The Devil's Religion

1. The Devil's Theology

Don’t read the book of Timothy. You might find out why the Bible was written and what it is actually there for.  The reason?  To make you wise for salvation in Jesus and to teach you how to live the Christian life.  So why was the Book of Mormon written?  I’ve absolutely no idea.  The Bible contains everything you need to know about how to live the Christian life and is more like a St John Ambulance First Aid book – simple instructions on what to do if a car crashes into a tree – than a huge volume of CDs containing all the books in the medical section of the university library.

The good theologian is the person who doesn’t know this.  He thinks the Bible contains all the answers to all the questions you could ever ask.  He needs to prove everything he believes from the Bible.  He may have a crisis of faith if he looks up on a sunny day and suddenly realises that the Bible doesn’t say the sky is blue.  It’s true in my experience that the sky is blue – why can’t I prove it from the Bible?  Which do I put first, the Bible or my experience?  The good theologian doesn’t understand the purpose of the Bible as a simple instruction book.  He thinks the Bible was written so that Christians would be able to use it to prove everything they believed and so avoid being led into terrible errors of theology.  The errors of theology he tries to avoid are all quite mind boggling and totally irrelevant.  You could believe all of these errors without coming to any serious spiritual harm.  But no, the good theologian must protect you from believing anything that is simply not true, no matter how unimportant it may be.  He gets excited about questions like which version of the English Bible is the most nearly infallible (or perhaps it’s just the one that says what he wants it to say) or the exact order of events leading up to the Second Coming of Christ (I must give that event honorary capital letters.)  He gets very excited about the question of whether a Christian, once saved, is always saved, and knows exactly what he believes.  No question is ever unanswerable.  Nothing must ever be left up to God.  You must be sure of what you believe.  The good theologian is determined to make you sure of what you believe and to make sure it is the same as what he believes.

The very best theologians are the ones who can divide churches.  It is a joke that a Brethren assembly divided over the question of how many angels could stand on a pin head.  Angels are bigger than that, everybody knows.  But the issue of whether a woman could speak in a communion meeting was actually just as trivial.  When an entire church can be split down the middle on a question like masturbation you really are on Silly Street.  All I can say in my defence is that if you knew the damage that the early house church movement had done to the kingdom of darkness you would have felt the use of a weapon of mass destruction to be perfectly justified.  They had terrorised the entire country for forty years and they haven’t done it since.  It was the right thing to do.

Good theology follows three rules:

(i) It must be a question that no one knows the answer to.  It is possible that the question is a personal thing – in the 1960s, some Christians wore a watch and some Christians didn’t.  Was this materialism?    It is also possible that the question is simply unanswerable.  Whether Jesus is coming in your lifetime or whether salvation can be lost are not questions that any Christian can answer.  The Lord himself says, “No man knows the hour” so that makes it amazing that so many Christians think they do.  The New Testament does not say “Once saved, always saved.”  There are plenty of texts that say that the believer is safe in God’s hand and plenty of texts that say those who harden their hearts, sin deliberately or stop believing go to Hell.  Theology wouldn’t be any fun unless there were plenty of texts on either side.  So don’t think that any of you actually know.

(ii) It must be a question that nobody can do anything about.  If anyone in the church had lost their salvation they wouldn’t be there, so what has it got to do with anyone else?  Faithful Christians are unlikely to wake up in the morning and say, “Let’s commit as many sins as I can today, on purpose, and see if I can sin away the day of grace.  By the way, I’ve lost my faith in Jesus, no longer believe he died for my sins and think that he’s a space man.”  Anyone who seriously thinks like this isn’t going to be having a conversation with other Christians about whether they’ve lost their salvation.  They’re more likely to leave the church altogether.  At worst, they’ll still feel the need for God in their life and join the Church of England or they’ll join the Church of Latter Day Saints, emigrate to Utah, marry as many women as they can and become a Mormon Bishop.  But anyway, that person isn’t in your church anymore and anyone who had lost their salvation wouldn’t be having the conversation.  Arguments about the Second Coming of Christ aren’t going to make Jesus come any quicker, or differently, so these are also pointless.

