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“God and Mammon”

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Mt. 6:24)

It is interesting to see that even though Jesus referred to Satan as “the ruler of this world” (John 14:30). He never referred to Satan as the alternative master to God, whom people have the choice of serving. When Jesus spoke of two masters whom men could serve, He said that the two were God and Mammon (Luke 16:13). In Christendom, generally speaking, preachers have always urged people to choose between God and Satan. Jesus however urged people to choose between God and Mammon.
Satan is a master schemer. He knows that if people are told to choose between God and Satan, no one will choose Satan. But when the choice is between God and Mammon, Satan knows that even believers will find it difficult to make a decisive choice.

Satan knows that most Christians choose their jobs and their place of residence, etc., based on their passion for Mammon (property and money) rather than on any desire for the promotion of God’s kingdom. Satan knows that all such believers are useless for God’s purposes, irrespective of the amount of religious activity they engage in.
Satan also knows that most of the Christian work in the world is more dependent on Mammon (money and property) than on the power of the Holy Spirit. Satan knows that all such Christian work will not have any eternal value – even if the reports of such work appear impressive when presented attractively by “public relations experts” in colourful Christian magazines!!

We must not be ignorant of Satan’s wiles. It is against Satan’s wiles that we are told to stand firm, and not against his wrath (Eph.6:11). Satan’s wrath has never hindered the work of God at any time. Persecution has only made the church of Jesus Christ flourish in every country and at all times. But Satan has often succeeded with his wiles, where he has failed to accomplish anything with his wrath (see Rev.12:11, 12).

Satan is happy to be hidden out of sight, because he knows that he can deceive people better that way. He knows very well that when a believer is influenced by the love of mammon in his decisions, he is actually serving the prince of Mammon, even if he imagines that he is serving God!!

When a believer’s attitude to Mammon is wrong, he will be wrong in every other area too – because he then becomes a part of this world system that our Lord came to destroy. Such a man is a traitor to the Lord’s cause on earth, even though he may not realize it. He is actually working on Satan’s side, without knowing it. This is the fundamental problem with many believers today. They have not understood Satan’s schemes.

Before Jesus went to the cross, He told His disciples, “The prince of this world comes and he has no power over Me” (John 14:30 – Living). Mammon had no power over Jesus. And so Satan could find no foothold in Him and could not touch Him in any way. But Satan finds plenty of foothold through Mammon in the lives of most believers. Thus he is able to divert them from God’s perfect plan for their lives.

Throughout the last 20 centuries, the greatest opposition for the Lord’s servants has always come from “Christians” and so-called “believers” who are Biblical in all their doctrines except the doctrine of “the love of money”! It is not at all surprising that “believers” who worship Mammon oppose God’s true prophets. Jesus Himself faced such opposition from the leaders of the Pharisees who had all their other doctrines right (Matt.23:3), but who loved and served Mammon (Luke 16:14).

Christians who pursue after Mammon have plenty of money to travel whenever they like, and wherever they like. They also have enough to buy whatever they like, whenever they like. Only lovers of Mammon can afford such expensive habits. But those who have an extravagant lifestyle can never be witnesses for the Lord in the midst of a suffering world.

It is dangerous to have money far beyond what we need. It was because Jonah had plenty of extra money that he could afford to buy a ticket to go to Tarshish – in plain disobedience to the Lord’s command. How safe Jonah would have been from such a temptation, if he did not have any excess money available with him at that time.
It was to save His apostles from such temptations, that Jesus left them poor in the world. The Lord Who made Job, Abraham and David rich could easily have made His apostles rich too. But He didn’t. Why? Because new-covenant apostles, unlike Old Testament saints, had to wage war against Satan. And when Satan came against them, it was essential that Satan should find “no love for Mammon in them”? Otherwise the Lord’s purposes could never have been fulfilled through them.

