In the world we live in, the moral fiber of this country is being destroyed like a virus day by day. One lie built upon another. Man in his unregenerate unsaved fallen nature is a slave to sin. What is a real concern to me is how much false doctrine is being taught within the Christian community. God's intention was to keep His body safe by putting a protected hedge around them as He did for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That is what the Garden means, a protected hedge. I have heard too much false doctrine coming from the pulpits of so-called born again believers. I believe the Devil has some real strongholds and has come as an angel of light and is deceiving many, in many congregations. I know that this is a very serious statement, but we know this can happen.

Scripture tells us in Rev.3:12 that the church at Pergamum had Satan enthroned in some area of their assembly. The word Pergamum in the Greek means, a spirit of confusion. Let's not be naive and live like ostriches with our heads in the sand. You thing Satan doesn't have his demons and top generals in church settings. If he could sneak into the Garden of Eden and deceive Adam and Eve because their guard was down, he will and is operating in the same way today.

This subtle deception can be seen if, it's our intention to walk in holiness before the Lord. Now remember all deceptions are built on lies. The reasons why liars can't inherit the kingdom of God is because, they have a lying spirit deceiving them. Remember the definition of sin. It's erring, missing the mark, losing our allotment and not sharing in a prize. Now what does it mean to walk in holiness? Let's define it from scripture. It means we are hearing God in our spirit telling us that we are clean and wholly purified in His sight.

In 11 Peter 3:13-14 he gives us this principle. "We should have an attitude of looking for Jesus' return as new heavens, and a new earth as God has promised us. When Jesus returns He wants to find His children knowing that they stand in a secure position within Him. He says we should not be judging ourselves and looking at our nakedness or being controlled by shame. If we are looking at ourselves as He sees us, then we will be secure, and we will be at peace with great confidence, free from fears, agitating passions and moral conflicts." What Peter meant when he said new heavens is, we are God's new heavens, when His power is totally at work in our being. We separately and corporately are His body. The realm of heaven is in us and we are to be functioning in it. Shame which is a living entity should have no power over our lives.

Adam said that he was afraid, when God showed up in the garden to talk to him because; he was focusing on his nakedness. He had lost his concept of how God loved him, which was with out conditions. Unless our relationship and walk in the Holy Spirit is deeply rooted, the constant bombardment from all areas of life erodes our thought life and we lose this healthy opinion that God has of us. Some where in our thinking we have been lied to into believing that now that we have met Christ and He is our savior, as long as we go to church and fulfill our so called Christian duties, this will protect us from a sin conscience awareness. This cannot be any farther from the truth.

There is no place in our walk with God of complacency. Your either growing in the grace and knowledge of God, or you are falling behind and not maturing as we ought.

What the real threat in some of our born again Christian communities is, we are still teaching laws and rules of measuring up attitudes and focusing on our nakedness or behavior. Now speaking from a worldly perspective, let's define how our moral fiber in America is being eroded. I am barely touching on the moral decay with these examples.

Over forty some years ago, they had the Donna reed show on TV. The censers had to make a rating decision whether they could televise a segment that told of her being divorced on the series. Those were some of the tough ratings going on in those days. I know this is hard to believe compared with what we are seeing as ratings today. The depravity and the filth in movies and on TV cannot even compare. It's as if a dark cloud has covered our minds and we have no more righteous indignation in out lives. Holiness? Where is it? Partial birth abortion. Taking a live fetus partially out of the birth canal and sucking out its brain to kill it, so it can be more easily removed. Plain murder an abomination in God's sight. Holiness? Where is it?

Taking the Ten Commandments out of public buildings because it violates the law of separation of church and state. Holiness? Where is it? Rights for homosexuals and lesbians to be able to marry and raise children. Holiness? Where is it? Let's look at one of the biggest atrocities ever displayed on the planet. The holocaust, Hitler with his demented mind and under the influence of demonic forces killed six million Jews in one of the most grotesque manners ever seen on the planet. This is not counting six million poles and other ethnic people. Have you ever seen some of the documentary films of the slaughtered and burnt bodies, not even talking about the starving people who were still alive? Holiness? Where is it?

We now see how the cancer of sin operates in our lives and the grotesque ways it manifests itself. Go back and read the verses that describe the fruits of sin and you can see everything from strife to idolatry. You say there is no idolatry going on in my life. What is idolatry? It's nothing more then putting something in God's place in your life. How about yourself. To me when I realized this in my own life, I was very thankful to the Lord for pointing this out to me.

I didn't take it as a guilt trip but as a word of wisdom of an area that I had to watch, so it would not take root in my life. I hope you are not having a hard time believing what I have just said. Do you have any idolatry or strife going on in your life? Kind of a wide variance to be put into the same category of these two traits of strife and idolatry stopping you from inheriting the kingdom. Therefore, we can see that we must deal with the disease that can cause these symptoms to manifest themselves. As God kids; we need to be going through a constant purification process by the Holy Spirit daily by an intimate and trusting relationship with Him. In this way, He can keep us protected in our minds from being deceived by the enemy. God's whole intention is to show His children that He is a loving Father. If you really understand this concept, you have to have brain damage to not want this with all your heart or you are being deceived big time. For us to allow this to happen there is something we have to learn to do.