(iii) The question must be made to look very, very important.  If the theologian is an Arminian he should fearfully warn you that being a Calvinist will lead to terrible complacency and spiritual weakness because you think salvation can’t be lost.  If he is a Calvinist he should fearfully warn you that Arminianism is the slippery helter-skelter to liberalism and becoming like Fidel Castro and believing that Jesus was the first Communist.  In order to be a Christian you must vote Conservative.  If Labour get in homosexuality won’t just be legalised, it’ll be made compulsory.  You must believe that the world was created in six literal days of 24 hours each and dinosaurs are still alive in the Himalayas somewhere because if you don’t take every word of the Bible literally, you might have difficulty deciding how much of it you believe or don’t believe.   And of course, Christians must use the right version of the Bible.  The New International Version is no good.  It misses out one verse in 1 John about the trinity.  Even then, it has it in the footnotes.  The 300 other verses in the NIV that teach the trinity are not enough.  1 John contains the only unarguable trinity proof text and the NIV should not have it in its footnotes.  It should be given pride of place in the text.  How are you supposed to win an argument with a Jehovah’s Witness without this deadly piece of ammunition?  Isn’t winning arguments what being a Christian is all about?  But the NIV questions this one verse so it is not Trinitarian.  Any Christian who uses the NIV, or any other modern translation like it, will stop believing in the trinity and lose their salvation (but only if they’re an Arminian.)

2. The Prayer of Jabez.

Jabez was a king of Israel in the Bible who prayed, “Oh Lord, enlarge my coasts, enlarge my territory.”  The book about The Prayer of Jabez invited Christians to say the same prayer.  “Oh Lord, enlarge my coasts.  Give me a good job, a decent car, a good wife, a decent house and plenty of food in my fridge.”  Classic self-centred Christianity.  God bless me.  Forget about the girl in Africa who has to carry her water pot 5 miles every day.  Just bless me.  To quote some Christian radio stations, “Jesus died so that your sins could be forgiven and your needs could be met….What most Christians want is freedom.  Freedom from bad habits, freedom from poverty, freedom from illness.”  Premier Radio broadcast a warning before their programmes.  They should change the wording to this: “You may find that listening to this programme makes you a totally self-centred Christian so that you just want God to bless you and don’t care about anybody else.”  Many preachers also use the prayer of Jabez.  “Oh Lord, enlarge my coasts.  Oh Lord, enlarge my ministry.  Help me to become a famous man of God all over the world.”  They usually do become famous men of God all over the world.  They’re so selfish they just say what people want to hear.  “Isn’t it marvellous that Jesus gave his life for us on the cross and expected nothing in return?  God’s like my rich middle class parents and he just wants to bless us.  Give a tenth of your money to my ministry and God will solve all your problems.”  Many preachers have gone over to my side.  Many of them don’t even realise they’re on my side.  Joel Osteen is the leader of one of the biggest churches in the world, Lakewoods Baptist Church.  The Christians there are known for their happiness.  You can be happy if you’re a Christian.  You can if you’re absolutely useless.  Christians at Lakewoods Baptist Church are not noted for volunteering in local hospitals, getting up at half past six in the morning to pray or for buying smaller cars so they can give all their money to missionaries.  That would be a miserable life.  No, they’re noted for being good smiley faced harmless middle class comfortable Americans.  That’s how I like Christians to be.  In millions of Christian lives I’ve already won the battle.  Most of those Christians don’t even know I’ve won the battle.

