There used to be a big campaign called WWJD – What Would Jesus Do? Back when most of the country was, at least nominally, Christian. Unfortunately, Modern Christianity in the West has created a fake Jesus that reflects the virtue signaling fake values of liberalism and in so doing has created a weak and superficial Christianity that has created weak and superficial Christians that inspire no one.

This is not a new problem. In 1738 on January 24th John Wesley wrote in his journal:

“I went to America to convert the Indians; but Oh! Who shall convert me? Who, what is he that will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief?”

Then, in a letter to a friend Wesley confessed, “I feel what you say for I am under the same condemnation…God is holy; I am unholy. God is a consuming fire; I am altogether a sinner, meet to be consumed. Yet I hear a voice saying, ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved’…O let no one deceive us by vain words, as if we had already attained this faith!”

At Aldersgate, there was an event that Wesley describes in 18th Century speak as: “my heart was strangely warmed.” Many denominations describe this event as being “saved;” in other words an assurance of salvation and grace that reaches to the very depth of the soul.

After Aldersgate when Wesley said his heart was strangely warmed and he realized the full force of his salvation on October 30 he told his older brother Samuel, “By a Christian I mean one who so believes in Christ as that sin hath no more dominion over him. And in this obvious sense of the word, I was not a Christian till May 24 last past. For till then sin had dominion over me, although I fought with it continually; but since then, from that time to this, it hath not.” So, Wesley’s remarks leading up to and following Aldersgate appear to say in clear terms that on May 24 he experienced a conversion to saving faith. Many Christians today, like Wesley at the start of this ministry, have not experienced this. That does not mean they aren’t Christian. Wesley described it a Christianity that sits on the Lental of the Kingdom of God but not entering fully into it. Too many Christians think church and preaching “is all there is” and they have never felt the power of the Living God in their lives. That is why I say Nature’ God. Nature knows the real God but some who call God “God” are not actually worshipping the one true God. This is a problem as old as the Bible and the Pharisees. Today we call these Christians in name only “nominal Christians” and they are in every denomination and faith. Some of them are leaders and preachers.

Of course I am not talking about everyone, but before you think I am just talking about some mainline denominations like the United Methodists or other ‘social justice’ gospels you better read on and reflect on what I have to say lest you be one of those who on that day run to the Returned Jesus and say “Lord Lord,” and have him respond “Get away from me you doers of iniquity. I never knew you.” Somehow, whenever we read that passage, we are always sure it applies to others and not us. But I ask you, isn’t that what the Pharisees would have thought when they heard that?

As a pastor I know, from talking to people not in the church, that one of the reasons they don’t give the church a chance is because of people already in the church. Of course, I told them “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

Unfortunately, even much of the so-called conservative world and non-denominational Christianity holds to this oversimplified, progressive, and even heretical image of the Son of God. So when people asked that question of “What Would Jesus Do?” – they already had a fake preconceived notion of what their options were. Let’s talk about what WWJD could really mean.

Welcome Children of Nature’s God, You, are created in the Divine Image as stewards of the Earth – as we are told in Genesis. I have already covered in another place how what most Bibles translate as “God gave humanity dominion over the Earth” would be better translated as God made humanity the “stewards” of the Earth.

Let’s look at that. The castle’s steward was the representative of the Lord whenever the Lord was absent from the castle. It was the steward who represented his lord’s interests in the castle and managing the Lord’s lands. Not only managing the business interests but fighting to defend them. Everything the Steward did, or failed to do, he would have answer for when the Lord returned and demanded an accounting from him. What do you think would happen to such a steward when he had done nothing as the Lord’s resources were stolen and misused in making junk for “planned obsolescence,” his lands and streams had been poisoned, his people misled and fed poisons, and his words twisted and re-imaged to fit the stewards and not the lord’s political preferences. I think it may be something like the Lord returns and the steward rides up to him and says “Lord lord! Welcome we have been awaiting your return!” and he says “Get away from me you villain! I never knew you!”

