America is facing a pandemic like we’ve never seen before. The Spanish Flu hit us in 1918 before, only we don’t have the medicines and medical technology we have today. The Chinavirus is actually much more contagious and widespread.
But as the preacher in Ecclesiases notes, there is nothing new under the sun. What has happened will happen again and what is happening has already happened.
This midnight podcast is too much to transpose into text manuscript. It touches on the current controversies under discussion among American Christians right now. I go back 500 years to read a pamphlet that Martin Luther wrote, “Whether one should flee the plague.”
The theological context he provides for how we should respond to a plague is written by somebody who lived through the Black Plauge, also known as the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death. It is indespensible wisdom for what American Christians should really be focusing on and thinking about during these difficult times.
Consider this an audio book of sorts. I’ve recorded this so that you can have the convenience of listening to the Pamphlet rather than reading it yourself. Luther is never light reading.
Of course, I can’t help but add my own commentary before or after. Never as clear and concise as the genius church father Luther, I always encourage folks to skip the commentary and listen to the real deal.
I did consider editing the recording, but as you can imagine, there is so much going on now. I could have made the time, but at the moment I’d rather hang out with my children. At any rate, consider it from the genre of graveyard shift radio.
Of course, it depends on what you mean by purpose and I’m about to tell you why in a dozen different ways.
About 20 years ago this question hit the nation and the world by storm when Rick Warren’s wildly successful book “The Purpose Driven Life” hit bookstore shelves. Today you can hardly find a bookstore, but the idea that a Christian must have purpose is so deeply ingrained in American Christian Culture that few can imagine the days when we already knew the answer to the question.
The sermons titled “What is God’s purpose for you?” have a wildly different answer today than they typically offered in the 1990’s. Warren’s book went on to net a billion dollars in sales in just a few years and even to this day no Christian author has beaten his record. It was so widely and aggressively marketed that the churches began teaching it, having Bible studies with the class companion book you could buy separately, and the young people of that era- who are raising families themselves today- were raised in the worldview of the purpose driven life.
When the idea lost its marketing and church growth appeal, that new generation of Christians who are today’s leaders doubled and tripled down. They moved beyond Warren’s ideas and joined prosperity theology to purpose theology. The last five years of American Christianity has seen a joining of prosperity and purpose theology to signs and wonders theology. One religious excess and false teaching built on another that is built on another, compounded together.
The results have been disastrous for the church and the culture. One must wonder what’s next in “Christian innovation.” Most distressing is that this de-construction of true Christianity hasn’t helped at all to fill people’s deepest desires to know God. They have less a sense of purpose than ever, and where once there was a natural desire for God all that is left is despair and its pursuit.
And why are today’s Christian leaders creating such destruction in the hearts and souls of men?
They don’t know their purpose.
The very thing they so deeply desire to know has been rendered impossible to approach, to receive, to ascertain, to discern. And the problem for Rick Warren and the whole idea of purpose begins with an intentional mis-construal and mis-interpretation of the verse that serves as the indispensable foundation for a “purpose driven life.”
Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.
This is a “word of the Lord” from the prophet Jeremiah to the exiles who were taken off to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem. Words taken down by a scribe named Baruch, written down sometime after 586 B.C. . This was a word to the people Israel. It isn’t a word to John or Sally or Tania or to you, or to me. Jeremiah was not making some grand pronouncement about human purpose, insisting that you must have a purpose, that you must find out what it is. It wasn’t a declaration that God made the Children of Israel for their own purpose, certainly not in the sense that is found in the depth and breadth of American Christian preaching and teaching today. And, in fact, the word that has been translated in different English Bibles as purpose or plans, actually means thoughts. It’s astounding that even in our translations we have twisted the word of God so much that we make it into what it isn’t.
In any case, God is speaking about his thoughts, his purpose. There is not a single passage in the Bible, or even a single context, in which God says that you must find your purpose. We simply have God telling us that we are here for His purpose. Jeremiah didn’t tell the exiles what that purpose was, he didn’t tell them they had to find meaning and purpose for life. What he did say, and what the entire witness of all the people of God and the Saints testify to is that God himself is their purpose. To be even more precise, that God’s purpose, to the furthest extent that we can understand God and understand meaning and purpose in the world- is us. His purpose is to redeem us, to save us from sin, death, and the devil.
Let me show you in the Bible where it talks about purpose.
When Jesus was preaching in the synagogues he said, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” In Luke 4 In John 12, after telling a crowd that whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life, Jesus said his would was troubled, “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.”
When Pilate said to Jesus, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world- to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Remember what Pilate said? “What is truth?”
