The Invitation/ Perfected/ Brides Role at End

The Church Would Become Corrupt

Joel 1:4 February 13, 2016

The fourth verse of chapter one in Joel states: “That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten”. According to the Biblical teaching I mentioned, the Church is represented by a tree. You remember the Lord Jesus likened the Kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed which, when grown, becomes a tree (Mt. 13:31/Mk. 4:31/Lk. 13:19). The palmerworm is the first to attack and completely devour. It takes some time to do its nefarious work but the palmerworm represents those sinister spiritual forces that attack, destroy and devour all eighteen Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Ghost. Close upon the blight left by the palmerworm comes the locust, the second invader. These (like the gypsy moth caterpillars which we became so familiar with) go for the tree’s main source of life – the leaves. In this spiritual teaching the leaves stand for the power and the very presence of the Holy Ghost.

The locusts are those vicious spirits who would remove and eradicate the reality of the Blessed Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Trinity. In the wake of the locust comes the cankerworm. This third force seizes upon the twigs and the branches of the tree. The cankerworm seeks to invade the limbs and, eventually, utterly kill them. Keeping the spiritual analogy, the twigs and branches of the tree represent holiness and that separation from the world necessary to keep oneself pure and undefiled before God. The cumulative effect of these three clandestine forces is to render the tree lifeless and vulnerable to evil influences within and without. The final conqueror, the one that seals the doom of this once mighty oak is the caterpillar. The ultimate invader doesn’t attack fruit or devour leaves nor destroy branches, for none of these are now left. The caterpillar stands for the final destroyer. It lives and pursues its dreary destructive work in the rotten trunk of that once highly visible, bountifully productive, stately and venerable old tree. The rotted trunk, the debris-filled remains of something once grand and glorious represents those apostate teachings that insist on justification not by faith but rather by works. These are the religious and occult systems that insinuate themselves into an already infested Church and reduce it to a mere shadow of its former vigorous self.

This clear, graphic, perceptive teaching about the Church makes no claim to be an historical, chronological prospect of the Church Age, though in hindsight it clearly was a statement of the state of corruption which would befall the Church. Peter had said on the day of the first Pentecost that the beginnings of the Church were literally fulfilled by what Joel had declared in his prophecy. Peter said; “this is that which the prophet Joel had declared” when he foretold that God would pour out his Spirit upon all flesh, etc.. I do not pretend to say that the foretelling of Church being worm-eaten in the spirit is in any wise meant to be an accurate biological or anthropological presentation or explanation of the condition of the Church. If this simple but powerful scheme of spiritual symbolism witnesses to your spirit, then you’ll recognize some of the heretical and schismatic teaching that have caused such havoc in the Church and helped bring it into the condition that the apostle Paul had dubbed by the Spirit, the “great falling away”, a description which is allegorically rendered in Joel.

But the birth of the church, as cited by Peter as a fulfillment of Joel, can be seen also in Jesus’ first letter to the addressed to the church at Ephesus, the only church of the seven letters which was of actual apostolic origin, being founded by Paul. The persecution, used to stave off worldliness and corruption and to preserve apostolic fervency and separation is represented by the hardship and persecution of the church of Smyrna, while the corrupted condition of the post-Constantine Church and the power of the Papacy, which ushered in the degradation and worldliness of the Medieval Church equates to the church of Pergamos and Thyatira, churches spirited by the false prophet Balaam and the infamous witch and sorceress, Jezebel.

It is during the predominant time of these two latter churches that the very nature and person of Jesus Christ became an issue of intense debate. The gifts and the fruits of the Holy Ghost were obscured by ceaseless discussions about the procession of the Holy Ghost – whether from the Father or the Son, or from both! Creeds and theological formulas became more important than conformity to God’s Word. The power of the Holy Ghost, which was so evident in the apostolic nurturing era and selfless persecuted Church of the second and third centuries was replaced by man-made systems of patriarchates, councils and synods in a determined effort to revive and rebuild what the Nicolaitane clergy perceived to be a “perfect” human organization – a Holy Roman Empire and an Augustinian ideal of a city of God on earth. The very presence of the Holy Ghost was all but lost in a church that continued to name the true Trinity but, in all reality, believed in the deity of the old religion – the father, the child and the mother. With the marriage between the church and the state, hopes of true holiness were all but lost. Eremitical and monastic separation from the world promoted not holiness but rather perversity and, at best, inspired a fanciful romanticism manifested in Mariolatry (Mary-worship) and the code of chivalry. From time to time the true doctrine of justification by faith held sway over hungry hearts and many clung to Jesus and Him alone both throughout life and in death. Justification by works actualized in numberless religious rituals, practices and impressive penitential acts kept people thinking that they knew, loved and served God when, at best, they only knew about Him!

In these dark years, through these Pergamum and Thyatiran epochs, the Church slugged and foundered in deep apostasy, ruling the domain of men, but dredging along in the very bottom of God’s spiritual waters. The sign of the time of Joel’s prophecy about the people of God in the days of the end being fulfilled, so that the rise to a brilliant light and the restoration of Joel could be fulfilled as another sign that Christ would return, to those who would be living even closer to the second advent.