Religious forms and spiritual truths:

The word religion appears 5 times in the KJV bible. Three times it comes from the greek word threskia and literally translated it means a ceremonial observance, and twice the greek word is ioudaismos (Judaism). Today the word religion is described in Websters dictionary as a “belief in and worship of God or gods; a specific system of belief, worship, etc., often involving a code of ethics.” Websters thesaurus adds “all that centers about mans belief in or relationship to a superior being or beings”.

I say that religion is created by man in order to sustain mans faith in God. Mans inability in and of himself to understand (to know) God is replaced by mans ability to create his own form of religion to honor God and does not require knowing Him. “ Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” Just as the men of Athens, wanting to cover all the bases, had erected an idol to the unknown god, man in his infinite wisdom has created a religion for every possibility that exists in the world knowing that there must be a god. In the early church at the time of the first apostles there was a simple spiritual truth being preached. “ That Jesus was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” This “grace and truth” is given to all those who are born of the will of God and in that “grace and truth” is the power to become what Jesus’s Church is going to be. Yet those who are “Born Again” would rather rely on religious forms and religious traditions to convince them of their salvation. The first apostles established the Church on spiritual truth and not on threskia and ioudaismos, but ceremonial worship and jewish tradition did enter in and corrupted the teaching of “grace and truth”.

H.L. Mencken wrote this summation in one of his articles; “ The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.” You see it is the vanity of man to believe that God created so that we could ride. It is the religion of man that God intended for us to make this a better place. It is the religious vanity of man to think that Jesus died on the cross so the world would be a better place. The “kosmos” was not created so that man would have a place to play, it was created in order that the creator would be glorified in the earth. So that Jesus would have His Church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. “ Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.” There will not be peace in the world, there will only be peace in Jesus. It has never been all about the created man. “The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.” It has always been about the “Born Again” man.

To be continued