Unraveling Christianity’s Next Reformation

Posted by K. Beau Beauchamp on Oct 13, 2008 in Articles, Featured, K. Beau Beauchamp, Reformation | 1 comment

A modern Reformation. You’ve most likely not seen it. You may have not even heard of it. This is by design. Your pastors and leaders don’t want you to know about it. They’d rather not openly discuss it. But there is within Christendom right now a slow building movement of tectonic proportions that is sending major tremors of reform through the bedrock of mainstream Christianity.

Another Reformation is on the horizon for the Christian Church. It is a true Reformation. And like every other Reformation of the people of God, it is one that your current church leadership wants nothing whatsoever to do with.

Some would argue that another Reformation is already here. Today’s pop-Christian leaders like Rick Warren and Joel Olsteen attempt to paint the mega-church phenomena is indicative of such a “Reformation”. In fact, Rick Warren has already compared his Purpose-driven church’s hyper-growth to that of a “Second Reformation”.

However, men like Warren and Olsteen are not really “reformers”. If anything they preach and represent nothing more than “status-quo” Christian doctrine and tradition. Theirs is an effort to draw in the largest “market share” of mainstream believers. You don’t do that by preaching a controversial message. Compared to Huss, Jerome, Wycliffe and Luther, the modern purveyors of Purpose-driven thought are hardly men preaching against mainstream Church-approved (i.e. orthodox) doctrine as the previous Reformers indeed did.

Real Reform

While most mainstream pastors are studying how to grow congregations ever larger the Holy Spirit of Yahweh God has been quietly at work within a mere handful. As Christian scholars blithely contemplate yet another “new perspective” or “modern take” on Biblical personas and eschatology, a real and massively powerful moving of God’s invisible hand has been changing the hearts, minds and perspectives of the faithful.

And now major cracks within long-held Christian dogma are finally beginning to appear. Christian laity are finally beginning to realize in larger and larger numbers that despite what is being vehemently preached from the pulpit, “the Earth is not really flat!”

These new tremors of reform have not gone unnoticed by some in Christian leadership. Some within Christianity today have indeed begun to pickup on the pulse of this new reforming of modern Christian thought. But these good folks don’t see the cracks appearing within long-standing Christian doctrine as being driven “of God”. They only want to view them as quite the opposite, in fact. So instead of working to objectively see what God is doing in terms of bringing real reform, our leadership has offered only a knee-jerk kind of negative reaction.

In many ways, these modern Christian leaders are responding to Reformation just like the Christian leaders did five centuries ago and the Judaic leadership did twenty centuries ago. Instead of looking honestly and forthrightly at the facts and truth God is revealing, they have begun working against the powerful hand of Yahweh God.

Not The First Time

What is this new Reformation that God is bringing? What would it fundamentally change about our views and perspectives of God?! What could Christianity have possibly missed that would require God to bring upon His people yet another reformation of our understanding of Himself?

Indeed, there are always the skeptics. Those people who cannot and will not ever change—even if the hand of God is behind it. ‘We don’t need any kind of reform,’ they demand. ‘God has already given us all we need (meaning the Bible). We’ve already had one Reformation within Christendom; we don’t need another!’ Such people feel that any kind of reform is unnecessary; that any reform of long-held doctrine can only be “of the Devil”. And anyone who preaches any kind of doctrinal reform is simply a misled “heretic”.

However, such people generally lack a wider sense of perspective of how God has always led His people. This is not the first time God has had to bring Reformation to a wayward and unlistening religious leadership.

Let’s take a step back for a moment. Are we as Christians really so arrogant that we cannot imagine having some kind of major error that God would seek to correct? Have we so deluded ourselves with our own brand of Christian hubris and our patented self-centered “sanctified judgment” that we cannot even imagine harboring mistaken ideals about the God of the Universe?

We comfort ourselves with wishful ideas like, ‘As long as God is on the Throne of Heaven, He would not allow Christianity to wander off-track in any major way!’ We’d like to think we’re collectively inerrant as a Church. Yet have we forgotten that God’s own chosen priesthood was allowed to wander away from Him? The Roman Catholic Church fell prey to the exact same error of a sense of collective infallibility. Are we in modern Christendom really any different than they? Again, we’d like to think so, but in reality, are we really?

There have been many times throughout history when the mainstream of God’s people thought and believed many things that were in fundamental error about God and who He was and what He was really like. Look no further than just 500 years ago and the Protestant Reformation when God brought reform upon an errant, stubborn and murderously wicked Christian Church and its hard-hearted wayward and, in many ways, pagan leadership.

Pagan Christianity?

While much of Christendom smugly chastises the ancient priesthood for adopting paganism into their worship of Yahweh God, few of us a modern Christians are aware that the Roman Catholic Church itself did the exact same thing! The early Roman Church leadership borrowed heavily from popular period pagan custom and incorporated numerous pagan customs and ideals that have now become fundamental beliefs of Christianity! You won’t find a celebration of “Christmas” in the Bible because this celebration was original to Mithraism and Sun worship. Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, “the birthday of the invincible sun” (god), was celebrated by Roman pagans on December 25 just after the winter solstice.

