KNOWING GOD'S WORD IS ENTERING A COVENANT NOT BIBLICAL LITERACY  

Before 1450 A.D., scarce written material and low literacy rates was the common feature of the day. Indeed, the financial patronage for manuscripts and books production was limited. Monks were the bookmakers. Churches and monasteries were bookkeepers for Medieval Europe. To add to the scarcity of books, mistrust for the knowledge-starving public led the medievalists to secure books through the invention of chained libraries. Books loan was shrouded with anathema and highly sealed as “ the most meritorious of all acts of mercy”. Thus, restrained reading collections were shielded away from public access. 

Forcibly, cuffed books collection became highly valuable commodities. Not only books were scarce, likely so was honesty. Truth hit a big availability crisis in Medieval Europe! Hence, the book was seen as an attribute of God. Owning a copy of the Holy Bible was a rare privilege bestowed upon a few.

Nowadays, the printing age has launched us beyond the era of cumbersome and costly chained books. We have landed on a digital bibliomania landscape. Today’s christians are Bible great publishers, debaters and readers. Seemingly self-contradictory, the ecosystem of main christian denominations has become a Babel tower of theological confusion, in spite of our unlimited access to biblical knowledge. 

Tellingly, one can display an unprecedented biblical illiteracy despite managing a couple of Bible translation on top of speaking classical Greek and showing Hebrew proficiency. The oversupply of biblical literature had brought about an outgrowth of theological doctrinal debates being transported into political parties platforms of the first magnitude.

Surprisingly enough, despite the scarcity of written materials, a handful of first century christian believers displayed an extraordinary knowledge of the power of the Word to the point of being recognized as “these who have turned the world upside down ” in Acts 17:6. The first christians did not have the luxury of any printed Bible in their gathering. It took 500-year period after Christ left the first believers before a written contribution to what is know today as the New Testament could become available. 

The communities the first disciples left behind had to keep the teachings of the apostles in their daily life. The first believers have to hear the Word, keep the Word in their heart, and live the Word out. Knowing the Word of God was in practice, to look for and find it in a christian daily way of life. Christians are the living Bible and the living Word of God is the essence of the covenant between God and man. Christianism is a relationship and a covenant with God, not a religion.Thus, the Word of God is meant to be lived out. The Word of God is life giving. God's Word is a living bread that gives life! One question then arises. How did the first believers relate to the Bible despite being mostly illiterate in the midst of a desert of books?

HOW TO TURN BIBLE BELIEVERS INTO PAGANIZED CHRISTIANS ? 

Reader's digest: " Mother Earth is in trouble and action is needed !" said A. Guterres on Earth Day celebration. On Planet Day celebration, man's eyes seem to be looking to the Sun for salvation. Mother Earth shares an intimate affinity with the Sun-god - Sol Invictus, Rome's legendary Sun-god ! Sol Invictus is a substitute of the Sumerian goddess Ishtar/Isis, the goddess of war, fertility and love. She was also called the Great Mother or the Queen of heaven. The Sun-god is back with a revenge !

Two ways to return the disciples of Christ to their pagan heritage and ancient gods. One, disrupt belief systems by advancing the agenda of Earth-centered religions against traditional Judeo-christian faith. Two, abstractly antagonize social justice and human rights such as gender equality and transsexual rights as a substitute to salvation and opposed to God, the author of human rights. The cult of social justice via Identity politics and the worship of Self has turned into a full blown new religion against the centrality of God's salvation plan.

Mother Earth has become the new State religion for all to fanatically convert and recruit new zealots. Putting aside the gospel of Jesus, the new messianism is the urgency to save and restore the Earth Mother. Earth-Day celebration is the new name for Sun-Day worship. In the Roman empire, Constantine imposed sunday as the day to worship Sol Invictus, the Sun-god Isis, known as Ishtar of Babylon or Helios to the Greeks !

