Recently a nationally known preacher announced that God had personally and directly (and I think audibly) told him there\u2019s going to be an earth-shattering calamity in the very near future.<\/p>\n
This preacher\u2019s first point of advice was to go and get thirty days\u2019 worth of groceries.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that strikes you as odd, but I\u2019m thinking if this is an earth-shattering catastrophe, is thirty days\u2019 worth of groceries really going to help?\u00a0 These kinds of pronouncements make me ask the question, \u201cDoes God really speak to people that way,\u00a0 or are these people just practicing theocracy by proxy?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n If you don\u2019t know what theocracy<\/em><\/span> means, it\u2019s an archaic word that means rule of God<\/em><\/span>.\u00a0 Now as a Christian, someone who takes God very seriously, I will one day live in a complete theocracy.\u00a0 It will be a place of peace, love, joy; something far better than the best this world has ever had to offer.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t expect to live in that theocracy (nor do I want to) on this side of eternity.<\/p>\n When preachers, prophets, priests, kings say they speak for God in that way, do they really do us a favor, or do they further push our faith into obscurity?\u00a0 Remember, God does speak<\/span>.\u00a0 He has spoken clearly through the sacred Scriptures.\u00a0 He can be trusted.<\/span> If you are a follower of Jesus, Scriptures teach us that God indwells each one of us.\u00a0 So He speaks to us through that still, small voice in our hearts and minds.\u00a0 He speaks to us through experience and circumstances and friends.\u00a0 That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to be a part of a local church.<\/span><\/p>\n I was talking to a friend the other day and he said, \u201cI really believe in the future of the house church movement.\u201d\u00a0 My response is, I\u2019ve been in the house church movement all my adult life, but I still believe in the church gathered for worship.\u00a0 I\u2019ll talk more about that later.<\/p>\n Back to my point.<\/span> If you suspect that God speaks today, listen.\u00a0 But if He\u2019s telling you the world is coming to an end, it\u2019s probably indigestion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently a nationally known preacher announced that God had personally and directly (and I think audibly) told him there\u2019s going to be an earth-shattering calamity in the very near future. This preacher\u2019s first point of advice was to go and get thirty days\u2019 worth of groceries.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that strikes you as odd, … Continue reading “Theocracy By Proxy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"series":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidfoster.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}