The Terrible Danger of Drinking Old Wine From the Structure-It Destroys the Taste for Jesus’ New Wine

 

“New wine must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved. No man also drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better.” Luke 5: 38,39.

Those who left Jesus after His sermon on the Bread of Life (John 6) had drunk the old wine of the Structure, and had no relish for the new wine that Jesus was offering them. Only new wineskins, not contaminated with the teaching of the Structure, could hold the new wine Jesus offered.

“The effort to unite the teachings of Jesus with the established religion would be in vain. The vital truth of God, like fermenting wine, would burst the old, decaying bottles of the Pharisaical tradition.” DA 279.

The Vital Breach Made By John, Jesus Was Not to Close Up

“Christ was not to close up the breach that had been made by the teachings of John. He would make more distinct the separation between the old and the new. Jesus further illustrated this fact, saying, “No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.” The skin bottles that were used as vessels to contain the new wine, after a time became dry and brittle, and then were worthless to serve the same purpose again. In this familiar illustration Jesus presented the condition of the Jewish leaders.” DA 278.

The Old Wine From the Structure Caused Them to Twist Jesus’ Words Into Meaning the Opposite

The teaching they had heard all their lives in the synagogues caused them to twist the words of Jesus into a direct confession that He was not the Messiah. Trying to fit Jesus’ teaching into the framework of the theological view of the Structure and the Structure’s idea of the Christ, caused the New Wine of Jesus to be lost and Jesus Himself to be rejected.

In the same way you cannot fit the mighty power of the new wine of the everlasting gospel into the arcane, old bottles of the “New Theology,” Rome’s Celebration, Babylonian rock and rap, Jesuit Spiritual Formation, the gospel of self-esteem,” etc.

Better to drink no wine at all than drink the old wine that destroys appreciation for the new wine. Better to be like the Roman centurion of whom Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

“And I say unto you, That many shall come from east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.

“But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 8: 10-12.

Jesus’ Test Was Too Great For Those Soaked in the Structure

Back to the people who heard the sermon on the Bread of Life:

“The test was too great. The enthusiasm of those who had sought to take Him by force and make Him king grew cold. This discourse in the synagogue, they declared, had opened their eyes. Now they were undeceived. In their minds, His words were a direct confession that He was not the Messiah, and that no earthy rewards were to be realized from connection with Him…. The insincere, the selfish, who had sought Him, no longer desired Him. If He would not devote His power and influence to obtaining their freedom from the Romans, they would have nothing to do with Him.” DA 391.

So terrible was the hostility that “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for He would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill Him.” John 7:1.

Who is Greater, Christ or the Structure?

“But I say unto you, That in this place is One greater than the temple.” Matthew 12:16.  

 

“Seek ye Me, and ye shall live. But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba:  For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught… “Seek the Lord, and ye shall live…. Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion…” Amos 5: 5,6.  

Every great reformation-be it John the Baptist, Jesus, Wycliffe, Huss, Jerome, Luther, Calvin, Zwingle, Knox, Wesley, miller, or White, all advanced only because they put Christ above every ecclesiastical structure. 

 

Christ Infinitely Greater Than the Structure

Who is greater, Christ or the Structure? Christ is infinite. He, by His Word, created the heavens and the earth. He founded the Jewish economy and religion, which was hijacked by the very Structure that He set up, a Structure that had come under the control of Satan. That Structure stood on the eve of its destruction by the Romans for its rejection of the King of the universe.

Unless we love God in proportion to Who He is, that is, greater than all creation, we fail to make Him God in our heart. God must be loved as a Person, the individual that He is, God of gods, King of kings, Lord of lords. Jesus said, “He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Matthew 10:37.

Every Gospel constitutes An Eternal Warning About Putting An Ecclesiastical Structure Above Christ

Every one of the gospels constitutes an eternal warning about putting an ecclesiastical Structure above Christ. That is a major theme of each of the gospels. However, what happens? Many a Structurite would rather read other materials than the Bible, and only dares to accept the Structure’s interpretation of the Bible-the very principle of Rome-that the Magisterium alone is competent to interpret the Scriptures.

 

Christ Has the Greatest Claim On Our Soul

Should not Christ claim our allegiance above any Structure? He created us, died for us, redeemed us, guides us, nourishes us, fills us, and is coming soon to take us to heaven. Should He not have our first allegiance?   

 

The Track of Apostasy

As the years go by there are fewer and fewer young people with the moral power to break this stranglehold and find out the truth.  The young people go to Structure meetings, and what do they find? More rock, more rap, more punk rockers with green hair, and a leadership that condones it all. When they go to the structure university campus, they are confronted with pantheistic slogans, and surrounded by rappers, earrings, and the culture of nihilism. The apostasy deepens and deepens.

