Sometimes I lie awake in bed at night fretting about the way that alleged new “converts” are getting nobbled by one or other of the welter of distracting fashions which have cut vast swathes through the visible church in recent times — whether it is so-called “deliverance ministries” (which minister nothing except delusion and confusion), or charismatic nuthouses (which make new converts think they have to fall down and start babbling in pagan gibberish as evidence of receiving the Holy Spirit), or the ‘Reformed’ & other types of legalists (who force them into a clonelike straitjacket of pietistic do’s and don’ts, and make them highly critical, always finding fault with everything, and being judgemental of others who are not exactly the same as them), or ritualised sacerdotalists (who make them think that bells and smells, candles and crossing oneself are where it’s at), or judaising “Christianist” Zionists (who fill their heads with a highly romanticised view of modern Israel and a whole mass of twisted eschatology to go with it), or the folk-religionists (who make them get rid of absolutely anything non-Christian in their homes and substitute those with a new set of pseudo-‘Christianised’ baubles, fish-stickers and badges, crosses on everything, naming their hamster after an apostle, rapture-warning stickers for the car, “Left Behind” ‘literature’, and non-stop “CCM” to ‘cleanse’ the home), or the altered state of consciousness new style of worship brigade (who make them think that getting “blissed out” on repetitive choruses, eyes-closed, arms waving about for hours or even days is ‘worship’). The seekers and searchers who are looking to come to Jesus as new converts are like fresh young meat waiting to be preyed on by all the above vampiric predators. It’s like a minefield.

The reason I know about all this is because I often pick up some of the aftermath flak from all the above when those recent converts somehow find their way onto my radar looking for counsel, utterly confused, and in many cases hurt or abused by those peddling the above fashions and bandwagons who turned against them because they began to realise how ‘off the wall’ it all is. Then they get accused of “resisting the Spirit”, or “backsliding”, or “having a demon of rebellion”, and other cultlike accusations. Yes, it has all become so cultish and spiritually ugly. Whatever happened to “the simplicity and purity which is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3).

Then I remember the fact that if they truly are God’s children they will one way or another find a way through all that “Christianist” baloney having been led to an outcome of truth and stable discipleship. Knowing that God is sovereign over all this, and that those who are His true children will come out the other side of that predatory “Christianist” cobweb older and wiser, doesn’t mean it doesn’t pain me to be an observer of it all. What an obstacle race and minefield it all is! And few dare call it the ‘A-word’… (though I do!).

We live in interesting times!

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2023
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]