You Will be Cast Out – The Counterfeit Church Expels Christ’s True People

I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. (John 16:1-3)

If you are a Christian and if you have either been the victim of an evil one parading behind a false facade of “saintliness,” then you most likely have felt the very common sting of being viewed with contempt or even driven out of your “church” for daring to expose the domestic or sexual or spiritual (sometimes all 3 wrapped up on one) abuser. Well, let me encourage you by showing you evidence that the visible church is far more apostate and corrupt than most professing Christians even want to know. In other words, let me show you that it was not Christ’s true people who cast you out, but counterfeits – wolves in wool.

The Lord Jesus spoke very plainly. His words, as quoted above from John 16, tell us that the true remnant of God can expect, increasingly as the Day of the Lord approaches, to be “put out.” Speaking to Jews, He specified “put out of the synagogue.” In other words, the clergy, the visible church that claims to be the church of God, cannot and will not tolerate a genuine Christian in its midst. And, as Jesus goes on to say, when they ex-communicate Christ’s people, they will boast that they are doing it all in the name of the Lord!

Now, what is really going on? That is to say, so many of you who have been shunned or ex-communicated or accused or shamed by your local church for daring to speak out about the evil that is going on behind the scenes, were treated this way because those pastors, those elders, those church members, do not know Christ. Oh, I know that can be hard to believe. They put on such a show. Perhaps you were in such a “church” for many years and were quite active in serving there. Surely, you thought, these people are Christians. And yet, Jesus tells us that we can know that when the righteous are cast out of such places that place is in fact a den of robbers, not His Body. Read His words above again. That is exactly what He said.

God’s Word repeatedly, and I mean VERY repeatedly, records this very thing – the casting out of the righteous from among those who claim THEY are the church of Christ, but are not –

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (John 9:35)

(His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) (John 9:22)

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; (John 12:42)

See it? Why should we be so surprised when it happens? Let’s not be confused by this fog the enemy likes to hide behind. These words of the Lord in Scripture blow that fog away and enable us to see what is truly going on. YOU were put out of your church when you reported a wicked, counterfeit “christian” abuser because you are light and they are darkness.

This is still another Scripture on this matter. I really love this one:

Hear the word of the LORD, you who tremble at his word: “Your brothers who hate you and cast you out for my name’s sake have said, ‘Let the LORD be glorified, that we may see your joy’; but it is they who shall be put to shame. (Isaiah 66:5)

Your brothers. Of course in the Old Covenant that meant fellow Israelites. But we can surely apply it to our situation in the New Covenant where we so often (and nowadays typically) are surrounded by “brothers and sisters” who aren’t. So, what do these fine “christian brethren” do? Same thing as Isaiah said – they hate every real Christian and cast Christ’s people out, claiming to do so for the Lord’s name’s sake!  That is exactly what Jesus said in John 16. They cast out Christ’s people and then boast that they have brought glory to the Lord. But…

it is they who shall be put to shame.

Why is it that most all of the hundreds and thousands of domestic and sexual abuse survivors, whose abuser targeted them in a local church, are no longer in such a place? Why do the majority not attend a church like they used to? Because, whether formally or informally, they have been cast out by the wicked counterfeits who do not know the Lord. And they are finding the real Body of Christ in some pretty unconventional places. It has always been that way you know. Catacombs. Caves.

Therefore, like the blind man healed by Jesus in John 9, when we are put outside the temple, we will find the true temple – Jesus. And we are seeing this very thing play itself out more and more in our day. We really can rejoice when this happens to us. It’s not fun, but it really clears things up.

 

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