"COMPETING FOR MARKET SHARE"
-Bryan Hupperts (Jan 10, 2003).
One night, I felt the Lord show me the various competing churches in a city as if they were fast food restaurants. The sign on their individual buildings may have said, Grace, or Faith Fellowship, or Abounding Love Center, but in reality, these warring members of the Body of Christ were acting like fast food restaurants competing for market share.
I asked the Lord about all of this, and he explained that if you spoke to various ministries, they would tell you they had an exclusive, independent spirit because "they were contending for the faith" or were "the chosen remnant among the apostate" et al. While there may be truth in all of these statements to one degree or another, God's assessment of his wayward church is that we are infighting with one another to see who can build the "best little whorehouse in Babylon".
Revelation 17:5, "And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Many use this verse to describe the Roman Catholic Church. If this is true, it means that spiritually she has many little daughters running around who look and act much like mamma! Babylon is a spiritual system that wars with God. Unless Christ and his interests are the focus, we can slip into the flow of this seducing, demonic thing without even realizing it.
Back in the 80-s, during the height of the tele-evangelist scandals that brought reproach upon the name of Jesus, God warned his church to clean house, or he would. That warning has gone largely unheeded. Now Jesus is cleansing the Temple with a whip again, and he has started dealing with hidden sins, exposing the sex scandals that are now rocking the RC church. The Protestants are next.
In the coming days, you will see many well-known Christian ministries fail. The dirt will be so ugly that I believe legislation will eventually be passed that will greatly curtail the freedom the of Christian church in America. The church will have to go underground without benefit of 501 © 3 protection and status. Many buildings erected in the name of Jesus that line the streets of America will become empty, and the underground church will move to meeting in businesses, and schools, and in parks, wherever two or three are gathered in his name.
There is an Exodus coming for the church, a call to come out of Babylon. We will hear another voice, the voice of God himself speaking to his beloved, as in Revelation 18:4, "And I heard another voice from heaven saying, 'Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues."
Can such a thing happen in America? I believe it will, and God will purify his wayward Church causing us to either lay down our warring ways or be consumed and devoured by one another until only a few remain. One of the great benefits of this Exodus is that the religious power broker's power will be shattered, and the average believer - the priests of God - will experience the freedom to simply be the Church!
Pray for those in leadership. There are dark days coming to the people of God.
-Bryan Hupperts
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