As Christians we’re never taught the true origin of some of Christendom’s most heart-felt and cherished beliefs about God and about Jesus. This is on purpose. While Christianity prides itself on believing the “truth” about God, it would literally shock most of us to learn that many of our tenets of worship and belief actually came almost verbatim from an ancient pagan religion known as Mithraism.

Much of this paganism has merely become “accepted” by modern Christians through two mechanisms: 1) a Protestant version of Catholicism’s own “holy tradition” and 2) a perception that the mainstream Church harbors “collective infallibility”. In Roman Catholic circles this is better known as “papal infallibility”.

The Church’s harboring of an arrogant sense of inherent inerrancy is very strong. So strong in fact that only through a powerful moving of the hand of Yahweh God can and does man change our perceptions of what we have mistakenly learned. In other words, within the Protestant Reformation it literally took the hand of God to correct a wayward and unlistening leadership within Christianity. Reformation attempts to re-teach us—the ones who can be taught anyway—that the Church and its leadership are not always infallibly inspired.

Bear in mind also that the previous Reformation also literally changed—corrected—the content of the Bible itself. While much of our mainstream Protestant leadership attempts to downplay or even spin this historical fact, it was the Roman Catholic Church who assembled—and even rewrote—the Bible we honor as infallibly inspired of God.

Of course, the Catholic Church doesn’t see Yahweh’s previous Reformation quite so positively. They view the Protestant Reformation as nothing more than a bunch of wayward “heretical” Christians who “lost faith” but will eventually return to re-embrace the doctrines and dogmas of the “Mother Church”.

The Other Reformations

Fifteen hundred years prior to the Protestant Reformation there was, for lack of a better label, the Messianic Reformation. Jesus and his Apostles brought huge reform to the people of God and to (yet another) murderously defiant religious leadership. If you read the history of Josephus, Jesus was not the only person in the first century whom the priesthood had executed for attempting to preach a message of reform within Judea.

Some 700 years earlier, the prophets Micah, Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah also preached a message of reform to an unlistening and wayward religious leadership bent on incorporating paganism into their worship of God and doing things their own way. In fact, so wayward had the “accepted version” (i.e. mainstream / orthodox) period religion of Yahweh God become that the rank-and-file laity didn’t even know what their own God was really like! God said through the prophet Isaiah,

“I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.” (Isaiah 42:6)

Jesus’ own understanding of this dovetails on what Isaiah said. Jesus understood how entrenched tradition could darken one’s ability to even see the light of truth. Jesus said,

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good [straight, uncomplicated], your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad [evil], your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23) [Greek amplification supplied]

Is what we perceive as “light” within mainstream modern Christianity actually the “darkness” that Jesus was talking about?! Have Christianity’s “eyes”, how we perceive things about our own God, become so twisted in a complex tangle of Catholic historical revisionism, spin and misdirection of the facts that we can no longer “see” the true nature and character—the word—of Yahweh our God?

It’s a powerful question—one our own mainstream theologians are being utterly unresponsive to addressing openly and honestly.

Quietly On The Attack

More and more I am seeing scholar and pastor on the quiet offensive and actually attacking God’s moving instead of really standing back and taking a good hard look at what it is that God is attempting to say to His people today.

As I have said, modern Christendom’s leadership have had more of a knee-jerk reaction than they have taken to humble and prayerful study of the true character, the word, of Yahweh God. I don’t blame such theologians for having a knee-jerk response, but I would caution them with the words of Gamaliel when the priesthood attempted to persecute the Apostles. Gamaliel warned:

“For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:38-39)

The last place anyone wants to be standing is on the wrong side of Yahweh God during a Reformation!

The Foundation of New Reform

So let’s “nutshell” the message of this new Reformation that some within Christendom have heard and are following and many are now fighting against. The core message of this new Reformation is really pretty simple but it’s ramifications within the Christian world are Earth-shatteringly mammoth.

The Reformers’ message is simply this: “God does not need or desire sacrifice.”

Yahweh God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, does not need any kind of blood sacrifice of any thing or by any one. Period. Yahweh God forgives freely, truly freely, without a sacrificial payment. All God requires is our humble repentance.

While you mull this around in your mind for a moment, consider that this simple message has more than ample Scriptural foundation within the latter prophets and even the Psalms. Yahweh God speaking through the prophet Hosea said,

“For I delight in loyalty [I desire mercy] rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God {knowing what God requires} rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6:6 NASB) [NIV] {amplification supplied}

Jesus himself quoted this exact same passage from Hosea. (Matthew 9:13)

Think about it. The prophets themselves railed against the pagan sacrificial system put in place by the leadership of the ancient priesthood. The message of the latter prophets was simple: God does not require sacrifice.