Then when Jesus appeared to Saul, he said, “Rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.” Even here, when Saul essentially becomes Paul, what was his purpose? To witness to Jesus. To serve Jesus. Not to start a new tent shop. Not to discover the meaning of his life, but to go to the gentiles to open their eyes, so that they might turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith.” Romans 8 that we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
In Ephesians 1 it says that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. Your purpose isn’t to start a new ministry or to hand out Gospel tracts or make a difference in the world. God’s purpose for you is to be holy and blameless. In love God predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth…
And today’s Christian teachers and preachers are telling yet another generation of Christians that they have a purpose within them, in and of themselves, that is somehow greater, somehow more important than what the bible says here… is there anything greater than uniting all things in Jesus, things in heaven and things on earth?
Did you hear what Paul told Timothy in the book of 2nd Timothy? He said to him, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…
What did James say? He said, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.”
Just consider the silliness of the idea that you have to have a purpose driven life, that you have to find your purpose, your meaning, in light of what the Bible actually says.
Everybody and their mama today is a preacher, a prophet, a bible scholar, a minister, and the whole world is chasing after purpose and rejecting the idea that we are, in Christ, the very fulfillment of God’s purpose for the world. God fulfills His purpose for us in Jesus, and Jesus fulfills our purpose for God on the cross. We are the fruits of the only purpose that matters! We are the fruits of God’s purpose, plan, will for redemption.
You chase after career and money and houses and cars and the nebulous idea of making a difference in the world- not bad things- but when this is the heart of your life as a child of God, you have to ask “are you really a child of God” , when you are pursuing a purpose driven life instead of Jesus, you are pursuing hell. You are living in hell.
All of this instantly pops into my mind when somebody tells me that they don’t know what their purpose is, or ask how they can discover their purpose.
The real question is, why do you need a purpose?
You need a purpose because you don’t know God.
All that said, the passages I just shared with you, they tell you in the clearest terms what your purpose is as a Christian. Anybody who adds on it, anybody who Oprahfies the word of God, is sending you away from the cross, they’re pointing you to the way of hell, not to the way of Christ. The world is filled of the despair of people who hunger and thirst after purpose instead of Jesus. And the Church is filled with preachers, who aren’t inspired, who don’t know God for themselves but teach the easy way of purpose. It’s easier for a preacher to tell you that God is going to give you a purpose than it is to show you and walk with you and shepherd you into repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.
And what do we see in the culture? We see people in search of their purpose, who have been told that they have some purpose more important, more special than God’s purpose, that they just have to find it, that they just have to plead to God to reveal their purpose in life. They can’t deal with the challenges of life and the world. They can’t deal with failure. They can’t survive tragedy. They can’t accept advice, wisdom, or correction. They can’t accept even the word of God.
The purpose driven life, the impossibility of attaining it in the way the American Church and the World defines it, has led to a double of the suicide rate in America, sexual identity confusion so pernicious and profound that parents are putting their 12 year old boys on puberty blockers, a drug addiction epidemic so deep and widespread that it’s the worst thing we have ever seen in our history, a new zealous commitment to communism, a frenzied commitment to Social Justice Culture so violent that ANTIFA makes the KKK look like a group of elementary school children scuffling over a call in a game of dodge-ball.
The truth is, the purpose of a garbage man is no different than the purpose of a prophet. The purpose of an evangelist is no different than the purpose of a janitor. You have the gift of healing? Your purpose is no different than the truck driver. That’s in Jeremiah too. The Word of the Lord. He tells the people that God has a plan of salvation for them, a thought of their redemption, but first he told them what they should do with their lives.
“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and gie your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.”
There is nothing special about you. And yet Jesus makes everything about you special. Him and only him. Your purpose is not who you are or what you do. It’s who Jesus is and what God did through him. God has no plans for your purpose in this world. He has plans for your salvation. The Bible says that God is doing all the work to fulfill His purpose for you, through Jesus Christ.
All you have to do is live. You need no special dispensation. You need no special job or calling or project, or spiritual gift, or ministry.
You already have purpose.
And here is the purpose, the only purpose, every Christian has. Read the Bible. It’s all right there.
To witness the miracle of salvation and what Jesus has done on the cross. Sure, to witness it in the sense of telling others, but more truthfully to be still and witness salvation in your own soul.
2. To be holy and blameless, without blemish.
3. To know the mystery of God’s will- which is your redemption in Christ. That is the whole of God’s will for you. To redeem you and save you.
