God has a purpose, but Satan is subtle, creeping in to utilize and usurp what God has done. God chose two peoples, Israel and the church. God used the Old Testament for the fulfillment of His purpose, but Satan subtly utilized it to form Judaism in order to hold back Israel from God’s purpose. Then in the New Testament time, God used the church to fulfill His purpose, but the subtle one crept in again to utilize and usurp the New Testament, forming a Christian religion to hold back Christians from fulfilling God’s purpose. Now Israel is held back by the Jewish religion, and Christians are held back by the Christian religion. Eventually no one is left to fulfill God’s purpose.
Much of what is being ministered in Christianity today may be considered either as a drug or as candy. According to a proper diet, neither drugs nor sweets are good. Sweets damage the appetite. A proper wife will care for her husband by restricting his eating of desserts. The husband may not be happy with this, but he should realize that this is good for his health. Eating desserts without proper food damages the appetite and creates bad behavior. The more sweets a child eats, the worse his temper is. Children acquire bad behavior from eating too much candy, but when their mothers stop feeding them candy, the children become well-behaved again. In addition to bad temper, high blood pressure and heart problems are also made worse by eating too many sweets. A country that is too rich in desserts will have a high rate of heart attack and blood problems. This is an illustration of the situation in Christianity today. Even the fundamental churches minister too many “sweets” to people. They have changed the appetites of the believers until even the real believers care to eat only “candy” and have no appetite for solid food. Anyone who comes to minister solid food offends them, because they have no capacity to digest and assimilate it. They know how to drink only sweet, soothing milk. In our early days, we very much appreciated a devotional book entitled Streams in the Desert, which compiles quotations from Charles Spurgeon and others for the purpose of comforting the reader. However, this book may be considered as a “dish of candies,” one for each day of the year. We eventually realized that the sweet and soothing nature of this book damages the appetite, causing the reader to care only for hearing comforting words and not to know how to receive unveiling words.
We may illustrate the shortage related to this kind of book in the following way. A Christian husband and wife with different natural dispositions may discover that they are not very suitable for each other, but because they are Christians, they cannot divorce; instead, they will both suffer. If they read a devotional book, however, they will be comforted. The husband may read a portion that says that although his wife is not submissive, she is still good for him; his situation will be a help to him and will accomplish something for him. Apparently this is a good word to comfort the husband. However, such a word will also strengthen his disposition. It will not expose his natural make-up or unveil his natural disposition. Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis, however, was a writer of another category. She taught that God’s intention is not merely to give comfort to people but to put them on the cross. However, if the husband in our illustration were to hear these words, he would not be able to receive them, because his appetite has been fully accustomed to hearing only sweet, comforting, soothing words as “candy” to be eaten day by day, year after year. Who can fulfill God’s purpose today? Many of the messages in Christianity contain either the drugs of heresy or sweet candy.
The Lord now needs some to rise up to speak unveiling words. This is what the Lord Jesus spoke. He was born into the Jewish religion, but when He came out to minister, He offended many people. He did not drug anyone nor did He sweeten them. Rather, He came to people with God’s purpose, telling them not only of God’s salvation but also of God’s way to fulfill His purpose. This offended all the Pharisees. Eventually, the ones who persecuted Him were not the Gentiles but the Jewish religionists. The persecutors of Jesus were pious religionists, who sentenced Him to death according to their religious law. Therefore, the world that hated the Lord Jesus was not the Gentile world, the secular world, but the Jewish, religious world. It was the same with the apostles. It was the high priest of the Jewish religion and those with him who put Peter into prison (Acts 5:17-18), and it was the religious Jews scattered in the Gentile world who persecuted Paul. Wherever Paul went to preach, the Judaizers followed him to stir up opposition (13:44-45; 17:5). The principle today is the same. As I have been in this line of ministry for over forty years, I have not been persecuted mainly by unbelievers. Almost all my persecutors from the first day up until today have been Christians. Likewise, the persecution against the local churches in the United States does not have its source in the Gentile world. In every locality, the persecution comes from the source of Christianity.