3. Testimony.  How the Devil Became a Christian.

I began to feel that I had spiritual needs.  I wanted a spiritual dimension to my life.  Which church should I join?  First I tried the Roman Catholic Church.  I should be confirmed by an ordained priest, they said.  If I was confirmed I would certainly receive the Holy Spirit.  But I’m the Prince of Darkness.  Oh no, they said, if the priest is properly ordained he can give the Holy Spirit to anybody.  When he pours his oil on his hand and puts it on your head you’ll receive the Holy Spirit all right.  It doesn’t matter who you are.  Receive bread and wine from Father Smith and you’ll have eternal life.  The bread and wine turn into the body and blood of Christ.  Can you imagine the body and blood of Christ in the mouth of one as wicked as me?  They said that plenty of wicked people had received bread and wine from Father Smith and still had eternal life.  If I came to confession on a Friday night Father Smith could forgive my sins.  I said that I had committed so many sins that it seemed impossible to confess them all.  They said Father Smith didn’t mind working overtime and the church would pay him for this.  He would let everybody else confess their sins first and sit up with me until four o’ clock in the morning if he had to.  Having become a Roman Catholic I then met a street evangelist.  I said I was a Catholic.  He did not run away as fast as he could, which I had expected from this response, but told me that a Catholic was not a real Christian and that the Catholic church was not a real church.  He was a real Christian and would show me how to become one too.  I said I was surprised to see him doing evangelism in the UK and that I hadn’t met an evangelist there before.  He said that we were in an area of high unemployment and he had nothing to do during the day and wanted a bit of an excursion.  Somebody had given him an old computer and the printer still worked so he had printed out some leaflets.  Would I like to take one of his leaflets?  I took one and read it with interest.  “Becoming a Christian is as simple as A, B, C.  A – Accept that you are a sinner.  Well yes, I certainly accept that.  I have sinned more than anybody.  Accept that you couldn’t save yourself.  Where did the extra A come from?  I’m sure that I couldn’t save myself.  Believe that Jesus died for your sins.  Jesus died for everybody’s sins.  In the book of Colossians he died so that everything in Heaven and on Earth could be reconciled to God.  Jesus died for my sins.  So far so good.  Now for the C.  Ask him to Come into your heart.  Yes, Come Into My Heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee.  Jesus is a sewer rat.  He wouldn’t mind the smell.  The Catholics had put Jesus in my mouth and now this guy had shown me how to put him in my heart as well.  Jesus is like the rat that runs around the toilets which are just a hole in the ground.  Are there any more parts of your body where you could put Jesus?  Maybe you could have him in your ear as well?  What a tiny little Jesus who could live in such tiny body orifices.  The leaflet had a painting of Jesus knocking on the door.  Come into my house, Lord Jesus.  Don’t go into the kitchen because mother’s making my birthday cake and it’s full of cannabis.  Don’t go into the front room because Dad’s watching a violent film.  Don’t go into my brother’s bedroom, he’s looking at porn on the same computer he prints his evangelical leaflets on.  Don’t go into my sister’s bedroom, she’s listening to rock music with murderous lyrics, lighting a stick of Indian dragon’s blood and playing with her ouija board.  She’s also drinking a big bottle of cider.  Hope we’re all still alive at the end of tonight.  Come into my house, Lord Jesus, and sit in the garden room.  We’ll come and see you at Christmas and Easter.  I told the evangelist I had become a Christian.  He looked overjoyed.  He took out a pen and drew a little line on the back of his Bible.  I noticed there were 2 lines there already.  I asked him how long he had been unemployed.  32 years.  He had now led 3 people to Christ and intended to lead 2 more people to Christ before he died in order to be able to draw a 5 bar gate on the Bible.  He asked for my name and address.  The devil, Hell.  Should he send me a CD on how to live the Christian life?  No point.  It would melt.  But I’m a Christian now, I said.  I’m saved.  I can do what I like.

4. Vaccinate Your Children Against Jesus.

When you have little children you take them to the doctor to get their injections.  Billy Graham came to London in 1966 and compared British religion to a vaccination.  Vaccination is when you are exposed to a weak form of a disease to stop you catching the real thing.  Demons of all religions and denominations know how to do this with Jesus Christ and his gift of salvation.  That is all most religion actually is.  A weakened form of godliness to stop you catching the real thing and being powerfully born again of the Spirit of God.  Have you ever seen an evangelist on a city street approaching people to talk about the gospel and one says, ‘I’m a Catholic,’ one says, ‘I’m Jewish’ and one says, ‘I’m a Buddhist’ as if that answered all the questions the evangelist could ever ask.  If an English evangelist (you’re more likely to see a red squirrel, they’re an endangered species) asks you what you believe about Jesus and you say, ‘I’m a Buddhist’ he won’t have the faintest idea what you mean.  He doesn’t come from East India, he comes from Beacon Lough East, so he really doesn’t understand what Buddhists believe about Jesus.  But ‘I’m a Buddhist’ answers the question to the satisfaction of the person who actually said it.  It really means, ‘I belong to God already so please don’t think that you could teach me anything, but what you’re doing is great, telling these heathen about God, so carry on telling them but not me.  Please give your leaflet to someone who actually needs it.’  How do parents vaccinate their children against religion?  They make them say their prayers every day.  They make them memorise their Scriptures.  They drum it in to them so that they’ll never forget.  Don’t you think I know every single word of your Scriptures?  It doesn’t make me particularly godly, does it?  But it makes you feel godly.  It means that you know more about God than other people.  You can consider yourself really godly because they know nothing and you know everything.  People who are religious don’t need to bow the knee to God.  They pray so many times a day.  People who are religious don’t need to repent of their sins.  If they steal an apple from the shop on Thursday they can go to confession on Friday night.  It’s so easy.  Such a vaccine can be used in Christian countries against church people.  In this way it’s even more subtle and even more effective.