Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

“Behold the terror of the Lord, and let His holiness make your soul tremble; grace alone delivers from wrath.” ~ John Owen

If I never tremble, I have never feared such holiness that intrinsically is so pure that there’s no other appropriate action than to put me away, and under just punishment for all eternity.

Why eternity? I’ll never be able to enter such beauty, such perfection, such holiness, such righteousness on my own. Even my best efforts are self-motivated and stained. If God lets me into His presence, as I am on my own, then He cannot be holy, righteous, or just. The only way to enter in is by stripping Him of His Divine Attributes— which so many are willing to do—or to be stripped of any hope in oneself, agree with God that we deserve His wrath and enter in the only way possible, through Christ.

Many love a Jesus today. He’s their BFF, their life-coach, the one stripped of His Divine Nature and merely a man like us: He gets us. In any attribute of divinity that He is allowed to maintain it is equally ascribed to man as well. He has taken the hand of these and raised them to be just like Him—equal in authority, power, position, honor and favor. He saw them as victims of their sins, raised them up, and has given them the call to be savior of the world and to go out with authority and power that cannot be distinguished from Christ Himself.

We don’t tremble anymore. We don’t stand in awe. God has been made to be so like us that we feel we are doing God a favor, that He needs us, that He is trying His best but unless He finds someone to partner with He can’t accomplish His will. We’ve never studied the Perfections—Attributes—of God. We don’t know Him. If we did, we might fear that our next breath would not be a gift and we could face His Holy Righteous Undiluted Wrath that we justly deserve. We don’t tremble. We don’t know Him.

God has been so demoted and stripped of His uniqueness that He is just like us. He must save us because if He doesn’t, He’s not loving. We put demands on God. We don’t even need Him. We have authority and power to speak what we desire and to command sickness to obey us, Satan to fear us and obey us, finances to obey us. We have become our own god.

We speak of God but He is not the God of the Bible. He has similarities but He exists for our good and to give us the desires of our hearts that we baptize in Biblical language and call good and claim is pleasing to God.

We have no fear of putting words in His mouth and claiming He speaks to us with such regularity that sometimes we are annoyed with Him for interrupting our sleep, our meal, our message. We are special because we hear God speak to us outside of Scripture and we need not fear that we could be the false prophets Scripture warned about. We are above the Scriptures; those warnings simply don’t apply to us.

We don’t need the Gospel or Christ. We may give Him appearances in what we speak but He really just gets in the way of our anointing, our power, our authority, our greater miracles than His. It is our time to shine.

Are you grieved? My heart despises writing such words and yet they are realities that plague the church. Such pride reeks in our pulpits and pews, prayer meetings and Bible studies. Many do not fear God because they do not know God. They have a Jesus, a gospel and another spirit.

Grace and Peace, y’all.
Soli Deo Gloria