Paul in his writings to the Corinthians in 11Cor: 6:17-18 says this. " We need to come out from among unbelievers and separate ourselves and touch not the unclean thing and then God will be able to receive us kindly and treat us with favor. In turn, He will be a Father to us and we will be His sons and daughters."

Let me spend a moment to define what was just said. Having the sin principle operating in our heart and mind causes us to come into agreement with other people who do not know who they are in Christ. This can be the unsaved or our brothers and sisters in Christ the Holy Ghost is constantly at work trying to persuade us because our fight is with an unbelieving hearts. It isn't that God has something against us because we are soul sick. He isn't saying get your act cleaned up or I can't love you, as I have heard taught in the Christian community for too many years. When there is no hungering and thirsting after God; this holds back the healing hand of the Lord to be all He wants to be in our lives. If we are deceived as Adam and are working out our own way of reaching God putting on fig leaf aprons or living in our own self-righteousness, we put God at a distance and He can't support us as He wishes.

Since Adam decided to put fig aprons on, he departed from God's protective hedge. God in His love for him made him coats to wear as he went his way, to do his own thing. We're still acting the same way. This scripture tells us to not touch unclean things. I don't want to touch any unclean things. Do you? In the book of Colossians, Paul was sharing a concept that explains how susceptible we are to touch unclean things which is a deception of the enemy to distract us from God's instructions of how to stay healthy and let Him be a Father to us.

In Col. 2 Paul says. "Let no one act as an umpire and tell you that you are unfit to inherit the prize. Don't live a life as if you still belong to the world. You are still living by rules and regulations of externalism. Such as don't handle this, don't taste that, and don't touch them. There is no eternal life in these practices. These rules all lead to death as they are being acted upon. They have no eternal life connected to them. If you live by these standards, you are following human precepts and doctrines. These practices to the natural eye look like they are a wise way of living, but their is no value in changing our behavior and walking in the admonition of the Lord."

We have a perfect example of using fig leafs to make aprons to cover our nakedness as Adam did. I said earlier that there is a difference between religion and Christianity. Religion in its true sense is a worship of self and nothing more then fig leaf apron making to cover our shame, which is man's concept of reaching up for God in his own efforts.

You notice with in this portion of scripture that he uses terms as don't touch, taste and handle. The disease of sin starts in our thought life. It's a process of being deceived as Adam and Eve was deceived. As we said earlier, a spider web being weaved. The word taste means to experience good or bad the word touch means to attach oneself to, as a relationship. The word handle means to injure and manipulate. Let's put this together. Eve was deceived because she flirted with the idea of disobeying God by the beauty of the tree. Therefore, the serpent got her attention. She flirted with this judgmental principle of good and bad. She then touched and went into the second phase by tasting when she decided to take up a relationship with the serpent by having a conversation with him. Finally, she got manipulated and injured. She handled and this became her injury. The conclusion, she put a wall between herself and God and severed her passionate walk with Him.

The greatest injury of life that we need to guard against is this happening to us today because nothing has changed. When we focus on our faults and mistakes that we make in our lives and do not allow the Holy Spirit to lavish His total favor and acceptance as a loving friend in our thoughts and emotions, we participate with the shame-based entity of demonic influence with in our self and bruise our soul.

The Devil still wants us to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. How does he do this? For non-saved people, thinking in terms of our behavior in right and wrong concepts is the only way they can think. However, for the born again Christian, this is a dis-grace. Meaning we separate ourselves from the grace of God and we cannot experience His love, forgiveness and the power to grow and maintain our relationship with Him. The reason being, we focus on our sin base nature that died with Christ on the cross. God took it from us the day we were saved; we continually dig up that old stinking rotted corpse from the grave. Scripture tells us that when we received Jesus into our hearts, we became a new creation; old ways of thinking should have been put away. Scripture goes on to say that, we received the mind of Christ. This should be basic stuff to us, who have been saved many years ago.

To the new Christian, once they recognize this, it is a joy to have this weight lifted from their minds. If we would just teach the love of God and realize what it means to be justified people in His sight, there would be more of God's kids hungering and thirsting after Him. In many places in the scriptures it states that the justified, us the born again believer, must live by faith. Romans 14:23 states, "anything that is not from a faith foundation is sin." This is a far different concept of looking at sin from an outward behavioral view. We can't restore the already rotten fruit behavior of sin out of the branches of our lives. It's our hearts that have to be changed, where the root or issues of life are formed. This is where the Holy Spirit operates from to bring us the presence of God. This is what grows healthy fruit or behavior in our lives.

Faith is defined in the bible as, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Simplifying this statement, faith is hearing The Holy Spirits voice speaking into our spiritual ear, telling us God's perfect will for our lives. It starts as a promise and as we allow Him to persuade us, by us having an intensive passionate relationship with Him, these promises then become a physical manifestation that we can see with our physical eyes.

It's us having this relationship that stops us from being tempted to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. In the Garden of Eden, there also was the Tree of Life. In Adams fallen condition he could not eat from the Tree of Life. We know or should know that the Tree of Life is God Himself. Because we have been restored by accepting Jesus into our lives, we can now eat from the Tree of Life. We can now bolding come to the throne of grace and ask the Lord for the things He promised us and to continue to function in our inheritance as He always intended.