A Warning for Pastors

by The End Times Report

This morning in my quiet time, I was communing with the Lord. 

I had just read from Leviticus 1. 

Let me set the scene for this chapter. This books picks up where Exodus leaves off, after the construction of the tabernacle. 

The Israelites had not moved, they were still camped at the base of Mount Sinai in the rocky and rough environment of the Sinai Peninsula. They had been camped at this site for almost a year and had been through much: 

They'd been through the dramatic exit from 400 years of bondage in Egypt. 

They'd marched through the Red Sea with Pharaoh's army on their heels. 

Then there was the Golden Calf disaster. Just weeks earlier, Moses had been on the mountain. While he was gone, they panicked and engaged in deep idolatry, destroying their freshly made covenant with God. Thousands died. 

And now, here they stood. Perhaps laden with guilt, fear, hope, awe, and a deep desire to be reconciled to the God who freed them and whose power has also shaken them to their core. 

They were aware of the devastatingly obvious corruption in their hearts. They were aware of God's obvious care and protection for them. And they knew disobeying Him has catastrophic consequences. 

They were a people shaken and raw. Stateless and vulnerable. Terrified and bewildered. But still chosen and beloved. 

At the end of Exodus, Moses could not enter the tabernacle because God's presence had filled it. 

As the first chapter of Leviticus began, Moses was standing just outside of the Tent of Meeting. God's voice called out to him from inside, inviting him to draw nearer. 

The children of Israel were close enough to hear Moses as he delivered this new message, but were kept at a distance.  

God knows they are wresting with guilt. He was ready to address how the children of Israel could reconcile themselves both today and for the all time.

And He had an eternal answer, not just for them, but a Person, the Messiah, the Lamb of God: Yeshua the Messiah who would bridge the gap between the lost and the Author of our souls forever.

Moses and the priests had an enormous responsibility. One that was given to them from God. One of holy leadership, self-sacrifice, one that required a love for the people and for God. 

Willful mistakes had devastating consequences. 

Leadership is still a serious calling. 

It was after reading part of Leviticus One and praying that I began to write a letter to the shepherds of today. It is an urgent one from the heart of a Father who loves His children and the Savior, Jesus, who is zealous for His bride. 

This letter is to pastors: the pastors of congregation, pastors of children, and pastors of worship.

One must understand that when God warns and corrects, it is out of love: both a love for leaders who are held to a higher standard and will give a full account, and love for the ones they are charged with protecting, teaching, and leading. 

Whether or not you are engaging the behaviors in the letter below, it concerns all of us to know what God does not tolerate. 

The Lord know the hearts of men. He knows our first responses to correction are often to defensiveness, mocking, and anger. But He corrects those He loves. 

I urge you to take this back to the Lord and ask Him where this should land on your heart. 

To The Shepherds: A Warning for these Times

Father, 

You have seen them. Pastors for whom pride is their folly, their god. Their church is their personal business. Their holy responsibility fills them with arrogance, not reverence, not fear of the Lord, but pride, fear of man, and competition. 

Their hearts are hardened toward the suffering and lonely. They cannot see Jesus in their midst standing next to the broken, alone, and unimpressive because their eyes hunt for those with money and power to fund the latest rogue project they have assumed has Your blessing. 

They pretend to be building for You, but these monuments are to their own hearts. Towers of Babel to surpass the church down the street or the one they cannot stop watching on Instagram. 

They are slaves to competition, compromise, and cruelty, smiling with wide open mouths, teeth dripping with the blood of the young, eager lambs whose throats they rip at will.

Whether it be a volunteer, an intern, a stranger they deem below them, a congregant who irritated them, a single mother who disgusted them- innocent blood drips from their teeth as they laugh, open mouthed in Your house and they praise You from unclean lips. 

They believe You are blind. Or compromised, Yourself. That You accept offerings tinged with the scent of the blood of Your people or the stench of neglect of their flocks. Or the stench of favoritism, nepotism, and worldly speech. 

Your sheep are hypnotized by designer clothes, expensive haircuts, and watches. They think Your favor is identical to satan's and that You make celebrities and not servants. 