4. To share in Christ’s suffering.
5. To remain steadfast in the faith.
We only read Jeremiah 29:11 when we talk about God’s purpose for your life. That’s really where the purpose driven life ideology stops, that’s where it hangs its hat. That’s all you’ll hear preached or taught in Bible Study these days. The purpose driven life leaves out the most important part of your purpose.
The purpose to be saved from sin, death, and the devil. The only purpose that matters. God’s purpose.
And when you re-discover God’s purpose, well here’s the Word of the Lord from Jeremiah.
“Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.”
You’ve read the Purpose Driven Life, but would you read THIS book? Probably not. But so long as you chase after fulfilling some imaginary purpose that empties out your soul, instead of filling your life with Jesus, you will never know God, you can never be a child of God, and you will never have the peace which passes all understanding.
Rev. CJ Conner sounds off on threats of a Methodist split. Listen to the podcast.
In Church news today the United Methodist Church announced a plan to split the worldwide denomination into two camps: Those who believe the Bible and those who don’t.
It would be the first time in American History that a split of this size- the United Methodist Church is 13 million strong- proceeded on the basis of such a fundamental Christian belief as the order of creation.
Half of the denomination, roughly 6 million members, reside in the United States. When a well organized and radicalized American delegation tried to jam through the approval of homosexual clergy and bishops, the vote failed decisively. The liberal UMC elite blamed the Africans.
A split would not be a bad thing. In fact, it would be nice for once to see an American denomination take a stand and put an end to the endless shenanigans that put communist radicals over Jesus. Let the radicals go make their own denomination.
But this talk of a split is the opening salvo in a high stakes game with epochal consequences. It isn’t about “irreconcilable differences.”
This is about funding and sustaining a worldwide network of radical ecclesiastical terrorism.
The terrorists are based in the United States. They hate guns, but love to throw constitutional process in total turmoil and darkness. So long as it gets them to their impeachment goal of destroying the Christian Church.
The problem is, the United States might be the headquarters of the Untied Methodists but no longer represents the majority of the denomination.
Here’s what the ecclesiastical terrorists are hoping to pull off: They want all the money- The money they collected while weeping liberal tears for naked African children living in the Sahara.
There is precedence in American Lutheranism. By the end of the 70’s the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) was broke. The American Lutheran Church (ALC) had tons of money. There was a reason for this. The LCA’s guiding lites, their best and brightest, were running around doing interviews for Playboy magazine, burning their bras, marching for abortion, and getting in on photo ops with Hanoi Jane.
The erudite elites came up with an idea to establish the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the largest Lutheran denomination in the world with about 6 million members. The conservatives hoped to co-opt and tame the radicals in the LCA, but the LCA needed ALC money to keep their doors open. They came together in 1988. It was a time of great enthusiasm. A match made in heaven!
A match made in hell was more like it. Today the ELCA is 3 million members worldwide with about half a million in church on any given Sunday. The radicals used the constitution to remake American Lutheranism into the embarrassment it is today.
And the terrorists got all the money. And they use the money exclusively to preach a false Gospel.
Sure there are burdens that came with the passive-aggressive hostile takeover of the ALC, one of the wealthiest denominations in American history, but, let me say it again: the radicals got all the money. The ALC sold out their inheritance for a pot of porridge and didn’t even realize it.
The proposal reported this week is much more transparent than what happened to the Lutherans decades ago. In fact, the proper response is much clearer in this scheme to split the baby.
Limp-wristed white men, both ecclesiastical terrorists and supposed traditionalists, are wringing their soft little hands over what comes next. Meanwhile the lesbian bishops along with their glitter squad have their eye on the money. There are no other options, they opine. It’s all a game. None of it’s real, and the lesbians are the ones with the spines.
But of course there is only one correct option.
The church belongs to the men who don’t want to split the baby. And certainly not to the ones who say they don’t for they sake of appearances and emotional manipulation.
The church belongs to the faithful servants, not the sinners.
It belongs to the true believers, not Ananias and Saphiras.
We don’t give ecclesiastical terrorists planes full of unmarked dollars.
The United Methodist Church doesn’t belong to the terrorists. It belongs to the Christians, a great many who happen to live in Africa today.
One Methodist leader, a lesbian bishop who was officially branded illegitimate, lamented that the UMC can’t become a symbol of diversity and unity for the world.
News Flash, sweetie, it already is. It voted against you. Decisively. With more unity in a high conflict issue than may have been seen in decades. Why can’t you live out your life in unity with the Christians?
Liberal women love their privilege, as you can plainly see. They are masters at divorce. Get ready to be kicked in the shin.
