AFTERWARD
What About the Future?
This book began with the question, “What about the future?” Having provided you with a book explaining much about worshipping God in spirit and truth, much about the Bible and much about the future – I ask you again now, What about the future?
Like a military scout I have navigated through the doctrinal warfare of Christian camps. I have existed in a spiritual no man’s land bereft of uniform, collar, scholarship or tenure. It is a place few wish to inhabit. Yet eventually a good spiritual warrior adapts to hostility and becomes relaxed in the battle arena, comfortable in a fire fight and surprisingly vicious with weapons of warfare.
The seasoned scout intimately knows his territory’s good, bad and ugly. The ugly, in biblical lingo, are the lukewarm. And a true warrior understands, as did Douglas MacArthur, “In war there is no substitute for victory.” Therefore, the good are necessarily absolutists and necessarily absolutely vicious in defending truth and truth’s goodness. In other words, the brave do not have veracity, the brave are veracity.
The biggest bullies are in the most precarious positions, if you have eyes to see. Because they are preposterous, they must necessarily appear to be bastions of unquestioning verity. But in truth they generate costly reality deception fields requiring the continuous engines of envy, charisma, distortion, showmanship and unrighteous extraction. They are virtual Goliaths who see nothing but David-less horizons as they fly their executive jets from airport to airport.
But as a student of martial art, I am convinced no giant exists that a David cannot slay. But I am getting old, and am past my prime. And I remain on endless patrol.
I have avoided the prideful pitfalls of position. I have escaped the cerebral intellectualism that massacres inquiring spirits. I have not received the charade of honorary accolades or doctorates.
Like a spy I have visited encampments of error. I have raised my hands in surrender and agreed God is in the house, when He was not in the house. I also have refused to surrender in God’s house, when He was in the house. I know a good or bad leader when I see one. I sense the spirit and doctrine of a congregation like a general who visits another country’s army base.
I have seen the heroic, as when a businessman halted his address to two thousand people and helped a mother with her crying baby. I have seen the dastardly, when a religious feigner showed crass regard for his flock while demanding each person “wave that (donation) check.”
I have been duped along with the gullible to support shepherds who were wolves. I have refused to help the poor man on the street. I have been an answer to someone’s prayer. I have more often been the complaint of another’s.
I have heard sermons on the weapons of God’s warfare from pastors who wouldn’t know the difference between a BB or a buffalo gun. I have witnessed truths proclaimed from pulpits of egregious spirits. I myself have many times gone off on a wrong spirit.
I have seen God mock a digitized praise band by removing its electric power, bringing an anointing to their a cappella voices – and then seen God’s Spirit rebuffed once the power returned.
I have seen prophets who were entirely consumed with obtaining profits. I have heard preachers who so loathed the prophetic, they were dead wrong about anything they taught about the future. They seemed fearless to prognosticate and prophesy in areas true prophets would not dare venture. These preachers taught to disbelieve all prophets, while demanding belief in whatever crazy thing they said about the future.
Always on patrol, always gathering information, always seeing more; I have wondered why my life has consisted of such extended reconnaissance.
Psalm 119:99-100 says, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.”
Faith comes by hearing and I listen to a lot of the Bible thanks to Apple’s iTunes software and iPods. I can hear much more than I can read. You would be surprised how much you grow listening to the Bible instead of reading other Christian pabulum.
Many times I have avoided being enlisted by one competing side or the other. Like a ronin samurai warrior without a lord general, I have aroused suspicions of camp leaders I have met along the way. They wanted me to kneel in submission to their authority and join their ranks, lest I help their enemies in the opposing camp or discover charades in their own. I have always said no. Their covering would have blanketed my vision. Their pride always kept them from learning anything from me.
Ronin means “drifting person” while samurai means “to serve.” Jesus was an itinerant preacher who served His Father whom He claimed was God. This frustrated the religious feigners massively.
I hope I have not been a lord-less, drifting soldier. I see now, as did the character of Danny Archer, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in the movie Blood Diamond, “I am right where I am supposed to be.” While in the story Archer sacrificed his blood on the soil of Africa to accomplish good, I have not sacrificed my life. But this work has come at a cost to family, finances and no doubt some life forces along the way. I am not certain what the exact cost of this work has been, but it is not small. Of that I am sure.
My Lord General has given me this strange life with these strange assignments and I am glad He did. I have scouted out positions. I have mapped the territories. I have survived spiritual bullets, traps, torture and confinement. I have climbed peaks, forged rivers and endured badlands. I have charted where the enemies of good are ensconced. I have seen their strengths and weaknesses. I know what they are hiding. I know their doctrines. I saw their stealth device plans. They have flaws that can be exploited. And I have come back with a full report. It is a report that I hope is a worthy read despite any flaws I introduced from prejudice, wrong position or immaturity.
