In Revelation 2, Jesus is correcting the Churches, and exposing their sins. One such sin was tolerating false doctrine, or false speech. Specifically, the doctrine was “freedom of religion” or the right to eat foods sacrificed to idols.
Revelation 2:14 But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
15 So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate.
16 Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
And again, this same tolerance for the preaching of evil, as being bad, is reiterated to another church, 4 verses later.
Revelation 2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.
21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
“Sufferest” means “to tolerate” or “to allow”, or to suffer under this false teaching. Note also, the similar condemnation of the specific false doctrine, “to eat things sacrificed to idols”, which is a very specific kind of freedom of religion.
In my experience, Churchy people are very overzealous at “not tolerating doctrine that differs from their own”. They are not very good at “not tolerating false doctrine”. Churches often split over differences in doctrine. Church people online are not very good at actual debate. They typically do not know any Biblical standards on how to evaluate what is true. Churchy people tend to be easily deceived, and bristle very easily at even the idea that they can be deceived, because they consider themselves “God’s elect” and do not think it is even possible for them to be deceived, based on one scripture that actually says it is possible for them to be deceived. And the Bible, in many places, warns of the dangers of deception, but those verses are ignored.
Biblical standards on how to establish truth appear to be very easy. Truth is established based on two or three witnesses. And if there is a teaching to depart from the law, then it is not true. Here are the verses on these two principles:
Deuteronomy 17:6 Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.
Deuteronomy 19:15 “One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established.
Numbers 35:30 Whoever kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the testimony of witnesses; but one witness is not sufficient testimony against a person for the death penalty.
Matthew 18:16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’
Furthermore, bearing false witness, is a form of “speech” that could be a crime worthy of the death penalty. It is even one of the ten commandments.
Exodus 20:16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
Here is a warning for people in social media, which applies to spreading false reports and rumors. I, myself, just now, realize I am a bit too lax in following this law. I often try to cite sources, and check sources, but I do not always do so. Sometimes, I share things that simply “sound good”, because I am sometimes lazy. That’s bad, because it leaves me vulnerable to spreading a false report. This is a command here!
Exodus 23:1 “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain, or swearing falsely using the Lord’s name is also especially bad.
Leviticus 19:12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.
Proverbs 19:9 A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.
The Biblical legal penalty for bearing false witness is that the punishment a person intended to do to the other, shall be done to the false witness. This could result in the death penalty on the false witness, depending on the circumstances.
Deuteronomy 19:16-19 If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who are in office in those days. The judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
In our modern world, this “malicious witness” is technically called perjury. But perjury is rarely prosecuted in our modern court systems, and it has its own specific penalty, not a varying penalty as the Bible says.
I want to get back to how Churchy people in America are notoriously bad at theological debate. They are not very good at knowing the standards to use to determine truth, that of relying upon 2-3 witnesses, and in not departing from God, or the law. Here is the specific Bible passage on how to root out false doctrine. It has several key elements, which I will highlight.
Deuteronomy 13 “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’ [FREEDOM OF RELIGION]—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You shall walk[a] after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. 5 But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.
So you can see that the penalty for preaching “freedom of religion” or a teaching to follow after other gods, is a crime worthy of the death penalty, according to the Biblical law in Deuteronomy. This is an idea that would probably be shocking to most Americans who have long valued “freedom of religion”, which is why I wrote this article.
This is probably one of the biggest sins of Modern America. We are so blind to this, nobody preaches it.
Of course, most people who like to think of themselves as Christians will retort, “we are not under the law”. I know. Paul. But that is the proof that Paul is a false apostle, and is a false prophet. Signs and wonders and accurate prophecy do not establish truth, not according to Deuteronomy 13, nor according to Jesus, either.
Matthew 24:23 “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. 24 For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you beforehand.
Signs and wonders cannot establish Paul as true, but that is how Paul attempted to prove that his works were of God.
Acts 15:12 The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.
The two cornerstones of Paul’s teachings are that we are not under the law, and that it’s ok to eat food sacrificed to idols, or follow after other gods, which is “freedom from the law” and “freedom of religion”, both false teachings.
As a consequence, debates about doctrine among Church people are about as bad as the political discourse in America today, and it looks like this: “Your doctrine is Satanic!”, “No, your doctrine is Satanic!”
Churchy people often maintain that the Bible contains no contradictions. It’s almost as if they never read the Bible, or never studied the contradictions that it does contain, the ones I just presented. Do we eat foods sacrificed to idols, or not?
This is a very interesting question, especially for today. At first glance, you might not see how this even applies today, since there are no false idols set up at local grocery stores, nor are there grocery stores at “shrines to false gods”.
Upon first thinking about this question I considered that all Muslim “halal” food must be first dedicated to Allah through prayer, at the time of the slaughter of the animal. This would require Christians to “economically boycott” Halal food. This is rarely ever taught in America. However, upon second thought, Halal food also conforms to the same Jewish dietary laws, such as no bacon and things, but there is far more. The food should be fresh, clean, etc. In fact, halal food might be healthier, and more Biblical than adulterated American foods that don’t even qualify to be Biblically permitted foods! What a puzzle.
