079 Huge Surprises

There is a series of online videos out from Lionandlamb ministries, stating that the Pharisees in Jesus’ Day were all members of a secret society which today is called Cabala. While at first glance this seems to be a convincing argument (and the author of the videos states it with an effort to make it come across as fact, rather than a theory), and it does seem to make sense in the light of such dreaded Scriptures as John 8:44, where Jesus tells them openly, “Ye are of your father, the devil…,” or many others where He blasts the Pharisees, about which many theologians argue that Jesus couldn’t have possibly said or meant that…

After all, He was talking to Jews, and the Jews are God’s people, right?

While I don’t doubt that members of occult secret societies may had infiltrated the governing body of Jewish religious establishment of those days, just as they have allegedly (and obviously) infiltrated today’s established religion, I see a few problems with that theory.

First of all, we have members of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees, who believed in Jesus, even if they had to do so secretly¸ like Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night in John 3, or Gamaliel, who defended the disciples before the Sanhedrin in Acts. Certainly they weren’t Satanists.

Secondly, labeling the Pharisees as members of a secret satanic society creates a comfortable gap between them and us. After all, we don’t belong to a satanic society, so we’ve got nothing to do with those satanic people who were responsible for Jesus’ death. No, we’re the good ones, and they were the bad ones.

I’m afraid that won’t do.

In my own personal experience, today’s established religionists are a lot more like the Pharisees than they would like to believe.

Let’s have a look from the Pharisees’ point of view in the days of the apostles: here was this strange, new, dangerous sect emerging, with scary new doctrines that threatened to overthrow all their good old traditions, and the way they had believed and practiced religion for so long.

How many people attending church do you know who would react differently to that kind of threat, nowadays, than the Pharisees did to Jesus and the Early Christians?

It’s easy to say, “Well, they were of the Devil and belonged to a satanic sect,” now, 2000 years after it happened and there’s no proof whatsoever to back up that theory.

It’s a lot harder to say, “Hmmm, looks like the Pharisees had a definite problem with self-righteousness, and they were quite stuck in their old religious rut, they thought they knew better than God as to who and what kind of people He would use.” Because that sounds a lot more familiar and closer to home, doesn’t it?

The theory also takes any guilt from the general Jewish population of that day, by creating a separation between them and their “satanic” rulers. But you can’t tell me that it was just a few members of a secret society yelling “Crucify Him!” and “Free Barabbas!” before Pilate (see also Mt.27:25).

Many people seem to forget that God has made a new Covenant with man, a covenant of the spirit, not of flesh, and that “He is not a Jew, which is one outwardly” (carnally, physically), “but he who is one inwardly…in the spirit” (Romans 2:28, 29).

“By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Maybe a whole lot more people than we think are going to turn out to have believed the wrong things, no matter how convinced they may be that they are in the right, just like the Pharisees were, and maybe a whole lot more of us will turn out to have sided with the wrong guys, opposing and oppressing those who look a lot more like little David with his slingshot confronting Goliath than the guys we’re siding with.

Not all Palestinians are terrorists, nor are all Muslims terrorists. In fact, there used to be more Christians among the Palestinian population than among the rest of the population of Israel, and there probably still are, except that we never hear much of their side of the story these days. Not much of anything gets through that wall the Israelis have built in order to keep out the undesired elements.

I really wonder how God would look on all these things.

And from the way I know Him, I think many of us are in for some huge surprises.

The truth, ladies & gentlemen, is and has always been terribly unpopular in a world run by the father of lies, even – or should I say, especially – in the circles of established religion.

Sin is a lot closer to home than many of us have the guts to admit to ourselves.

It doesn’t take a secret satanic society to oppose the true Messiah and His strange new sect.

All it takes is some damn clever lies of the Devil, and from what I can tell, those are more abundant than they ever were.

059 The Leaven of the Pharisees

If you type "leaven of the Pharisees" in your google bar, you'll come up with nearly as many results and definitions of the term, as there are denominations and churches. For the fundamentalist hardliners, the Pharisees of today are represented by the catholic church, whose members, again, have their own definitions.

I find the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees to be much closer to home than the other side, the other denomination. The leaven of the Pharisees is a sin we have all committed, especially the most righteous among us. It is the sin that nailed our Savior to the cross: Self-righteousness.

