A Word About Facebook

No question that Facebook is a great tool for communication. 

I recall the old days before email, even before faxes, when the only communication available, besides some rich neighbor’s phone, was a letter that would take a week or two to get to its destination and the same for the response.   

Facebook, and other similar platforms for communication is something outstanding. Connecting with friends and relatives at your fingertips is almost speechless considering the old, old days. 

But when it’s being used for other purposes, it becomes a concern, and an evaluation of values needs to be applied. Just like other platforms, and the Internet itself, they are promoting and feeding bad and evil information that creates bad and evil influences, that in the long run, maybe shorter than longer, it creates bad and evil effects in people’s lives, whether they like it or not, whether they see it or not, and whether they believe it or not. But when this happens with Christians… I can’t be quite, sit back and relax. 

Many times from  the pulpit, I have warn my flock to be careful with all types of influences that are spreading rapidly in our world, when majority of them, if not all, the purpose is to deceive believers, keep them busy, entertained, and enticed with superfluous ideas and beliefs that some consider funny, entertaining and even for community pleasure. As we approach the rapture event, Satan who knows better than some believers how to interpret the signs of the times, the last days, and he knows how short his time is… he will do anything, and he’s doing everything, to deceive believers, trap them and have them be… left behind. He has no other goal than to deceive. And the same way he deceived Eve badly with good… he will do it, he’s doing it, and he won’t stop till his final day comes.   

Why are Christians so ignorant on this? Why are many so blind, so blind that they can’t decipher bad from good or evil from good? Are they really a new creation, with new thoughts, with new perceptions and with a new mind? How can someone be redeemed, and transformed into the same image of Christ, have the same mind, but… are doing, acting, thinking, believing, seeing, agreeing, sharing, posting, liking, and saving, etc… like everybody else. How? And this is done by those that are in the same level that they were before, where bad and evil always dresses good, smells good, even has a good breath and nothing evil, nothing wrong, nothing perverted, nothing unholy… he’s showing behind the mask.   

Saints… be careful how you’re using Facebook. Be careful with the things that you’re liking that have nothing to do with your new life in Christ Jesus. Be careful with what you see, and then you share or even save. Always double check, where it’s coming from and especially… the source (who initially posted it). And if it looks inoffensive, and it’s been posted by a friend or a relative, double check it. Not only where it came from but especially where or who generated it. Always check what and who is behind a nice, funny, pleasant or even Christian post. Always be suspicious of anything on Facebook. I mean…anything.  

Keep in mind that the power of evil that has infiltrated in Facebook and other social media platforms is being used right now, as I type, to deceive young men and women and even older ones, to join evil forces that are spreading through every country, to destroy, kill and reign the world. Satan couldn’t find a better way to work in the minds of people. Social media platforms are his best tool, and he is succeeding. 

Final advice;  

Watch your shares. When you share you agree. Also, be careful with your comments. Words have power when spoken but also when written. Some jokes can harm you and you won’t even notice it. Not even when its sting hits you. Satan has a special anesthesia that is attached to every evil post, just to keep you so numb that you just go for it… easily. Keep in mind that when I mention evil… you will never see it, again… just like Eve didn’t. Eve saw evil as good, because it was presented to her, as good. Be very careful with some supposedly Christian posts. It just doesn’t matter who posted it. We are living in the highest deception times ever. Judas walked with Jesus, ate with Jesus, prayed with Jesus, laughed with Jesus, learned with Jesus, yet… betrayed Jesus. 

Encourage yourself to like, share, comment and post good and blessing  posts that you know for sure that they are good and they will be a blessing to others. Ask God’s Holy Spirit for that discernment. Otherwise, you can’t do it on your own common sense. The apostle Paul warned the church in Corinthian (1 Corinthians 2:14), that spiritual things can ONLY be discerned, spiritually.  

