By Gregory R Reid
Note by the Author: Some of these warnings were first written in an article I wrote called “The Trojan Horse” [http://www.gregoryreid.com/id180.htm]. This article is an updated understanding based on the current conditions (2007) within the evangelical church in the western world—Gregory Reid
Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against the church. The church is those who gather together in His name to do His will and spread His gospel. And truly, that church will not fail. But then, that must mean that most of what we see in evangelical, post-modern, emerging religious circles is not “the church”, but rather a form of religion that has the trappings of the church, but has not the power, nor the mandate, nor the authority that comes only from the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is just a physical shell made up of lost people who for some reason have been drawn to a religious place and religious ideas but have not been drawn into total abandonment to Jesus and surrendered to His absolute Lordship. They are those Paul speaks of who have “a form of godliness but deny the power of it” (2 Timothy 3:5).
This is why Paul told us to “examine yourselves, as to whether you be in the faith” (2 Corinthians13:5), because obviously, even then one could be in the CHURCH without being in the FAITH. He then gave the criterion: “Jesus Christ is IN you, unless you are disqualified”. In other words, if Jesus does not live IN you, you are not His. Your life must belong to the Lord Jesus Christ—lock, stock and barrel.
“Accepting” Jesus is a modern invention. As Keith Green used to point out, Jesus doesn’t have a self-image problem where He needs our “acceptance”. We need Him to accept us, and He will only do that when we come to the cross and surrender our “old lives” to death and our “new life” to Him.
I fear that most of the modern church is a group of nice people who are attracted to the nice ideas of Jesus and family and church but have never been to the altar and cried out for His mercy and forgiveness for their sins and surrendered their lives over to His Lordship. And that, dear friends, is what being a “Christian” really is.
The modern church mix is made up of many people, who are drawn to the ideas and trappings of church but who are not the surrendered property of the Lord Jesus, plus those who HAVE surrendered to Jesus at some point, but who have grown weary in well-doing and have ceased to be watchmen and simply allowed all the new changes in “church” to come in without examining them, and without contesting the wrong in them, and Antichrist without taking a stand against the increasing infiltration of occult new age lies, because they are…worn out.
The third is a small group who know what is coming and who are being marginalised because they raise the warning cry.
In order for the one world order/one world religion to succeed and make the way for the antichrist to come to power, the first group has to be recognised as the “church”, the second group of real believers need to be neutralised, put to sleep or worn out to be too weak to fight, and the third must be marginalised, criticised, mocked and dismissed so they will no longer be part of the emerging “church” but will be considered outcasts, extremists and freaks
This is how it will be accomplished:
Much like a spiritual Orwellian nightmare, the “antiquated and alienating” language of the church will be replaced with a whole new dictionary of catch-phrase, cute and pithy rhyming bromides, tips and spiritual sound-bites, as well as new-age friendly and interchangeable words and phrases. Unacceptable will be the words “sin”, “repentance”, “the second coming of Jesus”, “tribulation”, “heaven”, “eternal life”, “judgment”, “the cross”, “the blood of Jesus”, “suffering”, “chastisement”, “Lord Jesus”.
Instead, the new vocabulary is going to be a mass of herd-thinking, lemming-like following modern words and phrases designed to brainwash and get us all “on the same page” (to use one newspeak phrase), and includes these weak and powerless substitutions for “that old time religion” talk: paradigm shift, emergent, enlightenment, transformation, seeker-friendly, dialoguing, sacred tribes, (instead of cults and witches and pagans and Satanists) Jesus as leader and director (not Lord), kingdom now, kingdom come, as above so below, world changers, dream seekers, vision casting, changing direction or changing our way of thinking (instead of repenting), centring, contemplative prayer, dream catchers, reformation, etc.
Once all the words that have always defined and established the gospel as not just words but power, are eliminated, then this new vocabulary will become like an exclusive language that will make the “old talkers” look like outdated, “unenlightened” and non-progressive spiritual has-beens and relics from a less “transformed” time.