Unfortunately, all of us need to sometimes humbly reflect upon what one of my parishioners, a sheep farmer, once told me:

So, it is important for anyone who seeks to wear the name Christian to get it right! While we are not saved by works clearly, at least according to Jesus and the book of Saint James in the Bible, works flow naturally for someone who is truly redeemed. In other words, no works, no salvation. Works will never “earn your way” into heaven. Only belief can do that but the Hebrew Bible and Aramaic language are clear that there is no belief if there is no action accompanying it. Action MUST naturally flow out of a living faith. Humans can delude themselves into saying they believe anything but only their actions reflect what they actually believe. It would be well for people to remember that when they listen to their politicians.

So lets go back to What Would Jesus Do and the fakeness of that campaign. Maybe that was too harsh, people who followed it were very sincere. It was not intended to be fake but we had all been fed this fake image of the Son of God so our results would be more formed by our mothers who told us (in violation of Christian scripture,) that “if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all.” GET BEHIND ME SATAN!

Even my own mother said this. She was well intentioned but very very wrong. The Christian is supposed to “speak the truth in love” no matter how hard it may to hear. To be “wise as serpents but innocent as doves.” But never to be just “nice.” And that was how so many people took it. I almost walked out of a sermon (after I was a pastor – it would never have occurred to me to turn my back on the preacher, no matter how heretical his or her words were, until I went to seminary,) when the woman pastor in the UMC church said “Jesus calls us to be nice. Jesus was always nice.”

Oh really? I almost stood up and rejoindered, “Really? The Jesus who said ‘You brood of vipers!’ was being nice? The Jesus who called the leaders of the church a bunch of ‘white-washed sepulchers’ was being nice? (A sepulcher is a place that holds the dead; so, Jesus was telling them their faith is dead and that they have just put a nice coat of paint on it and are still walking around.) The Jesus who made a whip of cords, overturned their tables, and drove the money changers from the temple was being ‘nice’?” My wife saw me tense and placed her hand on my arm and I remained in my seat and said nothing.

But, let me be clear, I failed my Lord in that day. This woman was leading an entire congregation astray and I said nothing! John Wesley wouldn’t have done that. John Wesley’s diary can be an interesting read: “I was invited to preach at [such and such] a church today. They asked me never to return.” Wesley, the founder of Methodism would have no time for most Methodists today. In fact, were he to preach from their pulpit I am quite sure that the denomination would ask him not to return.

You see, that is the problem. When we ask ourselves “What would Jesus do?” in this situation. We almost never consider making a whip of cords and driving those whose very lifestyles promote sloth, greed, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and pride as did the money changers from the temple. “You have made this house of prayer a den of theives!” Jesus exclaimed. We have pastors and leaders in the church today, land many voices who claim to speak for God, but don’t. They serve an “anti-God” a force for dissolution, disease, and corruption. This corruption has touched every church and every faith. But it does not mean that God is false or the church is hopeless. It means that the only thing wrong with the church is that it is made of people; and we are a fallen people. As, in Jesus’ day, those who will not repent, who cause others to stumble, need to be driven from the temple because that is what Jesus did.

(Do I detect the sin of pride in those who regularly claim to have no fears for the apocalypse because they are saved? Hmmm, it sounds prideful to me. And all too often Christians have used it as an excuse to not have to do anything about the corruption of our age. They have become like the women who only partially filled the oil in their lamps in Jesus parable of the bride’s maids. How many of us will be caught in Jesus only example of how the judgement works as seen in Matthew 7). Unfortunately, whoever they are, like those in the parable, will be shocked that they are welcome. Saint Paul said that we must all work out our own salvation “with fear and trembling.” Too many of us have too little “awe” for an awesome and terrifying God. A loving God full of grace but so awesome that if Moses had seen Him in his entirety the Bible tell us he would have died. Jesus and the Holy Spirit, come to make God more relatable for each of us but he is still an awesome, terrible, other that our finite minds cannot comprehend.

