SPIRITUAL CLARITY

A loved one was developing cataracts on her eyes.  They were not far advanced, and surgery was resisted.  However, now that surgery has happened, she is startled at the brightness and clarity the new implanted lens brings to an eye.  This is not something glasses can fix - rather it takes making an incision in the eye itself and implanting a new lens. Scary stuff, huh?  Most of us guard our eyes like a hawk - at least from physical things.   Ah, I think you know where I am going.

I am stunned at how far the church has degraded in just the last few years.  People who used to stand firm for morality, decency, and commitment are being flipped over to the world's point of view.  People I know are no longer staunch about abortion and sexual perversion. I heard the "s' word out of the mouth of a Pentecostal just today, and he was not unique.  I see posts on Facebook exalting Word-Faith theology and God basically being our butler.   My wife was speaking to a youth pastor at a Pentecostal Church who had no expectation their teens would remain pure.  No wonder, there are Christian websites urge dating Christian teens to maintain their virginity by mutually masturbating and having oral and anal sex.  Christianity Today says one in four pastors has viewed hard-core porn in the last six months.  Among Christian men is in an epidemic. One church has TWO dedicate phone lines for men to call.  They probably should have at least one for women as well, as this filth is exploding among women now.   There is a homosexual Pentecostal denomination now growing like wildfire. There is a homosexual led Pentecostal Temple right in northwest Philly.  Christian colleges are increasingly teaching universalism and only a relative handful believe what Jesus believed about a literal Genesis. It is hard to believe.  It boggles the mind. But it is true.  The great falling away and the grand delusion both prophecied in the book of Revelation are happening TODAY!

The spiritual eyes of people no longer can focus the light of Christ correctly - spiritual cataracts I call this.  Their vision is clouded.  They follow political, financial, or self-help messiahs more than Christ.
It starts with "small" compromises; Perhaps a woman refusing to submit to her husband. Perhaps a man taking leadership in a church when he was a love for money or is not humble and teachable, all qualifications for leadership.  The compromise is like a snowball until you cannot recognize that person anymore.  At church on Sunday, the teaching elder was talking about a man who was the pastor of a great Detroit Pentecostal Church.  His heart gradually rejected almost every essential of the Christian faith culminating in a book "Love Wins".  Spiritual cataracts that led to spiritual blindness.

My friends, a new set of spiritual glasses is not enough. We need circumcision of the eyes to take out the corrupted lens and have it replaced with new ones. We will see brightly and clearly the glorious truths of the gospel.  Do not compromise with carnal Christians who worship star pastors or political leaders or alternative gospels.  Defend the faith and study the word of God EVERY DAY for yourself. Let the Holy Spirit teach you and listen to mature men of God.  Pray every day and intercede for the weak and the hurting. Pray for the strong to stay that way and avoid deception.  WE ARE OUR BROTHERS' KEEPERS.   Let Christ operate on your eyes and do not set ANY unclean thing before them, whether spiritual, sexual, or politcal.  Christ is Lord, and he can enable us to be holy as he is!