Romans 11:22
Behold the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen away, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off.
Above is one of the many passages that ‘reformed’ doctrine omits from the ears of its victims. Too often even the “kindness/ goodness” of God, that is spoken of by the many false teachers we are encompassed with today, isn’t even completely true. But this “severity” aspect of God’s nature is all but denied and avoided.
Before we continue to look at scriptural references of Christ’s stern disposition on willful rebellion to His instruction, let’s read the above passage again with some highlighted points, and then once more in context. Shall we?
Romans 11:22
“Behold the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen away, but God’s kindness to you, PROVIDED YOU CONTINUE in his kindness. OTHERWISE YOU TOO WILL BE CUT OFF.”
Some points:
1) Reformed theology presents a lie that Jesus has done it all for you, 2) your performance is irrelevant, and 3) that you cannot earn a “free gift”, so it is not salvation by works, but by grace and faith in “Christ alone.” But Paul is speaking of the Jews of the circumcision mindset, and is saying that they fell away from God, and therefore reaped His severe judgment. But Paul says to this Roman audience that if they continue in God’s “kindness” (aka His teachings lived out), THEN they would reap His blessing (salvation). Then this passage ends with the promise of judgment that they would be cut off from His salvation, if they did not continue walking in Christ’s law. Hmmmm. And like thousands of other passages stating the same, there it is! Now let’s put the passage back into the context of the chapter.
Romans 11:13-21
Now I am speaking to you Gentiles (the nations apart from ancient Israel). Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if SOME OF the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off BECAUSE OF THEIR UNBELIEF, but you stand fast through faith(fulness). So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches (Jews who rebelled), neither will he spare you.
And then our opening verse followed here. Do you see it? Paul was warning the Gentile believers to not become arrogant or critical against the “natural branches” (ancient Jewish people), but to fear Christ and be faithful to His covenant teaching. Notice that these “natural branches” were cut off from God’s covenant because of their UNBELIEF. And note that he said “SOME OF” the branches were broken off. Not all. Who were the first Christians? Believing Jews. Those believing Jews were the founders of the current Israel of God, aka The Church. The terms ‘Israel of God’, ‘People of God‘, or ‘Church of God‘ are all synonymous. Jewish ethnicity has NO COVENANT. Only those in Christ are the current ‘Israel of God.’
Galatians 3:28-29
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, THEN you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.
Look at this passage from Hebrews.
Hebrews 3:12-13
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you AN EVIL, UNBELIEVING HEART leading you TO FALL AWAY FROM the living GOD. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” THAT NONE OF YOU MAY BE HARDENED BY THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN.”
What did Silas just write to us in this letter to the Hebrews? “Take caution BROTHERS, unless an evil, unbelieving heart begins to reform in you and cause you fall away from God through giving sin a place to deceive you.” Wow!! “But they told me, Chris, that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and if I prayed the Sinner’s prayer with them, and receive Jesus into my heart, I’d be saved.” Well, THEY LIED. Whether unwittingly, or not, THEY are God’s enemies, and enemies of your soul. Period. I don’t care if it’s your daddy. Scripture is King. If your daddy is preaching contrary to the once delivered gospel of Christ’s Apostles, then he is contrary to God, and on course to becoming a damned being. It’s a choice. People teaching lies can repent when shown their error. Most never will. They’re their own gods, and their desires for this life controls them.
Galatians 1:10
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Remember the “severity of God” in our opening passage? I want you picture the image of Jesus that most of us grew up seeing, where you have either a Charlton Heston looking, Americanized, caucasian, blue-eyed “Jesus”, or the effeminate American “Jesus” holding a little lamb in a painting on the church wall. You know, this guy…..
Yeah, effeminate, creepy “Jesus”. The image our churches hung on the back wall of the stage, by the oak “Sunday School Attendance/Tithe Apparatus Thing.” An image of the type of person that a mother would snatch her child away from, and whisk them off to safety. Yeah, pedophile-looking Jesus. Ha! Look at the picture! Now ask yourself, where in all of scripture do you find any visual influence that would provoke an artist to paint that dude? It isn’t in there, folks! Nor is the Jesus that 99% of modern church people adhere to. It’s a false image being worshiped. One that John called “The Image of the Beast”, in the book of Revelation.
