Part of the difficulty in this post-Christian culture is that truth has become an ever changing fluid with no boundaries and no moorings. Thus anything can be and “is” truth to a culture that has been brainwashed for three generations or more through educational and university thought, which has been increasingly anti-Christ and decadent*, becoming more and more militant in the way it treats dissent in thought and idea. So many of the Christian college kids I know are treated with verbal assault, humiliation and ridicule – and worse – by mostly tenured professors whom, no matter what the class subject is, insist on making it a steady flow of anti-Christian tirades, as well as making the entire class about a political or social ideology, that, God help you if you disagree with.
*[For a three part article that examines the Public School System, its beginnings and agenda, click on this link for Part One]
As a result, we now have a generation of youth three generations down who
don’t have any measure for truth. And they are becoming increasingly a mouthpiece for their elders in the social ruin of our nation. For example – and I warned you about this – after the acceptance of homosexuality, would come the acceptance of gay marriage – done.
Acceptance of trans-gendered without one shred of medical evidence it is an actual condition by birth – done.
I warned that the entire pedophile world, under different names like NAMBLA, The Renee Guyon Society, Boylovers etc., were just waiting to take the same cues from these sexual social re-engineering successes to begin to build THEIR case. First, they have started to soften how people view them – not as the predators that they are – but as “MAPS” – “Minor-Attracted Persons” – because every social engineering project needs a catchy catch phrase that makes people look more sad and human and persecuted. Now I am hearing about people who are “trans-age.” What is that?
I warned that the entire pedophile world, under different names like NAMBLA, The Renee Guyon Society, Boylovers etc., were just waiting to take the same cues from these sexual social re-engineering successes to begin to build THEIR case. First, they have started to soften how people view them – not as the predators that they are – but as “MAPS” – “Minor-Attracted Persons” – because every social engineering project needs a catchy catch phrase that makes people look more sad and human and persecuted. Now I am hearing about people who are “trans-age.” What is that?
Adult on the outside, but little kids on the inside, therefore, you know, it is “natural" for them to be attracted to other kids! And with that, as I suspected, there is a growing voice from within the youth culture that is saying, “Hey if I want to have sex with an adult, who are you to tell me I can’t?” And we are fast reaching a point where this is going to become a common cry from the new age youth, and God help anyone who dares to disagree.
Can you see where this is going? The laws will change…Suddenly the absolutely insane picture of the men of Sodom demanding they bring out angels so they can sexually assault them does not seem far-fetched, and not far off! We are seeing ROMANS 1 played out right before our eyes.
I know I am a one-note message in many ways, but hear me again: If we don’t do everything and anything we can to reach this young generation, then we will have surrendered it to the very things I have written about here. And I refuse to let that happen without a fight, a call, a call to broken hearts and mass evangelistic efforts to reach the youth while we still can.
It will take an outpouring of the Spirit and men and women of God who are willing to preach the Word of God WITHOUT COMPROMISE and regardless of the cost. My prayer every day is for God to raise up those who are willing to fight for our youth!
THE ONLY ANSWER IS JESUS!
I am witness to what God can do when He visits a generation of youth – I am a Jesus person and saw it all with my own eyes – and my heart’s cry is for God to do it again. When God’s people are desperate and heartbroken and cry out for His mercy, HE WILL RESPOND. And so I refuse to give up hope. As we await Jesus’ soon return, let us do everything and all we can to reach this next generation.
The passing of Billy Graham is the end of an era. And I have been battling on and off online with people who want to vilify him as an anti-Christ, and a 33rd degree mason. I have plenty of information to prove he was not a mason by the way – including a statement by the Masons that he was not one of theirs!
As to his mistakes and errors, there were those, as there are with any man or woman of God. I am sure he regrets several of those missteps. If you’re in ministry long enough, you’ll have made them! But let us not forget that countless millions met Jesus in stadiums worldwide because he obeyed the calling to preach. You may get mad at me and say you think I’m completely wrong. That’s OK. I don’t know everything. I just know that on the horizon, I see few of any similar stature to take his place. (Although I believe Franklin to be a genuine man of God whose gospel is straight up Jesus).