And now Yahweh God is teaching His people this ancient tenet about Himself once again. And once again the reaction of most of us as mainstream Christians is to just automatically disagree with such a notion.

Tradition becomes our foundation instead of good and sound judgment. We say, ‘Just look at all of the “commanded” sacrifices laid out within the Torah!’ (the first five books of the Bible). How could all of this be wrong?!’

But again, we lack a sense of perspective and we utterly fail to notice that a century after Isaiah, the prophet Jeremiah penned the words of God speaking to the leadership of Israel and the priesthood. God said,

“How can you say, ‘We are wise for we have the Torah of Yahweh’, when the lying pen of the scribes [elders, leaders] has handled it falsely?” (Jeremiah 8:8) [Hebrew amplification supplied]

And then there’s this passage from Jeremiah where God says,

“For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk in all the way which I command you, that it may be well with you.’” (Jeremiah 7:22-23 NASB)

You may want to note that the NIV’s translators deliberately mistranslate verse 22 by inserting the word “just” into the text which completely changes the original meaning of the passage. The word “just” does not appear in the original Hebrew nor is it implied. The NIV’s translators are the only ones who attempt to change the meaning of this passage with their own sectarian bias. After all, if the passage is correct and God did not command sacrifices, a good chunk of both the Old and New Testaments is boldly false in its representation of God’s word, His character.

The very first chapter of Isaiah has God railing against sacrifices:

“The multitude of your sacrifices—what are they to me?” says Yahweh. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?” (Isaiah 1:11-12)

Well before even Isaiah, the Psalmist writes of the word of God,

“My people, I am God! Israel, I am your God. Listen to my charges against you. Although you offer sacrifices and always bring gifts, I won’t accept your offerings of bulls and goats. Every animal in the forest belongs to me, and so do the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds in the mountains, and every wild creature is in my care. If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you, because I own the world and everything in it. I don’t eat the meat of bulls or drink the blood of goats. I am God Most High! The only sacrifice I want is for you to be thankful and to keep your word. Pray to me in time of trouble. I will rescue you, and you will honor me.” (Psalm 50:7-15 CEV)

Perhaps the most powerful reason why everyday Christian people are turning toward this new Reformation is out of an inherent God-given sense of something none of us can read or even see. It is nothing short of a simple and gentle moving of the Holy Spirit of Yahweh God within the hearts and minds and spirits of people everywhere.

We as the people of God are simply awakening to realize for the first time in a very long time that our loving and caring and ever-faithful God, Yahweh, does not ask for nor require sacrifice to forgive. Any sacrifice. Not animal sacrifice. Not human sacrifice. God does not need nor does He desire blood to forgive.

So what does our God require of us to bestow His unfailing forgiveness? Jesus perhaps said it most plainly,

And, behold, one came and said unto him, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?”
And he said unto him, “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but One, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”
He saith unto him, “Which?”
Jesus said, “Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 19:16-19 KJV)

Jesus said nothing about sacrifice.

Well before Jesus’ time, Yahweh speaking through the prophet Ezekiel said very plainly,

“The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him.

“But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die. None of the offenses he has committed will be remembered against him. Because of the righteous things he has done, he will live.” (Ezekiel 18:20-23)

Within Ezekiel 18, God utterly destroys the entire doctrine of “original sin” (or inherited sin) by spelling out in more words than are really necessary that the sin of one man cannot be inherited or transferred to nor can one’s punishment be borne by another.

In fact, Ezekiel 18 completely contradicts the entire foundation of Pauline / Roman Catholic soteriology—that is, how salvation is actually given by God.

Although most of the leadership within Christianity continue to cling to the errant notion that the Bible’s Scriptures represent a kind of unified thought of God’s character, what is beginning to emerge within Christian thought is that what the Bible’s Scriptures really represent is more of a history of deep struggles between powerful religious leaders who didn’t listen to God and the prophets who did. This is hardly a compendium of unified thought. Ironically enough, even the very concept of an Old and New Testament axiomatically sets up a fundamental disagreement of who God is and what He requires for salvation.

Conclusion

The bottom line of this Second Reformation of the Christian Church holds some astoundingly massive ramifications for the future of the Christian Church and our ultimate understandings of Yahweh our God. Are we as modern Christians really prepared to meet these challenges to our long-held doctrines head on with all honesty and wholesale integrity? Or will we be like the Pharisees and Roman Catholic leaders, fighting against our own God for the sake of entrenched pop-culture tradition?

Yahweh is a God of real love and astounding warmth. I suspect that the real reason why Israel had such a turbulent history with God and wrote of Yahweh within their Scriptures with such a negative slant is because they themselves were constantly at odds with His true Word. They ignored his gentle nature and adopted self-serving pagan blood sacrifice into their worship of our kind, gentle and loving Creator.

So before you just “blow-off” the understanding that God does not require sacrifice, perhaps you should take a step back, do some additional research and do some deep soul-searching. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has something really amazing and exciting to teach all of us about Himself.