COUNTERFEIT CHRISTIANITY PART 1
Dr. D. K. Olukoya
Judas heard the word from the Lord: “One of
you is going to betray me tonight.” Everyone of Jesus'
disciples began to say, “Lord, is it I?” When Judas
asked the same question, the Lord said, “You said so.”
That was enough for somebody whose head was not anchored to defeat.
Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me the secret of your power,
that I might destroy you.” Samson heard that and still
allowed it to happen to him.
The Lord has been warning that many people are
working behind schedule, and that is scarring. He says that there
are so many prophets and prophetesses who by themselves have gone on
continuous incubation without hatching, and that many prophets have
become parrots, talking too much. Many evangelists have become
oracles of the devil and God is now in the process of project
transfer, that is, “If this one is silent, the stones shall
speak.” I pray that the Lord will not replace us in Jesus’
name. These are very serious matters.
When the Lord says, “Stones shall arise,”
He does not mean that stones shall come up and begin to talk. He is
saying that hardened people that we never thought would accept the
Lord will accept Him and He will bombard them with power and those
who have been born again for years will now be carrying their bags
for them. It is very sad that we are working behind schedule.
John 18:17: “Then saith the damsel that
kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man’s
disciples? He saith, I am not.”
The word “Christians” is mentioned
only once in the Bible and the word “Christian” appears twice. But
in the New Testament, believers are called disciples over and over
again
WHO IS A CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE?
A Christian disciple is one who learns of Christ;
who follows Christ and obeys Him. In the Bible, we see that the
Pharisees had their own disciples. John the Baptist, had his own
disciples, and in His days on earth Jesus had His own amongst whom
were the apostles whom He chose to be with Him.
In the Bible as well, the term “disciple”
is applied to all who followed the Lord, many of whom the book of
John tells us that after He had preached a message, they said, “This
is a hard saying, who can bear it?” So, they went away and walked no
more with Him.
Christ has very many disciples throughout the
whole world today. Every Christian should be a disciple.
Unfortunately, this is not so and that is why the church of God has
problems. We need to make a distinction between being a Christian
and being a disciple. Somebody may hear an altar call and come
forward to surrender his life to Jesus. He may go through a
foundational class, be baptized in water, and by the grace of God
got to know about sanctification and the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
He could pass through all these experiences but it does not mean
that he is a disciple. You are a believer, okay; but that is
completely different from being a disciple. It is possible to be a
Christian, be saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost and
still not be a disciple. Many of them are eaters and not givers.
Many churchgoers are following their brains, their persons, their
families and their pastors, but not Jesus. This is because they are
not disciples.
To be a disciple means to be a disciplined
Christian. A Christian who is a disciple does not lose his temper
and start fighting. He can discipline his temper. A disciplined
Christian is not the kind that would break his fast and be
pretending as if he was fasting.
A disciple does not only become a Christian but
follows on to know the Lord. No wonder the Bible says, “Unto the
children of Israel, God shows His works but unto Moses, He shows His
ways.” Which one is better? It is only a disciple that can know the
way. The miracle seekers know only the works of God, they are afraid
of discipline.
A disciple follows on to know the Lord. Paul
said, “That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, and
the fellowship of His suffering.” A disciple is like Mary of Bethany
who sat at the feet of Jesus and learned of Him. Discipleship is
therefore a costly business; very costly. For example, you would be
rejected and ridiculed by others. You would be asked to do things
for others whether they deserve it or not. You follow God’s leading,
no matter the personal cost it involves. So, discipleship has a
price. And because it is a costly business, 90% of churchgoers are
not disciples. This is unfortunate.
Singing does not make you a disciple. Ushering
does not turn you to a disciple. Even wearing the pastor’s collar
does not make you a disciple. To be quite honest with you, many
pastors are not disciples yet. Many deliverance ministers do not
even understand the meaning of the word disciple. A disciple is not
someone who is satisfied only with the fact that he is going to
heaven. Salvation does not cost you anything but to be a disciple of
Christ is very costly. To get saved, you need only to repent before
God and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but the conditions for
discipleship are quite different and demanding. The question is,
“Art thou also one of His disciples?” It is a question
you will answer in your heart. They threw the question at Peter and
it destabilized him.
A disciple is a champion survivor. When others
are falling, the disciple will keep standing. A disciple would trust
God no matter the situation he encounters. He is not the kind of
person that says, “Well, I asked you people to pray for me and you
did not pray for me. There are so many churches in town. I am not
coming to this place again.” That is the attitude of miracle
collectors. Disciples are not people who say, “Don’t you know who I
am in this place? In case you don’t know me, I am so so and so. So I
demand respect.”