What about you? When Satan comes against you, does he have power over you, because he finds the love of Mammon in you?
The battle against Satan is not fought on earth, but in “the heavenlies” (Eph.6:12). It is there that Satan’s power has to be bound by us (Matt.18:18). Only those who are heavenly-minded can fight this battle. Those who love Mammon are earthly-minded and are useless in this battle. Satan knows that very well, even if believers don’t.
In heaven, the saints walk on golden streets. Heaven has been prepared for those who have learnt to put gold under their feet even on earth. Our fasting and praying cannot accomplish God’s purposes, if we love Mammon and are earthly-minded. It is only the prayer of “a righteous man” – one who has been freed from attachment to earthly things, like Elijah – whose prayers are effective before God (James 5:16, 17). This is why God allows us at times, to lose large amounts of money – to deliver us from the love of Mammon and to make us effective for Him.

It will be very difficult for a disciple of Jesus, if he is totally honest and wholehearted, to become rich through his business in a world that is under the dominion of Satan. To become a wealthy man in such a world, one would have to follow Satan’s principles in some area or the other, and disobey the principles of God’s Word. The Bible clearly says, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.” (1 Tim.6:9). One who seeks to be “rich towards God” can never become “rich in this world” (Luke 12:21; 1 Tim.6:17).

This applies also to preachers who become rich through preaching the gospel and selling Christian books and tapes. Another gimmick these days, is to conduct tours to Israel (“the holy land”??). If a preacher can gather 10 people for a trip to Israel, the travel agent will give him one free ticket. All such preachers are worshipping “the golden calf” and are servants of Mammon, and not of the Lord Jesus Christ. [Someone asked me once if I had ever been to the holy land. I told him I was walking there every day!]
The “prosperity gospel” was invented in the latter half of the 20th century by Mammon-loving preachers who had to find some “Scriptural” explanation to justify their extravagant lifestyles and the immense amount of wealth that they had accumulated from the tithes and offerings of their “devotees”. So they hunted up Old Testament promises that God had given to Israel and began to proclaim those promises as the unfailing mark of God’s blessing today. And money-loving believers gladly lapped up this new gospel!

A secular journalist in the U.S.A., who heard of such a church where the “prosperity gospel” was being preached, wanted to find out if this teaching really worked. So he went to the church’s parking lot and checked out the makes of the cars parked there. He found that the cars parked in the spots reserved for the “Pastor” and “Assistant Pastors” were expensive cars!! But most of the other cars were cheap ones! He concluded that the “prosperity gospel” did work – but only for those who lived off the tithes and offerings of the congregation!! The rest of the congregation remained in the same condition that they had always been in!
Even in poor countries like India, preachers are becoming rich, off the tithes and offerings of poor people, through this counterfeit gospel.
What must the Lord think of the Christian “church” and its leaders today, who have pursued after Mammon, become tolerant of sin, and thus made themselves powerless in the battle against Satan. The gates of Hell have prevailed against this “church”. And that is the clearest proof that this “church” is not the church that our Lord is building – for the powers of darkness can never prevail against that church (Matt.16:18).

Whenever a genuine Holy-Spirit revival comes anywhere, it will be a revival that delivers believers from the love of Mammon. Only such a revival will drive the prince of Mammon out of the church. Any other so-called “revival” is a counterfeit.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The bottom line: The US Government is creating the instability in the Middle East while the hard working middle class people must pay the price for their politics…

“We Just Can’t Seem to Pinpoint the Problem,” says Obama.
Well, consider this:
If you are a Syrian Christian, the most endangered of the Syrian refugees, the US will not take you in…
According to data from the State Department’s Refugee Processing Center for Fiscal Year 2015, resettled Syrian refugees were 97 percent Muslim. The Hudson Institute’s Nina Shea, in a November 2 article in National Review, showed that in the past five years 53 out of 2,003 Syrian refugees accepted by the United States have been Christians (about 2.5 percent of the total). But about 10 percent of Syrians are Christians.