Dark Green Religion by Taylor Green suggests that nature-worship, sacred ecology or biocentric spirituality is turning into a contemporary religious movement. It's just an introduction to returning humanity to worshipping the Sun, the Moon, and other celestial objects. It's a revenge of Deus Sol Invictus, Rome's legendary Sun-god that has been plotting to be reinstated as the god of this world ! We have landed back into pagan landscape.

The new catechism brought in by the environmentalists is that God does not exist and faith is no longer necessary in this post-modern age. God did not create the earth, neither is He the one in charge. Evolution did everything ! Man must be in charge.

The new religion of this age evolves around "the Church of Nature for Earth Mother" against the Judeo-christian revelation. "Climate religion" has been consecrated the new messianism the whole world must submit to as the way to salvation! Religious saboteurs and political ideologues are the new High Priests of this New Progressive World Movement.

PROGRESSIVE OR LIBERAL THEOLOGY: THE DECONSTRUCTION AGENDA 

Two millenniums of Church history had landed us on a double theological trajectory highway: liberal or  progressive, and Bible believing  Conservative theology. 

Conservative christianity is often grotesquely referred to as a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Out of fashion, obsolete, outmoded, backwardness. The progressive seem to be the advanced mob, the iconoclast with the mandate to attack and destroy traditional beliefs and institutions to the benefit of mankind. Ironically enough, to be progressive is to fight to restore and vindicate the past : the return to Earth-centered religions and the fight to restore as human rights what was common traditions and sexual practices to the Canaanites and Sumerians. We have landed back into Babylon holding smart gadgets and claiming to be post-modern ! The progressive highway is a ride to the past. The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning ! 

The progressive or liberal christians introduce themselves as inbred converts to a Bible debating and rationally argumentative community of believers. They have been walking around with the suitcase of reformers. They have risen as foes of historical biblical christianity, paving the way for liberal theology. However, progressive theology has been the actor in rehearsal and performance for both critical philosophies and postmodern theories. 

Unsurprisingly enough, liberal christian disciples have been compulsive buyer to the shopping malls of critical political philosophies since the 19th century. They have been drinking for so long at the wells of corporate rivers.

To begin with, the late 1700s and 1800s, waves of critical political philosophies began to make inroad into social agendas. Among the committed adherents of critical thinking with a clear agenda of destructive biblical criticism, we find Immanuel Kant, Hegel, and K. Marx. Hegel disavows all absolutes except the State. Progress becomes a substitute to God and pantheism takes control of society. Reason, a quasi-divinity, becomes the supreme horse of progress riding History as well as the new judge for History. K. Marx is a messenger of atheistic communism, while Kant turns thumbs down on the possibility of knowing God. To Kant, subjective religious experience is enough as authority.

Walking in the footsteps of cultural marxism, postmodern critical theories gained attraction in theological circles in the 1980s and 1990s. Postmodernism runs with a clear agenda of deconstruction and institutional critique. Postmodernism is informed by totalitarian ideologies. Rightly so, the progressive are simply architects of totalitarian ideologies. 

The postmoderns are architects of chaos, demolition and naive adepts to  woke progressivism. Societies, institutions, norms and beliefs must change and go fast. They aim at deconstructing traditional families and religious traditions. They clearly oppose God given Laws and order for individuals and  nations. 

Postmodernism defines itself by an attitude of skepticism, irony, a rejection of truth, morality, universalism, and objective reality. Among the postmodern high priests, we find Jacques Derrida, J.F. Lyotard, and Frederic Jameson. To date, there has never been a better way to deconstruct and demolish christian heritage than use critical theories to fit into biblical narratives. 

The so called liberal theology runs opposite to Biblical values and principles. De facto, it is a revenge of secularism rebranded as progressive values. It sounds like the hypocrisy of one who hires a divorce attorney to preserve one's cherished marriage. The progressive agenda is simply a controlled demolition project of society and values deconstruction. The progressive's warfare grand strategy runs on this principle: conquer via subversion, deception and overtake the world  via demolition and chaos. 