Be very careful with posts or videos that talk about love, peace, serenity, spiritual energy, harmony, aura colors, balance, calmness, meditation, etc… and there’s no biblical scripture attached… this is the New Age stratagem to entice and bit people and move them into a state of apathy where they will be slowly brainwashed, thinking and believing that it’s all about God. 

One other thing; be very careful of what you post, whether through images or words, about yourself, your family, your life… anything. Even with all the security that Facebook and other media platforms offer, you’re not secure as you think. You can apply all the privacy settings that you have available to you, but you still don’t have that privacy that you believe you have. There’s too much going on now in this area of privacy. People are being deceived and don’t even notice it. Sad, but true. And you also need to consider what it is private and what is personal. Certain things you should never by no means share with anyone, less on Facebook, or other platforms. Unfortunately many people, inclusively many believers have not figured out yet, that Facebook is an x-ray of their souls, their mind and their understanding. 

Today it’s very easy… very very easy, to see what someone believes, thinks, accepts, inclusively their “hidden” fleshy desires, vices, inappropriate pleasures, and so much more, by just following them on Facebook. Yes… Facebook is the new era x-ray of the soul and many are opened to it, exposed and subjected to the consequences.  I’ll close with the words of Jesus and the apostle Paul concerning the last day’s deception. 

Watch!   

Don’t sleep!

Prophecies vs. Predictions

Lately I'm seeing many good men of God, predicting coming events by what's going on around the world and in the country, and supporting those predictions with biblical scriptures.

Some might even happen... but not by what scriptures seem to predict, but by what these good men of God are guessing and "prophesying".

Our words have power to create (Proverbs 18:21, Romans 4:17). If we speak things into existence, even if they're not predicted in the Bible, or even if they're very similar to events predicted in the Bible, and we keep speaking and speaking, and speaking... they will happen.

The problem here is that some of these predictions are of catastrophes, disasters, and all kinds of negative circumstances that in reality the Bible talks about them in the last days. 

But are we really in the last days? Have we even got into the "beginning of sorrows" prophesied by Jesus (Matthew 24:8)?

One thing I know for sure... the church will not go through these catastrophic times. Why would Jesus die for His bride and then let her suffer like the whore?

If we have the choice to speak words of life and death... why speak death?

My words today will be of LIFE!
I'm determined. (even if hell itself shows up)

A Monday Night Thought...

There are three types (well… there’s probably a couple more, but these are the top ones), three type of people that go to church:

The saved, the unsaved, and the lukewarm.

The saved is the one that recognized that he was living in sin (disobedience towards God), got convinced, repented, converted, and became a new creation in Christ Jesus.

In other words…
He repented of his sins, ask God’s forgiveness, placed his life in God’s hands and invited His Son, Jesus, to be his Lord, Savior and coming King.

The unsaved… is the one that continues living in disobedience, nothing to do with God. He’s a self-made man (or woman). He doesn’t need God.

The lukewarm, is the one that Jesus said, you can’t serve two masters, you hate one or love the other. But he thinks that he can love both.

He has one foot in the kingdom; another foot is in the world. He wants the

blessings from both sides. He’s doing everything like the unsaved, but trying to get everything that the saved has.

This is a very dangers position, because Jesus said in Revelation 3:15,16... 

“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.

My point here is this:
Check your status today. And if there’s anything that needs to be fixed… let the right person fix it. You!

Easter's Concept Distorted

At this time of the year, when Christians celebrate Easter, a big percentage celebrate it in a distorted way. There’s a lot of emphasis on the cross, when the cross was a place of death and curse. Isaiah 53 gives us a good perspective of Jesus going through the cross.

Many say and many emphasis that we have been saved by the cross. Happens that if Jesus had gone to the cross and nothing else had happened, it wouldn’t help us nothing at all. Our victory, and our salvation, wasn’t through the death of Jesus. Because of sin, we had been sentenced to physical and spiritual death. A dead Jesus wouldn’t help us at all. Yet, many still see Him this way. And others still have Him on the cross… through the crucifix.

