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Lambs to the Slaughter

A Perspective From the Desert

I grew up in Modoc County, California.  When I mention the main town, Alturas, people ask “what’s it near”?  Nothing, I respond, because if I told them Canby, Termo, Ravendale or Likely, their faces remain blank.  It’s a vast, windy, arid, high desert.  Across the Warner Mountains, lies Surprise Valley, where there’s a population of Basque families.   They raise sheep in harsh conditions, with parsimonious land in terms of feed, water, and moderate temperatures.  It is generous in one way – coyotes.

When it’s lambing season, terrible things can happen.  Packs of coyotes flood in.  When the ewes are at their most vulnerable, as the lambs are emerging, is the choice time for the coyotes to strike.  It’s known that they will consume the emerging lamb, the hindquarters of the ewe, killing both, before moving on to the next target.  The carnage of these vulnerable sheep is heart-wrenching.  Entire flocks can be killed, not entirely eaten, just wasted.

This gets us to the Asbury ‘revival’.  Plenty of sheep, the wolves surging toward the flock, and some people calling out warnings.  I’ve shared many balanced perspectives, Biblically based, which call for restraint, discernment, and waiting to see any good fruit emanating from this gathering, before coming to a firm decision.  I’ve been called several things, most of which are not complimentary.  Or given instructions like the following:

I’m clearly dealing with an intellectual.

I do long for revival but I don’t care for viral gatherings based on false prophecy:

I know you might think me stubborn, but it’s a good time for 2nd Thessalonians Chapter Two.  

“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.  Let no one deceive you by any means; for That Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, . . .”

I’m concerned at this point in time, with a giant falling away, even one that might appear to be the opposite, even one that just feels so good.

I also am leary of the flood of false teachers rushing to the exact spot where little lambs are emerging but not even able to walk yet.  Why would I claim the students at Asbury can’t walk?  It’s a place where Spiritual Formation (it’s included in the curriculum)  and Contemplative Praying are promoted.  According to an article from Truthkeepers.com:

“Spiritual Formation is contemplative spirituality, and it is sweeping quickly throughout Christianity today.  If a college, a seminary, a church, or an organization wants a spiritual Formation, may they keep in mind, they will get eastern mediation and the occultic realms that accompany it.

Contemplative Praying is a pagan practice that came into Protestantism via the Roman Catholic Church.  RCC mystic, Thomas Merton, recognized the church was void of spirituality.  His search for spirituality led him to associate with a Buddhist colony where he discovered Contemplative praying.  The Buddhists received it from the desert-dwelling Sufi Muslims.   . . . This mystical stream contemplative prayer is the Western bridge to Far Eastern spirituality.  One cannot get more New Age than Spiritual Formation and Contemplative Praying.”

 

Essentially this is a group that is being fed toxic waste blended in with Christianity or as my pastor, Jim Putman of Real Life Ministries, would call it “Rat Poison Theology”.  As is clear from the list of ingredients on many rat poisons, about 95% of the contents are harmless, some might even be good for you, but the poison contained in the box will kill you.  The rest of it is just to get you to eat it in the first place.  The lambs at Asbury are already in a weakened condition.

There’s almost nothing more precious than a newborn lamb and almost nothing more heart-wrenching than seeing it meet a brutal death before it sees the light of day.  We can’t kill all the coyotes but we can mobilize to protect the lambs.