"Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot,
they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourneth unto me;
the whole land is made desolate, because no man layeth it to heart."
(Jeremiah 12:10-11)
History has a most unfortunate habit of repeating itself, something that 'The Preacher' observed so very well when he penned this great Biblical truth which has echoed down the ages right to the present day: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
Pastorship. The selfless shepherding of the flock, nurturing and protecting. A calling of the Lord. The exercising of a sober duty of care on His behalf. At least that's the theory. But in practice? Well, very sadly that's a different story altogether, as a whole host of pretend pastors today endlessly and unashamedly emulate the pretend pastors of Jeremiah's time. And so the vineyard is again destroyed, the Lord's portion once more trodden underfoot. The Church-so-called has in all directions become a desolate "anything goes" wilderness, an uninviting and disturbing Surrealist landscape where nothing is quite as it seems and reality morphs into whatever we want it to be; Truth becomes subjective rather than objective, and wide open to individual interpretation. Pretend pastors are everywhere driving the sheep off the narrow Way and onto the broad road.
Few there be who have eyes to see that contemporary evangelicalism has become not a beacon of blessed hope but an absolutely catastrophic car-crash! The pastors pipe, the people dance, but it's all a charade, a masquerade, a hollow sham; it's just a fairground hall of mirrors where the true shape of how things really are is completely distorted. An alternative reality is come into play. We are at a topsy-turvy time when wreckage is somehow seen as revival, spiritual trash as treasure and spiritual treasure as trash, poison as purity and purity as poison in the relentless turning of things upside down and inside-out and back-to-front. As it is written,
"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes,
and prudent in their own sight!"
(Isaiah 5:20-21)
So very many who present themselves as pastors in these, the End Times, are not in any sense faithful shepherds but rather they are shameless users of God for their own personal advancement. Their commitment is not to what is in the flock's best interests but to that which is perceived to be in their own. They have an agenda to be fulfilled, which in essence is their pre-eminence. Their desire and their drive is for elevation and esteem, power and position, societal status, salutations in the marketplace, a plump pay packet and a pension pot, and lashings of mint sauce please on those tasty lamb cutlets. But all this must of course be assiduously hidden away under a well-varnished veneer of righteousness.
But let's not make the mistake of exonerating the people sitting under these pretend pastors, seeing them as their hapless victims. The fact of the matter is that they are fully complicit and culpable in the relentless degradation and abuse of the Faith once delivered that we are so painfully witnessing on all sides. These people have simply got what they want, which is to have their itching ears tickled; it is they who have heaped to themselves these fleshly frauds and made them fat; if this was not so, these wolves in shepherds' clothing could neither ascend to the lofty positions they occupy nor stay in them. Period. A multitude of folk just happen to be only too pleased to be deceived.
Is your pastor apt to teach, and is his doctrine sound? Is he open to correction if it is not? Is he available to his congregants, or unattainable in an unassailable ivory tower? Does he uncompromisingly preach on the centrality of the Cross of Christ and the inherent depraved nature of fallen man and the essential need of a Saviour and repentance for sin - and with the whole heart and not just (quite insufficiently) with the head? Does he expound upon Biblical eschatology? Hold to the inerrancy of the Word and urge the testing of everything against it, including what he himself says and does? Does he speak on Judgment, Hell and the eternal damnation of the unsaved? Or does he religiously (I use the word advisedly) shy away from such things?
Does he diligently warn about great antichrist deceptions like the New Apostolic Reformation, or the Word of Faith movement, or ecumenicalism, or the utterly demonic curse called the Toronto Blessing? Or is he silent about the likes of such atrocities, or has even actively embraced and happily promoted them? (And note well, my friends, that in asking all these things I've referred to your pastor as 'he' - but be it clearly understood that if your pastor, or co-pastor for that matter, is a 'she' then you are NOT in a Biblical fellowship on this one count alone!) The bottom line here is, are you supporting a truly God-commissioned shepherd or a "career Christian" who is a mere hireling appointed of the flesh and not of the Spirit? "Ah, but he's such a nice man!" you might say. Friends, always remember that a whited sepulchre is no less a tomb for having an attractive external coating. And it is always going to be something of the dead, not of the living!
This then is the pitiful place we've arrived at: a one-time lush and fruitful vineyard in deep denial of its own self-destruction. We have a plethora of both pretend pastors and counterfeit-cuddling, wilfully myopic congregants, who together constitute not a real but a synthetic and savourless salt of man's manufacture. In the grace of God, let there among the discerning Remnant always be found the heart of Jeremiah, that weeps for the wretched unfaithfulness of those who, in their resolute championing of artifice over authenticity, somehow still have the temerity to call themselves God's people!
