WHAT DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT YOUR CHURCH? AN EXCERPT ABOUT THE ROOTS OF YOUR CHURCH FROM JOHN ROBINSON, by Deirdre, June 22, 2014 I have a confession to make. Sometimes I wonder why God bothers with mankind. It seems to me that for the most part man is evil. Man is selfish and self-centered and will never change, absent some major event which involves killing the evil mankind never changes and when he does it seems as though it is only temporary. I was watching a program on the history channel and was drawn to the work of John Robinson. John Robinson (1576 – 1625) was the pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers before they left on the Mayflower. He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists and is regarded (along with Robert Browne) as one of the founders of the Congregational Church. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robinson_(pastor) My thoughts are just reaching those that John Robinson concluded almost 400 years ago. It is excerpts like the one below that makes me ask God, how can I effectively deliver your message Lord to people whose ears and eyes have been closed, who have been infected and afflicted with a brainwashing campaign that is centuries old. How do you get through to people to let them know that religion and God are distinct --- that their religion is corrupt, but God is not. – So far the only way I know to do this is to keep encouraging you to read your bible for yourself, and to encourage you to read the history of Christianity and get a perspective from the pastors and other religious leaders who helped to form the Institutionalized Christian Church that you know today. Christianity has a very dark history, of which God is NOT a partaker, I know that God is NOT a partaker because He called me into ministry explicitly to learn and teach the truth about God. God and religion are separate entities, and the church that you attend on Sundays has NO fellowship with God, of this I am convinced in my heart. Here is the quote from John Robinson that caught my attention …. “Religion is the best thing, and the corruption of it the worst: neither hath greater mischief and villainy ever been found amongst men, Jews, Gentiles, or Christians, than that which hath marched under the flag of religion, either intended by the seduced, or pretended by hypocrites. The Jews in zeal of God, such as it was, persecuted Christ himself to the death: and Saul [Paul] in a kind of zeal of the law, was no less than a ‘blasphemer, persecutor, and oppressor.’ (1 Timothy 1:13)” Pompey, the Roman having erected that arcem omnium turpitudinum, would not call it the stage, or stews, as it was ; but the Temple of Venus. And what shall we think of the Spaniards’ Romish zeal, who by their own bishop’s relation in his first instance of Spanish cruelty, hanged upon one gallows thirteen innocent Indian women, in honor of Christ and of his twelve apostles. But God is not pleased with good intentions exercised in evil actions; much less either pleased, or deceived with the vizards of impiety, and inhumanity; but as He will repay unto the wicked according to their evil works of all kinds; so will He render double vengeance unto them, who under the livery of religion seek countenance for impiety and wickedness. A man hath, in truth, so much religion, as he hath between the Lord, and himself, in secret, and no more. ” – John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 22:04:11 +0000
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