The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
2 Peter 3: 9 NKJV
It is not a popular message, and if you speak it you could end up as a perceived enemy of the church. It's a message that popular pastor Carlton Pearson spoke to in the film Come Sunday. The message that it is certainly not the Lords desire that all of His children should perish in hell. That our own beliefs on hell may indeed be wrong. In the end, bishop Pearson was stripped of his church leadership and mocked within the church community for bringing his heresy to light. I can relate to much of what bishop Pearson endured, because for many years I was that guy in the pew absorbing each and every word that the mainstream church wanted me to hear. That God was a good and just God. That God, at times, could be a angry God. If you wanted to keep on Gods good and blessing giving side, you needed to follow the commands spoken by the pastor on Sunday morning. I get it. I remember those days. But now they seem like more a memory for me. See, I haven't stepped into a church since 2010. In fact, the other night while watching this movie with a few friends, I was told that perhaps God had indeed turned His back on me because I turned my back on Him. Really? News flash, I didn't turn my back on God. I love the Lord with all of my heart. I love Him because He loved me first. I love Him because He loves me even when those around me see nothing good in me. I could not turn my back on Him. Even if I did, God would not abandon me, He would wait for me to return to Him. So, I have not turned my back on God, just on the family business. That family business that is hell bent on making full pews and offering plates the focus of their existence. The family business that forsakes speaking the truth of Christ Jesus and instead continues to read from a two thousand year old playbook. That is what I walked away from.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."
John 3: 16 - 17 NKJV
For Carlton Pearson, his come to God moment happened as he watched a news program about a war torn region of the world. Then the question came...are these people going to hell? Granted, they had not been "saved" in the eyes of the mainstream church, so were they then destined for hell? My own come to Jesus moment happened at the end of a Easter Sunday sermon. The pastor had just finished wrapping up the traditional sermon on the death and resurrection of Christ and how through Him all of our sins were now washed away. Then, almost as a afterthought, he invited the congregation to come forward for prayer if they had any sins they needed to confess. I was done. This certainly wasn't the God I had been taught, who spoke to me about forgiving my sins but then goes back on His promise. Can God lie? Absolutely not. It was then that I realized that my struggle wasn't with God, but with the men who taught me about the Lord. The old Christian mindset that God is a vengeful God does not sit too well with me. If God were a vengeful God, then why did He provide for my salvation through Christ? If God is a vengeful God, why did he create me lovingly in His own image? {Genesis 1:27} If God is a vengeful God, why is it that He lives in me today? {Galatians 2:20} No, I will never believe in that image of the God I love. This is the struggle that Carlton Pearson wrestled with. It is also the struggle which a dear pastor friend of mine wrestled with as well. longing to speak the truth of Christ and the love nature of God, but knowing that if he did his place in the family business would be no more. One thing is certain, however, you will not find me in that pew come Sunday.
And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our only but also for the whole world.
1 John 2: 2 NKJV
~Scott~
1 comment:
I have also heard the false claim all too often in Christian circles that God somehow abandoned Jesus as He hung on the cross. Of course, this is ridiculous. We are told that Jesus is the image of God in the flesh. When we see Him we see the Father. God was with Him the entire time.
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