In Part 1, we saw that spiritual corruption occurs in a church structure when the institution begins to replace God’s design law with the belief that His law functions like human law. Once that foundational error is accepted, predictable consequences follow.

Here are the steps by which such a system gradually suppresses advancing truth:

• Indoctrinate members into that false legal system, teaching them that God’s laws are imposed and enforced through punishment, which incites fear and undermines trust in God.
• Then indoctrinate them into a theology that increases fear of punishment—not fear of sin, but fear of punishment for sin—teaching them that God is the punisher and that He needs to be appeased/propitiated.
• Then teach a mechanic, a system of rules and conformity, that one must comply with to stay out of legal trouble with God.
• Then make your doctrinal list of rules and behaviors that define the legal orthodoxy and ensure specific elements will be behaviorally measurable and distinct from other groups so that your group can maintain the claim of being the holders and protectors of truth.
• Then, in such a legal system, you must install umpires, referees, judges, the determiners of what is “orthodoxy” and who and what is “right” and “wrong.” So set up a pastor, pope, an orthodoxy committee, some form of biblical research committee that is invested with authority from the system to determine truth.
• Then establish a creed, a list of fundamental beliefs, that becomes the test of orthodoxy, requiring all members to publicly proclaim faith in that list.
• Then tie membership and even baptism in the organization to belief in the list, not simply faith in Jesus.
• Then police the membership to ensure the list is enforced. This will take multiple layers of control:

• Control of the church-owned schools, particularly the seminaries, and teach the “orthodoxy.”
• Require church leaders, particularly pastors, to be trained in the seminaries that teach the orthodoxy. Do the same in the high schools and elementary schools.
• Produce a study guide to ensure the worldwide church receives the same weekly indoctrination that reinforces the orthodoxy.
• If pastors arise with new light, seek to intimidate them into compliance and silence them; if they do not submit, fire them.
• If members arise locally and are voted into office—teacher, elder, deacon—and bring advancing light, it is the pastor’s job to oppose it, to guide them back to the orthodoxy of penal/legal theology with a punishing god who is the source of death. If the pastor cannot achieve this, then remove the offending person from office.
• If the pastor has lost control of the church and cannot remove the voices of truth from local office, then replace the pastor.
• Ensure local church property is owned by the conference, not the local congregation, so that if a local congregation embraces advancing truth and light and the conference cannot redirect them back to orthodoxy, then the conference can purge that group from the system by closing down the property.
• And then, when the representatives from the local groups come together in official church capacity, at official meetings of the worldwide church, ensure that the agenda, rules, and procedures put in place are established by the ruling elites in committees outside of the body of representatives, and make sure those rules and procedures give the appearance of representative bottom-up advancement of light, but ensure that, in reality, the procedures prevent honest, open, and real discussion and advancement of truth. How? By setting the agenda of what can be discussed by preselecting what motions or people can be voted upon, and restricting the time for delegates to discuss what the central committee has determined can be discussed. And if, per chance, a glimmer of truth were to break through this gauntlet of obstruction, then procedure will require that such advancing light will be diverted to a study committee, where it will be buried in years of study so that the truth never comes before the church.

In his book The Subversion of Christianity, Jacques Ellul describes the process of how Christianity became subverted. He details the history of the church betraying the gospel of Jesus, which transforms hearts, for a legal code that punishes bad behavior. He writes:

The popes use laws to fight the corruption of the clergy … the church’s reaction to the encounter with immorality, its immense attempt to enforce law and morality, and its reply to loose conduct in the ethical fields is closely connected with the error of confusing the church and society. … The perversion, then, was that of making the gospel into law … the mistake was dealing with these on the moral and legal plane instead of following the example of Paul, who always works through the moral question to the spiritual question, gets back to the essence of the revelation in Christ, and from this derives some models of conduct that are consistent with faith and love. The church did not do this. It thus set itself on the same level as the world and treated moral matters on the moral plane (pp. 88–89, emphasis mine).