 

Niche Marketing of Slick Religious Entertainment

“Baby-boomers and their children are the target audience, the market niche, that the innovative, trend-setting churches are shooting for.” –Douglas D. Webster, Selling Jesus: What’s Wrong with Marketing the Church (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 59, quoted in Above All Earthy pow’rs, 289.

 

A Structure Domesticated to Accept Apostasy Without Resistance

Reports coming into the ministry from Structure Camp Meeting indicate that the Jesuit takeover is all but complete-the takeover planned by Jesuits such as the top Jesuit scholar Karl Rahner, who wrote about it in the 1980s in his book, Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility. The Structure has been domesticated to accept shocking apostasy for young and old alike. There is no apparent resistance left in the Structure to apostasy. The resisters were weeded out long ago. Hierarchical control in some areas has become ferocious.

Niche Marketing

Now the Structure has taken up niche marketing of religious entertainment—

The older generation at Camp Meeting goes to hear the Andrews University professor give them the New Theology-that it is impossible to achieve perfection, etc. etc. The older generation accept the rank apostasy of the youth-youth walking the camp grounds with hair dyed green, with tank top, miniskirts, short shorts, as the rock music ramps up for the evening youth meeting, and a carload of rappers arrives with the rap music belting out over the camp grounds as the rappers get out of their vehicle dressed in full-scale regalia.

The Strange Power Opposed to the Idea of Attaining the Perfection Christ Holds Out

“Beholding Christ for the purpose of becoming like Him, the seeker after truth sees the perfection of the principles of God’s law, and he becomes dissatisfied with everything but perfection.  Hiding his life in the life of Christ, he sees that the holiness of the divine law is revealed in the character of Christ, and more and more earnestly, he strives to be like him… The human agent sees what he has to contend with-a strange power opposed to the idea of attaining the perfection that Christ holds out. However, with Christ there is a saving power that will gain for him victory in the conflict. The Savior will strengthen and help him as he comes pleading for grace and efficiency (MS 89, 1903).” 6 BC 1098.

Layer upon layer of apostasy has wrapped a Structure in a horrible Babylonian confusion. Spiritual and theological confusion reigns in an idolatrous Structure that has substituted itself in the place where Christ alone should be. Causal conversation and observation of the meetings revealed everything from futurism to New Theology espoused in the minds of the people. It is a people robbed and spoiled, seemingly devoid of even common sense, and the ability to act on the most fundamental truths of the Bible. One of the most startling dimensions of the almost complete spiritual subjugation is the acceptance by the older generation of green-haired youth, rappers and rockers in the youth department.  

 

More and More Perfection of Character is the Salt of Christian Experience

“How hard is it for Christ to get the correct idea of the spiritual nature of his kingdom, into the minds of his disciples. How hard for them to realize the necessity of constant prayer, of sincere repentance, of attaining to more and more perfection of character, which is the salt of Christian experience, and the evidence of the operation of the Holy Spirit on the heart. The Holy Spirit is to enlighten, renew, and sanctify the soul.” GCB 10-1-96.

“But he answered them and said, Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.

“Leave them alone: they are blind guides leading along the way the blind. And if the blind should lead them along the way the blind, both into the pit will fall.” Matthew 15: 13,14. (German Translation.)

“If the professed followers of Christ, even in part, act the same as the world, they may have their names on the church books, but when joined to the church they are not joined with Christ. Therefore, the same spirit has to a limited or large degree a controlling power upon the minds, heart, will, and temper. Their stand in the church is what Christ named hypocrites, a stone of stumbling to those who but for them would have an altogether higher idea, and a sanctified effect on the character.” GCDB 2-4-93.

 

Purity and Righteousness

“Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself even as He is pure.” Any hope aside and separate from purity and righteousness is the snare of Satan, sophistry, and fatal delusion.” TSB 135.

 

The Megachurch Phenomenon Has Nothing to Do With Christ and Discipleship

“Whatever influence for good as followers of Christ, as believers in the truth, they may have to improve, refine, and elevate the world in their association with it, and personal effort put forth, will depend upon their vital connection with the breadth and distinctness of the line of demarcation which characterizes them as separate from the world, and the perfection of contrast to the world which they reveal in spirit, in words, in works, from the world.” GCDB 2-4-93.

 

A Devastating Polemic Against the “Megachurch” Phenomenon

“Evangelicalism, now much absorbed by the arts and tricks of marketing, is simply not very serious anymore.’ That is the judgment of David F. Wells of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in a new book Above All earthy Pow’rs. This is a book of considerable interest. More than half of it is devoted to an overview of the last several decades of sociological writing about religion and modernity, with major attention to the work of Peter. L. Berger, and laced with a theological critique indebted chiefly to Karl Barth.  The last third of the book is a devastating polemic against the evangelical ‘megachurch’ phenomenon, with it pandering to ‘seekers’ in search of a vaguely spiritual uplift devoid of concern for truth or serious discipleship. The panderers, writes Wells, claim to be winning souls for Christ, but in fact the number of ‘born again’ Christians is static. They are really engaged in niche marketing by selling spiritual entertainment that, by comparison, makes Bonhoeffer’s ‘cheap grace’ look like the way of the Cross.” –First Things, May, 2006, p. 64. Quoted in The Journal, June 2005.