It has not been easy assembling these truths, precepts and doctrines. Of course devils have tried to keep me from creating anything of merit. I hope you, dear reader, do not believe they have met with much success. Rather, take comfort that if I can provision these teachings for you, you can provision them into your soul. But just as I had to overcome the difficulties of this creation, you must overcome satanic difficulties in drawing ever closer to God.
God is, after all, a connoisseur of men. Perhaps He will be able to write in His book a description of you not unlike what Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1806 of Meriwether Lewis, who led an Army Corp of Discovery to the Pacific (i.e. peaceful as in Rev. 22:1 clear crystal, pure river of water of life) Ocean.
“…of courage undaunted… Honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous, that whatever he should report would be certain as seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for these express purpose, I could have no hesitation in entrusting the enterprise to him.”
[Thanks to James Daugherty’s book: Of Courage Undaunted]
A complaint of this work will be the obvious fact that teachings are non-linear. They are simply line upon line, precept upon precept; here a little, there a little, as it says in Isaiah 28:10. This is maddening, I know. But it is how God apparently does His greater things. If you know an easier way, I would be glad to hear of it.
But if you have eyes to see, much of Christianity is engaged in mind-numbing repetition of baby doctrines. It is God’s mocking lines of Isaiah 28:13. As Yogi Berra said, “This is like deja vu all over again.” And it is dangerous to your soul to be stuck in an endless loop of baby talk. The mobile in a crib moves with the air and calms the mind of babies. So also do baby doctrines to the immature mind. But when hard things come, soft heads lose.
Nothing is wrong with babyish “pure milk of the word” preaching (1 Peter 2:2), so long as you understand it is part of a long path. Adult men’s Bible studies must not stay in second grade classrooms, as I once observed of a church’s spiritual puerility manifesting in their material classroom situation – which they did not have eyes to see! (First thing I said when walking in was, “When does third grade start?)
It is cheap humor to laugh at the foibles of modern Christianity. But infantile weakness in Christian doctrine creates death in believers. And that is not funny. It is not funny when so many Christian leaders in church, radio, television, internet and the world seem to be stuck in “my top is top” pride, deception and extraction. The world deserves better. Jesus Christ deserves better. You deserve better.
Perhaps it will be the job for others to gather resources, enlist recruits, prepare for battle and someday engage in meaningful big endeavors to right the wrongs identified herein. That is not a scout’s job. But it might be somebody’s job. I wish them well.
Maybe I could help, if I don’t get set up for a fall like happened to Tom Horn. He was a scout in the Indian wars. And he also was a cattle detective. If cattle represent thoughts of the mind, I have been a cattle detective. I just don’t want to get double-crossed hung.
But as for you, dear reader, read this field report and do not be alarmed by it. Do not be offended. Do not rush to attack me or others. Do not rush to attack institutions. Do not do anything rash.
Instead, use what good you find here and use it to engage your own future. Realize we all have deceiving spirits within us needing to be removed. Realize we all need to absorb more truth. These are the truths most people avoid facing their entire lives, including many religious leaders. Realize the biggest difficulty is eliminating pride and allowing the Spirit of God within us to control us so that we are of a right spirit and truth.
And then, the future will be good, because God will be in you making it good.
Enjoy, then, God’s future. It will be good for you and good for all.
An old joke goes like this: A mom is making pancakes for her little boys, Jonah and Joshua. The kids begin fighting over who gets the first serving. Mom says to them, “If Jesus was here, he’d say, ‘I can wait. Let my brother have the first pancake.’”
Joshua turns to his brother and says, “Jonah, you be Jesus!”
Perhaps it is time to start manifesting Jesus, by God.
Or we can do little but wait for a rapture of some imagined kind that absolves us from duty through beam-me-up-now apathy. Or we can do little but wait in lethargic stupor for an imminent second return to fix what God insists is our responsibility. Or we can do little but wait with faith in an eternal security of a kind of creepy confirmation that we are not actually horrific hypocrites.
Or we can start manifesting Jesus, by God. And be a God bearer.
“Besides this you know what [a critical] hour this is, how it is high time now for you to wake up out of your sleep (and rouse to reality). For salvation (final deliverance) is nearer to us now than when we first believed (adhered to, trusted in and relied on Christ, the Messiah).” -- Romans 13:11 Amplified.
Salvation is perhaps nearer to us now because we can know more truth now. And we are surprised to discover we love more truth now, even if it is bitter. And when we love more truth now, we might be able to manifest more than ourselves now. And that is good.
It is so good, it might even sometimes be so God, quite suddenly and quite naturally. It is just as the Bible’s last page has said all along: Behold, Jesus really does come quickly – in us, if we are not too full of the enemy.
Jesus says in Revelation 22:7, “Behold, I come quickly…” Again He says in Revelation 22:12, “And, behold, I come quickly…” For the third time in Revelation 22:20 He says, “Surely, I come quickly.”
And John the Revelator says, “Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
I wish you a prosperous journey of the soul into the future.
Hoping all in Christ,
Robert Winkler Burke
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