Let’s look at the severity of God, and ask yourself, “Is that the LOVING God image the celebrity heretics tout on TBN, and that false teachers dispel from every heretical pulpit in the world today?” (You know, the Jesse ‘Due-Plentious’ types of the world……)
In Proverbs 1, we get a crystal-clear insight into how the Holy Christ feels about people who reject His kindness. What is His kindness? Let’s see…. How about the fact that mankind rebelled, grew deeper and deeper into depravity, worshiped other gods, created diabolical cultural practices, sacrificed and aborted babies, had religious orgies, killed God’s prophets and Apostles, killed His only begotten Son, mocked His name, blasphemed His eternal words, and still yet in His foreknowledge from the foundation of the world, He had created a plan of saving us derelicts from ourselves, IF Adam chose to rebel and throw it all away? How is that for kindness? We deserved nothing but death, and yet he still provided mankind a way out of their own mess. And instead of acknowledging their role of obedience and faithfulness to God, men created a false image of that “salvation (kindness)”, and made it all about themselves again and again! AND STILL DO. So God, in His kindness came down and took on the form of a man, walked out the example of His kindness before us, gave us His Spirit to empower us to CONTINUE IN HIS KINDNESS, by being doers of His exemplified word, and still yet men killed Him, killed His Apostles, and continue to hate those who are walking out His kindness, even now. So…have we painted an image of what “His kindness” clearly refers to?
Proverbs 1:22-28
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge?
If you turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my spirit to you; I will make my words known to you.But because I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded, because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also WILL LAUGH at your calamity;
I WILL MOCK when terror strikes you, when terror strikes you like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you.
Then they will call upon Me, but I WILL NOT ANSWER; they will seek Me diligently but WILL NOT find me.”
How does that fit within the false teachers’ definition of Jesus’ love today? It doesn’t. Their Jesus is their servant. The biblical Jesus is Lord of All, and we serve Him and His will. We die to our desires and exchange them for His desires. He is God of the scriptures, not me or you. Get it??? For those who would want to argue that “Proverbs is merely ‘wisdom literature‘, or ‘Old Testament‘, (as if God’s holy nature changes), let’s look at the severity of Jesus’ Love. Shall we?
John 2:13-17
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. AND MAKING A WHIP OF CORDS, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”
So the loving Jesus makes whip of cords, and whips the merchants who were profaning the house of God, by selling Passover sacrifices, that God expected people to offer to Him personally. Jesus did this act TWICE in His 3.5 years of ministry. Once at the beginning of His ministry, and a second time at the end. Is that LOVING PEOPLE, as you hear it suggested today? Yes, because Christ is focused on our eternal souls, not our health, wealth, and wisdom in a cursed world system that opposes Him.
Remember when Jesus cursed the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, and that they lie desolate to this very day? Does that fit the image of the love of Jesus that you’ve been taught by unqualified or deceptive teachers? Certainly not. Today’s false Jesus says “You just gotta love people and come alongside them in their willful rebellions, and just be nice to them. Isn’t that what Jesus would do????” Ugghhh NO!!!! Is that what He just did to Chorazin, Bethsaida, or Capernaum? Is that what He did to the cashiers in the Temple, selling sacrifices like it was a freakin’ gift-shop? Did He come alongside them? Yeah, with a bull-whip and left whelps across their backs for blaspheming the very house that was supposed to represent Him.
Where else did Jesus pronounce a curse? How about this very house/Temple we are speaking of now. On His way to the Temple in His last days, Jesus is passing by a fig tree with His Apostles and He stops to curse it. Many have preached utter foolishness on this story in my ears. But the truth is, this Fig Tree being cursed by Christ was a symbolic allusion to what He was headed to do moments later. Jesus walked into their blasphemous circle of Judaism that rejected Him, and He pronounced a delegitimization of their Aaronic priesthood, declaring He was replacing it with a new order, after the order of Melchizedek (king of righteousness). He pronounced the curse on Jerusalem, which fell in 70 A.D.. He cursed their antiChrist religion, declaring that He was delegitimizing a covenant they had perverted, along with God’s ways, and He was giving it all to the Apostles to oversee and establish a New Covenant of faithfulness. And Jesus cursed their blasphemous Temple, declaring “not one single stone of this thing will be left upon another!” In other words, “I AM GOING TO BURN YOUR FREAKING HOUSE DOWN TO THE GROUND!!!”
So tell me, folks, was that LOVING? You better believe it! You live in a world where Satan is its god and ruler. This Beast hates Christ and they who bear His name/word/Spirit. Everyone who operated in the LOVE OF GOD throughout scripture was killed for it by the Beasts (kingdoms) of their respective day. The Beast from the Sea, known as the world system, and the Beast from the Land, known as false religion, namely false Christianity, work in tandem. The land beast leads men to serve the sea beast. It preaches a false Christ that partakes in the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life. Those three things are the literal attributes of the nature of the Beast. Those three things are the proverbial mark of the Beast. They are the same three tactics Satan tempted Adam and Eve with in the garden, and they are the same three tactics that Satan tempted Jesus with in the wilderness, and they will always be the same three tactics that he will tempt you and I with. If we serve those desires, we bear his mark in our thoughts (forehead) and deeds (hands). We are showing ourselves to be lovers of the world’s pleasures, rather than lovers of God.
