In the days before the internet and social media, you would rarely ever pick up a newspaper and read an article from a pastor publicly outing and judging another pastor for all the world to see. You most certainly would not see anything on television or hear radio news where a pastor is openly criticizing someone at another church for spending over the budget approved by the church leaders and members.

I had a disturbing video show up in my YouTube feed last night from a popular pastor on the web with nearly five hundred thousand subscribers. The pastor in question apparently overspent on the approved travel budget and a few other things. The pastor who posted the video online actually went so far as to resort to name calling by referring to him as “spending like a drunken sailor”. The more disturbing part of this is the video had over 400 comments from his supporters cheering him on for his actions and “exposing” the guy he was verbally attacking. Initially I was dumbfounded, then angry. Then I wrote a retaliatory post and sat there for a minute before I posted it. At the last moment I decided to pray for the guy instead of posting my scathing rebuttal which included references to Scripture about how he should handle these kinds of situations. The attacking pastor even admitted he knew the man, which makes it even more disturbing. This is a man with a masters degree in theology and a large public following.

I want to give all of you some words from the mouth of our most precious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as He is discussing the signs of the end times in last of the five Olivet Discourses. Keep in mind this is some of the most important prophetic material in all of Scripture. Matthew 24:10 – “At that time many will turn away from The Faith and will betray and hate each other”. This is literally what we are beginning see among the global church of Believers. Instead of making every effort to preserve the unity of the church we are going behind the backs of each other and attacking like wolves. Understand this: Every Believer on this planet is a flawed human being. They are flawed in their actions, words, teachings, writings, and every other phase of their life. When we accepted the free gift of pardon for our sins past, present, and future, and were baptized into The Holy Spirit, we did not get sprinkled with magic Christian dust and become perfect. Absolutely not. We are all still messed up and we have a daily obligation to pray and repent. Of course being saved does not give us a license to sin. We could do an entire class on that topic alone.

One of the fifty plus commands of Jesus is Matthew 18:15 – “Go to Christians who offend you”. I am not judging this gentleman who failed miserably at following the commands of Jesus, I am only discerning his fruit, of which there was none in his video. If he actually knows the guy like he claims don’t you think his first inclination would have been to speak with him privately as he is commanded? Apparently not. he chose to record a ten plus minute video outright attacking him and calling him a “drunken sailor”, with his followers piling on and saying “get him boy” essentially. I am sure every last one of these people who were involved in this call themselves followers of Jesus Christ. Do you see where this is headed?

Indeed maybe the end times are upon us. I try not be lose focus of evangelizing by channeling my energy into prophecy date setting. There is enough of that going out there already, but Jesus literally predicted this would start happening. I think this is a great time for us to conduct a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves and see if we currently measure up to The Will of God and His Son. We have an eternal obligation to keep each other built up and refreshed. If another Believer is getting off track, firstly we need to be praying for him, and secondly we need to be making some kind of heartfelt effort to get the person reconciled. Can you imagine if a church membership started posting derogatory attacks about each other on Facebook and Twitter, or is that already happening too?

My prayer for everyone is let’s all be careful of having a prideful and selfish admiration for earthly distractions. With all the crazy stuff happening in the world today and communication traveling the entire globe at light speed, it’s way too easy for us to get off track. I do it. We all do it. We can’t go ten minutes without keeping up with latest worldly whatever. Challenge another Believer in your life to replace cell phone, television, and internet time with Bible study time and also challenge yourself. And above everything else, follow the commands of Jesus Christ and live out His Word.

Blessings everyone, you are all super special in God’s eyes..