Since the New Age dictionary is the template for all the new emergent “church-speak”, all the new “emergents” will indeed be on “the same page”—right out of Satan’s playbook for absorbing and neutralising the “church”. It will make that church as powerless as a toothless poodle.
This is being done through several very deliberate means. First, they are glutting the Christian marketplace with new translations, most of them based on a spurious text that was disregarded as flawed for centuries, then reworked by two British spiritualists1 (Westcott & Hort—check your translation and you may see their names in there) and has been the text that has been pushed as the text on which almost ALL new Bible versions are based, from NIV to New Century. Then they throw in a glut of Bible “transliterations”, which are not translations but just a person’s idea of what they think it means, such as The Message. As the once reliable (KJV) translation becomes a relic that is unwelcome in the “emergent church”, Satan delights on seeing the look of confusion on people’s faces as one verse goes up on power point and ten different people have ten different translations that aren’t even close to what is on the screen—and they quietly conclude, “This is confusing. I’ll just stop reading it for myself”. This is why so few children ever show up in church with a Bible and just trust that whatever goes up on the screen is okay.
Being that hundreds of references to Jesus’ lordship, the cross, sin and the blood of Jesus are routinely (and often randomly, based on the transliterator’s bias) removed, soon the power and authority of God’s Word will be taken out of the church and left with the few who dare to actually believe it is God’s perfect Word. This new “church” and new “youth paradigm” will be one that uses scripture only as a “helpful guide”. Children will no longer be encouraged to “study to show yourself approved to God”, (2 Timothy 2:15) but instead will be fed “experience” as more important than the Bible. The power—and the importance—of preaching and teaching will be downplayed and even mocked. This quest for “experience” will be a gateway to massive deception, as one experience opens up to another. Those who challenge the experiences if they do not line up with scripture will be called Bible thumpers, extremists, pharisees, and those who are limiting the Holy Spirit.
As parents and church leaders stop putting a premium on the Word of God, then children will simply not take it seriously anymore. An encouragement to “quiet time” will become little more than a scripture bite with “contemplative” activities, “breath prayers”, and other Hindu-drawn devices. The scriptures will become meaningless, or, at most, a nice guide to better living.
How far this is from the sacred Word of God that has cost MILLIONS of believers their LIVES just to possess even a PORTION of it over the centuries! After enough new Bible versions have filled the church so that while we’re all “on the same page” NO ONE will be on the right page, because the pages and words are so different, and when enough “inclusive” language is put in the new Bibles to replace the old, there will come a “new age” version that even Hindus, Buddhists Wiccans and Pagans can accept. And I believe it is already being worked on as I write. By the time it is brought out and hailed as the inclusive, definitive Bible for all ages, those who contend for the purity and authority of the Word of God will be so mocked and dismissed that they will be, to these “new age believers”, nothing more than a joke and an annoyance.
This is a program-in-progress even now, where, little by little, we “lower the bar” of truth in order to let un-churched people gain entrance—not to the Kingdom of God—but to this new church.
In this church, there will be no speaking of the occult or occult practices as “bad”, no talk of other religions as bad, no speaking of Jesus as the ONLY way. It will be the church that accentuates the positive and eliminates the negative (positive and negative are also big newspeak words in this church), and it will grow exponentially as witches, occultists, homosexuals, radical feminists, socialists, adulterers and paedophiles realise this is a church that asks no questions, raises no standard and requires no repentance. “Come as you are” the new banner, will never add, “Go and sin no more”. There will be no lack of comfort, no challenge, no conviction. This church will be big on works and become the perfect “model” for the one world order which will compel people to “heal the world” rather than prepare for Christ’s return. It will be a socialist club that will kiss the face of the Buddhist priests as they fall into eternal hell, join hands with the gay pastor in the pulpit who will go and engage those same hands in detestable and forbidden perversions and they will call him “godly” and thus fill up the blasphemy of the whore of Babylon and re-establish the baal prophets and homosexual prostitutes in the very house of God.