It's the audacity of thinking we have the right to judge another, blatantly defing Jesus' own commandment He gave us to "judge not that ye be not judged" (Matth.7:1). But we go ahead and do it anyway. We go around and call others "fornicators" and "adulterers" because they live together "in sin" without a marriage license.

We go around and tell others the Satanic lie that they can lose their Salvation if they don't watch out and stop sinning, quoting the only verse most Christians ever memorize on Salvation (Phil.2:12): "Work out thine own Salvation in fear and trembling" (Ahhh, it feels so good to cause others to feeeaaaar and trrrremmmmble, doesn't it? - So who's the pervert here?).... Of course, totally ignoring the dozens of Scriptures that make it quite plain that Salvation is a gift of grace, only to be obtained through faith, and without works whatseoever. What Paul was referring to in the verse above, is what we make out of our Salvation in this life, and what kind of a life we build on the foundation of the new life in Christ. But our eternal Salvation is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8,9), and if God is Love (1John 4:8), then He won't jerk that gift away from His child everytime he sins.

Besides, sinning is something we all do a lot more often than we like to admit. Those self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees of today are just trying to make it easier on themselves by re-defining sin: you are a sinner because you're not married, and I'm not, because I go to church on Sundays and have a marriage license. According to Jesus, everyone who even so much as looks at a woman and desires her in his heart, has already committed adultery (Mt.5:28). Now, the only sort of (male) people I know of who can withstand that natural urge God built into a healthy man's system, are homosexuals.

The leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees is the audacity to put oneself above another and say, "I am good and you are bad, because I go to the right kind of church, and my belief system is the right one." Jesus certainly didn't fit into the belief system of the Scribes and Pharisees, and likewise He could walk past any of those supposed followers of His today, who claim to be so much better than everyone else, and they wouldn't even recognize Him. They'd be the first to accuse, resist, persecute and judge Him again.

The leaven of the Pharisees is the audacity of anyone (even indirectly) saying to any "illigitemate" child, "The world would have been better off without you, because you were born in 'sin'."

It is the audacity of self-righteous church Christians all over the world who refuse to accept divorcees in their midst.

They are totally out of touch with God. They are Paulites, not Christians, and at the same time ignoring Paul's own warnings not to become followers of his, nor of Apollos, nor of Peter, but of Christ. And, of course, at the same time, blatantly ignoring the gist of Paul's epistles, which is to make clear that Salvation is by grace, and that "the fruit of the spirit is LOVE... against such there IS no law!" (Gal.5:22,23).

They miss the point of the whole story, starting with Cain (who thought he could win God's favor through his own works) and Abel (the prototype of the victims of the do-it-yourself religionists of all ages).

No matter how much those self-righteous little Scribes and Pharisees of today try to make life impossible for their fellowmen, "there IS no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1), as much as they're trying to prove the opposite!

They're only heaping up greater condemnation upon themselves (James 3:1). It's that kind of people who make Christianity a grim and bitter choice for those who would like to enjoy life a little bit.

No wonder there are so many Satanists and witches. With so many modern Scribes and Pharisees around with an attitude of, "If you don't accept my religion and live according to my rules, you're going to burn in the fires of hell forever and ever," they probably figure, "Okay, so I'm going to burn in Hell then, as long as I don't have to be a self-righteous prig like you!"

Just as the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day relied on Moses, and called themselves Moses' disciples (John9:28), entirely missing the whole point, as Jesus pointed out when he said, "Had ye believed Moses, then you would also believe Me, because he spoke of Me" (John5:46), so the modern day Pharisees rely on Paul, utterly oblivious to the point Paul was trying to make, and becoming the very people of whom Paul prophesied: "The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you" (Romans 2:24), referring to precisely the type of people who dare to judge others (2:1).

No wonder Jesus warned us of that kind of poison. It's the very stuff that turns hundreds of people against the true God by the hour, landing more people in hell - thanks to those "dedicated Christians" - than Satan could achieve by any other means.

No wonder Rick Joyner saw Satan's armies riding on the back of Christians. They're his greatest tools, and they certainly deserve his gratitude.

As far as Jesus goes, they should remember that the very way they treat even the least of His brethren is the way they're treating Him.

I can see a lot of red faces in the not too distant future. Red with shame.

Selected Scriptures About the Pharisees:

Watch "Overcoming the Religious Spirit" by Patricia King & Faisal Malick