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October 8, 2025 |
| Orbiting What? | ||
As some people go deeper into Christianity, they reach a point where they say, "something is wrong." It's much more of a feeling than a thought. For some, this feeling is expressed as, "is this all there is?" or as, "we need to find our way back."
This leads them to try to draw closer to God, but they don't know how to do that. Though they try, those things do not alleviate that feeling.
I've found it useful to understand this as planets orbiting around a star, where we are the planets and the star is some massive object that attracts us. I hope you will find that useful as well.
Those who feel that the church has gone off the rails try to identify the things the church has done wrong and undo those things. The most recent changes are the most detailed in history, so they try to undo those. Some modern Protestants try to go back to the early Protestant days. Some try to undo the things the Catholic church did, as the first Protestants tried to do. One problem with that is that many of those changes are obscured by history. Another problem is that Protestants like some of those changes and are not willing to give them up.
Few realize that the Church of Rome was already distorting the physical church when Paul wrote his letter to them. When he said to them, "You are grafted into the tree that God is growing (Romans 11:17)," he said it because they didn't believe it or want it to be true. Romans didn't like Jews. The city of Rome kicked all the Jews out (Acts 18:2), possibly twice. So, the Christian church became the murderer of Jews.
No one is prepared to go back as far as is necessary, and if they could, that wouldn't make the feeling go away. The problem is: what are you orbiting?
It should be our nature to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matthew 5:6). That verse says we will be satisfied, but that will not happen in these bodies. We will go through life with that hunger and thirst. That's not what I'm talking about here.
That righteousness refers to a life that is lived. There is another kind of righteousness, righteousness before God. We already have that, through Jesus.
We should also want to be closer to God, more in tune with him, more connected to him spiritually. In this, too, we are limited in what we can achieve in this life, but few people reach that limit.
If you are a person who already attends church regularly and reads your Bible regularly, but you want to draw closer to God, what do you do? If you are a Catholic, you may observe more of the holy days the Church has defined. If you are a liberal, you might try to help the poor more. If you are a Protestant, you might become more involved in church programs, groups, or ministries.
If you believe that your church is teaching the truth, these are the kind of things you might do, but do these things bring us closer to God? If your church is teaching the truth, then doing the things it says should bring you closer to God.
Just the fact that the people in these churches would do very different things is a sign that there is a problem. That raises the question: which church is teaching the truth?
As you can see in the title image, if you are orbiting the sun when you should be orbitting around God, attempts to do what the Sun (church) says will not bring you closer to God. They may, in fact, lead you away from God.
In 1 Timothy 4, Paul tells Timothy how bad the church will become.
But the Spirit speaks plainly that in the last-time they shall depart one by one from the faith and they shall go after deceiving spirits and after the teachings of demons. (1 Timothy 4:1)
Just because they will leave the faith doesn't mean they will leave the churches. They will continue to spread their false ideas inside the existing churches.
Paul continues with a large description of these future churches. While most churches aren't as bad as Paul describes, most churches have at least one of the flaws he lists.
Would we think that the churches Paul spoke of would suddenly change late in the end-time. No, successful changes to church teachings take many years. If they are done too quickly, they fail. Almost 2000 years after Paul wrote that, we believe we are close to the end of the end-times; therefore, we would expect the churches to already look somewhat like Paul describes.
With this being the case, the question becomes: is any church teaching the truth? If they aren't, then there is no reason to believe that doing the things they say to do will bring you closer to God.
The problem is that most people are "in orbit" around a physical church or denomination instead of being in orbit around God. There should be no difference, and so it shouldn't matter, but the churches are obviously very different from each other, and it does matter. If you tighten your orbit by moving closer to your church's teachings, this may not move you closer to god. It may move you further away.
Theologians call our time the "Church Age," a term that does not appear in the Bible. That means the physical church is now the center of Christianity.
The physical church was never meant to be that. It was primarily a place of teaching, but it was also an opportunity for praising God, to plan joint efforts, such as outreach, and for Christians to be together and away from the world. It was never the place for worship, baptisms, marriages, or funerals.
The covenant in the Old Testament set up a temple as the focus of the faith. It also set up a hierarchy of people who worked in that temple. These were the Chief Priest and the other priests. They were the intercessors between You and God. They were consecrated to go into the inner places of the temple, where You could not go.
In the New Covenant, You are the temple and also the priest working in your temple. The Holy Spirit purifies You so that You can make spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God. The Holy Spirit also binds everyone into one spiritual church.
The Romans in the early church of Rome knew temple worship, and they understood how power works and its benefits. They made the physical church the center of the faith again.
This put people in orbit around the physical church, instead of orbiting around God. As the church wandered away from God, it took with it those who were orbiting the church and left behind those who were orbiting around God.
The church has failed. Its teachings are far from God's teachings. Its people rely on the church instead of relying on God. They:
We need to be focused on the Holy Spirit, who teaches what the Bible says. We need to be suspicious of the churches and how they interpret the Bible. We need to be recognizing our sins and seeking forgiveness. We need to be fully submitted to God. This is how we move closer to God.