The Progressive Agenda And Asymmetric Warfare

Make no mistake and beware of the great deception!  The progressive agenda is a type of warfare launched against the Judeo-christian nations. Nations that have built their laws and values based on biblical principles must be brought to their knees and give way to a so called "progressive" society. Christian nations are the primitive nations that must be eradicated for so called "modern" nations to emerge. 

The freedom agenda from the progressive movement is substantially freedom from God's laws and restrains. The progressive's fight or warfare consists on freeing nations and individuals from the God of Israel and His laws. Anything that has to be submitted to God's will must be resisted and turned down. It's all about casting their bounds from God. Consequently, the climax of this battle takes us into the deep waters of new laws for societies: abortion must become the new norm, legalizing civil union for transgender, gays and lesbians is  not negotiable, taking the Bible out of the public sphere becomes an act of freedom and enlightenment against hatred and injustice, etc...

Winning warfare today is not about shouting bullets and causing a bloodbath within nations. The "Cold" War that brought the Soviet empire on its knees did not involve guns and bullets. The weapons of the Cold War rely on the ideologies of cultural marxism to demoralize and destroy the pillars of the Soviet empire through at least four distinctive stages. Each stage of social change takes 10-15 years to be implemented. 

One, a stage of  demoralization. Make people doubt about their belief systems and the values that shape their views and culture through subversion and irony. Two, a stage of assimilation. Make people accept and assimilate the new ideologies. Three, a stage of normalization. Make people normalize the new motto of the day to the point of becoming blind to any other reality. Four, a stage of resistance and revolution. Make people resist to any opposition to the new ideologies. Finally, bring in a revolution to radically rewrite and redefine society. That's where we find arising radical groups that want to impose their ideologies at all cost on the national stage.  

Under the robe of intellectual defenders of the faith or reformers, liberal christians had been fed spoon from the wells of critical thinking and postmodern. It is nothing short of a progressive breakthrough, but a stock-in-trade of brilliant Marxist-Hegelian clowns’ gags and pranks on theological arenas. What is called "progressive" is de facto an euphemism to conceal a soft neo-paganism come back project and a revolution that overturns the Judeo-Christian nations. What takes center place in liberal theological circles is no longer God's salvation. Salvation is the last concern on the "progressive agenda". 

The certified handpicked victim groups based on sexual orientation, ethnic groups, racial categories, social and religious minorities, and the masquerade gender coalitions have become the modern marxist lumpenproletariat. This new "proletarian class" represents the ideologically-armed protest groups that are waging warfare against the Judeo-Christian societies with the aim of overthrowing them and rewriting history and social norms. At all cost, these ideologically-armed protest groups and the vindication of their cause become more important than the message of salvation. Seemingly, the progressive movement has become the savior of modern nations and mankind.  

Consequently, by the end of the day, liberal theology or the progressive agenda amounts to a perdition trip by landing us all on secular landscape and deeply marxist-rooted form of warfare against societies standing on Christian pillars. 

It is a Bible liquidation auction sale in order to replace christian most precious heritage by secular philosophies and a coming world that has erased the covenant with the God of Israel. Taking the so called "progressive" agenda ride is a journey to the new order of the ages. 

LIBERAL THEOLOGY IS  A BIBLE LIQUIDATION PROJECT 

How does the Bible auction sale goes on? To Liberal theology, Jesus’ divinity and resurrection as well as the atonement of personal sin are denied. He is a simple teacher on the same platform with Buddha or Socrates. 

Therefore, there is no need of salvation and redemption. God’s judgment is refuted. Science can lead us to all truth. Christianism and other religions are similar rather than different. The supernatural and the natural, God and man, immanence and transcendence are moving to a final “one” reality symphony of orchestra. In a nutshell, to progressive christians, the Bible is no longer relevant to modern society. End of the blown up sale...! Everything historically Biblical must go fast to allow the organized risposte of the ancient world as we knew it before Christ! 