(A monthly publication of American Christian College d/b/a Summit Ministries, Manitou Springs, Co.) Emphasis mine.

 

Understanding What Has happened to the Structure

In order to understand why the Structure has become the way it is, it is necessary to understand what has happened in the world at large around us, for the Structure has become what it is because of its effort to adapt to the world around it using the policy of “cultural relativism.” Roman Catholicism calls it “missionary adaptation,” the effort to adapt the church to the surrounding world in order to increase the conversions from the world.

 

Structure Sucked Into a Much, Much Larger Phenomenon

Concisely, the Structure has become part of a much, much larger phenomenon that has taken place in the evangelical world. In short, the principles that drive the consumer-oriented postmodern world have become the principles that drive the “Church Growth” movement that seeks to market the church to a godless postmodern society.

Unless we understand the deeper threat spiritually of what has transpired in Babylon, we will never understand what has hit the youth ministries, and the Structures at large of evangelicalism and the Structure of the professes people of God.

The New Gnosticism: “Seeker” Churches – Reinventing and Reengineering the Church

 

“ ‘For Gnostics,’ Elaine Pagels explains, ‘exploring the psyche became explicitly what it is for many people today implicitly – a religious quest,’ not least because Gnostics believed that a fragment of divinity was lodged somewhere in their interior world.” – Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979, 123, quoted in Wells, 141.

 

“Jung’s most famous ideas-the collective unconscious…would not have been possible without guidance from Philemon [an evil spirit]. It is from this Gnostic-Mithraic guru, who lives in a timeless space that Jung called the Land of the Dead, that Jung received instruction in ‘the Law,’ the esoteric key to the secrets of the ages. Jung inscribed these lessons in his ‘Red Book.’ –Richard Noll, The Arian Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung. (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 3,4.

 

“[Jung’s] ‘Seven Sermons’ is written in an oracular style, under the pseudonym of a famous Hellenistic Gnostic by the name of Basilides of Alexandria….” Ibid., 161. 

 

“By 1916 he [Jung] began to link his self-identity and personal destiny with the Gnostic heresies and even took on the pseudonym (and literary voice) of the second-century Gnostic leader Basilides of Alexandria….” –Ibid., 139.

 

‘Gnosticism may be defined as a system which taught the cosmic redemption of the spirit through knowledge… One Gnostic teacher counseled, ‘Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is who within you makes everything his own… you will find him in yourself.”’ –Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol, 1 “The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. 82-87.

Jung’s Gnosticism Invades Evangelicalism

The psychologist Carl Jung, deeply immersed in Gnosticism, would create a phenomenon that would invade the evangelical churches known as “seeker” churches-churches based on Jung’s concepts of the exploration of the self. The exploration of the self would replace true discipleship of Christ.

 

Consumerism

“The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her…” Revelation 18:11.

The Gnostic/pagan psychology of Carl Jung has been welded together with the consumerism of our culture in the “Seeker spirituality.” Consumerism is a major part of Babylon. Consumerism has merged with religion, has fused with religion. The religion of exploring the self is merging with a consumerism that would appeal to the “spirituality” of the self-driven soul.

 

Reinventing and Reengineering the Church

The new approach in reinventing and reengineering the church is considered to be the most important effort of evangelicalism to engage the postmodern world.

Seduction by Consumerist, Postmodern Culture’s Temptation to Negotiate the Gospel in the Interest of Ephemeral Relevance

David F. Wells, the Andre Murch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an ordained Congregational minister, writes of this ‘seduction by consumerist, postmodern (read ultramodern) culture, and its temptation to negotiate the gospel in the interest of an ephemeral relevance,” writes Timothy George, dean, of the Beeson Divinity School, Stanford University, and executive editor of Christianity Today. 

 

“Useful” Religion: A New Kind of Distinction

“The gods and goddesses have gone in the Western world today but so, too, has the single God who alone exists and Who has uniquely revealed Himself. In the postmodern world, truth is now relative, not to the multitude of gods and goddesses, but to the multitude of human knowers.  The categories of true and false, right and wrong, therefore fall away and are replaced by a different kind of distinction: religion which is useful as opposed to that which is therapeutically helpful. And the need to discern between what is true and what is false, we have come to think, is a bad habit which needs to be abandoned.” – Wells, 149, 150.