To the African Bishops, and their partners all over the world I say, “Never negotiate with terrorists.”
Especially when you run the show.
Especially when your people are dying for the privilege of following Jesus. These soy latte-sipping American Christians don’t get to play victim.
If there’s going to be a split, it’s going to have to be the terrorists being shown the door, being kicked out of the house. Let them go the way of Cain and Esau.
If there is going to be a split, let the wrath of God fall upon the heads of the ecclesiastical terrorists as they flee. Don’t agree to their terms, their premise, or their schemes.
Do what’s right, not what your tender skin and weak minds can withstand. Let the men be men, let the boys sit with the girls at the children’s table, and let the lesbians go to another house for Christmas dinner. Let your table be a place where Jesus is welcome.
If the men of the United Methodist Church fail to do what’s right, there will be nothing but hell to pay, particularly the preachers, for the rest of your lives. It will be a regret and a failure that you may never overcome. God will never bless whatever new denomination or group you create, no matter how faithful it is to God’s word. Look at the Lutheran breakaway groups, how miserable a thing they are, if you want a peak into your future.
The sweet and gentle Lutherans put up a bit of a fight, but at the end of the day, none of them were willing to be sullied with the cross of Jesus Christ. Some left. Some stayed and pretended to keep on fighting for the Gospel. All but a handful were weak, worried what people thought of them, castigated and neutralized the real men and women who knew how to win a war, and were worried more about their pensions than they were about the true Gospel.
Don’t be the Lutherans.
If you fight for what’s right, if you strive to do the right thing, if you press on to cast out the terrorists among you, and you still fail, what comes next will be nothing but blessing from the Father who smiles on His true sons. You may end up being on the ugly end of a denominational split, but you will inherit the Kingdom of God. What they go on to do will wither. What you go on to do as obedient sons will thrive in unimaginable ways.
And that’s why, United Methodists, you never negotiate with terrorists.
I’m sure you have heard somebody say something like this before, “I’ve made mistakes, but I am a good person.” Or, “He’s a beautiful soul, even though he has flaws.” When you begin to discuss what those “mistakes” or “flaws” are you’ll discover an insane world of delusion.
Buying Coke instead of Pepsi is a mistake. Forgetting to pay a utility bill is a mistake. Getting a math problem wrong or balancing your checkbook wrong is a mistake. A tiny speck of carbon in your diamond ring that can’t be seen with the naked eye is a flaw. Being so trusting and generous that you are taken advantage of is a flaw. Having a sweet tooth that can’t be satisfied is a flaw. But when people, especially Christians and Preachers these days, speak of “mistakes” and “flaws” they are usually describing something much more sinister.
Go to a funeral and you’ll hear a preacher talk about a “man with his own flaws,” but later you might discover he had a mistress for 20 years and a whole other family. A pastor might say, “She’s made some mistakes along the way,” but he’s talking about a woman who lost her three kids to the state, abandoned two others, served 6 years in prison, and was recently arrested for trafficking heroin.
President Trump’s personal lawyer testified on Capitol Hill and repeatedly acknowledged, “I’ve made some mistakes, but I’m a good person on the road to redemption.” If you listen to his testimony you discover his “mistakes” included lobbying for questionable foreign states, tax fraud, loan fraud, and lying under oath to Congress.
No Sir, those aren’t mistakes and you aren’t on the road to redemption!
There is no such thing as “mistakes” and “flaws.” There is only sin and evil. Lying, killing, dealing in drugs, stealing, cheating on your husband or wife are not mistakes. These are sins. People who live these sins are not “flawed individuals.” they are ungodly, evil people.
So where did the idea that sin and evil is really just mistakes and flaws start?
In the Christian Church. One of the greatest scenes in The Godfather is when Corleone is in the confessional receiving absolution from the priest for unspeakable evils. If you read a synopsis of this scene, Christians often speak of Corleone as a “flawed man.” In America today you will be hard pressed to find a pulpit or a pastor who speaks about sin. They speak about going through hard times, often the consequences of sin. They speak about “missing the mark” or “falling short of the glory of God,” but in just about every sermon you will ever hear these days, sin and evil is trivialized, downplayed, and minimized.
When you trivialize, downplay, and minimize sin, you trivialize, downplay, and minimize God.
The truth is, nowhere in the bible will you read about “mistakes” or “flaws.” The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat sin and evil. In the Old Testament a mistake is an unintentional sin, usually failing to bring the right offering to the temple out of confusion or misunderstanding. The word appears nowhere in the New Testament. The word flaw appears once in the Old Testament and means a little spot or blemish, a pimple if you will, and there Solomon is declaring to his love that she is flawless, without spot or blemish.
