A Place of Worship

January 12, 2025 Leave a comment

Like all buildings, the building at 133 Adams St., was built for a purpose.

The west-side structure wasn’t a grand soaring Gothic edifice like other churches in Chicago. Rather, it was a simple structure built with minimal resources under the direction of a simple man and his wife: Daan and Linnea De Leeuw. They wanted a blue-collar Bible church for their growing family and the growing community.

The church was built according to the De Leeuw’s plans and the money God provided. Once the corner lot with an existing house was purchased and a permit issued, church members raised the structure as they could only afford to pay the building contractor.

Around a cornerstone with the inscription “1952+”, a concrete block building was erected with a pitched roof and no steeple. Three white stone crosses were set in relief on the brick face of the building. A parking lot was created. The old house on the corner became the parsonage.

The interior of the sanctuary was no nonsense. The concrete block side walls were painted-beige. Three windows with amber bubble glass lined each side wall. Forest green curtains bordered the windows. The walls around the windows were bare except for a small wooden rack near the organ. It held the numbers of the previous service and Sunday school attendance and the offering amount.

Front and center on the platform stood a large wing pulpit. Three large minister chairs were behind it along the choir loft. A piano and an organ flanked the platform. On the back wall above the choir loft was a plaque which read “God is in His Holy Temple. Let All the Earth Keep Silent. Hab. 2:20.”  

To the right of the platform and behind a large rectangular hole in the wall was the baptistry. A landscape was painted on the walls surrounding the water tank.

On the main floor in front of the pulpit was the oak communion table. “This Do In Remembrance of Me” was carved on the front. The table held the offering plates and a flower arrangement – the only element of beauty in the building.

Opposite the platform, sixteen rows of chairs back, was the entrance to the sanctuary. A clock was hung centered above the double door entrance to let the minister know when to end the service.

When the church was dedicated, Daan became its pastor. Thirty families joined the church. Over time there were altars calls, baptisms, weddings, and banquets. Weekly children’s programs were developed. The church membership grew. Two hundred more voices were added to the congregational government.

At one point it was decided that the church could take on more debt and expand. A large wing, at a right angle to the sanctuary, was added. The addition included a gym and kitchen upstairs and classrooms downstairs.

With a growth in membership came an increase in disagreements. Disputes arose about what Biblical texts meant, about how things should be handled, about who should or shouldn’t be a member, and about finances. Church business meetings became so rancorous that Daan and Linnea decided to leave the church, move far away, and abandon the building and its original purpose. With the De Leeuw’s departure, a pastoral search committee was formed to find a replacement.

The search would repeat itself over and over every few years as there was always dissatisfaction and disappointment with each person they brought in. Interim pastors would fill the pulpit more often than a full-time minister. Families, frustrated with the lack of cohesion, stopped coming.

Many began attending other local churches and some moved away. Membership dropped down to just a few of the original builders and attendees. As such, the church was no longer financially sustainable. The building and property were sold to a Jehovah’s Witness congregation which turned it into a Kingdom Hall.

A few years later the JWs sold the church when they moved across town to another building. The new owner was a restaurateur.

After rezoning to change the corner property to commercial use, he converted the gym into a banquet hall. There was a large kitchen adjacent to it. The sanctuary was converted into an entertainment venue. The classrooms became multipurpose rooms. One large room was made into a salon with hairstylists, nail specialists and an electrologist. A Yoga studio was set up in another and the other rooms became storage and stock rooms.

A large sign that said Transitions Banquet Hall & Entertainment Venue was installed in front of the three raised crosses. Garish lighting illuminated the sign and the outside walls. Neighbors were none too pleased about the lights, the traffic and the noise so close to their homes. They had lived by a non-disruptive house of worship and now a disturbing spectacle had taken its place.

Wedding receptions were held in the banquet hall. The room could accommodate two-hundred guests, a DJ and a dance floor. Strobe lights and a disco ball light hung from the ceiling.

In the sanctuary, singers, comedians, and magicians performed. Drinks were served. The concrete block walls, painted red, were covered with photographs of past and present entertainers. Sound speakers hung in the corners of the room.

