to the degree that the church seeks to meet our own needs before the needs of others, desires to control the beliefs and behaviors of others (both inside and outside the church), and chases after glory, fame, power, wealth, and recognition before men, is the same degree to which the church presents Jesus as a Satanic Messiah to the watching world.<\/strong><\/p>\nDon\u2019t be shocked by such a statement. This is not new. Mankind has always tried to make God in our own image, and God has always been trying to reveal Himself to us as He really is. We have wanted a God of self-reliance who needs nothing and nobody, who glorifies Himself by destroying His enemies and forcing every molecule into submission to His will, and who requires that all people worship and adore Him lest they face the torment of His eternal wrath. <\/p>\n
But in the face of this grotesque depiction of a manmade-God, God has been trying to show us since the very beginning in Genesis 1, that He is a God of light, love, hope, healing, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. As a result of God\u2019s eternal love, He created human beings so that we might love Him in return. He wants our love, but knowing that He cannot force love, He woos us and invites us and calls us to Him, but we, being the worst of all possible lovers, slander His name, drag Him through the mud, tie Him up in a dark corner, and eventually even crucify Him on a barren hill. And all the while we declare that it is God Himself telling us to do these things.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s insanity. When God sends His messengers of grace and love to show us what He is really like, we get so upset that someone is threatening our idea of a God-who-looks-like-us, that in the name of God we kill the very messengers of God. This is what we have been doing since the very beginning. It\u2019s what we\u2019re doing today. It is also what we did in the days of Jesus when the \u201cimage of the invisible God\u201d walked among us. Jesus was not despised, rejected, condemned, and ultimately killed by the sinners and so-called \u201cenemies of God,\u201d but by those who claimed to know God best.<\/p>\n
The Messianic Secret<\/h2>\n All of this better helps us understand what many Bible scholars call \u201cthe Messianic secret\u201d in the Gospels. Have you ever noticed that as Jesus went around preaching and performing miracles, almost any time someone recognizes Him as the Messiah, He instructs them to keep quiet about this and tell nobody else? Since we all assume that Jesus came to declare Himself as the long-awaited Messiah, we get confused when Jesus prohibits people from telling others that He is the Messiah. <\/p>\n
Why would Jesus want to keep His identity secret? Why does He want His role as the Messiah to remain a secret?<\/p>\n
The reason, I believe, is because the Messiah the people wanted was not<\/em> the Messiah Jesus came to be. The people of Israel wanted a warrior Messiah, one who would slay the enemies of Israel, overthrow the corrupt and pagan Roman Empire, slaughter the wicked, and set up Israel as the ruling nation over all the world. <\/p>\nThe Messiah the people of Israel wanted was the same Messiah that Satan offered to Jesus in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. <\/p>\n
Jesus knew that if word that \u201cThe Messiah has come!\u201d spread around the countryside, many people would start little rebellions in their towns, believing that this was what the \u201cMessiah\u201d wanted them to do. Thousands of people would show up with swords in hands, ready to follow the \u201cMessiah\u201d into battle against Rome. Since this is not what Jesus wanted, and not at all the kind of Messiah He came to be, He told people to keep quiet about Him being the Messiah. He needed to show them what kind of Messiah He was before He would let them announce that the Messiah had come.<\/p>\n
The Confession of Peter<\/h2>\n We see this exact same scenario play out on a smaller scale in Matthew 16. Jesus asks His disciples who He is, and Peter, by the Holy Spirit, says that Jesus is the Messiah (Matt 16:16). Jesus praises him for this answer, but then immediately tells them not to let anybody else know (Matt 16:20). A few verses later we learn why. Jesus instructs His disciples that since He is the Messiah, He must go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed. <\/p>\n
But the disciples do not want to hear this. Peter, the one who just proclaimed that Jesus was the Messiah, pulls Jesus aside and tells Him to stop saying such things (Matt 16:22). The Messiah is to kill His enemies; not be killed by them. The Messiah is to rule and reign and conquer; not suffer and die. At least, this is what Peter thinks. <\/p>\n