Their flocks desire these treasures for themselves so they worship at the feet, become minions of whoever shines like silver coin no matter the filth of mixture that emerges from their mouths.

They scorn fruit and love money. 

Your house has become a theater that rewards personality over character, preferring the false fire of the loud and brash to the steady, wise embers of the holy and seasoned. 

They are deceived and sending scores to hell while congratulating themselves as good and faithful servants. 

They crave the platform more than they desire Your heart. They are hungry for Your glory and gobble it hungrily at every opportunity. They devour the weak amongst them through slander and gossip disguised as conversation or even prayer. 

They make meals of lambs while inside of Your house. They think You are deaf and cannot hear their screams as they are ripped apart in your halls. They think You are as compromised as they. 

They believe earnestly that You overlook the flies in the holy oil because of the way it sparkles in the light. 

They confuse the time You are giving them to repent for holy permission. 

They bring You offerings, rotted public offerings, while ignoring that pure and undefiled religion is to care for the orphans and widows in their distress. 

They bring you offerings ignoring the command to make right what they have broken in their brother or sister beforehand. 

Instead, they use the orphans and widows amongst them, people craving family and connection, as their personal unpaid labor force. 

They coerce those they are entrusted with into earning their favor and Your righteousness through never ending tasks and call it "serving God's house."

They know that people hunger and thirst for righteousness but instead of creating disciples, they call relentlessly for volunteers to help build unto themselves. What they are left with are unruly, starving sheep in vests, holding brooms, and believing their goodness comes from how many toilets they can clean.

Why create disciples when one can create a team of eager butlers?

In their cravings for riches and glory, they have forgotten that Your heart is with the brokenhearted, the weak, and that you hate unjust scales. 

They sing and dance wildly on Sundays atop their sins, making a concert unto themselves out of Your words. Then they feast, stuffing themselves, as the weakest in their midst beg for crumbs of validation. 

They form exclusive groups, secret rooms- resurrecting the ways of the Pharisees. They dress grotesquely and immodestly, drawing as much attention to themselves as they can, while giving each other awards for what You have done. 

They have made golden calves out of shepherds and called it due honor. 

As they feast, toast, and celebrate themselves, their flock, spiritually emaciated and dry lipped, writhe in the pews, crying for milk. Dreaming of meat. 

"But look at our miracles." 

"I never knew You."

In their desire to appear favored, they have forgotten Your voice and forsaken their anointing. 

They cannot hear You above the sound of their own ambition and imaginations. 

Insecurity that could have laid at Your altar and forged into immovable identity, instead decayed and bloomed into stubborn pride. 

So Your sheep starve as the shepherds feast on double portions and throw offerings into the wind. 

Where are Your shepherds, Lord? 

In the high places. 

"What is the bleating I hear?" 

It is the sound of wandering, hungry sheep, being driven to and fro by various, self-serving doctrines. The type that tickle itching ears and make sheep hoot and holler with excitement.

The me-centered gospel that promises the world and ignores the soul. 

The doctrine that tells them they are better than their neighbor, rather than called to love their neighbor. This doctrine that drags sheep up to the mountain and promises them everything their eyes can see if they would just bow down. 

It grows the flock into violent mockers, pretenders, white washed tombs who dress to impress on Sunday morning, spend Sunday afternoon practicing the witchcraft of gossip, and then brings them back to service the same evening to remain unchanged. 

They drink from strange wells. They cheat, they steal, they lie. They drown in social circles of self-congratulation. 

They are chased away from Your house not by the sin in the hearts, but by the hunger in their stomachs for the bread of life. For community. For leadership. For basic kindness.

The bleating you hear is Your sheep, driven into the wilderness. Their flesh being ripped from their bones by waiting, ravenous wolves.

The bleating You hear is their cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me" when they were never forsaken. Only deceived. Because not all who prophecy or drive out demons are known by You.

The flock didn't ask for lights or smoke or many mansions. 

They asked for a family of God, to be healed, to be together. 

Gathered. At the feet of our first love: 

Jesus. 

Boldly approach the throne of grace, repent, and be made whole so that You can be made new, and acceptable to serve until the day of return of Your Lord, the Christ, Jesus.