The Daily Word of Righteousness

A Wife but Not a Queen, #6

Then I heard another voice from heaven say: "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;" (Revelation 18:4—NIV)

How is it that Christian organizations can work with each other in Christian endeavors when one believes the other is yielding to Satan? Are they willing to have fellowship with demons? They are inconsistent. Queens often are ready to sacrifice their integrity in order to accomplish their own will.

Today the Catholic and Protestant churches are endeavoring to establish rapport. Are the Protestants willing to worship the virgin Mary? Are the Catholic Charismatics willing to cast away the Immaculate Conception? Who are the Protestants attempting to please—man or the Lord Jesus?

If one were to consider the denominations and churches of today to be the Body of Christ, the Wife of the Lamb, he would be forced to conclude that the Body is ill, confused, disjointed, afflicted with paralysis and palsy at the same time.

The truth is, the Christian denominations are not the Wife of the Lamb, they are queens seeking their own glory, their own thrones.

When the record of church history is examined and the pertinent Scriptures are reviewed, it appears Babylon the Great (Revelation, Chapters 17 and 18) is the name given to the Christian organizations. Throughout history the churches, with some exceptions, have demonstrated that they are not willing to be submissive to the Head, they are not willing to abide in union with the Life of Christ. Their behavior reveals that they intend to follow their own reasoning and that self-will, not Christ, is their motivation.

How many saints have suffered, and are suffering today, at the hands of the churches? God never will accept these self-appointed "queens" of the Kingdom of God. The Christian organizational structures, the manmade kingdoms, soon are to become the prisons of unclean spirits. They will be visited with the eternal fire of God's wrath. Then will God's holy apostles and prophets rejoice over the vengeance God has determined to take on the queens of the Kingdom.

Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. (Revelation 18:20)

The apostles and prophets will rejoice greatly because it is they who have suffered at the hands of the self-appointed leaders of the Lord's flock.

The description of the "great whore", given in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the Book of Revelation, does not fit the thousands of Christian congregations that have labored throughout the centuries doing good, giving of their substance to the poor, proclaiming the Gospel of Christ.

Many churches (perhaps the smaller ones are in the majority here) have been faithful to the Lord Jesus. They have borne a true witness, have been, to some extent at least, in union with the Life and wisdom of the Head, and have travailed in birth as Christ has been brought forth within the members.

But the corruption that is close to every Christian congregation and must be guarded against continually and diligently is revealed in the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation. The record of church history tells the story of Nicolaitanism, of the Jezebel spirit, of lukewarmness, of leaving our first love—the Lord Jesus.

To be continued.