A disciple obeys God’s commands and would follow
the plan that God has chosen for his life. Jesus is number one
priority for a disciple. Any other thing is secondary. The priority
of many people is marital breakthrough. For some, it is financial
breakthrough. May be that is why they are not being blessed. Their
priority is wrong. Every disciple is a believer in Jesus but not
every believer is a disciple of Jesus.
The benefits of discipleship are so much. The
Bible promises Jesus’ disciples wealth and riches. It says that
wealth and riches will be in their house. Also, the Bible promises
that when dark circumstances surround the Lord’s disciples, God will
be there to help them out. It promises that whatever was meant for
evil in the lives of disciples shall be transformed into good. It
also promises that they will never be shaken from the foundation of
their faith. It promises that God’s divine protection shall be upon
them and their families. The question again is, “Art thou also one
of this man’s disciples or not?”
Many people are not doing what God wants them to
do. Many are just warming the benches in the churches, and some are
lost there. It is a tragedy for somebody not to know where he is
going at the age of 40 - 45.
A sister went to the bank with a cheque of N250,
000.00 she wrote for her church. The bank manager called her and
said, “Are you crazy? You want to give the church a whole
N250,000.00. Are you mad? Give the church N10,000.00 and give their
pastor N5,000.00. The sister said, “No sir, I made a covenant with
God that if He blessed me, this is what I would do.” The man said,
“Oh, but this is too much.” The sister then withdrew the cheque.
Within a short time, she lost two people in her family and spent a
total sum of One Million Naira to bury them. “Art thou also one of
this man’s disciples, or are you just going to church for the fun of
it?
Many people would say, “Pray for me so that the
witches disturbing me will die. Pray for me that all shall be well
with me.” But these things end here. Witches do not go beyond this
place. Once a person dies, he or she is free from witches. He will
then face either struggling with Satan in hell fire or he is
enjoying with the Master in heaven. The choice is yours.
CONDITION FOR BEING A DISCIPLE OF CHRIST
1. Hatred to self: Luke 14: 26: “If any man come
to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be
my disciple”.
So, the first condition is hatred. Does this mean
that we must hate those who are close to us? No. It means that we
must give the Lord supreme place in our lives. It means that we must
love Him better than we love anyone or anything else. Jesus must
come first in our affection and there must be no rival. Some
people’s fiancées are rivaling Jesus in their lives. A person sits
down to wait before the Lord and wants to receive from Him. As she
is reading her Bible, there is a knock at the door and somebody
enters, a friend she loves. Then she drops her Bible, the quiet time
and the meditation ends, and for the next three hours she is
chatting with the visitor. “Art thou also one of this man’s
disciples?” If you are, you will arrange your priority well. Jesus
must come first in our affection. There must be no rivalry. That is
what He is telling us. If a situation arises where we must make a
difficult choice between obedience to our parents or obedience to
Christ, we must put Christ first. That is what he is saying.
I know of a sister who bought a wedding gown and
everything for her wedding. Three days to the wedding she came to
the pastor and told him that there was an emergency. “What is the
emergency?” The pastor asked. She said, “Sorry sir, you know that
Saturday is the wedding, but I have found out that the man drinks
although he says that he is born again, I have even found a bottle
of gin hidden under his bed. After taking alcohol, the brother used
peppermint or something else to wash his mouth. When the sister told
her parents about this, they rose against her calling her names,
because they wanted her to marry that brother. But she looked at the
man and said. “If I marry this one, I will lose Jesus.” She loved
the man, but Jesus had the first place in her life. So, she broke
the engagement. How many sisters can do that? Many would decide to
marry the man and manage with him. Then when they settle down with
him, he may be boxing them at night.
In Matthew chapter 10:34-37 Jesus says: “Think
not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace,
but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own
household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me.”
So it must be Christ first all the time. When
Christ has the rightful place in our lives, we shall love our
parents the more. When Christ takes the first place in your life,
you will love your wife the more.
Art thou also one of this man’s disciples? Does
He have preeminence over your life. Do you hate anything that will
come between you and Christ? That place you are working and stealing
and telling lies, is placing a wall between you and Christ. Is
Christ the first place in every part of your life? Examine yourself
now. This is why the Lord said that we are working behind schedule.
2. Hatred to worldliness: Any Christian who can
still boldly stand in the middle of unbelievers’ party and dance to
worldly music, may the Lord have mercy upon him. It means he is
still very far from the Lord. If a Christian still has friends who
are only interested in parties, he is still far. He needs to recover
himself today.
3. Carrying the cross: Luke 14:27 says, “And
whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple.” These words are very clear and emphatic. They mean that
if we are not bearing the cross of Jesus, and growing after Him, we
are not true disciples. You can be the disciple of your General
Overseer. You can be the disciple of your pastor, you can even be
carrying his bag about. You can even give yourself a name, “Pastor's
boy,” but if you don’t carry the cross, you are not a disciple. The
pastor may be shaking your hands saying, “Well done my boy, well
done,” but the Lord may be saying, “This one is stinking, take him
away from me."
