Epilogue: A Second Reformation
Just like when Luther and the other Reformers only some 500 years ago began recognizing that their beloved Church was not preaching actual truth but rather half-truth and man-made opinion dressed up to sound like “real truth”, modern Christians are also now recognizing that their beloved Church is not telling the whole truth nor is it relaying whole and factual history to itself.
Today the modern Church needs modern Reformers; reformers who will not be afraid to take a firm stand for the truth and who will indeed lead the Christian Church BACK to the Eternal One and not away from Him.
A few years ago Beau and I began to feel that something big was going to be happening within Christianity. Just as technology, the printing press in this case, became the catalyst of reform for the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, the very same thing is again happening in our era. The Internet is becoming the catalyst of reform in the modern era and—whether we are prepared for it or not—a full-blown Second Reformation of the Christian Church is on the horizon.
It cannot be avoided.
This is not some prophetic announcement we received from God; it’s just a reasoned understanding and common sense. History is once again repeating itself. When you look around and see people studying and learning and abandoning all manner of once cherished beliefs for truly sound Scriptural understandings and doctrines built from renewed Hebraic understandings, it becomes evident that God is bringing reformation once again to His people.
The Protestant Reformation took root in large part because the Roman Catholic Church lost control of the well-groomed and limited information it was presenting to the people. Because of the invention of the printing press, suddenly all manner of books were being printed and sold to a Christian audience thirsty for the true living water of the Gospel. The Catholic Church venomously derided and even burned these new books and even their authors as “heretical”—because these brave and determined Reformers dared to question the Church’s lies and its heinous authority. The Church pressed state authorities to arrest, imprison and legally murder anyone caught with such “heretical” books, because the message these books offered indeed told the truth and eroded the authority of the Catholic Church’s doctrines; revealing some of them as unsound, oppressive, illogical and even silly.
Understandably, none of us in the modern era want to admit that our beloved church harbors error. Many of us complacently sit back and just assume that God has given us all the truth there is from the Bible and that the Bible is without error. The leaders of Israel said the very same thing. They thought they were all-wise and needed nothing more in terms of reformation of their views about God and their own Torah Scriptures. After all, they had the Law of God handed down to them directly from Moses and it was still in Hebrew! Yet, what did God tell them? He said through the prophet Jeremiah some 700 years before the Roman Catholic Church would begin to assemble our Bible,
“How can you say, ‘We are wise for we have the Torah of AHYH [or Holy Bible of God]’ when the lying pen of the scribes and elders [or Catholic and Protestant Leaders] has handled it falsely!?”[1]
Reformation didn’t start with Luther—Reformation started with Moses and Aaron warning and leading the people out of their Egyptian paganism. Reformation began again with the Prophets, again, warning and leading the people out of paganism and blood sacrifices that surrounded the ancient priesthood! Reformation once again took root with Jesus and his Disciples who shunned the sacrificial cult of the priesthood. Jesus taught a reformed understanding of AHYH God and His Law and Commandments! After that there was the Protestant Reformation, which broke the monopolistic stranglehold of exclusive doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church had on Christianity.
Establishing a single canon of “Inspired Scripture” was the Roman Catholic Church’s first step in shaping and producing a common body of religious doctrine. From the time their Church Counsels dictated which historical writings were to be considered inspired and which ones were not to be considered inspired, they took away the common man’s ability to really decide for him or herself what he or she should or shouldn’t believe. Finally, Martin Luther came along and decided that he wasn’t going to just accept what he had been told; he was going to look further and discover the God of Abraham for himself.
We as modern Christians need to show the same courage that Martin Luther did! We must face the fact that if the Bible were truly inerrant and inspired of God from its inception, then the Protestants who changed the Roman Catholic Bible canon did not have the authority to do so. However, if we’re accepting of the Protestant Reformers’ changes to the Bible, then we need to ask ourselves the question: What if the Reformers simply did not go far enough in their revision of the canon? Could they themselves have been so caught up in their own brand or version of “Paulianity” that they did not see Paul as the Law-altering “wolf” Jesus warned us about?
In the end, what we as Christians need to do is simply and fully abandon Roman paganism and return to the true root of Christian faith, which are the teachings of Jesus the Messiah and the latter prophets he supported.
Many devout people have insisted, when confronted with inaccuracies and errors in the Bible and evidence of paganism in the Christian message,
“God would not allow the Christian Church—His Church—to be led so far astray.”
To this heart-felt assertion I can only say that God allows people to sin if they so desire. God chose the Priesthood of Israel, yet He allowed them to sin—and egregiously so. Not even the latter prophets could stem the flow of falsehood and blood emanating from the Temple cult of Israel. The Roman Catholic Church was also not protected by the Hand of God from inventing and adopting man-made pagan traditions and inserting them into their “scriptures” as well—beginning with Paul! We as Christians cannot just naïvely assume that God has just automatically given the Protestant Church His “stamp of approval” because of the sanctified judgment that we feel we have.
It is unreservedly difficult to make a decision to abandon falsehood and follow the truth wherever it might lead, but it is also utterly worth it. Moses’ successor Joshua gave some timeless advice regarding which road we should choose:
“Now fear AHYH and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your [Roman Catholic & Protestant?] forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt [Rome?], and serve AHYH. But if serving AHYH seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your [Roman Catholic] forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites [Protestants], in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve AHYH.”[2]