The banquet hall and entertainment venue operated successfully for seven years, but there was something about it that was always at odds with the neighbor’s conventionalism. Concerned also about the area’s decline, its noise, rising crime, and rising property taxes, and wanting a better quality of life, homeowners fled the area. Boarded up properties, trash, and overgrown weeds began to appear.

It was only a matter of time before Transitions’ customer base eroded away. Wedding bookings dropped off and entertainment acts no longer booked. With the loss of customers and income, the building’s upkeep went into disrepair and service quality dropped off. The owner decided to start up again somewhere else. So, he put the property up for sale. But no offers were forthcoming.

Over a decade the abandoned buildings became covered with graffiti. The cornerstone and crosses, too. The onetime place of worship became an eyesore condemned by the community. At city board meetings neighbors voiced concerns about what was going on in the building and in the former parsonage. People were coming and going day and night. Was the building, once a symbol of hope for those who met there, now a heroin den?

The onetime house of worship would be fondly remembered through pictures on Facebook and good times associated with it. But the deserted and decaying house of worship now stands as a remembrance of the disputes which brought about its demise and abandonment of purpose.

Would a developer come along and renovate and repurpose the existing buildings? Would the developer know the building’s original purpose? Would he, instead, tear it down and build new? Would he keep the cornerstone or discard it for a new milestone?

~~~~~

The Angelus – Jean-Francois Millet 1857-1859

Millet: “The idea for The Angelus came to me because I remembered that my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed.

An X-ray of the painting on request of Dali who was impressed greatly by the contrast between the idyllic background and tragic poses of the peasants. It appeared that originally instead of the basket of potatoes Millet had depicted a baby coffin. Thus the couple was burying their child.

The Angelus (painting) – Wikipedia

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Scaffolding

November 5, 2023 Leave a comment

I sat down with a close friend the other day. I asked him about his early church experience, as I am interested in church dynamics.

Here’s what Dan (not his real name) said during the interview:

“My parents attended a Baptist church in Chicago before moving to the suburbs. I was a kid and just remember old buildings with a fusty smell and pictures to color. After the move, we started attending a Bible church. I was eight years old.

“I don’t remember a single sermon. But I do remember the church sanctuary. I sat there Sunday mornings and evenings for maybe twenty years.

“There was a plaque on the back wall above the choir loft. It said “God is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent. Hab. 2:20.  

“Front and center was a large wing pulpit. Three large minister chairs were behind it along the choir loft. A piano on the left and an organ on the right flanked the platform.

“On the main floor in front of the pulpit was the oak communion table. “This Do In Remembrance of Me” was carved on the front. The table held the offering plates and a flower arrangement.

“To the right of the platform and behind a large rectangular hole in the wall was the baptistry. A landscape was painted on the walls surrounding the water tank.

“Opposite the platform, sixteen rows back, was the entrance to the sanctuary. A clock was centered above the double doors to let the minister know when to end the service.

“Rows of blond wood pews filled the space between the front and back with an aisle down the center and along each end.

“The side walls were painted-beige cinder block. Each wall had three windows of tinted-amber bubble glass. Forest green curtains bordered two sides of each window.

“The walls around the windows were bare except for a wooden rack near the organ. It held the numbers in attendance at the service and at Sunday school the week before. An usher counted attendance every Sunday.

“That’s a twenty-five-year snapshot. I don’t recall that room ever changing.”

I asked him about the service.

“Prelude. Hymns. Lots of choruses about leaving earth and flying away. Sermon. Calls for salvation and rededication of your life. Postlude. Every Sunday.”

I asked him about memories that stick out.

“Let’s see. There was the leader of the boy’s club. He let us run around and be crazy one night each week. One time he took us to a construction site to show us what he was working on. He was a carpenter.

“There was an adult Sunday School teacher who visited a nursing home once a month. He had me come with him on those Saturdays. I’d play a hymn with my trumpet. Afterward he would give a short devotional.

“And there was this interim minister – there were lots of them – who got me my first job as a clerk in a Camera/Photo store. One time – I was twelve or thirteen – he had me come with him downtown to Pacific Garden Mission. I played my trumpet and he spoke to those who had come off the streets of Chicago.”

I told Dan that he only mentioned certain men as memories that stick out. Then I asked if anyone had mentored him.

“No one from church. Only my trumpet teachers did.”

I asked him to explain.

“I started playing the trumpet in third grade. My uncle gave me a beat-up Conn trumpet that he longer wanted to play. In the Junior High School, the band director wasn’t crazy about the look or the sound of my horn. So, he switched me to French horn for two years. But my heart was with the trumpet. I asked my parents for private lessons.