When we say cross, some people think it is a
problem. No, no, it is not a problem that we are talking about. If
it refers to problem then it means that everybody is bearing the
cross, because there is nobody in this world without one problem or
the other. But that is not what we mean.
Several years back, I was sent to a church to
represent my own church. There, after the praise and worship, choir
ministrations and the message and everything, the pastor came to the
front with a microphone and said, “We have been doing pleasant
things all along, but when unpleasant duties arise, it is our duty
to carry them out.” Then he called one Brother Samuel to come out.
The handsome brother came out: The pastor then said, “This brother
has slept with three members of this church and has impregnated the
three of them.” And turning to Brother Samuel he said, “Therefore,
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
we excommunicate you from this church, and we hand you over to
satan.” And he asked him to go back to his seat. When the pastor
called on the congregation to share the grace, I could not stand up.
It was a very sad thing.
We need to be very careful. For that man to get
into that kind of situation means that he was not a disciple. The
sisters who were roaming around him because he was handsome were
also not disciples. All those three women he impregnated were
cursed, not by the devil, but by man. Who will remove the curse?
To bear the cross is to take up the cross and
follow Jesus. It means you voluntarily share in His reproach and
suffering. It means that the kind of suffering Jesus went through,
you are willingly to share in it. It means you are willing to put
aside your own dreams, your own plans, your own ambition and your
own goals in exchange for the will of God. It means that in a
situation where your desire and that of God are opposite each other,
you should follow that of God. Some people say, “Eh, my wife is my
cross.” No, she is not. If she is your cross, you will be carrying
her about every day. The cross that we are talking about is that you
are willing to put aside anything that pleases you in order to
follow the Lord.
To Jesus, the cross meant suffering and shame. It
meant laying down His life. This is what we find in
Hebrews 12:2: “Looking unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down
at the right hand of the throne of God.”
If we are to be Jesus’ disciples, we must be
willing to share His sufferings. Some people are ashamed to carry
their Bibles in the open. They hide it inside their bags. They don’t
want people to call them fanatics.
To be His disciple means to be hated, persecuted
and misunderstood as He was. To take up the cross, means that we are
willing to bear all the suffering and shame, out of love for Jesus,
who out of love for us agreed to be numbered with the transgressors
and was crucified on the cross. When Jesus was here on earth, Herod
sought to destroy Him as a baby. His town’s men at Nazareth wanted
to throw Him over a cliff. The scribes charged Him with being in
league with Beelzebub. The people tried to stone Him. The chief
priest and the elders paid Judas to betray Him and accuse Him
falsely before Caiphas. He was charged for treason before Pilate.
Pilate asked the Jews “Whom shall I set free for you? You want
Barabbas, the robber or Jesus?” They said, “give us Barabbas.”
Pilate then condemned Jesus to death. And He was crucified between
two thieves.
HOW DO WE PASS THE TEST OF DISCIPLESHIP?
Have we taken our stand openly for Jesus? Do our
friends and loved ones know that we are Christians? Are you willing
to deny yourself and bear shame and suffering, if it is necessary,
because of Jesus? If you don’t carry your cross, He says, you cannot
be His disciple.
THE CROSS
The cross is a place of death. It is a place of
humiliation. It is a place of suffering. It is a place of
self-mortification. It is the most wicked instrument of death
devised by the heart of man; nails are forced through the palms and
the ankles, the lungs stretch out and the body sags. The victim now
suffocates. He dies painfully and slowly. That cross is the end of
your old life. It destroys the old pattern, the pattern of Adam.
When your old life dies on the cross that is true
Christianity. Many people are coming to the church but very few are
recognized in heaven. Many even call themselves pastors or ministers
of God but they are not recognized in heaven. Why? They fail to
listen to the words of Jesus: "Whosoever does not bear His cross and
follow me cannot be my disciple. "Art thou also one of this man’s
disciples.
4. Forsaking all: Luke 14:33 says, “So likewise,
whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he
cannot be my disciple.”
Beloved, the Lord says that there are some
miracles He has not started doing because we believers are not ready
for them yet. There are a lot of things that are disturbing the
power of God from flowing.
What does it mean to forsake? It means that you
must forsake all that you have. It means that I must reach the point
where I can honestly say,” I am taking my hands off my life. I am
taking my hands off my home. I am taking my hands off my loved ones.
I am taking my hands off my money. I am taking my hands off my
possession. I am taking my hands off all that I have. I am taking my
hands off all I have looked upon as my own. I will henceforth look
upon them as Jesus’ own. I will no longer have any claim to them.”
That is what forsaking means.