How does Jesus respond? He rebukes Peter as speaking for Satan (Matt 16:23). He says that the Messiah which Peter has in mind has nothing to do with the ways of God, but is based entirely on the ways of men. This is the Satanic Messiah. <\/p>\n
Jesus then goes on to say that if we truly follow Him, we will follow Him into death and self-sacrifice (Matt 16:24-26), not into power, glory, self-advancement, and control over others.<\/p>\n
The Spirit of the Anti-Christ<\/h2>\n When we put all this together, then we also begin to understand the New Testament teaching about the anti-Christ. <\/p>\n
If the Christ is the Suffering King who bleeds and dies for His enemies, who loves and accepts all, and who has no desire to control others but only to serve them, then any \u201cChrist\u201d which is used to defend war and violence toward enemies, to reject and divide from others, and to control and manipulate others for personal gain, is the anti-Christ. <\/p>\n
Any portrayal of Christ that allows Jesus to accept the offers that Satan made to Jesus in Matthew 4 and Luke 4 is a false Christ, an anti-Christ, a Satanic Christ.<\/strong> <\/p>\nThe Church and the Satanic Messiah<\/h2>\n But has not the church accepted and adopted for ourselves the very things that Jesus rejected in Matthew 4 and Luke 4? <\/p>\n
If so, are we not wanting, desiring, proclaiming, and following a false Christ, an anti-Christ … a Satanic Christ? <\/p>\n
In many ways, the church has become just like Peter. <\/p>\n
Though Peter understood that Jesus was the Christ, he did not understand what it meant for Jesus to be<\/em> the Christ. The church has been making the same mistake ever since. The Messiah that Jesus rejected is often the Messiah that much of the church proclaims.<\/strong> <\/p>\n When we lust for power over others instead of giving power to others, we are following the Satanic Messiah.<\/p>\n
When we desire to control the beliefs and behaviors of others instead of trusting that God will lead them as He leads us, we are following the Satanic Messiah.<\/p>\n
When we call for the death of our enemies \u201cin Jesus\u2019 name\u201d instead of seeking to serve our enemies in His name, we are following the Satanic Messiah.<\/p>\n
When we chase after wealth, power, prestige, glory, and fame instead of choosing to love, give, bless, and forgive, we are following the Satanic Messiah.<\/p>\n
Instead of helping people in hopeless situations, we give them authority figures who tell them what to do.<\/p>\n
Instead of seeing that we are all brothers and sisters on this earth and that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, we create false divisions based on skin color, cultural traditions, religious preferences, and invisible geographical boundaries called \u201cborders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead of seeking to be reconciled to our enemies, we seek revenge upon them by asking leaders to bomb them, kill them, or at the bare minimum, round them up and lock them away.<\/p>\n
We cry out for freedom from oppression, not so that oppression can cease, but so that we ourselves can become the oppressors.<\/p>\n
We vote in leaders who promise to change everything else so that we ourselves do not need to change.<\/p>\n
The Satanic Messiah is alive and well, and I sometimes think he is worshipped and followed more than the one true Messiah, Jesus, our Suffering King. <\/p>\n
Which Messiah do you worship, and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Matthew 16 when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, through Peter understood that Jesus was the Christ, he did not understand what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ. The church has been making the same mistake ever since. The Messiah that Jesus rejected is often the Messiah the church proclaims. Peter was rebuked for wanting a Satanic Messiah, and the church has made the same mistake. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2234,2231],"tags":[1260,2227,1227,2252,2251,1228,1883,1263,2253,38,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-38636","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-redeeming-church","8":"category-redeeming-theology","9":"tag-christ","10":"tag-control","11":"tag-jesus","12":"tag-luke-4","13":"tag-matthew-4","14":"tag-messiah","15":"tag-power","16":"tag-satan","17":"tag-temptations","18":"tag-theology-jesus","19":"tag-theology-church","20":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\n
The Satanic Messiah vs. The Suffering Messiah<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n