We Christians have nothing to celebrate about the cross. And we have nothing to sing about the cross. The cross was a place of scorn, mockery, shame, curse and death.

We haven’t been saved because Jesus went to the cross, but because He conquered death. If He hadn’t been resurrected, nothing would’ve change. We would continue dead through all eternity. The victory of Jesus over death, brought us back everything that Adam lost. That’s why the apostle Paul classifies Him as the second Adam.

Through Jesus resurrection (victory over death), we have been saved, forgiven, and have become children of God. Jesus resurrection brought us abundant life here on earth and eternal life after the death of our bodies.

The cross is something to forget. There is nothing to celebrate concerning the cross. Our Easter celebration should be based on Jesus conquering death. Matter of fact He celebrated His own victory, precisely talking about His victory over death. We see this in Revelation 1:18, when He said… “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death”. 

On this Easter, let’s celebrate Jesus victory through His resurrection. And let us not be religious by celebrating it just once a year. Let’s have the attitude to celebrate our victory in Christ every day.

And for the ones that like to have a cross as a symbol of Jesus and what He did for us, how about replacing it with an empty tomb?

Happy Easter to all.

Opened Doors

If you were given the opportunity to share your opinion why doors exist, I believe you could find three or four good reasons, if not more, why we have doors. If I asked you, why there's doors on your car, I think that the first reason you would find immediately, would be… “so that I can get in”. And that answer would probably be the most common one if asked to a big group.

But the most important reason why we have doors is… protection. Whether it’s a house, a car or anything else, a door is there for the purpose of protecting, and protect in a few different ways.

The same way we have natural doors, we also have spiritual doors. For instance… our heart has a door called “will”. Through that door you can let things in, or you can stop things from going in. And I believe that there’s no need for details on this.

But I want to talk about another spiritual door, or doors, that exist in our lives, more precisely in our homes. These doors, similar to the door of our hearts, you don’t see them in the natural, but they are there in the spiritual realm. If doors are made with the purpose of protection, it means that we cannot neglect them as we do with natural doors. How many times do we leave the door of our house wide open? Wind blows dust in, blows the cold in, and if its summer time, the heat will come in and other things too, if the door is wide open. But even if you leave the door ajar, it will not protect you from these things. The wind will open it easily and bring in all the other stuff. Even an animal can step in very easy because the door wasn’t shut.

Here you can say… “okay, from now on I’ll keep the door shut. Great! Sounds like you’ve got the message. But imagine that you have the door shut, closed, and an intruder with bad intentions attempts to get in. Do you think he won’t? Yes he will. Why? Simply because the door was shut but not locked. And if you notice, doors in some houses have more than one lock, so that protection is reinforced.

The point here is to stimulate your sensitivity towards the need of keeping the spiritual doors of your home, always locked. Satan is always looking for an opened door, for a door that’s ajar or even shut. And when he finds one, he steps in and he will always do some damage. Many times… a lot of damage. When I hear Christians saying, “why did this happen to me”, I’m pretty sure that they left some door opened. Here, Satan stepped in and he messed things up.

Let me give you an example of what I’m trying to show you. Sometime ago, I saw a Christian posting the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen anybody post on Facebook, and here it was being posted by somebody that supposedly is a Christian. I just couldn’t believe it. I cannot even put it in words. Depravity was very intense. Immediately my first thought was… “a door has been opened”. Now listen to this… not after more than a couple of weeks, Satan steps in and attacks the whole family with a big problem. One of those very difficult ones that sometimes to get it fixed, you accidentally create other problems even bigger, because there’s no easy way out of it. But I believe that this person opened more than one door. I say this, because around the same time, another dormant problem that this family had, was awakened and bit them very hard. Almost like that saying… “what goes around comes around”.

When I heard the whole story… to me, it was a confirmation. Nobody should’ve posted such disgusting thing, never mind a Christian.