And it seems that the political left is better at understanding and practicing the “political boycott” of their enemies than Churchy people, who, deceived by Paul to feel they are not under the law, seem to have forgotten basic Biblical principles, in favor of freedom to shop wherever they want.
Why is the political left so intolerant of Christianity? Because Christianity is supposed to be intolerant of the political left, to the point of death. It’s almost as if the left sees this better than the Christian Right, most of whom would be shocked to learn their Bible prescribes the death penalty for people who follow the doctrines of the Apostle Paul, who taught it is ok to eat foods sacrificed to idols, also known as “freedom of religion”.
What is this “freedom of speech” anyway? According to wikipedia, there are many legal restrictions and exceptions, and I’ve covered a few. No false testimony, no slander.
“Legal systems sometimes recognise certain limits on or to the freedom of speech, particularly when freedom of speech conflicts with other rights and freedoms, such as in the cases of libel, slander, pornography, obscenity, fighting words, and intellectual property. In some European countries, blasphemy is a limitation to free speech. For example, in some countries defaming Muhammad the Prophet of Islam does not fall under free speech.[27][28][29][30] However In France, blasphemy and defaming of Muhammad the prophet are protected under free speech. Justifications for limitations to freedom of speech often reference the “harm principle” or the “offence principle”. Limitations to freedom of speech may occur through legal sanction or social disapprobation, or both.[31] Certain public institutions may also enact policies restricting the freedom of speech, for example speech codes at state schools.”
There are numerous other forms of Speech that Jesus says to not do.
Do not swear by heaven.
Do not swear by the temple, or the gold of the temple.
Do not swear or make any oaths.
Do not engage in blasphemy.
Do not add to the law. Do not take away from the law.
Freedom of speech should sound almost as ridiculous as “freedom of violence”.
Violence is only ok if necessary to defend yourself, your loved ones, your property, your work, your city, your state, your country, in which case we don’t use the term violence, but rather “self defense”, and you have to limit the violence to the minimum necessary, which yet again in another loophole, may include up to killing the initiator of violence, but in yet another loophole, not always, such as in case he is fleeing. And you can’t use violence and force to commit crimes, or to try to win arguments, or simply for fun. Actually the concept of “the right to self defense” is severely limited to whether a Police Officer, and a District Attorney, and a jury agrees with you or not, and therefore, while in philosophical thought it might be considered a natural or absolute right, the reality is that it is a right that sits on the ever changing sands of public opinion.
And how did we get here? The Christian Right embraced the false ideas that it’s perfectly fine to worship Satan, (freedom of religion) and that it’s perfectly fine to advocate breaking of God’s laws (freedom of speech), particularly as advocated by the false Apostle Paul.
The big sin today is the fruits of these sins enshrined (more false worship) in the First Amendment.
As we can see, the Political Left is better at rejecting these false values than the deceived Christian Right freedom advocates and Libertarians. I don’t mean to say the left is good at rejecting false religion, as we are supposed to. No, they embrace it. The left may say they believe in freedom of religion, especially for Muslims who kill Christians, but they have no problem suppressing Christian values and thoughts and teachings. The left says over and over that they have no problem with political violence of those on the left, but have a big problem if it came from the right. And now, the political censorship of big tech is only echoing the censorship of the big media.
Such hypocritical double standards are the hallmark of evil, as exposed by Jesus in Matthew 23.
Matthew 24:23 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
Christians in America today are also hypocritical all the time, not practicing what they preach. They claim that Paul is sent by God, but they do not follow the teachings of Paul, and neither does Paul!
Paul says it’s ok to eat food sacrificed to idols, but not if you offend anyone, as if offending your brother is the greater sin.
Romans 14:20 Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with [a]offense. 21 It is good neither to eat meat nor drink wine nor do anything by which your brother stumbles [b]or is offended or is made weak.
See also, 1 Corinthians 8, the whole chapter, especially:
1 Cor 8:13 Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.
Imagine the insanity, of course, of doing away with the law, and then inventing this new law, to not be offensive, which is an impossible standard to follow. Nobody can appease the political leftists. And, can you tell any Paul follower that their teachings are offensive, and will they apologize? Or can they argue their position without being ridiculously offensive? Of course not. They will uphold Paul, but not his teachings, the definition of Christian hypocrisy. Because Paul’s teachings are evil, and in their inner hearts, they may well know it. Or they apologize and say they are not as good as they want to be, by attempting to uphold Paul philosophically, but not in practice.
Does Paul even follow his own rules? Of course not. Paul is a hypocrite, and is extremely offensive, just look at this passage from Galatians.
Galatians 3:1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?
Galatians 5:12 As for those agitators, [who teach the law and the circumcision] I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!
What? Did Paul just say he wished that people who teach the law would go all the way and cut off their own penises? OMG, he’d be banned from Facebook for sure, and for good cause. I’d block him. Can you say something more offensive to someone who disagrees with you? I mean, really.