There are boxes scattered in the church for
people to put in money for the needy. I am sure that there are many
people who have not put one kobo inside any of those boxes. It would
be helpful for you to make a list of the things you regard as yours.
They may be your wife, children, home, bank account, car, house and
certificates. Make a list and hand them over to God. Recognise that
they belong to Jesus. That songwriter says, “Take my life and let it
be, consecrated, Lord to thee…" Take everything. That is what it
means to forsake.
“Art thou also one of this man’s
disciples?” Forsake every thing. Someone was harassing me:
"Excuse me sir, post me out to go and do the work of God, post me
out to go and do the work of God.” I said he should go to a certain
place where there is religious turmoil and he said “G.O, don’t crack
jokes. This is a serious matter. You don’t joke with things like
this.” What he was telling me is, “Post me to a comfortable area.”
A true disciple would forsake everything to
please the Master.
5. Continuity: In John 8:31, Jesus said to the
Jews: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.”
Continuous, not temporary action, not acting when you feel like, not
epileptic action. To continue means to abide in Christ, to grow up
into Christ, to shape our lives in conformity with the word of God.
It means that we should accept the word of God as the final
authority in our lives. It means that we should seek day by day to
live in submission to the word, and in obedience to the Lord.
Many churchgoers are not really getting ready for
the Second Coming of Christ. They don’t pray up to half an hour a
day. They don’t read their Bibles up to half an hour a day. They
don’t witness to anybody. They just dress up, go into their cars, go
to their places of work, come back, go to fellowship at times and go
home and sleep. This is dangerous.
What Jesus sometimes wants us to do can conflict
with what we want to do or what our friends want us to do. We should
be asking ourselves, “What does the Lord want of me? Why has He
saved me and called me? There are so many that are roaming about,
who are not saved, why did you save me? How will His glory be
manifested in my life? Am I reading and meditating and feeding on
His word?”
“Art thou also one of this man’s disciples?” The
time has come when God will no longer permit His temple to be
polluted. There are lots of criminals now in the house of God. A man
ran away from the world because the pollution of the world wanted to
kill him, he then ran into the church of God, only for him to meet a
greater destruction there. He ran away from the Jezebel in the
world, only to find out that there are worse Jezebels in the house
of God.
When people are pursuing a thief and he runs into
a police station, they would stop chasing him at least in the hope
that he has given himself up. But it is not always so. Now, Somebody
who is a sinner, whose heart is polluted, runs into a church, and
one would have thought that by so doing the sinner is now safe. But
it is not so. There are many evil workers that Satan has raised up,
who are in the house of God, and are not willing to change.
“Art thou also one of this man’s disciples?” What
is the sense in coming to church when you do not want to be a
disciple? What is the sense in coming to church when at the end of
the day, the Lord will say, “Who are you? I don’t know you. Where
did you come from?” And you may now say, “Sir, remember that I gave
my life to Jesus at so and so crusade. I attended so and so Bible
College.” And the voice will say, “Get away from me, you worker of
iniquity.” You may say, I used to sing,” was your life in conformity
with what you were singing?” I am a pastor.” The voice will say,
“Fine, you preached this message, you preached that message, what is
the impact of your messages on your life?" You may say, “I was a
Sunday school teacher.” The voice will say, “Yes, but you were a
worker of iniquity, you were teaching in sin.”
Are you one of those people who are making your
church to work behind schedule? Are you a prophet or prophetess
whose life is slowing your church down? Are you the type of person
that God has been calling and talking to and you put His words aside
while pursuing your own agenda? Are you the type that walk with your
two eyes open into sin, and you come out and ask God to forgive you?
And if He forgives you, you walk into the sin again? When will you
be serious with the Master?
PRAYER POINTS
1. Every enemy of discipleship in my life
must go today, in Jesus’ name.
2. O Lord, let sin be slaughtered in my life, in the name of
Jesus.
3. Every spiritual veil preventing me from seeing, be roasted,
in the name of Jesus.
4. My hypocrisy must die, in the name of Jesus.
5. Power to save myself from this wicked generation, fall upon
my life, in the name of Jesus.
6. O mountain of iniquity, clear away from my life, in the name
of Jesus.
7. I shall not go back into perdition, in the name of Jesus.
8. My Father, let Your glory possess me, in the name of Jesus.
9. O Lord, deliver me from evil conscience, in the name of
Jesus.
10. Every satanic strangulation on my neck, break, in the name
of Jesus.
11. Lord, sprinkle my heart with Your blood, in the name of
Jesus.
12. Lord, destroy the evil in my flesh, in the name of Jesus.
13. Every spiritual irritation, be lifted away, in Jesus’ name.
14. Mountains of hindrance get out of my situation, in the name
of Jesus.
15. Every hindrance to open doors in my life, clear away, in the
name of Jesus.