So there is no such thing as a mistake or flaw when it comes to living in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. This is a lie that has been fed to Christians by pastors and preachers who draw their teachings and faith from the father of all lies.
There is only sin and evil. The cost of these is eternal death, weeping and gnashing of teeth, hellfire and brimstone. The only redemption from sin and evil is to stop sinning and stop being evil. The only way to do that is to join your life with Jesus Christ, be grafted in to the tree of life, and go and sin no more.
No, love is not a feeling. Love is an action, a promise, and a law.
If you have ever been to church, you’ve probably seen your preacher wipe tears and speak passionately about love. If you ask him “What is Love?” you will hear a lot about feelings. In fact, you may notice that most of his preaching focuses on tapping into your feelings. This is what he learned when he went to Sunday school as a kid and this is what he learned at seminary or Bible College: love is a deep, passionate feeling.
This is also how the world defines love. Open the dictionary and you’ll read that love is an intense feeling of deep affection. More than 100 British women are engaged or married to men on death row in the United States because of their feelings and deep affections. ISIS wives, who went to fight alongside men they met online and had intense feelings for, want to come back home to Britain and the United States.
Love is not just used to describe feelings towards people. It is used to describe feelings towards food, alcohol, and drugs. The obese woman will bemoan the fact that she loves food, that it gives her comfort. The alcoholic often invests more in his drink than he does in his children. The drug addict “can’t live without” her drug of choice.
Our common understanding of love is fully physiological. Feelings are physiological. Those British women need those death row men just the same as the addict needs methamphetamine. It gives them some kind of fulfillment outside of God. It fills some perceived need that is of Satan. The reality is, any need you have that you can’t trust God to fulfill is simply not of God.
The love of this world is not love at all.
The typical Christian’s view of love, the understanding of love taught at your church, is some glorious, ecstatic feeling. Your preacher is actually teaching you about his addiction- his physiological need for people, substances, things, places, and emotional experiences. He’s revealing to you that he doesn’t trust God for all his needs, that he believes feelings are more important than God.
This is not Biblical love at all. In the Bible, love is never a feeling. It is never an emotion. It isn’t some nebulous notion of “grace.” Love is an action, a promise, and a law.
Take a look at 1st Corinthians 13.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
Love is action. There are no feelings involved at all in the great love chapter. Every word that describes love is a verb. In fact, the actions that can come from feelings in the Bible are forbidden. Envy is forbidden, and love does not envy, so envy has nothing to do with love. Anger is evil, love is not easily angered, so therefore anger has nothing to do with love. Anger, envy, pride, selfishness- these are all “intense feelings.” This means love is not something you feel. Whatever you’re feeling, it isn’t love. Love is spiritual, not physiological. Love is not of the flesh, it is of God. You can feel lust, impatience, anger, envy, and pride- the very things the world tells us is all a part of “true love”- but the Bible specifically tells us that love is not these things. Love is what you do.
Love is a promise. Take a look at John 3:16,
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
The Bible is a love story. It tells of all the things God did. It also is about the one single promise of a Savior, a Messiah, of Jesus. God says He will crush the head of Satan. God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” These are the promises, the definition of love we read from John 3:16.
Love is the whole law. The law is not a feeling. Read what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-40,
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37-40
All the Law and the Prophets! Read the prophets and you will discover what love really is. The people rebel against God, God punishes them for their own redemption, and they return to God until they reject him again. The Law Jesus speaks of is actually the first five books of the Bible, which detail the order of creation, the meaning of God’s relationship to man, and the promise of salvation through Jesus. The prophets show us how the people of God were pointed back to the order of creation, the meaning of God’s relationship to man, and the promise of salvation through Jesus the Messiah, again and again and again.
Love is the very order of God’s creation itself. Love is eternal. It is the immutable laws of life and death, birth and maturation, the seasons and the stars and the sun and the moon, male and female, good and evil, right and wrong, holy and unrighteous, heaven and earth, angels and demons. Love is what holds the universe together. The Bible says God is love. When preachers teach love as a feeling, they are false preachers. When they point to their hearts or hold their chests as they describe the love of God, they are lying to you. When they wipe a tear because they are “overwhelmed with the love of God” they are dancing with the devil. Feelings are not immutable. Feelings are not ordered. They are chaotic and changeable and temporary. They are flesh which rots and dust in the wind.
Only people who don’t know God call love a feeling. Satan deals in the currency of feelings. God’s love is all action and promise and immutable law.