“Before I started lessons – this was during eighth grade  – my father and I went to an instrument store. He bought me a brand-new Bach Stradivarius b-flat trumpet. The horn was a beautiful and expensive gift. I felt affirmed.

“My first trumpet teacher was a high school principal who also played trumpet in big bands. The first question he asked me: What trumpet players did I listen to?  I told him Herb Albert. He just shook his head.

“He told me who I should listen to and to what pieces of music. He began giving me exercises to practice. Major and minor scales. Tonguing exercises. I’d have to play them for him the following week.

“The summer before high school I took what he taught me and practiced like crazy. The high school concert band director had sent out the requirements for entering the band. Those included playing major and minor scales and site reading.

“A month before my freshman year began, I was called in to audition for the band director. I played all the scales and sight read what he put in front of me. He was pleased. I was in the concert band – first trumpet section right behind the first chair trumpet, a sophomore.

“My junior year of high school the band director Mr. Gies became my second trumpet teacher. He also played the trumpet semi-professionally.

“What happened was this: the guy who sat first chair was a stellar trumpeter but he needed to be replaced. During the summer the first chair French horn player became pregnant. Both would soon be leaving the school. So, the band director began one-on-one time with me.

“Over several months Mr. Gies and I met in the school auditorium during an open period for both of us. Playing the trumpet in that auditorium, that sanctuary, was like no other experience. With those unstifled acoustics I could open up and project a nice broad sound.

“Mr. Gies asked me how I practiced. I shared with him the Carmine Caruso method for building chops. I learned the method from my first trumpet teacher, Mr. Lichti.

“I told him that the method involves interval training, articulation, range and produces endurance. With it, I had developed an extensive range -double high C to over an octave below the treble staff. The method had formed my sound to that point.

“Sitting together offstage, Mr. Gies and I worked through the Caruso method along with the Clarks – Clark Technical Studies – which are exercises used for the development of fingering technique.

“I cherished that time alone with the band director. In between playing an exercise we talked about anything and everything. And sometimes we were silent and it felt comfortable.

“We practiced together the rest of my junior year. I was ready for the first chair trumpet position when the other guy left.

“My third trumpet teacher was at a Bible school. After high school I entered a Christian Ed/Music program. The Christian Ed program was a bust but the music program was a blessing.

“I took private lessons from the concert band director, Mr. Edmonds. Unlike the other teachers, he was an established pianist with perfect pitch. He had a different take, a different sound in mind, for my horn – a precise centered pitch. He was also a composer. He adapted classical music for our concert band to play.

“In between playing my practiced exercises and being critiqued, the director and I would talk about anything. I shared with him the challenges I was facing. My practice time was limited because of my studies and the time spent listening to classical music for music appreciation class. And I had a part time job. He prayed for me at the end of each lesson.

“Like back in high school, I sat first trumpet second seat behind a sophomore in the concert band. But at an outdoor band concert, Mr. Edmonds had me solo the opening trumpet lines of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of the Nobles”. And when The Gaither Trio – Bill, Gloria, and Danny – came to town for a couple of concerts and needed some horns for the finales, Mr. Edmonds offered his two first chair trumpet players. The private lessons and my practice gave me opportunities to play.

“Looking back . . . sitting next to a trumpet teacher week after week, I learned from those who knew what to listen for and who to listen to. Mr. Lichti, for example, helped me realize that I had “deaf spots” in my listening. To develop my “ear”, I began to listen to Adolph “Bud” Herseth, principal trumpet in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I wanted to emulate his bel canto sound and his musical acumen.

“To accomplish this, I had to take a risk. You see, with one-on-one instruction you cannot hide, you can’t fake or pretend. You play your horn and the truth comes out. Sloppy practicing is immediately revealed and so is the need for discipline. You need another’s knowledgeable perspective to grow as a musician. Words or notes alone are not enough.

“The three trumpet teachers I mentioned invited me into their musical realm, which was both affirming and daunting, as I was made me accountable to them. In the role of apprentice, they imparted to me trumpet knowledge, technical ability, and a love for the craft.

“And now that I think about it, I take it back. The man who took me and others to his construction site and the man who took me with him to the rest home and the man who took me with to the Chicago mission and got me my first job were mentors. They influenced me just like the trumpet teachers advanced the formation of my horn playing.

“You asked about my early church experience. I’d say that there was lots of scaffolding but no formation. For me, there was really nothing life changing about going to church and sitting in silence listening to someone standing behind a pulpit. But there was with people I spent time with.”

End of interview.