2 Timothy 3:4-5
…….lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
So how do we behold the “kindness and severity of God?” Solomon said in Proverbs 1:7, “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The writer of Ecclesiastes concluded with this:
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
Fearing God guards us against being found with an unbelieving heart. The Fear of the Lord compels us to walk in His word, His name, His Spirit. The love of God constrains us and the fear of God compels us to walk in His kindness. As John said…
1 John 2:6
The one who says he resides in Christ ought himself to walk just as Jesus walked.
Reformed heretics tell you that you can’t walk as Jesus walked. So….who is right, the person whom Jesus ordained as His Apostle, to establish the Covenant, or the utterly blasphemous Martin Luther, who never knew Christ in the flesh, or at all in any way? You know, the same Martin Luther who said these things of the canonical Epistle of James, (delivered by an Apostle of Christ and also the biological half-Brother of Jesus)
Luther states……
“We should throw out the Epistle of James from this school (Wittenberg) for it doesn’t amount to much. It contains not one syllable about Christ. Nor does it mention Christ except at the beginning. I maintain that some Jew wrote it who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any!”
(Sited from: LW-54 424-425)
“the epistle of St. James is an epistle full of straw, because it contains nothing evangelical” (Sited from: ‘Preface to the New Testament,’ ed. Dillenberger, p. 19. – Cf. Also Jean Janssen, L’Allemagne et la Reforme. (Trans. E. Paris, Plon, 1887-1911). Vol II, Pg. 218.)
Nothing Evangelical? Thank God for that! LOL!….but seriously….Sadly 95% of modern “christianity” and its views on salvation revolve around the teachings of this heretic, rather than the teachings of the Apostles of Christ. Martin Luther was the founder of the Reformation. His little henchman, John Calvin, took his views and put them into organized practice. I believe those two men are responsible for more souls in Hell than any two false teachers who have ever lived. Their false christian heresies have reached more people than anyone in history. Why? Because most who claim to be God’s preachers preach their doctrines still.
I wonder why Luther hated the Epistle of James, distinctly? Look at a comparison of Luther’s words in this image below and James the Apostle’s words:
Luther’s entire doctrine is that “Faith alone saves us.” This ideology is at the core of American theology. So what does the Epistle of James, whom as I said was Jesus’ brother, the Apostle placed as the head of the Jerusalem Council (the mother church of the early church), say?
James 2:24
“You see that a person is justified BY WORKS and NOT BY FAITH ALONE.”
So let’s see…..Do we go with Martin Luther, 1500 years after Christ for accurate theology, or do we go with James, Christ’s Apostle, head of the Church council, biological half-brother to Jesus??? LOL! Hello? You’d think that is a common-sense answer, but look around you. People love a gospel that serves their flesh, not a Christ who calls them to crucify it and take up their own cross daily and follow His example of dying on it. Yeah, Billy Graham or Joel Osteen sound better to a person whose god is their own belly/appetite!! It’s like the old blues player, Albert King sang, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”
‘Reformation leader, Martin Luther said this as well….
“Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St. John tell’s us. Was not everybody about Him saying: ‘Whatever has He been doing with her?’ Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died. (Sited from: Trish Reden Weimar Edition Vol2, pg107)
THAT is the “great reformer” whose doctrine was influenced by the third century heretic known as Saint Augustine. THAT is the founder of the Jesus Paid it All/ Once Saved-Always Saved/ Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love BS!! THAT is the Sinner’s Prayer origin. THAT ends in Hell. And one must trample under foot the blood of Christ to follow THAT. And all American preachers would do well to check themselves before God, and repent of any nuances found in them that is influenced by reformed doctrines. Reformed teaching, rapture teaching, charismatic teaching, evangelical teaching, and all the like are heresies. The biblical worldview of the scripture backs none of it in context. And those who perpetrate it, follow it, or support it are guilty of the blood of Christ. And Christ will deny them before His Father for denying HIS truth before men.
I cannot count the times that people have replied to me that those Luther quotes are “TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT.” Could someone please tell me a context where saying Jesus committed adultery with anyone is justifiable? Please??!? I dare you! Blasphemers! I am so sick of religiosity and people trying to justify their image of the Beast they call Jesus. THAT ‘Jesus’ is called the ‘Lamb with horns that speaks like a dragon.’ a.k.a. “The Image of the Beast.” I call it American Jesus.
Romans 11:22
“Behold the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen away, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise YOU TOO will be cut off. “
WAKE UP!
