Apostasy in the Last Days

Going, going...

I don't like to tell folks to leave other churches because that smacks of audaciousness. However, I strongly recommend that people who attend Presbyterian churches find new venues to follow Jesus Christ.

That's because the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) is dead. And it's been dead for a long time.

The Presbyterian Church wasn't always that way. It was founded in the 16th century by John Calvin who was one of the early church reformers along with Martin Luther who rejected the Roman Catholic gospel. 

Calvin was a pragmatist who believed that Scripture rather than tradition had to be the defining authority of the faith. Although Calvin embraced Predestination, the contentious belief that God chose his followers before the dawn of history, Calvin was otherwise dedicated to the orthodoxy of Scripture. 

And for several centuries, the Presbyterian Church shared her founder's passion for the inspiration of the Bible. Many folks were born again into a new eternal life in Jesus Christ through the Presbyterian Church. And millions more heard the good news of the genuine gospel of Jesus Christ: "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16) through Presbyterian ministers and missionaries.

But that was then and this is now. Now, the Presbyterian Church has decided to allow its clergy to perform same-sex weddings in clear defiance of the scriptures that Calvin and his church held in such sacred esteem for centuries. 

If you're a bible-believing Christian, then there's no sense debating this issue with those who promote same-sex marriage within the Christian church. Because those who believe that the homosexual lifestyle is normal and permitted by God don't believe in the scriptures. And there are a lot of professing Christians who no longer consider the Bible to be the inspired, inerrant word of God. 

After PCUSA legalized same-sex marriage, it decided to divest economically from companies that do business with the nation of Israel. On Friday (June 20, 2014), the PCUSA General Assembly voted to dump its stock in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions because those companies do business with the tiny Jewish nation.

Of course, PCUSA doesn't want the stock divestiture to look like anti-Semitism. So, PCUSA offered up the convenient excuse that the divestiture was designed to send a message to companies to stop doing business with Israel inside "the occupied territories."

Get it? According to PCUSA, this isn't about Jew-hatred--it's about companies that conduct business with the Jewish nation on land that PCUSA claims belongs to the Palestinians. After the vote, PCUSA spokesman Heath Rada made the sanctimonious statement that "in no way is this (vote) a reflection of our lack of love for our Jewish brothers and sisters." 

Then why the divestiture vote? Because PCUSA refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. When PCUSA speaks of "occupied territories" what it really means is that any land that Israel possesses is unlawfully occupied. 

Why does PCUSA believe that? Because PCUSA has embraced a Roman Catholic heresy. The Roman Catholic Church teaches a concept called Replacement Theology that claims that when Israel corporately rejected Jesus Christ as her Messiah, God rejected the Jewish nation and replaced her with the Roman Catholic Church. 

Therefore, according to Replacement Theology, Israel has no right to exist. And, according to the Catholic Church, Israel's reemergence in 1948 as a sovereign nation once again after 1,800 years wasn't the fulfillment of God's promises made to His ancient prophets but was a coincidence that had no prophetic significance. 

A long time ago, God spoke these words to Abraham concerning his descendants and the nation of Israel: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Genesis 12:3)

Therefore, the Presbyterian Church is under a curse. Not surprisingly, PCUSA has lost over 500,000 members since the dawn of the 21st century. And PCUSA figures to lose many more because the Holy Spirit has also left that church.

Somewhere in heaven, John Calvin is weeping. Surely, he remembers Christ's prophetic words that in the end times "many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people." (Matthew 24:10-11)

Calvin probably never thought that those words would be fulfilled through his own church. But now they have. What a tragedy.