~~~~~

Church culture: “Tragically, in recent years, Christians have gotten used to revelations of abuses of many kinds in our most respected churches–from Willow Creek to Harvest, from Southern Baptist pastors to Sovereign Grace churches. Respected author and theologian Scot McKnight and former Willow Creek member Laura Barringer wrote this book to paint a pathway forward for the church.”

A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing by Scot McKnight | Goodreads

In this podcast, theologian Scot McKnight and his daughter, Laura Barringer, join Julie Roys to discuss their latest book, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing.

While their first book explained the characteristics of a “tov,” or good, culture, their latest book tackles the next challenge—transforming ingrained toxic cultures into tov ones.

Pivoting Your Church from Toxic to Healthy | The Roys Report

Pivoting Your Church From Toxic to Healthy | The Roys Report (julieroys.com)

~~~~~

Bud Herseth’s Final Concert on NPR – YouTube

Adolph Herseth Interview – YouTube

~~~~~

Filed under Christianity, discipleship, Music, The Church, trumpet Tagged with , , , , ,

And Nothing but the Whole Elephant

October 1, 2017 Leave a comment

 

Jesus said to them, “If the world hates you, know that it hated me before you. If you were from this world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you’re not from the world. No: I chose you out of the world.” John’s gospel account 15: 18-19

~~~

From the many conversations I have had on Twitter, the word on the street is that “God is love and is all about love. We love, so we are doing what God accepts.” So, where does the world’s hate come in?

The hate spoken of in John’s gospel is generated by a protection of one’s place in the world against “outsiders”. Over and over again I have had that hatred and vitriol directed at me on Twitter. I cannot show you the Tweet replies. They are vulgar and pernicious. The replies come from a place beneath this world.

The hate-filled replies occur when I say something other than what is considered loving by those protecting their place in the world. Replies are derived from a worldview. And, one’s worldview depends on whether you accept being called out of this world knowing that that those in the world will hate you or if you are in this world for its approbation:

Called-Out Ones worldview: “For God so loved the world, that He gave…”

Social Justice Warrior (SJW) worldview: “For the world so loved me, when I…”

In order to make the world-accepted SJW worldview sustainable, mainstream churches create a Jesus who is palatable, marketable, consumable and renewable. The ministers do this by parsing Scripture into love notes. Their resultant Scripture messages, whether in a sermon or in a blog or on Twitter, remind me of a bag Valentine Sweethearts – candy hearts.

These churches promote “inclusion” because in a consumer-driven society, choice of how you live, choice of what you accept and who you accept, choice of right and wrong-choice becomes the ultimate approbation in this world.

~~~

Coming to a church near you: a populist theology which promotes the acceptance of the gay lifestyle, universal health care and illegal immigration all as works of Christian charity from the pulpits of body-of-Christ-divisive politics (race, gender, class, sexuality, etc.). This populist theology uses the high-sounding term “social justice” so as to neutralize detractor’s objections and to force a consensus, a groupthink around the premise of political correctness redefined as God’s love.

I encounter this populist theology every day now. If you are on Twitter “fighting the good fight”, you may receive the same replies from Catholics that I did. They go something like this:

1.       “God is love. I know many committed gay couples who love each other.”

2.      “Jesus never talked about sexuality or homosexuality, therefore it is a non-issue. If Jesus was concerned about homosexuality he would have said something.”

3.      “Jesus is about loving your neighbor. Jesus is not judgmental. Jesus is fully accepting, inclusive. He’s about loving the homosexual. Who are we to judge?” (from Pope Francis’, “Who am I to judge?”).

4.      “Loving your neighbor means universal healthcare. You are not charitable if you are against universal healthcare. You must be a Conservative who hates people.”

