How Does the Christian Church Dishonor Both God and Jesus?

By Donald Werner

The Bible tells us to honor our mothers and our fathers. The greatest honor we can give someone, or God, is to respect and obey their instructions, or submit to their authority. But contrary to that, the greatest dishonor we can give to a person, or God, is to reject and disobey their instructions and spurn their authority. When we do reject and ignore God’s commands, God calls that ‘bring reproach on Him’ and ‘despising His word’ (Numbers 15:30). By following Paul’s writings, the church believes the ‘law is dead’, ‘done away with’, and that salvation by grace apart from keeping God’s law. Jesus didn’t see it that way, he clearly and often called on us to keep God’s law and repent when we failed – otherwise we would not be in the Kingdom. The church had to set a number of Jesus’ instructions aside and devalued God’s commandments in order to embrace Paul’s lawless theology. By claiming that we are no longer a need to keep God's law, the Christian Church has produced people who ‘practice lawlessness’ and according to Jesus, those who practice lawlessness will be cast into a lake of fire. Please read this book, for your salvation may well weight in the balance of what is written here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780359258284

Book preview

12/20/2020

Copyrights

Copyright © 2018 Donald Werner. All rights reserved. ISBN #: 978-0-359-25828-4

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.  All Scriptures, unless otherwise marked are from the NKJV.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version® ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

Scriptures taken from the New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation

THE PREFACE

We all grow up believing what we were taught as children is the absolute truth because that is all we know, but if we keep studying, sometimes we learn that what we have be previously is not completely true.  When that happens we must be willing to set aside what we have learned previously, and embrace what we now know to be the truth - as hard as that may be. 

It is my understanding that the authority of God’s word supersedes all other authorities, including religious instruction, doctrines, creeds, traditions, and teachings. And the God’s words, whether spoken by YHVH or by Jesus, must accept it as absolute truth and timeless.  All ‘truth seekers’ must be willing to honestly compare what they have previously learned from their churches and honestly compare it to YHVH’s words and Jesus’ words.  If you are willing to do that, be prepared to be surprised and amazed. 

Although some people will be offended by what they read in this book, please note that it is not my intentions of offend anyone.  And I know that religion can be a personal thing for many people, and, I have no doubt that what I have to say will go against most people’s personal religious beliefs.  And I’m sorry if what I say offends you, my only intent is to share what I have learned in decades of Bible study so that others may be snatched from the jaws of eternal death.

THE INTRODUCTION

Over the centuries the original Christian faith changed, and the Christian faith we practice today is no longer the same faith that Jesus taught and practiced as we read about in the Book of Acts.  Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Bible believing Jew and we must understand him in that context. 

Jesus never wavered on his Jewish faith. Jesus referred to the Old Testament Scriptures as the ‘Word of God’ and he would not tolerate any manmade traditions or manmade oral laws which leavened, diluted or compromised the integrity of God’s pure word. Yet today the teachings of the Christian churches have strayed far from what Jesus taught and preached – in some cases teaching the opposite.  The orthodox or commonly accepted Christian faith, has negated important portions of God’s word and Jesus’ words, giving hearers license to the practice of lawlessness.

Through my series of books, I will share with you Biblical truths that have been set aside in favor of church creeds, doctrines and traditions.  In this book I will examine how the church that claims to worship and honor both God and Jesus, actually dishonors them both and I will explain how this happens.

I will draw on many of scriptures from the New and Old Testaments.  By the time you are done with this short book you will clearly understand the issues and the severity of the situation.  Unfortunately, no amount of teaching, preaching or writing will ever change or correct the church.  Its’ errors are cast in the concrete of their doctrines which a person must accept if they want to be members of the Christian religion and be called a ‘Christian’.

Because I intend that this be a short book, I will not belabor points, but I will use just enough verses and details to make my point. 

I pray that God will be your Teacher and your Guide as you study the material in this book.  I pray that you will not just informed, but that you and your relationship with God will be transformed by what you read. 

Blessings as you study, Donald Werner

Chapter 1 – GOD’S WORD

AUTHORITIES WITHIN THE SCRIPTURES

An authority is a person, being, or organization which issues laws, rules and(or) commands.  We all have many authorities in our lives, such as: parents, spouse, boss, teachers, police, IRS, judges, lawyers, doctors, religious authorities, self, Jesus, God, etc.  We honor an authority when submit to that authority and obey it, and we dishonor an authority when we spurn that authority, by ignoring, rejecting or simply disobeying its laws, rules and(or) commands.

Whatever authority we select as our greatest authority is also our ‘supreme authority’, and we will obey our supreme authority above all other authorities – thus our supreme authority is also our god, or God. We can only worship our supreme authority – and obedience to our supreme authority is an act of worship.  So when we violate God’s laws, it is evidence that He isn’t our Supreme authority.  Sin is a symptom of wrongly prioritizing our authorities. True repentance is a process of re-evaluating the priority of our authorities and restoring God the throne as our Supreme Authority.

AUTHORITIES IN THE SCRIPTURES

While we tend to paint the Scriptures with one big brush, and declare all of the Bible to be God’s word, however, we must reconsider this.  It becomes very apparent when we read the Scriptures that there’s not total agreement between some NT writers.  The churches get their idea that we don’t need to keep any of God’s Old Testament law from Paul’s writings, but is that what Jesus said?  No, Jesus repeatedly in the Gospels told us that we must keep God’s Old Testament law for eternal life.

So we have to ask, are Jesus’ words inspired or are Paul’s words?  If they don’t agree they can’t both be inspired.  And of course the churches understand that, and they claim that they are both inspired.  How can they do that?  They also claim the