Actually, rich Arabs ARE doing something for Syrian refugees, at least the young female ones – buying and trading them as their temporary sex slaves:

Finally in Israel, a secular Jewish boy who almost dies, sees in a vision extraordinary signs of the ends times, mentions Gog (anti-Christ) by name, tells of great destruction in Israel and the details of the coming of Messiah…

A 15-year-old secular Israeli boy named Natan had a near death experience on September 28, 2015 and returned to life describing Biblical prophecies about the End of Days.
In a video posted on YouTube, Natan is shown speaking to an Orthodox Jewish audience in a synagogue in Israel, just days after his near death experience. He relates his understanding of what was revealed to him in the next world during the 15 minutes that he was pronounced clinically dead.
Rabbi Rami Levy, who sits beside Natan and helps the teen tell his story, claims that Natan did not study in a Jewish religious school and did not learn the things he spoke about from the Bible. Levy himself was raised in a secular, anti-religious Israeli family. In 1982, while performing reserve duty in the Israeli army, he survived the Lebanon War through a miracle of Divine intervention. Levy subsequently became religious and was eventually ordained as a rabbi.
Natan’s near death experience happened on the first night of this past Sukkot, which was also the night of the final Blood Moon. At the home of his uncle, where he went to visit for the holiday, Natan began feeling unwell. He described suddenly shivering and felt cold in his arms and legs. Natan decided to go and rest and, in those moments, felt his soul exit his body through his nose.
Among the various spiritual messages experienced by Natan, which can be heard beginning at the 35 minute mark of the video, the young boy speaks about the messiah standing on the Mount of Olives and determining who is worthy to be saved. Natan describes this future scene saying that “the mountain simply opens…it splits in two,” though not by earthquake and not by atomic bomb. This vision matches a prophecy in Zechariah that the Mount of Olives, located just east of the Old City of Jerusalem, will split and create a valley.

“And on that day His feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem from the east. And the Mount of Olives shall split in the midst thereof-toward the east and toward the west-a very great valley. And half the mountain shall move to the north, and half of it to the south.” (Zechariah 14:4)

In describing the qualities of the messiah, Natan said, “The Mashiach (Messiah) is first of all someone who can’t sin. Someone who repented. Who didn’t commit any transgressions. It can’t be that the Mashiach is someone who committed transgressions. Now it can be someone who we actually know very well. Lots and lots of people know him, according to what I understood. But everyone will be very, very surprised that he is of all people the Mashiach.”

Just before the 36 minute mark, Natan claims that the messiah will kill Gog, the leader of the nation of Magog, who will be a critical player in the final war of Gog and Magog and will bury him in Israel. This claim is consistent with a prophecy in Ezekiel that Gog will be buried in Israel.

“And it shall come to pass on that day that I will give Gog a place there as a grave in Israel, the valley of them who pass along the east side of the sea, and it will then stop those who pass along. And there shall they bury Gog and all his hordes, and they shall call it the Valley of Hamon Gog.” (Ezekiel 39:11)

Toward the end of the portion of the video, Natan describes the power of the Messiah to discern a person’s holiness. “I also saw that the moment Har haZeitim (Mount of Olives) splits into two, then the Mashiach will stand at the entrance, but he won’t…he won’t see who is religious, who has a beard and who a person is. What he will see is – he sees according to a person’s holiness, he will smell each person, he will smell if someone has holiness, if he is pure, if he did mitzvot (God’s commandments), if he performed acts of kindness. To see if he really has true fear of Heaven and not just fear of punishment, and things like that.”
The idea that the messiah will be able to discern the righteousness of a person based on something other than physical appearance is reflected in a prophecy from Isaiah that describes the gifts of the messiah, including the ability to judge without relying on what his eyes see or what his ears hear.
“And he shall be animated by the fear of the Lord, and neither with the sight of his eyes shall he judge, nor with the hearing of his ears shall he chastise. (Isaiah 11:-3)
The release of the video has caused two types of major reactions – amazement mixed with fear or incredulity and denial. Susan Constantine is a world renowned body language expert specializing in deception detection. She has appeared as an expert on television and radio shows and in print publications in the US and abroad over 1,000 times. She reviewed the video at the request of a client.

Although she is not an expert in the Jewish content of Natan’s testimony, Constantine verified the credibility of Natan’s presentation. In a statement she provided to Breaking Israel News, Constantine asserted, “I have reviewed the entire video and it is my professional opinion the boy Natan truthfully believes he experienced a visitation in heaven and was not being deceptive.”

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