Our Journey To Sanctification

For it is written: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So then each of us shall give account of himself to God.

Romans 14:11-12

The image above, taken from an article at The Star (link here), holds me, a certain sentimental value. It is a snapshot of an ordinary working day, at one of UMMC’s wings, a semi-government hospital located at Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, that housed the specialist clinics for neurology patients.

The image, brings back memories of a very difficult chapter in my life almost 10 years ago, when my family plunged into a sudden spiral of medical emergency, with my wife at risk of almost losing her life. It was a few months of very grueling moments, that no one would have wanted to experience ever.

It was during a time when everything in life changed for each of us in the family; my wife was hospitalized, I had to stop what I do to take care of her, and it was also during these trying times my kids stopped attending school and turned to home-schooling. Eventually, my wife recovered, and we moved to the outskirts, away from bustling Kuala Lumpur’s city center, after I sold off all my properties and businesses that I once owned.

Most people would have said that my decisions were a little exaggerated and over the top. But if anyone had experienced what my family and I had been through, and the aftermath of where God took me in life, they would have understood why I had to do what I did. I came from one of Kuala Lumpur’s big megachurches, and after my wife recovered, I did not return to church to share my experience, nor to declare publicly that God had healed my wife.

It was a moment that was never for any of us in our family to be proud of, let alone to even have any bragging rights over anything we did. The progress was more of a case of God had to struck us down with calamity, made us take a good look at our sins, and thereafter He gave us two choices; one that leads to death and the other to Life. Yes, there’s no typographic error when I stated that I never went back to church to declare God healed my wife. More than just healing, the truth is God spared us our lives. And for this reason, after coming out from a very embarrassing episode in life, we decided to acknowledge this fact and made significant changes to our ways and conduct. Then our journey to sanctification began.

The Meaning Of Sanctification

In Hebrews 2:11-12. It is stated, “For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who SANCTIFIES AND THOSE WHO ARE BEING SANCTIFIED are all one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying: “I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.”

Sanctified people are born again and therefore part of God’s family, detailed in the verses above. They are reserved for God’s use. They know the sanctifying work of the Spirit in their lives, they abstain from sin, and understand they have been called to be his holy people. To be sanctified means that God has been at work in our lives. Under the Old Testament Law, the blood of a sacrifice was required to set things apart from God. And under the new covenant in Christ, we are called to be living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1, 2 Timothy 2:15 & 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

But in our churches, we were hardly ever taught the process of sanctification. What we are told is, you and I are immediately born again, after our pastors lay his hands over our heads, and as soon as we say with our lips we accept Christ. Thereafter, just attend church regularly, attend home fellowship, get baptized and pay our tithes consistently. And our pastors will spend the rest of their days, to persistently remind us, don’t let anything shake off our faith, don’t stop coming to church or don’t let the devil remind you of your sinful past. That is salvation according to the terms of these men.

They are expecting to carry on doing these, which are in essence nothing more than men’s worthless customary practices. On the day each person passes away, these pastors will declare at their funeral, that the dead have fought a good fight, they ran a good race, and they are now safe in the arms of Jesus. And believers conduct themselves as taught and told, being assured of salvation according to the terms of these pastors, thinking that sin is no longer an issue. So they expect one fine day, when they arrive in heaven (as how they were told by their pastors), God will not be ashamed to call them as His, and that in their unclean state, they also expect God to declare them in the midst of His brethren and to bring them into His glory. This expectation is completely against what is stated in Scripture.

The Turning Point For Man

I know of one person from Indianapolis, who is now undergoing this transition and turning point. He does things to protect and to defend practices of the man-made church. Off and on, he’ll demonstrate his objection against any other forms of theology, other than salvation is a simple process, and people are saved as long as they say they are.

When he is in energetic mode, he’ll do all kinds of things to promote church attendance, thus leading him to believe that recent global immunization programs are from God. To him, church attendance is sacrosanct, and therefore, if governments mandated that we are to be immunized before we are allowed to attend church, therefore his logic is that such rules must be from God. He is like a 15 year old kid, who found his way to a Hillsong youth conference. If he likes what he sees, therefore he believes that what he likes is also good for the rest of mankind, according to how he imagines it to be. Kind of like a one size, fits all mentality.

On bad days, he’ll announce that he is down with cancer. And several weeks later, after treatment, he’ll declare that God has healed him. Then a couple of months on, he’ll say that he is going for another scan, and publicly requested the rest of the world to pray for him. When the results are out and shows cancer negative, he’ll leap with joy and declare God has healed him again. And he’ll go on and on with this vicious cycle until the day he breathes his last. He can fool others, but he can’t fool me. I know too well, what cancer is all about, and it ain’t as simple as how he puts it. Unless the patient knows the truth, and knows what really causes cancer and how to cure it, as opposed to relying on commercially-sanctioned protocols, pushed to people from shelves, by big pharmas.

He never want to come to terms with the fact that by doing what he is doing, he is encouraging and deceiving others in the church, to follow his flawed ways. It simply makes him happy, if others do exactly what he does. Neither is he bothered, whether the lies and errors he promote, might destroy the lives of others through his own making.