I think we have spiritually entered a new era, one in which the enemy thinks he’s got this little world of ours sewn up and ready to reject the Lord Jesus and worship Lucifer. And I ask you to say with me, “NOT ON MY WATCH YOU DON’T!”
[Note to reader from James Fire: Something we all need to ask is what our own view of a true follower of Jesus is, what marks a saint as being a saint of God?
I pray this article encourages and stirs you up.
SHOW ME . . . back to Greg's newletter . . .]
We may be – and I believe we are – at the precipice of every Bible prophecy being fulfilled. But this is also our most glorious hour as the church if we are willing to understand the power of, “They overcame by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” (REV 12:11) Tell people about Jesus boldly and unashamed – not some acid-jean washed cheap imitation savior, but the LAMB who is a LION who calls ALL people to repent, and come to Him! There is still time! And let your lamps stay filled and trimmed in this dark hour. Jesus is coming soon.
As always there is much more to write of than I have space for. Please continue to pray for my eye surgeries, which have had some complications and some possible permanent setbacks without God’s healing. I will take prayer for healing!
I would ask as Paul did for prayers that, “God would open unto us a door of utterance…” (COL 4:3) Please pray for open doors to go and teach and give these messages so the church may stay strong and uncompromised with the world. A battle always attends that, as Paul said: "For a great door and effectual is opened for me, and there are many adversaries." (1 COR 16:9) But with your prayers, this word will continue. Thank you!
In His Grace,
Gregory Reid
What’s the Meta Picture? A Call for Clarity
I am concerned that in the last decade or so, with the expressions of many legitimate concerns about new age-type evangelical teachers, teachings and ministries, that we are getting a bit lost in the minutiae of individual issues and commentary. Some people have become strictly anti-Catholic in their responses, making that the central issue of their discernment ministry. Others are strict cessationists, or strict pre-or-mid tribulationists, and interpret everything through those lenses.
Might I add the Strange Fire, anti-anything Holy-Spirit-gifts to the mix? Suddenly, anyone with a slight deviation is in danger of being labeled a heretic. And folks, we are in danger of losing our audiences, and we are in danger losing the point of it all- the “meta picture.”
This short letter is the result of one of my young friends, who has not been exposed to all the crucial details of deception in the church, trying to make his way through my book and through many issues that he is not even vaguely familiar with: Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, Rick Warren, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Eckhart Tolle, etc.
Predictably, people like Rob Bell have since moved on to real heretic land, traveling with New Age guru Deepak Chopra and doing conferences named things like “Seduction of Spirits.” He’s kind of a no-go for anyone who reads the Bible even cursively. But many other names and concerns, though they were legitimate, have now faded from the spotlight.
But some have already moved on to worse things since 2007 when the book came out, including Rick Warren, who prayed in the name of “Isa” during the Obama inauguration, who is pushing his “new” 40 days program on a young, unsuspecting and largely Biblically ignorant generation. His manifesto, which has literally transformed the Western evangelical church in the last 18 years, (and poisoned true gospel work in Africa) is nearly iron-clad now.
His vision of how to “do church” has become the way most DO: changing language so as not to offend, eliminating concern or even mention about the Second Coming of Jesus, addiction to The Message as the Bible to read and put on Power Point messages on Sunday morning, you get the idea. There are clear and present – and clearly definable – dangers there, but we must make those points clear and simple, not complicating them with ties to 100 other issues and teachers.
My friend’s question hit me like a ton of bricks: “What’s the meta picture?” In other words, when trying to navigate the often complex and always tricky waters of new age deception in the church, his frustration just led him to ask me, “Help me, I can’t get the big picture.”
And I realized that we as discernment ministries are in danger of largely just preaching to the choir now. We are agreeing as to who the “heretics” are, what movements are satanic or occultic, and applauding each other’s efforts to make it matter. And so we should, because we need to encourage each other in a rapidly thinning ministry work. I do become concerned, though, when we begin to turn the guns on each other for even a slight deviation from our personal stance. God keep us from that!