As the church is being moved away from expecting a “pie in the sky by and by”, and moved toward a socialistic works-oriented religion that will take the place of social programs, it will be moving exactly into the place it was designed to by those who control the Luciferian agenda and do not want to eliminate the evangelical church, but neutralise, co-opt and absorb it. For this Luciferian order does not wish to destroy the world, but to make it a PERFECT world—disease free, poverty free, war free—only with Lucifer as god and not Jesus as Lord of all. The move for the emergent church to be pushed toward “repairing the world” and be overwhelmingly involved in social and political causes is all part of the plan.
As the wall of truth is torn down and a “new wall of understanding and interpreting truth” is put up with untempered mortar, I see a huge crack or gap in the back wall of the church. In the midst of this church will be hurting souls hungry for the supernatural power of God—as we all should be hungry. But there will be a multitude who are NOT exercised in the Word of God to discern truth from error. They have not been taught, nor do they practise, how to “try the spirits, to see whether they be of God” (1 John 4:1). They will seek an experience with God (as we should!) but the boundary of truth has not been established through years of commitment to the written, engrafted Word so it is not there to protect them.
This inevitably provides a spiritual crack that allows a trickle, then a stream, then a flood of supernatural events to fill this new church. I am grieved and hesitant to say, that I believe much of this has already come through the new so called “prophetic” movement. The crack is already a gaping hole and the flood has commenced.
Now, hear me—I was spiritually raised Pentecostal, I believe in all the gifts and manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and I believe we need them now more than any time in history. I am both an intercessor and a watchman. I believe, I believe I BELIEVE!—in ALL of God’s Holy Spirit miracle power! And I LONG for it all.
But I am also a former occultist, and I have fought those powers all of my life. And I tell you before God, that Satan can imitate it ALL. I have heard tongues and prophecy and heard gospel hymns and choruses in a spiritualist church. I have seen demonic healings and lying signs and wonders that would make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
And I tell you, as much as I see the need for the prophetic and believe the genuine is from God, I am seeing that a great deal of it is from another source. There is so much guessing, speculation, elaborate word working, that is untested. The scriptures could not be more plain to “do not believe every spirit” (1 John 4:1). I am concerned because a generation raised and conditioned and bathed in the occult through media and books, cannot naturally distinguish between an occult working and a genuine manifestation of the Holy Spirit!
The door has been opened to “satisfy” the “seekers of the supernatural” who do not discern, because they have not been trained how to “test the spirits”. They are not being told to test the spirits, lest they be “doubting God” and “limiting the Spirit”. This breach in truth will give way to “lying signs and wonders”, “sanctified” necromancy (that is already happening), meaningless miracles (what purpose does gold dust serve?) and direct “prophecy” from lying spirits. A church “open to anything” is going to fall prey to everything.
This particular phase is crucial to those who are “preparing the way” for “the one” as they call him “whose coming is with all lying signs and wonders”. The “new church” will see only the power he shows and will count it as being from God.
I believe in the real power and miracle supernatural of God more now than I ever have. For that reason I raise this warning. ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOD! Test it ALL!
None of the new age agenda or one world religion can succeed unless the biggest obstacle is removed from the evangelical church as it now stands, viz the preaching of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ in the clouds, and the coming tribulation and the end of all things.
Tribulation, persecution, revelation, the second coming, the rapture, all must be eliminated from the vocabulary and the preaching and teaching in the “emerging church” if they are to succeed in seducing the evangelical church. And we’re almost there now. Just this morning, I read these frightening words from a “prophetic” conference: “We must stop erroneous thinking to escape with the rapture. Let’s repent of this! Church mentality is RENTING. But God is into owning the whole thing!” (Earth.)