Paul’s message is literally, “If you want to obey God’s laws, you should cut of your entire penis!” How is that not both a ridiculous false argument to make, and how is that not grossly offensive to say? Of course, God’s laws include no such commandment, and it’s possible that the practice of circumcision is a later addition to the law, because it violates so many of the essential practices of the law. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Circumcision violates that. Circumcision is unnecessary violence. Circumcision is an amputation that somehow suggests that God made a mistake when he made man. Circumcision of the clitorous by Muslims seems an abhorrently violent practice by Western minds, but the foreskin is the sensitive part of a male, akin to the clit. It’s likely a Satanic addition to the Bible. There are whole debates on this.
So the Church is filled with extremely offensively disagreeable people, who can’t sit still long enough to listen to a full argument or agree on anything. You can’t teach them Biblical legal principles, because Paul taught them the law is nothing, and you can’t teach them to not be offensive, because they can’t even follow Paul. And that is to be expected, because nobody can follow hypocritical standards, because they are no standards at all.
A hypocritical standard is “freedom for everyone”. Then, after attaining power, it’s always “freedom for me, but not for thee”.
I have to admit, I censor people all the time. I learned I had to do this on facebook. Why? Because otherwise, I would have to tolerate abuse and slander. Slander may well be illegal, but do I really have time to take someone to court over every little lie they may utter about me on facebook? I would lose. Attorneys are expensive, and it’s also ridiculously time consuming even without an attorney. And unless I can prove that I lost income, because of one little comment, I have no damages, so court is a waste of time. Instead, I just block people. Isn’t that censorship? Of course it is. I’m not stopping their mouths, I’m just shutting my ears to abuse. And there are so many other people I will block for the slightest of reasons, because I’ve learned. People who post ads for sunglasses. People from foreign nations who simply message me with “Hi”. Super sexy single women profiles with heart heart heart, wanna see me naked? Block, block, block, block. And, of course, I block all who ask for my advice, yet dare to invent lies about me and needlessly accuse me.
Of course censorship is good and necessary. “Cast out Devils”, Jesus said. Makes no difference if people are demon possessed or just acting like demons, lawbreakers or fools. Abusive people have to go.
Why is Facebook successful? They eliminated the spam problem that exists both in email and online. This is a blog. It has a comment section. The comments no longer work, because 99.9% of the time, all the comments were spam, and it was wasting all my time. On Facebook, you can both block people, and report their profile so they get booted off of facebook, and so that eliminates the spam problem. I ran several other blog software over time. It, too, was innundated by spam. Facebook censorship works. Do I really want to try to see what my friends are saying, or study a topic in a facebook group, and get hit with porn? I do not. That used to happen once about every 6 months on Facebook. Now, I can’t remember the last time that happened. They are getting better at censorship.
Do they over do the censorship? Of course, and they censor with a liberal bias against conservatives. We all see this.
Does anyone really believe in the right of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, if someone else’s religion tells them to execute me as a Satanic sacrifice? Of course not. Nobody does. It is clearly illegal to advocate killing the President, or anyone.
Assault and Battery are both crimes. Assault is making credible threats of harm. Battery is the actual physical attack. Making credible threats is merely speech, and yet it is not legal. Extortion is also a form of speech, it’s a also a threat to expose some sort of criminal actions or embarassing actions, and it is also illegal.
The objection is: Oh, but Jason, people don’t believe that because murder is illegal. My retort: And where do you get that idea from? Their answer: From the law. My retort: Don’t you teach we are not under the law? And so the infinite arguments from lack of standards continues forever.
The lawgiver will return. The fact that we have forgotten the non hypocritical standards of his unchanging laws are our generation’s sins. Freedom of speech and religion are deceptions, false rumors, and false teachings, and false testimony, that he rebukes in Revelation 2.
I wrote all this a few years ago. Now, I run a large Facebook group. I don’t like to censor people, but I have to. Slander is wrong because it ruins reputations, and it confuses many people who don’t yet have the discernment to understand that statements expressed as facts are not necessarily facts, but might be lies.
And a lot of people have let their brains turn to mush, and they no longer think there is any such things as truth and lies. To them, it’s all just perspectives.
The eternal battle is between people who wish to worship God in truth, and preach truth, and all the rest of the world who hates us and has deceives with so many lies.
Genesis 3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Here are two Bible Chapter stories you can read on your own time.
Numbers 16. Moses vs. the rebellion of Korah.
The “false religion” of Korah was rather humble. Those who were rebellious argued that they could hear from the Lord, too, and thus, no different from Moses.
Numbers 16:3 They came as a group to oppose Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?”
1 Kings 8. Elisha vs. the prophets of Baal.
The prophets of Baal, while killing the Lord’s prophets, had a religion similar enough to Judaism, that they both served “the Lord”, because Baal means Lord, and both sacrificed bulls on altars, and both expected their Lord to ignite the bull with supernatural fire.
God wins in the end.
Fascinating contrasts and deep insight. I would add that the fruit of obedience to Gods will or Disobedience is also a witness for or against somebody.