What this guy does is what most other Christians found in churches do. And their pastors are fond of people like them, because each time they bring the good news and declare that they are healed, they have something to brag about at the pulpit; that God is working through their church to heal these people. Therefore, more lies are manufactured and amplified on top existing lies. As such, instead of relying on what is truthful, people are swayed and deceived into obeying man-made fables, on how to induce God to act and do things in their favor.

In his own words, Pastor Saw Lip Hean from FGAKL, once called such people, as fake people with a veneer of religiosity; they make themselves believe that they are God’s miracle, they speak pompous things about their pastors performing miracles on them, lying to themselves that God has healed them, and among their friends they preserve this lie for as long as they could, until they day they die. In actual fact, they were not healed. Because if they were indeed healed, they needn’t go back to their hospitals, to constantly monitor the state of their illnesses. If a person is truly healed, he would have lived his life in total freedom from fear, that someday he’ll fall ill again. And the most obvious clue that a person is healed, is that he lives, and he is not under any threat or imminent danger of dying.

More importantly, man failed to recognize that God demands sanctification before they are entitled to Life, that after we dedicated ourselves and accepted His Son, we are to keep ourselves pure and clean, holy and acceptable to God, so that on the arrival of the big day, Christ will not be ashamed to call us His own. And the last thing for anyone wanting to hear from Christ is Him saying, I never knew you, depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness (Matthew 7:23).

Time Is Running Out For Man

Hospitals everywhere are now becoming crowded. The march to man’s turning point had already begun. And among Christian communities worldwide, say thank you to your pastors for hastening forward such days of reckoning. Soon, the true sheep will hear the calls of the Shepherd, and they will recognize the big decision that is before them. They will have to choose between; either to clean up and live in Christ, or to die in their sins. Whereas, the blind and the deaf, will not even hear the calling. For they are still busy eating, drinking and having their merry moments.

I count myself and my family as fortunate. What I see that is about to happen to people in this world, God had already caused it to happen in our lives, 10 years ago. While the world was at peace, my family and I were undergoing immense turmoil. And now we are at peace during troubled times, and we see the same turbulence that we experienced before, that the rest of the people shall now have to go through.

So three years ago, when we saw people among us committing grave sins and doing colossal transgressions against one another, we shouted to warn them the repercussions of what will come, if they continue on with their habits. But like voices falling on deaf ears, we were turned away like imbeciles. Reverend Sim Tze Tian, in his sermon yesterday, probably pictured that, when he briefly described the story of a person, that he thought he knew was Satan, that this person cried out, yelling to everyone around him, that he did no wrong. He then stops short of explaining further, and I had no idea why. That is how man-made churches will treat those who come to them, and warned them to either repent or die. They’ll assume the devil is in you and complain that you are making too much noise. That is what happened to John the Baptist. That is also what happened to Jesus, when He was preaching at the synagogues, to the extent the Pharisees saw it fit to conspire to have Him murdered.

Where To From Here?

And so, three years on, we are here today. And no, I won’t stop yelling and crying out; repent or die. Because this is what it is, this is coming and this is real.

But the Bible also said it clearly, let the unjust, let him be unjust still; he who is filthy, let him be filthy still; he who is righteous, let him be righteous still; he who is holy, let him be holy still. (Revelation 22:11) People will continue to do what they are doing, it will remain business as usual for many. And many too from churches everywhere, will continue to stick their necks out to defend their false beliefs; that God is good to them and will not allow them to be delivered into the hands of evil men. And when calamity and death strikes them and their families, they go back inside their churches and continue with their chanting and prayers, that will not be heard because of their sins (Proverbs 15:29, 1 Peter 3:12 & John 9:31).

Most pastors and preachers will be first to fall. Because it is written, he who teaches, will be judged more strictly than the rest (James 3:1). While this group of people are teaching others what they thought is correct theology, they too thought that they will be exempted from judgment. But right now, these leaders are already, more or less aware, of what is about to come. Many have started reading the book they have ignored all their lives, the book of Revelation.

But to many also, the corruption they have caused to happen in God’s houses of prayer, have already reached the point of no return. And it is obvious, instead of going back to the drawing board, to theologically correct what is wrong, many pastors and preachers are still living in denial, and desperately finding ways to explain the calamities to their church members. And with so many churches going online since several years ago, it is not difficult to track and see what is going on, how these preachers and pastors are cooking up all sorts of excuses, to keep people from turning away from their churches, and to find ways to shield themselves from responsibility and accountability.

That the day too shall be coming, when believers will find themselves caught and trapped in Sheol, suffering torment for a thousand years, and on the day they are called to rise for their time of judgment (Revelation 20:13), these pastors and preachers will be getting relentless firing from their own followers; as everyone will be turning their guns against them, blaming and accusing them in the presence of God, that it was their pastors’ fault or their friends in their churches’ fault, that they were not told the truth. Because from the very beginning, their pastors and preachers, were nothing more than mere liars, they knew nothing, they don’t even know what meant by repentance, and they have not, the answers to God’s gift of eternal Life.