The problem is that there is a whole new generation of people being brought into the churches, and they have absolutely NO GRID OR TEMPLATE for getting “the meta picture.” We can point out a thousand LITTLE points – and we must when they are unbiblical – but we must be aware that unless we help them to drink, so to speak, we have led them to the water but all we are doing is pointing out a lot of things that to them never get exactly to the point. And here is the danger: It leads them, in an age already oversensitive to any kind of criticism or “hate language,” to dismiss us too soon as simply being heresy-hunters, nitpickers and “divisive.”
Look, we know we’re not. Although I think there are some who need a few classes in online Christ-like communication on hard issues, most of us are alarmed, distressed and doing what watchmen do in dark hours – we cry out in the wilderness. We may seem angry but we’re just alarmed. We may seem unbendable but we are just committed to the truth of God’s Word, and we know some things are just biblically WRONG that are being promoted and taught.
But if we are to get the ear of this new generation coming into the church, we have to reach them in the way they are used to hearing. And unfortunately, it’s in 10-15-minute soundbites. If you can’t grab them and make something undeniably clear to them in the first few minutes, you’ve lost them.
So I am not suggesting we change the truth of the message – God forbid that we EVER soften it, change it or deny it, alter it or hide it! But we must get better at simplifying our concerns about deception in this age.
How to do it, I am still praying through…as I ask you to. The need to reach the new generation is so absolutely vital, but right now we are so overloaded with the depth and breadth of deception that we sometimes come in with guns blazing and barely a warning – and for many, it’s like handing them a whole set of Encyclopedia Britannica and hoping they absorb something.
They don’t even know where to start! We may very well need to pray over the verse “Line upon line, precept upon precept will I speak to these people…” In other words, perhaps we need to shorten our messages (this, coming from the King of Verbosity) make them filled with truth and make them foundational truths.
I am praying about writing some short messages on how a believer can recognize deception, why these things matter, what these things say about how soon Jesus is returning, how to undeceive yourself, etc. Strong enough Word and words to grab people by the collar and say, ”HEY! THIS MATTERS, LISTEN UP!” without giving them the whole litany of concerns all at once. Pray that God gives all us new ways of telling these crucial truths in a way that it is clear, unmistakable, easy to understand and impossible to escape.
In an era where people are almost entirely led by their emotions and the latest media tag-line (#MeToo for example) and who are willing to argue loudly and unreasonably about points they can barely defend but are good at parroting from the media, educators and peers, let’s determine to be a people who are going to preach a message to the world and to the church that is as free of secondary, distracting issues as possible.
Especially for my fellow brethren in the discernment work, God is counting on us speaking the truth in love, without name calling and with a kind of new clarity that will sink deep into the minds and hopefully hearts of the hearers and cause them to respond to Jesus and respond to the call for truth and freedom from even one particle of deception in our minds, hearts, lives and congregations.
It is a tall order, but this next generation’s ability to hear the truth may be dependent on our willingness to trim the fat, stop the bashing, speak clearly and powerfully in a way they will not be able to resist responding to.
No, not everyone will hear. But Paul said, “How will they hear without a preacher?” (ROMANS 10:14b) And so we must preach.
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 COR 14:8) And so we must make that message clear, true and compelling. We must help them understand the “meta picture” – that it is not just one issue, but a plan of deception that weaves into it many issues, and that as believers we are responsible for discerning the lies and abandoning the practices that lead to lies.
Compel them to come to truth; entreat them; pray them and love them into truth so that their feet may be kept from a trap, and if ensnared, perhaps God will give them deliverance and freedom from the complicated web of lies Satan is throwing over the precious body of Christ in this hour. Let’s break the lies – one lie at a time.
Gregory R Reid, YouthFire Ministries
YouthFire
Box 370006 El Paso TX
79937
79937
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