Somehow, I believe it is under the false prophets of modern liberalism, that too much of modern Christianity has lost the ability to stand up for their faith. The Templars knew how to do that. They may not have always got it right; but they were knights who rode out, originally, to protect pilgrims to the holy land who were being raped, murdered, and sold into slavery by Muslims and heretics on their way to Jerusalem – grooming gangs of Britain anyone? Isn’t the King supposed to be the defender of the Faith in Britain? Oh, well, I guess he is doing no better than the rest of us, is he?

I don’t see a lot of Christians today riding out to do combat for the innocent – except men like Tim Ballard, the former US Federal Agent whose life is portrayed in “The Sound of Freedom.” Yet, are we not all called to act thusly? To put everything on the line for the faith. How’s that goin’ for ya?.

Jesus had harsh words and actions for any who preyed on the innocent or naïve (as in the money changers in the temple.) Ever been hit by a cat of nine tails? It’s not a “nice” experience. My ex-wife used one to hit our dog once and I jumped down her throat!

The Templars saw innocents in danger and acted. I saw lies and injustice everywhere and tried to post truth on Facebook but was shutdown so I started OfNaturesGod.com and SabersEdge.Online and make no money on them but pay many hundreds of dollars a year from my veteran’s disability and retirement to maintain. But I am not close to “doing everything I can for the faith.” God and I talk about it (as the old book says, “God is Calling, But Most Leave the Phone Off the Hook”) and I feel insufficient to do all that I feel he wants me to do.

We need Christians with the conviction of the Templars today; with the faith and conviction of Tim Ballard in Sound of Freedom. I am talking to you. But as so many sermons I have preached I am also talking to me. But to fulfill our call we need to see the truth of the gospel and not act on lies and falsehood.

We need those whose gospel has not been poisoned by the “sweetmeats” of liberalism. John Wesley said that the Christians of 18th Century England were only fed pleasant sounding words from their pulpits. Like people who only eat “sweetmeats” they are Christians with a diabetic faith drowning in sugar. Unfortunately, our faith has been so colored by these “sickly sweet” words that many read the Bible today only in that light and so embrace a false gospel. AS such they cannot really understand what they read because the poison is in their heads already and they have already been “told” what to think about it and can no longer see anything else.

Maybe this is why Jesus said, “Let those who have eyes to see, let them see.” We must ask ourselves. “Do we have the eyes to see or are we just seeing what someone has told us was there?” This is why the Bible says to read scripture prayerfully so God can talk to us and the Spirit can guide us in our study.

I personally noticed this after taking Hebrew and Greek in Seminary. As a former investigator and counterintelligence agent I had already been conditioned to be careful not to read my own meaning into witness statements or to make assumptions when conducting investigations. As I read through the Bible again, although I had read through it entirely before, I saw many things I had missed. In seminary it was in this investigative light…that I studied every passage. Asking what was there instead of “knowing” what I would find. The full wine skin or the full cup is already full and nothing new can be poured into it.

I studied every word and looked up every phrase to divine its true meaning. I concluded that Satan has done a number on Christians today and most of us don’t notice. The faith we, as Christians are taught today, is almost anti-biblical with so many things is it really the Faith of Christ anymore? So many ideas that were added to the faith from “dispensationalism” to “social justice” that are not in the Bible. Many things, some of which are well thought out and good – explaining things that need explaining, but others that are fraught with human error. We are misled by very well-educated false prophets and sweet sounding words that don’t come from God but from this “Enemy.” And the Enemy is very very good at corruption.

Christians need a balance, and we can find it in prayer and meditation on the word of God. But we need to remember that most of prayer should be listening to what God is saying to us for the God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, has never stopped speaking. Although most of us have stopped listening. But we can start listening again whenever we choose to and carve out some time for God and approach Nature’s God with the same open heart and assurance that nature does. And it begins in the real gospel that reflects what Jesus actually said and doesn’t remake him into some virtue signaling false saint of the modern day and the progressive message. We need to heed both the invitation and warning in Matthew Chapter 7:

A Tree and Its Fruit

15Beware of false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20So then, by their fruit you will recognize them.

21Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’

23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’

The House on the Rock

24Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because its foundation was on the rock.

26But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain fell, the torrents raged, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its collapse!”

And the promise that proceeds it in Matthew:

Matthew 7:7-8

7Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.