Liberal theology bears the mark of John 6:66: "From that time many of his disciples went back and walked no more with Him." 

This is a group of peoples who hold themselves too smart enough to follow and submit to God's Word. They have become too "progressive" enough to believe the message of the cross. They have a highly sophisticated and rational culture to surrender to the "unsophisticated" message of Christ. They would not trade their secular philosophy and culture for Christ' s message of salvation. Therefore, they have been walking away from the cross, only means of salvation, while turning their back to Christ the Savior. In a nutshell, they want Christ and the Bible out of their societies and schools. 

What do we carry home when the transaction is approved ? A diet reconversion to losing divine salvation and embracing self-justification. 

The assumption becomes that one is not evolving if one sticks to tradition or normative ethical conventions. The choice to be “different” from socially consecrated norms and values has been vouchsafed to the bill of rights. Nowadays, to be smart is to receive a mental blood transfusion from Hegel, Kant, and Marx. And convert to a post-modern clown bearing the tattoos of anything that sounds “different”, from becoming a sexual "révolutionnaire" to a theological evolutionist. It then becomes fashionable to be a self-proclaimed atheist to be crowned smart thinker.

However, what had been traded for progressive new consumption gadgets is nothing creative but some recycled ideological items of the past to making the ancient Canaanites blush of jealousy. 

Promoting an intellectual paternalistic deception! Intellectualism is a spirit that holds captive the mind in search of deep knowledge. When applied to the Word of God, it amounts to accumulating and cooking up Bible knowledge without a relationship whatsoever with God. Impressive factual biblical knowledge and relevant information about the Bible do not necessarily amount to a genuine knowledge of God. 

Knowing God is engaging his written Word through an obedient relationship. It's entering a covenant. The tragedy of modern Christianism is building up religious performers and theologians detached from a commitment to the Word. Ironically enough, a bushman in a remote area could be more Bible proficient than a cutting edge Bible savvy scholar leaning only on his intellectual ivory tower for enlightenment.

In John 10:3, Jesus specifically exposed Nicodemus, the greatest Bible scholar of Israel, as a showcase of an educated ignorant, totally in the dark about the things of God despite his distinguished academic pedigree. 

How do we return christians to their pagan heritage? Otherwise, how do we transform believers into paganized christians? Make them religious performers, Bible debaters and uncommitted believers to biblical teaching. Let the the paganized christians arise ! 

This posture has substantially left us under the tutelage of a highly ceremonial church riding on the clouds of well-aged rituals, bearing the vestiges of Constantine’s high marks. While securing unity among the folk, a highly trained-to-perform christianism becomes more a badge of religious belonging and piety than a shared relationship to a living God. The pitfalls of a ceremonial christianism had cast a shadow over the fact that the posture of a ritual does not match the dependability of one’s character in a relationship.

Consequently, building a disconnected theology from its raison d’être to fit cultural, social and political mutations amounts to a theological amateurism. As the standard bearer for all currencies, the Word of God does not flip around to allow giveback by way of incentive compensation with regard to our social new incentives. In other words, as far as the Word of God is concerned, there is no provision for any downward adjustment to incentive compensation due to sexual, moral, cultural or political volatility. The Word of God is never swinging at any cultural or political currency exchange rate. God is not changing anytime soon. And He is bound to his own Word. For God had exalted his own Word above all his Name (Ps. 138:2). 

That is the reason why, theology out of  salvation context amounts to the perilous temptation found in Isaiah 14:13-14 “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb the highest heavens and be like the Most High.”

Losing the Bible In The Church - A Tested Recipe 

In 2 Kings 22:8, we discover how it takes a God-fearing Law and Rights abiding king to discover the lost Bible in the very Temple of God. 

“Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the court secretary. ‘I have found the Book of the Law in the Lord’s Temple!’ ”. 

How possibly in the world could the Book of Covenant - the Bible - be lost within the Temple’ premises where its is supposed to be stored by all means? The whole point of losing the Bible in the Church is a testimony of a self-inflicted wound within the Temple. It speaks loud to the fact that, the Book of Covenant had been lost in the Temple, because the whole nation was uncommitted to the terms of the written Law. 

The nation during king Josiah’ reign was rather committed and surrendered to the worship of some celestial spooks. The nation had pledged obedience to the moon, the stars, and the sun deity as a new found religious fascination. No one was found to be practicing, obeying, and committing to the Law. The Bible was lost.

The most tested way to losing the Bible in a nation is not through some well choreographed religious rituals or theological arguments and symposiums. Plainly spoken, losing the Bible in the Church occurs by not simply obeying the Word. Like in a married couple, the guarantee to losing a spouse is by ignoring the exchange of wedding vows and embark upon a cheating trip. Obedience to the terms of a contract is the key in maintaining the relationship, not a lifelong time arguments over the wedding signed document. For, as long as there is no commitment, the Word is lost.

That is why a ceremonial church who fails to obey the Word is only indulging in religious orgies. Such a church does not represent any danger to the kingdom of darkness, nor enter into an agreed commitment with God. Performing religious ceremonies without commitment to the Word stands as a disgust in God’s eyes. In Jeremiah 7: 21-23, God says to Israel: 

“Take your burnt offerings and your other sacrifices and eat them yourselves! When I led your ancestors out of Egypt, it was not burnt offerings and sacrifices I wanted from them. This is what I told them. ‘Obey me, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.’ ”

During Josiah’s reign, God was looking for a priest and a king to bring back worship - a court secretary - in the nation. Worship is connected to the court system. Worship is not a ceremonial ritual but a pledge of allegiance to obedience to a covenant. It is the very act of bringing to pass the terms of a written law. As king Josiah rightly understood, it takes a national repentance, not a national conversation, for a nation to rediscover the Bible. “Our ancestors have not obeyed the words in this scroll. We have not been doing everything it says we must do.” (2 Kings 22: 13).

The king then assumes his place of authority and renewed the covenant in the Lord’s presence. He pledged to obey the Lord by keeping all his commands, laws, and decrees with all his heart and soul. That’s exactly what worship is all about: a pledge of obedience ! In this way, king Josiah brought about a confirmation of all the terms of the covenant that were written in the scroll, and all the entire nation pledged themselves to the covenant (2 Kings 23:3). Today, we have lost the Bible by entertaining highly Bible intellectual christians and theologians who are not yet ready for worship.

THE Bible is a BOOK OF COVENANT

As laudable as it may be, biblical head knowledge without an intimate relationship and commitment to God through his Word, becomes futile, counterproductive, idle and often time destructive. When there is a disconnect between the mind and the heart, Bible knowledge becomes a dangerous predicament. It amounts to giving someone a live chicken to swallow without the commitment it requires to go through the necessary steps prior to enjoying a proper and life giving meal. 

The Bible is a manual of operations and procedures for Kingdom oriented - citizens. That’s what the primitive Church rightly understood. Paul the apostle in Acts 22 reminded us that he studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the Law of Moses. He was even zealous for God. Yet, he was in total ignorance of the God of his ancestors he served. Paul, despite his theological pedigree was an enemy of God and opposed to God's agenda in the world. Paul the theologian was killing and destroying God's children. One can be a great theologian and yet an enemy of the living God. Rightly so, in Philippians 3: 8, Paul came to the conclusion that academic pedigree, being a religious zealot and a high profile defender of the Law of Moses are rubbish compared to the excellence of knowing Christ.

Knowing God is not an academic exercise, but becoming conform to the person of Christ. "I count all things as loss compared to the surpassing excellence of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ".  

Narcisse Jean Alcide Nana