By this, you can see how dangerous it is to open certain doors in our lives, that soon or later will give Satan the opportunity to step in. And when he steps in, note this, he doesn’t cause any damage right away. He lets some time go by. Why he does this? Because he knows that if he does any damage as soon as you open that door, you will notice it. In other words, you will figure out that it all happened when you did something that you should’ve never had done. And by noticing it, you wouldn’t do it again. He doesn’t want that.

So from now on, be very careful with the spiritual doors you open in your life, in your home. You need to keep your life, your home, and obviously, your family protected.      

Here’s a few doors that you need to be careful with:

• The people you bring in your life, and in your home 
• The books you read or you have in your house. 
• Magazines. 
• Videos, movies. The things you watch on TV. Even certain type of programs.
• Games.
• Internet.
• Social Media. Etc.

On all these things (and similar ones), you need to be very careful on how you utilize them. Remember that many of these can have, probably have, an evil spirit attached to it. So when you open that door, when you activate some of this stuff, they will come in and their intentions are not good.

Let me give you an example to simplify what I just said. Imagine that you’re reading a book with a story about a couple and one of them cheated on the other, then the other went to live with somebody else and a divorce process started. The story goes on and on and adds more stuff like the girl’s father trying to kill the guy, and so on. What type of spirit do you think is behind those words? You’re probably saying that’s just a written story. The thing is that words have power when spoken and also when they are written. In this story… do you think that the spirit of lust, infidelity, perversion, anger, and murder, are good spirits? Of course not! They are evil spirits and are attached to the words in that book. So whether you read it or you have it hanging around in your house, the spirit is there.

The same goes with the other things mentioned above. The movies you watch. The games you play. What you’re looking at, or doing, on the Internet. What you share or post on social media. The people you socialize with and you let in your house. Their words can affect you and your family. Especially if they have a negative way of talking, whether it’s about the government, the boss, health, neighbors… anything.

So, lock all doors that can let in anything that will cause damage. Evil spirits can come in through a movie, a video, a book, a game, a magazine, from the computer, from your TV, etc. When these things are in operation, whatever is being projected through them, will be inside your home. And if it’s not good…

This is one of the reasons when I buy anything, we always bless it, because we never know what kind of words were spoken over or around those things, or even wrong attitudes practiced over or around them. Whether it’s a book, a TV, a sofa, a table, a washing machine, a computer… anything. Note that I'm taking about things that enter in my sanctuary. 

Keep all doors locked!

Read good Christian books.

See good Christian movies. If not Christian, make it sure it doesn’t carry anything that will stay in your home and messes up your life.

Watch good and healthy programs.

Read good magazines. There’s many good Christian ones.

Socialize as a Christian, and with Christians that are like Christ.

On social media… post or share good things, Especially things that will bless others.

Do you want to play a game? Find one that as no bad stuff in it. Even if it’s funny.

In all this you need to ask God’s Holy Spirit for discernment. Many times I get very upset when I see Christians, that can’t differentiate what is inappropriate for them as believers. Some bad stuff, they just think it’s funny, entertaining, exciting, relaxing, educational, etc.

The dissimilarity between natural things and spiritual things, the apostle Paul was very clear about it in first Corinthians 2:14 when he said that… “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (ESV). Here… please note that Paul was talking to believers.

 

Before the angel of death passed by every house in Egypt, God instructed Moses to notify the Israelites to place the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of every house and everyone would have to stay inside (Exodus 12:22). Once all inside, the door definitely would’ve been locked (in those days, probably with one or two big solid and thick wooden bars). After this… it was like a sanctuary. Everything was done holy around the sacrificed lamb. The lamb (symbol of Jesus) was inside the house. On the doorposts was his blood. That night, the angel of death passed by and many homes were attacked. The ones that had the lamb inside… no chicken, no pork, no turkey, no goat, no cow, but just the lamb, and his blood brushed on the doorposts and beam above the door… were safe!