5.      “Jesus and Paul are not the same. Jesus is love and Paul is rules. Jesus is universal love. Paul, on the other hand, is a picayune fundamentalist and fundamentalists are authoritarians. Jesus would say “Live, love, eat, pray and let live.”

6.      “Jesus is social justice. He talked about helping the poor. Dorothy Day is a hero. Many of our heroes are beatified saints, saints who did good deeds while alive. Jesus demands good works from us. “Faith without works is dead”.”

7.      “Women are talking in church. Women are being ordained. Scripture is being updated and should be inclusive of homosexuality, as well.”

 

My first thought when I encountered these replies: “The Catholic church has done great harm to its charges by not teaching the whole of Scripture, the whole council of God.” Scripture has been defined down to a constructed abstraction of Jesus’ words.

One of the main reasons the populist theology has taken root in the Catholic and all (yes, all) of the mainline churches, I believe, is the lack of Scripture knowledge coupled with a deficit of personal faith-history. Deism is pervasive in the church: “God and His Word are far away from reality and not relevant to what I am experiencing”; “You don’t understand same-sex attraction. You can’t change me so, accept me for what I am.”

Post-modernist pop-theologians rightly question history and what has been passed down through millennia but without a sufficient regard for and knowledge of the discipline of the study of history – factual non-repeatable events. Their pick-and-choose history approach leads to utter confusion about who Jesus is, what happened the first century and to whether or not Jesus even existed. I have witnessed such dissociative history making on Twitter. Such groping at history and at Scripture reminds me of the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant: each of the blind men encounter a different part of the elephant (trunk, tail, etc.) and then return home and proceed to project their ‘understanding’ of the elephant as the elephant while claiming the other five blind men must be mistaken. Blind_men_and_elephant2

Populist theology also has historical Leftist ties (“Unconstrained vision” is the term used by Economist Thomas Sowell to define the philosophy of the Left). Political philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau wrote, “man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.” Another philosopher, Marquis de Condorcet, believed that men in their natural state with a “natural inclination” would seek out the social good. For them, man’s nature was not the problem. Rather, institutions needed to be reformed so that man’s better nature would come out. Hence, pop-theology presses for reforms: the church must be reformed to help men to realize their better nature. “We are so much smarter now,” is the inference.

Enter the church’s “social justice” moment. And the “social justice” proffered is done under the guise of the common good but it is in reality a narrowing of focus down to subjective individual rights and individual happiness, in parallel with what is happening politically in Europe and the U.S. currently. The “common” part of their “common good” are those who share the same self-directed interests. Others must conform to their self-interests for the common good.

My second thought after reading the above replies: “It is time for another reformation – putting the Bible (again) into people’s hands and teaching them how to read it for themselves.”

It would seem that many of the above respondents view Scripture through the lens of a post-modern Epicurean Catholic world view, a worldview which replaces historical narrative (in this case, derived from the “faith once delivered”) with a relevant “social gospel” or populist theology promulgated as authentic Christianity. And with little knowledge of Scripture many Catholics are ‘falling’ for what they have been taught by the top-down government and media of the Catholic church and its social justice-primed priesthood.

When they do (see replies above) they end up with a Jesus who is fantasy blend of Dorothy Day, Ghandi, Mr. Rogers and a Democrat with a Jesus bleeding heart – an ends-justifies-the-means person. In other words, they end up not with a literal historical Jesus, but rather a figurative Jesus and one disposed to making you and your world feel good about doting on yourself. And, if you can get other people to dish out love and charity and “understanding” and, most importantly, cash, then you have done right by pseudo-Jesus.

Every self-designated Catholic I have encountered on Twitter appears to know little or nothing of Scripture. For them, it seems, raw Scripture, ‘unrefined’ by the Catholic priesthood, seems to be tied to evangelicals who are considered fundamentalists and therefore, presumptively, not connected with their Jesus’ all-assuming love. What they know and repeat is what a priest or Jesuit tells them, and their reply is usually about social justice, a catch-all for not being judged but for being loved.

Without making this post too long, here are some of my quick replies to the above points. Feel welcome to add yours in the comment section below.

