 as the basis for their claims.

The Scripture says, “For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.”

       For reasons best known to them and their master, satan, proponents of predestination conveniently ignored the word, “Foreknew”, which aligns with God’s attribute of being Omniscient. In Isaiah 46:10, the LORD said, “Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do My pleasure.” How would this same God have sent His Son to die for people He had already elected to be saved?

How does the “whosoever” in Jesus’ John 3:16 align with predestination? For the avoidance of doubt, this is what the Son of God said about God’s own redemption plan – “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOSOEVER believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” How does this amount to predestination? In Timothy 2:3-4, Paul said, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” How is this an evidence of predestination?

 What satan has done through this demonic doctrine is to portray God as someone or something worse than himself. If God would indeed deliberately send people to hell for fun, how is He worthy of our love and worship? What happened to man’s free will if God had rigged the salvation process before the creation of the world? Why did Jesus say in Mathew 25:41 that the everlasting fire was prepared for the devil and his angels? Our Verdict: Anyone who embraces or propagates the doctrine of Predestination hates God and has made himself or herself His enemy.