What is the problem in the Roman church, and what is the problem in our church today? Replacing God’s design-law reality with the imposed-law lie. That is why the final message to the world is a call to return to worshiping God as Creator, which requires rejecting the rules-oriented approach and returning to reality, to understanding that all of God’s laws are design laws that function within the living being. Then, when we are won to love and trust, we experience healing and restorative power through reality-based reconnection with God, the living source of life.

Let Jesus and His Methods Lead the Way

Finally, what if Jesus were the in-person head of the church? Would a centralized system with Jesus at the head, which ran as a system of rules, with Jesus providing all the answers—which are always 100 percent accurate and true—and which we are to believe because Jesus, our King, has said it, result in the outcome God wants for His universe?

I ask this question because I think many people believe this is the goal, a system with Jesus at the head telling us all the answers that we are to believe because He said so.

Would such a system result in what God wants? Why or why not? And what does the evidence of history reveal?

Did God use this method in heaven when Lucifer started his rebellion? When Lucifer lied about God, while God, of course, spoke the truth, did He say to the angels:

You have heard Lucifer, and now I have spoken the truth. I have said it, so you are to believe it; that is all there is to it. I assure you I am righteous, I am holy, and what I say is correct and accurate; if you don’t believe me, then, because what I have said is true and you have refused to believe it, I will, in justice, kill you. I do want your love and trust, but now that I have spoken the truth and you have refused to believe it, I can no longer trust you. You are in rebellion, so I must kill you, even though I don’t want to. So please choose to trust and believe me because I have spoken truth, so I won’t have to kill you.

Did God use this method in heaven? No! Why not? What happens if this method is used by someone speaking the truth? It incites doubt, fear, rebellion—why? Because of how reality works! It violates one of God’s design laws, the law of liberty—which is that love exists only in freedom. Violations of liberty destroy love, undermine trust, and incite rebellion. So, Satan loves it when Christians present a God who will kill people if they don’t believe what He says.

God cannot win by use of law and law-enforcement; this is why He said it is not my might or power but by His Spirit of truth and love that wins people to freely choose to trust (Zechariah 4:6).

On the road to Emmaus, did Jesus use the method of speaking the truth from His position of authority, “I am the risen Savior; believe because I say so”? No. But why did Jesus not use that method? Because there is no transforming power in believing the right thing without understanding why it is right.

If you believe 2+2=4 merely because the teacher says so—you may know the right answer, but you are not secure in reality. All a deceiver has to do is be more persuasive, convincing, dynamic, or come from a position of higher authority than the teacher and tell you 2+2=7, and you will believe it.

God will not use the method of believing based on His proclamations of truth alone—even though He will always proclaim the truth. No, God is the God of reality; all truth is on His side, and He wants us to believe not merely because He spoke the truth, but because in reality it is true. And when we follow truth, it always leads us back to God.

Satan has no truth on his side; thus, he absolutely wants to get people pursuing “truth” by any means other than the truth, believing because someone said it, because of a rule, a creed, a doctrine, a miracle, sign, wonder, a powerful feeling or strong conviction—anything other than reality itself.

What is so sinister and toxic about the penal/legal religion is that the people caught up in it know something is wrong—they know they are sin-sick in heart and mind; they struggle with insecurity, fear, guilt, shame; they are afraid of punishment, death, and facing their record of sin, and thus, they want deliverance, they want freedom, they want to be saved, they want peace with God and within themselves, but they are deceived by the lie that God’s law is imposed and into believing that they need to be saved from God, from His legal punishment, rather than being saved from sin.

Thus, they desperately hold to the penal/legal lie in hopes of salvation, claiming belief in ideas that function to hide and protect them from God, but the way reality works, that very system of belief keeps them in fear, keeps their hearts and minds separated from God; they cling within themselves to beliefs that they intend and long for to hide them from God because they don’t trust God, and thus, they keep themselves cut off from God while claiming to believe in Him. This is exactly what the Pharisees in Christ’s day did.

So I invite you to reject the imposed-law system of rules, hierarchy, might, power, and coercion, and return to worshiping God as Creator, whose laws are design laws, embrace the truth, and enter the eternal journey of growth, advancement, and maturing in truth.