1.      The plea bargaining “God is Love” defense is foiled when you define love, not in terms of codependence and sexuality, but as desiring the ultimate good for another. This of course leads to a definition of what is good. I reply with Jesus’s request of the Father, “Set them apart for yourself in the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17:17)

2.   When someone says that Jesus never talked about homosexuality I remind them that Jesus’s mission was to the lost sheep of Israel, the ones who were supposed to be “a light to the Gentiles”. The Israelites knew the law, the Torah. The law forbids homosexuality. This was common knowledge in the first century. Jesus did not need to repeat it. Paul, on the other hand, an apostle to the Gentiles did need to speak about the matter (e.g., Rome, Ephesus, etc. had temples to pagan gods which involved all manner of sexual immorality.)

3.   Here we have justification by plea bargain. Jesus prays for his own that they will be sanctified, separate – taken “out of the world” worldview.

4.      If you know Scripture then you know that Jesus did not heal everyone in the world during his earthly time. He told us that we can do the same and greater things than he has done when filled with the spirit. Beyond the fact of outright healing, there is the matter of personal healthcare. Universal healthcare replaces a person’s personal responsibility for their health with a non-caring impersonal government bureaucracy. This costly tax-payer bureaucracy will need to control your behavior, your paycheck and the doctor’s practice to control costs. As such, it is loving to not desire socialized coverage.

5.      When I hear someone say that Jesus is Gospel and Paul is not relevant I remind them that Jesus met Paul on the road to Damascus. In the fullness of time Jesus encountered Paul. I remind them that Paul right then and there became an eyewitness of Jesus and therefore an apostle. I remind them that Jesus sent Paul to be Jesus to the Gentiles – the heathen, the pagans, the unclean. I tell them that Paul wrote the theology of the newly established Kingdom of God on earth in his letters to the infant churches.

6.      I remind them that the gospel is “Jesus is Lord”. All else falls in line and in order under this proviso:  salvation, sanctification (called out of the world) and then social gospel (to affect the world under the direction of the Kingdom’s Lord.)

When Jesus tells the rich man “Sell all you have and give it to the poor” we understand the means to the rich man’s salvation: renunciation of his coveting relationship of wealth- a relationship which came between Jesus and the rich man, sanctification (separation from the love of his money and the hold it had on him) and then faith with works – a complete detachment from self-preservation- giving his wealth to the poor, a product of the new Kingdom focus.

7. Women vs. gay acceptance and Scripture: I remind them that there is a difference between culturally defined and morally defined. There is a difference between cultural practice and culturally-imposed taboos and doctrinal principles and God-directed temperantia-God’s ordered structure for the being of man. Paul wrote about the former in his letters to the church at Corinth. Anything perceived as ambiguous was directed back to a person’s Holy-Spirit directed conscious.

 

It is no secret that the Evil One’s mission from the very beginning is to ask, “Did God really say you couldn’t…?”

Pop-theology proposes to modernize and conform the church to be a welcoming inclusive place for whatever the prevailing winds of PC doctrine bring to the church’s door step. Be it known:  the called-out ones – the ecclesia – will remain faithful under the Lordship of Jesus.  The churches that wallow in the world will have their candlestick taken away. In the dark their mutual admiration society will be left grappling with elephant parts.

 

 

Added 10-4-17:

Filed under Christianity, Homosexuality, LGBT, Political Commentary, The Church Tagged with , , , , , ,

“Doubly Dead and Uprooted”

April 27, 2014 Leave a comment

tree limb

The title of this post comes from the following scripture passage, written by Judah.

 Judah identifies himself first as a slave of the Lord Jesus and then as the brother of James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Judah is the half-brother of the Lord Jesus.

 Judah tells us that he earnestly wanted to write about God’s salvation realized but he turns quickly to the false teaching among his “beloved ones.” These false teachings sprung up in the early days of the church and even while the apostles, the eye witnesses, were still alive.

 Beware: false teaching is happening everywhere around us, even more so since the first century AD.

 In those days Gnostic teaching of the antinomian type was creeping into the church teaching. The Gnostic “false teachers” viewed the material as evil and the spiritual as good. Thus they cultivated their ‘spiritual’ lives and let the flesh to do whatever it desired to do. In effect, they gave license for all kinds of fleshy lawlessness including acceptance of the sexual perversion of homosexuality as normative within the church of the Lord Jesus.

