Amos 5:12 For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate [from their right].
During my interaction with the veteran Preacher whom I mentioned in my last message, he shared (he is retired now) about a colleague during his working days in a bank. The colleague was a formidable Hindu and performed the office puja every year. But after interacting with our Brother and hearing the Gospel denied to do the puja. He even stopped taking part in any Hindu ritual, including taking Prasad. The height was when he, who was not suitable for a job, started declaring that he would get it because of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. When the result came, his name was not there; on fervent prayer of our Brother another update to the result came, which was something that never happened and on the update his name was found. After all this, when he joined a Believer Church, the Pastor there forced him to tithe (something that is to build faith) caused him to leave the Church, for he was in debt and needed time to come out of it.
There are many stories of how Pastors and Church leaders destroyed, or tried to destroy, the faith of people whom the Lord touched. Myself, if the Lord was not in one-on-one communication with me, I do not think I would have survived the Churches I have been or am in. Even in ministries, we find people who do not fear God in what they do but fear the leaders of the ministry.
Churches have become slaughterhouses of the faithful; they deceive people with religious Church activities that divert the focus from God and His Kingdom to Church expansion and management. They fool people to think just reading the Bible is sufficient and discourage them from studying it deeply, for they themselves have no answers.
Let us fear God and remember all have to answer Him on Judgment Day. We can fool man but cannot fool God.
[Prayer Starter]
Lord, You are Almighty God. You, Lord, are a merciful God. You are a zealous God, very possessive of Your little ones. You warned that it is better to tie a large rock around one’s neck and jump into the deep sea rather than destroy any of Your little ones, yet people do not fear You in doing so, they prefer pleasing man…
We make this prayer in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
[Reference Scriptures]
Amos 5:9-11
9 That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.
10 They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.
11 Forasmuch therefore as your treading [is] upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.
Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in [yourselves], neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
Matthew 23:14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
Matthew 23:15, 25
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
Matthew 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and [that] he were drowned in the depth of the sea.