Please, young brothers and sisters don’t mess with God, His Church or His people.
So many our young black brothers and sisters are being blinded by the profanity laced tirades of ill-informed, history twisting, misguided and frustrated demagogues whose words divide and heal nothing or no one. They are being told that every preacher is ripping them off. They are being told that every church is the creation of some sort of whitewashing of religion by white evangelical pagan theologians of the Western World. They are being told that all churches do is prepare people for heaven and do nothing for the lives of those who attend them here on earth.
It is sad to see young black men and women posting on their Facebook pages and Instagram sites derogatory commentary about God, the bible and the Christian Church. You see over and over again, re-quoted and misquoted rhetoric spewed out over the internet disguised as truth. What some are sincerely believing to be the truth are things that have been easily debunked and deemed bogus and deceptive for many years. If not for the universal twisted use of the 1st Amendment what many people are posting about the church is fertile ground for a lawsuit. The fraudulent claims about ALL church and ALL preachers and ALL of its members is slanderous. The last time I checked it was against the law. Here is the definition of slander.
Slander: the action or crime of making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation. Slander can actually be truth spoken about an individual to defame their character or sully their reputation.
I get it. Mom and Pop bootleg churches have given the church a bad name. I get it. There are places of worship that are so antiquated and dead, stuck in religion that I would forbid my worst enemy from attending them. I get it. There are biblical illiterates and theologically ignorant preachers who only use rhetoric to tickle the ears of their congregants and live large while not caring about the flock that make their lifestyles possible. I get that and I’m as ticked off about it as anyone. But to say that ALL churches, and ALL preachers and ALL members are ignorant, lost and of no significance in today’s society is blasphemous, dangerous and rather scary that someone can say that and not fear God.
There are great churches all over America and around the world. Churches that build up it’s members and help them achieve their purpose and destinies in life, both individually and corporately. There are great pastors who care for the flock of God. Pastors who feed the flock and not themselves. Who put more in than they would ever get out. Who sacrifice, labor, lose sleep and age quicker than others because of the burdens they carry for those they lead in the local churches and the community. There are church members with plenty of sense who have discovered that God is real and no white man taught them about Him, they met Him for themselves.
I just so happen to be a pastor, who is a part of a local church and who has to care for thousands of members, (followers of Christ) locally and abroad. I am not the product of Western Religion nor am I the recipient of a whitewashed gospel. I met Jesus in the confines of my home, having never heard a sermon from any man. I read the bible alone twice before I ever attended a church worship service or was influenced by any earthly teacher. I found out that in the bible was enough truth to save my own soul and the soul of any man. I discovered that when you come to God you must first believe that He is. That He does exist. Skeptics will be blinded to Him. The god of this world is good at keeping people, especially in these last days, young black people, from the glorious light of the gospel.
When I was on drugs, drinking myself to death and making and spending money at the club, on women and fast cars and houses I was called successful. When I met Jesus and gave it all up, and stopped making money and started making a difference, I was called crazy. Now that I’m preaching the gospel, empowering people economically by employing hundreds of people, now that I’m empowering people educationally but building a school that has educated and graduated thousands of students, now that I’m empowering people socially by feeding and clothing hundreds of people weekly, visiting jails, prisons, nursing homes, hospitals and taking mission trips to the Motherland of Africa and other places around the world, now i’m a crook and everything I teach and preach is garbage. I don’t think so.
It’s time for the church to just be the church so that our young brothers and sisters will see something that God had in mind when He sent Jesus to earth to establish His kingdom and to save His people.
The church is not a farce. The true church of Jesus Christ is alive and well on planet earth. Please don’t let the Facebook false prophets and ill informed young folk make you join the bandwagon of the apostates and skeptics who are just one prayer away from coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right, just one prayer away.
If you would just talk to God right now and ask Him in Jesus name to forgive you of your sins, He will. He will forgive you of any blasphemous commentary that you’ve made about the church or it’s leaders. I know this to be true because He did it for me. I use to hate Christians and thought all of them were fake and phony and brainwashed, until I met the true head of the Church, Jesus.
Please young brothers and sisters. Don’t mess with God, His Church or His people.
—Vaughn McLaughlin