The wall is about to crumble!

There is a wall spoken of in Ezekiel 13:10-16. The wall is constructed upon false-hood and lies. Lying prophets who tell the people what they want to hear. They cry peace and prosperity where there is no peace, and their prosperity is the gold and silver of this world. Their gold and silver and jewels are truly wood, hay and stubble and it shall surely come to nothing when the Lord comes against this wall.They lie to people and tell them that God is at peace with them and that they can, no matter what, fall back upon His mercy and His grace and that He will sustain them in their time of trouble. They have no peace for they do not know Him and their gold is fools gold and will not buy them peace.

There are many who plaster this wall and they do so with ” untempered mortar.” Now, I laid bricks for over 25 years. In the beginning, when I was an apprentice, we went to a trade school. The trade school was inside and we built many beautiful structures. We built egg-shaped sewers and Gothic arches and so on as we perfected all the finer points of building bricks and stone. If you were to walk into the large room where we were hard at work, you would see some fine examples of brickwork. The untrained eye would not notice and really could not notice that the mortar between the bricks was only sand with a small amount of lime, it was untempered, it had no cement. When the project was finished it was simply and easily taken down and the material would be scraped off and used again. If it were outside, it would not last very long and if a storm or rain were to hit it, the structures would simply collapse on themselves as the mortar that held everything together had no integral strength.

This is the kind of wall that Ezekiel is talking about in Chapter 13. Christendom itself is just like this wall(not the Church). It has been constructed by false prophets and the mortar used to hold it all together is religiosity. It gives a beautiful appearance and it encompasses a stronghold, but the time is coming soon when the Lord Himself will come against this structure. The Lord Himself will cause a storm designed specifically to bring the structure down. This is just like Matthew 7:26 where the Lord talks about two houses. One is built upon a foundation of Truth, that is Jesus, and the other has no foundation at all, it is merely built on sand. Now, in the normal course of events no one would ever know what house had a foundation or which did not. Yet, when a storm comes and the rains of persecution pour down, in the end only one house will be left standing, the house that stands entirely upon the foundation of Jesus Christ.

This storm is coming brothers and sisters. In fact the fore-winds have already begun to blow. There will be a flooding rain, great hailstones shall fall and a stormy wind shall tear it down. Tear what down and expose what? The great wall of religion and denominationalism shall soon be exposed as the birth pangs of persecution begin to intensify. God has always had a remnant of people who dwell outside the walls, outside the systems of men. They are witnesses who testify of the truth. Indeed, as Stephen says , God does not dwell in temples built by human hands. God’s kingdom dwells within the hearts of His children. His structures consist of living stones. These living stones together, are the temple of God.

This great storm of darkness that is descending upon the world is designed to leave only the true children of God standing, and by standing I mean never faltering, standing fast to the end , a prevailing, enduring and overcoming stand. That which is without the foundation of Jesus, which is constructed by un-tempered mortar will not stand. And by not standing I mean shall fall into compromise with the world.They shall not stand fast, they shall not endure and they shall not overcome. That un-tempered wall shall be no more when the climax of the storm comes, when Jesus Himself shall descend in all His glory with the saints and with a shout of glory and triumph. Those saints still alive after the final martyrs have been slaughtered shall arise and join Christ and His army in the air, that glorious army of saints who come with Christ and then every knee shall bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.

In much of the church we are living with the triumph of form over substance. The evidence of that is the lack of depth of Christianity in our society. We have had many charlatans that have used the power of the media and the rules of entertainment to water down the message while promoting themselves. Three of four generations into an entertainment driven church we are left with a shallowness of showmanship that engages the ‘audience.” Tozer writes “The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment.” I would argue that all across Christendom in the west we are seeing leaders who lead the people by providing entertainment.

Tragically, we have seen that as the world goes so goes the church. Of course it should be the exact opposite, yet here we are. You will hear excuses about staying relevant and keeping up with technology and so on. I personally have nothing against technology but when it becomes an integral part of the “show” on a Sunday morning then you know that the plot has been lost. Today we are being driven by the form and not the substance. The cultural winds have simply taken a hold of the church and the church is being driven along by these winds towards what destination? What is the end for such a church? The complete amalgam of the world with the church. This is a tragedy. The church was supposed to be a counter-culture not a sub-culture.

Yet if there is an enemy that seeks to swallow up the church whole by means of swamping it with the world, he has miscalculated. We see in the secular world that given enough frustration the electorate eventually rebel against the establishment that has become corrupt. This last election cycle is a perfect example of rebellion against the establishment with men like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. If the world can react against the corruption they find in the system then even more so can good brothers and sisters in Christ. As always Satan will overplay his hand and brothers and sisters will simply leave the corrupted institutions behind. The more our enemy overplays his hand the more he drives saints together and actually helps the Scriptures come to pass. Jesus prophesied in John 17 that we should be one just as He and His Father are one. We shall see this come to pass.

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ……….And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:(Eph 4:4-13)

Brothers and sisters God is raising up apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers. Not the children of the system that we see today, but genuine saints whose primary goal is the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry and the edifying of the Body until we all come into the unity of the faith. The unity of the faith is the work of God Himself through His Holy Spirit and the spirit of the world that has invaded the church will only drive the saints towards such a unity that will undoubtedly be forged in the fires of persecution. Pursue the substance of God with all of your heart and soul and mind and do not be distracted by shiny things that make a lot of noise and attract attention. The substance of God will triumph over the form of man.