 

Willow Creek Pioneers the New Approach

Wells writes, “This new approach was, of course, pioneered by Willow Creek Community Church…. There is, however, a common thread that ties Willow Creek not only to its copycat followers, but also to those who were inspired initially by its success but have gone on to develop their own mutations. That common element lies in the fact that they are all operating off methodologies for succeeding in which that success requires little or no theology.

It is an attempt to respond to the spiritual yearnings of Boomers and Xers while creating an experience of the church which is compatible with their habits, likes, dislikes, wants, expectations, and sounds. [In 1992 the Willow Creek Association was formed to link ‘likeminded, action-oriented churches’ worldwide. The association in 2001 had swelled to over 5,000 churches and 65,000 leaders were attending ‘how to’ conferences annually… In the year 2001, 865,000 people attended Willow Creek services…]. It produces an evangelism which is modest in its attempts at persuasion about truth, but energetic in its retailing of spiritual and psychological benefits. So successful, so alluring, has this experiment become that it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is transforming what evangelicalism looks like.” –David F. Wells, Above All Earthy Pow’rs, 265, 266.

Seeker Churches Intuitively Drawn to The “Shadow Culture” of Spiritual Seekers   

“This changed cultural context is producing spiritual seekers. It is to this ‘shadow culture,’ this parallel market of spiritual desire, that seeker churches have been intuitively drawn.  Their methodology is peculiarly adapted to this movement because to those who seek spirituality without religion, as so many in the postmodern world do, these churches are offering spirituality without theology. It is most often, spirituality of therapeutic kind, which assumes that the most pressing issues that should be addressed in church are those with which most people are preoccupied: how to sustain relationships, how to handle stress, what to do about recurring financial problems, how to handle conflicts in the workplace, and how to raise children… they really have not come into church to find the kind of truth by which the Church has historically been defined, and by which it has lived, across the generations and centuries…

 

Seeker Churches: A Buyer’s Market

“The seeker churches have recognized that, for good or ill, they are operating in a marketplace. Just as there is choice in the mall so there is choice in religion. Moreover, what we find there is that it is increasingly a buyer’s not a seller’s market.

 

The Almost Sacrosanct Assumption About Consumer Sovereignty

“This creates an entirely different context for ministry from what prevailed only a few decades ago. This market today is competitive. And increasingly what pastors are up against are churchgoers’ preferences.  This is a buyer’s market and what the buyer wants has become as large a consideration as what the church wants to give. And what churches have discovered is that these preferences are significantly affected by deep therapeutic longings, by fallacious assumptions about human potential, by a sense of entitlement to wholeness, by an almost sacrosanct assumption about consumer sovereignty,  by the entertainment industry, and perhaps even by a desire to be cocooned from society as much as possible.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” 2 Timothy 4:3.

Disney World a Model For Some Churches

“This has changed many things in this new experiment in how to ‘do church.’ Among them is the fact that concerted attention is now given to the way in which a newcomer ‘feels’ about the church. That is why Disney World is considered a model that some churches have tried to follow…. One of the less welcome by products of the new consumer mentality is that brand loyalty is a thing of the past so people circulate through churches, trying one and then another, which the result that back doors are being used as much as the front….

 

Complete Managerial Control

“…Disney, the happiest place on earth, is in fact, utopian.  It is a compelling distillation of how the middle class wishes life looked in the United States or how they (mistakenly) remember it as having been. And the key to producing such a happy place is complete managerial control, considerable imagination, and technological wizardry. None of these points has been lost on emerging seeker churches…

 

Entertainment

“Disney is also about entertainment, and some churches have come to think that here, too, another page can be taken from its book… entertainment has therefore emerged as a very important factor in the new mix… Ministers who resemble comedians or other entertainers are beginning to show up on church teams…

“These churches have been to the forefront in recognizing how the growth of our cities, the evolution in the ways people shop, and the ways in which they have adapted to large, impersonal structures in society have all changed what they expect from church, what they are and are not willing to tolerate…

 

“Much of What the Earlier Generation Valued Has Been Swept Away

“… When malls began to be built outside cities, a ‘culture-changing concept’ was under way. No longer would shoppers drive into the city but they would go to the malls. At the same time this was happening, the importance of the neighborhood was diminishing. Those born before 1935… value a sense of community which they found in the neighborhood but those who are part of the younger generations, those born after 1955, work off; a non-geographical basis for creating social networks.’… Thus it is that we have the ‘emergence of the new regional megachurch as the successor to the old neighborhood parish… The contemporary ethos is now quite different from what it used to be. As modernization has taken hold, much of the earlier generation valued has been swept away: ‘familiarity, continuity with the past, kinship ties, small institutions, simplicity, predictability, longtime relationships, informality, and a slower pace of life. Younger generations have only known a culture, which is dominated by large institutions. They are used to having many choices, to experiencing innovation, constant change, numerous surprises, and convenient parking lots.” Wells, 269-275.