Supper

by Mike Ratliff

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:19-20 ESV)

The “visible church” is without a doubt Laodicean, that is, lukewarm or χλιαρός or chliaros, as we saw in yesterday’s post Laodiceans. We saw that that means the vast majority of our local churches are comprised of a mixture of those who are ψυχρός or psuchros, which the ESV translates as “cold,” and those who are  ζεστός or zestos, which the ESV translates as “hot.” We saw that that meant apostasy was predominate because unbelievers were allowed to be part of local churches professing to be believers even though they obviously showed no evidence of being  ζεστός or fervent in their faith. My own experience in this is that the real believers in these churches are in the minority. This will vary of course from church to church. One of the first and most prolific red flags that is a warning of Christian disingenuousness is whether a church or a believer is focused in their walk and their ministries on God and His glory where it should be or whether that focus is upside down or backward in that the focus is on people or self rather than God. If everything is focused on the person or the people in what is preached, taught, and what the “worship style” is (whatever that means) then what you have is man-centered religiosity and that is a clear marker of disingenuousness.