Here we see the crux of this new thinking: “kingdom now,” “the kingdom is within and among you,” “Your will be done on earth…now”, message. I recognise that Jesus did speak of the “present” (Gospel) kingdom, which He said does not come with “open show” and that is “among” us (i.e. in our hearts (within you) and our midst)—cf. Luke 17: 21. However He also spoke of a future “coming of the Kingdom” which is not ours to know the time or place cf. Acts 1:6-7. “Kingdom now” is an oxymoron, even to those who advocate it, for they say we the “church” will bring in the Kingdom , so they confess it is future. Of course they are wrong because the Bible says Christ will bring in the Kingdom when He returns. Nearly always error contains some truth—truth pushed to an extreme always becomes error.
Many scriptures are being twisted and de-contextualised to condition the church, not to expect Jesus’ return (at least not from heaven and in the clouds), not to prepare their lamps with oil, but to take over. It’s called “dominion theology”.
And it is going to send a whole multitude of naïve and undiscerning believers into a trap of thinking they are going to rule on earth but will instead face prison and persecution of believers such as the world has never seen. I didn’t say it; Jesus did. Read Matthew chapter 24. A thorough and honest reading of the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Jesus will return in the clouds, and that the church is to expect His Coming—to literally “love His appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8). The words of prophecy concerning the last days are abundant and numerous.
So why is it that this generation is completely unfamiliar with all of this? When was the last time you heard a message on Jesus’ return, or last days’ events, or preparation? I fear, for whatever good the “Left Behind” book series2 did, the damage may be greater, because now, well, it’s all…fiction—mere stories or even fantasy.
In order for the coming antichrist agenda to succeed, he must have a church that says, “Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:4).
Are we not there already? Have not those who preach Jesus’ soon return, who warn of coming tribulation and judgment, been categorised and dismissed as “doomsday preachers”, people to be laughed at and mocked, or at least, have people roll their eyes at them in mild amusement and pity?
Watch for the “emerging church” to rapidly redefine and explain away and change the meaning of all the scriptures that deal with prophecy and the last days. And since most new “church” folks don’t read the real Bible for themselves, the issue will rarely even occur.
Rather than pilgrims and strangers whose home is in heaven, who believe to “be with Christ, which is far better” (Philippians 1:23), who know the kingdom is invisible and who know we are not here to “heal the world” but to “call every man to repentance”, this new church will become little more than the relief social agency for this coming world system of antichrist, and whose inclusion in that system will give them a false religious sense of “purpose” and “destiny” and “doing good works”, as they lose the true mandate: to preach the fiery gospel of Jesus because they know that “the end of all things is at hand” (1 Peter 4:7).
It is difficult to believe that the day will come when who Jesus was and is will be so redefined and changed, and what He said about His coming will be so twisted, that the “man of peace” will come, and many of these new “emergent” church believers will say, “We got it wrong! He has come back, just not as we thought! He’s come back as a human, and he’s got the love, and the miracles, and the power to prove it!” And thus the deception—and the way—for the end of things—will be complete and ready to begin the final countdown.
I cannot bring myself to end this on a positive note, lest I detract from the gravity of what I have written and have shown.
I will only say, to those who have ears to hear, hold your ground; be strong; behave like men and women of the living God; put on all your armour, watch, and earnestly contend for the faith that was delivered to you; keep your bags packed and hold everything lightly in your hands; preach the uncompromised word that makes people sweat, get angry, and walk away or repent and weep and get saved; do not compromise; prepare for hard times; and look up and REJOICE, because your redemption is drawing nigh!
Man the outposts! Hold the line. Be the warrior. Do not back down. Stand firm in the truth, and the gates of hell WILL NOT PREVAIL against those who stand and fight to the last!
About The Author: Dr Gregory Reid is the director of YouthFire ministries. He has been in youth related ministry since 1975, is ordained with American Evangelistic Association, and has an honorary doctorate from Logos Graduate School In Jacksonville, Florida. Dr Reid has been training criminal justice classes on cult crimes and crimes against children since 1987, and is currently working as a youth pas¬tor at Crosspoint Church in El Paso, Texas.
