I think I know what you are still driving at. And no, I would never attempt to coerce. In fact, the one time when I have personally even seen something resembling Christian coercion was at a Hispanic church where the worship leader would literally stop and tell the congregation they needed to worship God more. I thought, "True worship of God cannot be manufactured," so it didn't sit well with me.
Out of curiosity Robert Derrick, what denominational background was this that you came from? Or if not a denomination, what sort of church environment?
I agree.
Sounds almost like a Megachurch environment.
No, a newly created Organization of Churches breaking from the Pentecostal Churches that they had decreed to have 'compromised' the holiness standard. It was formed around one man, who was the 'Pastor' of all the churches. They have a particular 'outreach' to the military, called 'Servicemen's Homes', which began in oversea bases, where the preacher would open his own home, on or off base, to young G.I.s looking for a Christian environment rather than the barracks.
The perversion came when these 'Home away from Home' environments were turned into
a business for profit, much like used car lots springing up outside of military bases. Filthy lucre, lord's over God's heritage, merchandizers of the sheep.
It is called New Testament Christian Churches NTCC. Under the Founding Pastor, who is now dead, they became the
only true and rightly holiness church left in the world: the last true Organization of the churches of God, since the time of the apostles, with 'Pastor' as the modern James. Young G.I.s (myself included) separated from home and hearing the Gospel for the first time, became easy 'pickings' for recruitment into the Organizational Bible College, which was little more than a Business Seminar for 'building churches'.
Mind you none of this sprang up overnight, nor was even planned. And the real
wooden hook of bad fishing was in fact the true preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the Gospel of the cross with the Holy Ghost baptism and Spirit sent down from heaven. I was a licensed minister close to the 'Pastor' for 13 years, until I saw that the Organization had become an inherited business of his personal family, just like any other in the real business world. His born or married relatives would in due time ascend to the top, after doing a 'floor time' in the field of building a church.
Looking at it in this light from the outside would be simple, but from the inside, not so simple. Especially since most all the churches around us were indeed sloppy in righteousness and 'compromisers' to the core, as you point out.
When I did personally break with 'Pastor', the very next day the
vail of Pastor was taken away from my eyes (2 Cor 3:14), and I
immediately began to see the Scriptures plainly as written, and saw how that most all we were doing in the 'church building business' was
against God and His sheep, rather than
for Him.
In that day, though I thought myself a castaway awaiting God's wrath, I did what I was normally want to do: pray and read the Bible. I randomly opened the Book to Ezekiel 34, and began to read, and I came to vs 34: "
Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad."
And I thought, my God,
that is pushing the church! Pushing the church is wrong! And for the next 5 years alone, in solitude not in isolation, I daresay even as Saul of Tarsus in Arabia (Gal 1), the Lord would open my eyes
by Scripture daily showing me where we had all been so wrong, and that 'Pastor' was not only
not the next James of God's Organization of Churches, but rather there is no such thing as an Organization of God, and anyone claiming to be the 'Pastor' thereof, is usurping the headship of Jesus Christ over His believers: Cult group. Antichrist ruler and dominator over the believers:
"
And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer." (Rev 6)
I know what an antichrist is
distinctly by Scripture, and I knew one that I once loved as God Himself.
And I also know the little beginnings, the little foxes, the small root going down the road of false ministry (Heb 12:15). It mostly begins with someone sincerely desiring to do good for the Lord in reaching out to a lost and dying world, but they are
not called by God, but rather by the will of man. They yet still have in their hearts to fulfill the first commandment of God to all mankind:
Be fruitful and multiply: I.e. they have yet to properly succeed in the world and prospered as believers of God obedient to His commandments (Josh 1)(3 John 2), and so they just
cannot help themselves from trying to fulfill that God-given urge to succeed, but
in the wrong place and at the wrong time: In the ministry of Christ.
The ministry of God is the
loving people business , but becomes the 'people business' in the hands of them
prematurely seeking full time ministry, and so they begin to pursue and
hunt down souls to help build their business for profit sake, rather than simply to help souls to build up their own lives for Jesus' sake.
"
He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD." (Gen 10)
Rather than being ambassadors of Christ beseeching others to be reconciled to God
in Christ's stead, they become ambassadors of their church, begging others to be reconciled to themselves
instead of Christ. (2 Cor 5:20)
No man does this on purpose from the beginning. No man wakes up one morning and decides to use the ministry of Christ for their own purposes. It only happens because true and sincere believers get it in their hearts to launch off into an endeavor that God has not yet called them to. They become more of a problem than a help to believers.
The mystery of iniquity and the mystery of Babylon, is that the ministers thereof begin in sincerity for souls, but end in merchandizing of them instead. The
mystery is that even the antichrists going out from the apostles' fellowship and doctrine (1 John 2: 19)
don't even know it in the beginning...
antichrists and beasts of ministry do not start out that way. Even as Lucifer did not start out as the devil.
'Pastor' was a good man and Christian. A faithful and sincere minister of the gospel, but when he say an opportunity to achieve success as a businessman in the ministry, he took it and rose up in the clouds of success like God Himself (Isaiah 14), and proceeded to fall away backward into the depths of a personally organized cult built around himself. Like King Saul, he began innocent and good and willing, but when the occasion of personal power arose, he took it, to his own destruction.