 Gnosticism exists today in all its lawless or antinomian forms within many our churches: Catholic, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and Evangelical.

 Here is Judah’s letter:

The Letter of Judah

 Contend for the faith

 Judah, slave of Jesus the Messiah, brother of James, to those who are called, the people whom God loves and whom Jesus, the Messiah, keeps safe! May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

 Beloved, I was doing my best to write to you about the rescue in which we share, but I found it necessary to write to you to urge you to struggle hard for the faith which was once and for all given to God’s people. Some people have sneaked in among you, it seems, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation ~ ungodly people, who are transforming God’s grace into licentiousness, and denying the one and only master, our Lord Jesus the Messiah.

 False Teachers

I do want to remind you, even though you know it all well, that when the Lord once and for all delivered his people out of Egypt, he subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. In the same way, when some of the angels did not keep to their rightful place of authority, but abandoned their own home, he kept them under conditions of darkness and in eternal chains to await the judgment of the great day. In similar fashion, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities round about, which had lived in gross immorality and lusted after unnatural flesh, are set before us as a pattern, undergoing the punishment of endless fire.

 However, these people are behaving in the same way! They are dreaming their way into defiling their flesh, rejecting authority, and cursing the glorious ones. Even Michael the archangel, when disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not presume to lay a charge against him of blasphemy, but simply said, “The Lord rebuke you.” These people, however curse anything they don’t know. They are like dumb animals; there are some things they understand instinctively ~ but it is these very things that destroy them. A curse on them! They go off in the way of Cain; they give themselves over for money into Balaam’s deceitful ways; they are destroyed in Korah’s rebellion. These are the ones who pollute your love-feasts; they share your table without fear while simply looking after their own needs. They are waterless clouds blown along by the winds. They are the fruitless autumn trees, doubly dead and uprooted. They are stormy waves out at sea, splashing up their own shameful ways. They are wandering stars, and the deepest everlasting darkness has been kept for them in particular.

 Enoch, the seventh in line from Adam, prophesied about these people. “Look!” he said. “The Lord comes with ten thousand of his holy ones, to perform judgment against all, and to charge every human being with all the ungodly ways in which they have done ungodly things, and with every harsh word which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” These people are always grumbling and complaining, chasing off after their own desires. From their mouths come arrogant words, buttering people up for the sake of gain.

Rescued by God’s Power

But you, my beloved ones, remember the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus the Messiah. “In the last time,” they said to you, “there will be scornful people who follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the people who cause divisions. They are living on the merely human level; they do not have the spirit. But you, beloved ones, build yourselves up in your most holy fait. Pray in the holy spirit. Keep yourselves in the love of god, as you wait for our Lord Jesus the Messiah to show you mercy which leads to the life of the age to come.

 With some people who are wavering, you must show mercy. Some you must rescue, snatching them from the fire. To others you must show mercy, but with fear, hating even the clothes that have been defiled by the flesh.

 Now to the one who is able to keep you standing upright, and to present you before his glory, undefiled and joyful ~to the one and only God, our savior through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all ages, and now, and to all the ages to come. Amen. (emphasis mine)

 

 “Doubly Dead and Uprooted” aptly describes the moral relativism, the lawlessness, of our day. People are uprooted from absolute truth and are just dead tree limbs, blown about by the winds and whims of our “values” culture.

 I have written about our culture’s ‘uprooting’ in previous posts.

America’s ‘Devalued’ Moral Currency

 

Tear Down That Anthropocentricity

 

 Many churches now teach a ‘feel-good gospel’ that is ‘inclusive’ …but also damning.

 With the church failing in its mission to make disciples, America is now rebuilding itself on a foundation of sand, of lawlessness, much like Europe has already done. We will soon be washed away. The torrents will come.

 My “beloved ones’: Reading Judah’s letter you can’t help notice that as someone who grew up with Jesus Judah understood his half-brother Jesus from his orthodox Jewish perspective to be the anticipated Messiah.

 Finally and most important of all, Judah mentions Jesus the “Messiah” over and over again within this short missive. The Kingdom of God on earth began in those days and continues to the present! Judah urged his brothers and sisters in the faith, including us, “to contend for the faith that was once entrusted to the saints.”

 

 

(Tree limb picture from Aerophant.com)

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