4 Questions That Demand Truthful Answers

The Next Reformation of the Christian Church—Is Already Here

Understanding the Major Changes the Next Reformation of the Christian Church Will Bring

The Church Is Dying

It’s no secret that the Church as we know it is imploding. Christians have been leaving the Church literally by the millions every year for decades. Not because they are leaving GOD. No. But they are fed-up with the Church, it’s arrogance, it’s unlove, and it’s narcissism.

Maybe you don’t see it. Maybe you’re part of the problem of why people are leaving—

It doesn’t take a prophet for us to see that Reformation in the modern era is here. It’s unavoidable. And it’s going to be unstoppable—one way or the other.

A lot of Christians are already seeing it. But perhaps ironically, the people who are not seeing it, mostly because they don’t want to see it, are the ones whom it will affect the most—not to mention they are also the ones who need it the most. I’m mostly talking about our Church leadership. But it will affect you, Mr. and Ms. Everyday Christian, as well.

This Next Reformation is beginning with people “deconstructing” (meaning reevaluating, introspecting, unpacking, dissecting) the faith they were told to believe and then ultimately walking away from the Church. Note I did not say walking away from GOD, or Christianity per se—I said the Church.

It’s the organizations and institutions and by extension the beliefs that make up the Church, meaning its people and leadership, that are at the root of the problem and it is they who are the reason why Reformation is so badly needed.

This is really not about institutions. It’s about—YOU.

What Does Reformation Even Mean?

600 to 700 years ago, early Reformers began to question the Roman Catholic Church’s edicts, beliefs, doctrines and dogmas. Men like Huss, Jerome, Wycliffe, and others who would come a century or two later. Many of these men were murdered by the Catholic Church for teaching “heresy”, assumed “apostate beliefs from the pit of hell!” Note the drama the Church adds to make simple disagreement sound like demonic possession. But that’s how simple minds within the Church often operate—on fear mongering and emotion instead of reasoned factual historical scholarship.

500 years ago the printing press became the catalyst that fueled the last major Reformation of the Christian Church. No longer was the Church able to maintain its iron grip over what information was taught, and to whom, and in what way. In the past, with its full-control over information, the Church has always been able to put its own peculiar “spin” on the facts, often making a lie seem like it was the truth of God.

While calling the Church a “liar” may sound abrasive to us in the modern era, remember that the Catholic Church not 300 years ago was still murdering Protestant Reformers by the thousands for doing nothing more than preaching what you and I are taught to believe today as “the Gospel” truth.

Let’s not sugar-coat this—the Church was lying to everyone and then murdering the people who disagreed with and attempted to expose their lies.

What spirit was the Church actually harboring while it was doing this? Sure we can try to spin this by saying that there have been some evil leaders now and again within the Church,

“But the Church itself is not evil, Keith!”

Okay, and what are we to do if those “now and again evil leaders” were actually in-charge of putting stuff into the Bible way back when? We’d be stuck with their evil books for centuries if not millennia.

“Well God would just not allow that to happen Keith!”

Oh, really? Then I implore you to keep reading…

With the advent of the printing press, Reformers like Calvin and Luther could now distribute their pamphlets, books and even Bibles en masse to the public outside of the Church’s dare I say rather fascist purview and control.

Keep in mind that the last Reformation wasn’t something that happened overnight or even within a year or two. It took decades, even the better part of a few centuries for the Protestant Reformation to finally take root and grow into what we know today as the Protestant Church(es).

Reformation is always something that takes a while to grow, and when it does, there is friction, often bad friction, between those who want to just maintain the status quo in Church leadership, and those who see the lies of the past for what they are.

In the modern world, we’re taught to only look at Reformation as something that happened in the past and not something that we will ever need again, at least that’s what we’re taught by the people now in-charge of whatever Church we call home. They have no errors that require reformation.

Or do they?

How ironic that the people telling us that Reformation could never happen again, are the ones in the same position the Catholic Church was 500 years ago. Now it’s BOTH the Protestant and Catholic Churches (I include Orthodox here as well) that find themselves in the crosshairs of what is being called a Second or Next Reformation of the Christian Church.

Changes From the Last Reformation

Luther and the other reformers made a grand push away from the falsehoods and man-made traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. But some would say that the Reformers didn’t go far enough.

For instance, the last Reformation saw major changes to the Bible.

The Reformers literally excised, dropped, ripped-out entire books from the Bible that the Roman Catholic church had assembled nearly 1,000 years prior! How can you just cut stuff out of the “Word of God” like this? Didn’t God protect the Bible from bad Church leadership!?

Evidently not, because the Reformers just 500 years ago did exactly that—they changed the Bible.

The books that were dropped from the Bible are often referred to as the “Apocrypha” or “hidden books”. There has always been some form of controversy surrounding them, even within the Catholic Church. Jerome who translated them into Latin back in the late 4th and early 5th centuries didn’t want them in the Bible canon. But he was forced by Pope Damasus to translate and include them. A millennia later, the Reformers would drop these books anyway.

But not all of the Reformers agreed on what should have been culled from the Bible. Luther didn’t want to just stop with these “intertestamental period” Apocryphal books. No, Luther actually wanted to junk even more books from the Bible, namely the books of: Hebrews, James, 1–3 John, Jude, and Revelation. But Luther lost this fight with his fellow Reformers. Instead, Luther settled for placing them at the back of the Bible as “less than inspired”.

Even today, this is the reason these books appear at the back of the Bible. Revelation didn’t show up at the back of the Bible because God put it there, Luther did.

Incidentally, Luther didn’t want the book of Hebrews included in the Bible either; mostly because the book has an “unknown author”. Without a known author, the book factually has no authority. We’ll get back to this unknown author business in a moment.

Fast-forward a few hundred years and all of this controversy over the Bible and it’s “less-than-inspired” or “unknown authored” books has been utterly forgotten, or deliberately buried (not taught to us in the laity) as mainstream modern Christianity has setup new man-made “holy traditions” all of us are supposed to abide by.

We now call the Bible the “Word of God”, declaring it utterly “inerrant” (without errors), “infallible”, and “wholly inspired” in its every word, jot, and tittle. Even though it still has “less than inspired” and “unknown authored” books within it.

But is the Bible really the inerrant, infallible and wholly inspired tome we are told to believe by our Church leadership? Or are we simply believing in more man-made Church “holy tradition” inherited from a lying Catholic Church and then a Protestant Church too indoctrinated by its own Mother Church to see the original errors in their fullest scope?

These are questions already being put before, not so much the Church itself, but directly to the people seeking a deeper relationship with GOD.

In this sense, the Church’s leadership are the impediment. So like Luther, Reformers of the Next Reformation are simply ignoring your Church leadership, going around them, so to speak; even outright leaving the Church to die slowly still clinging desperately to its lies.

4 Essential Questions the Next Reformation Must Answer Truthfully

Luther nailed his 95 Theses, meaning questions, to the front door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The Next Reformation will have its own theses, questions that everyone who remains part of the Christian Church must answer truthfully for themselves.

I present merely 4 essential ones. Others may offer 20; or 50. Who knows? I’m not so much interested in the minutiae as I am getting to the root of the lie. In answering these 4 critical questions, I believe the minutiae will take care of itself.

As a contemporary Christian reading these, you may or may not agree with these issues or questions, but they will be raised by someone, people like me and others on a Reformed path, and you will have to deal with them—in one way or another.

Some of these questions you may agree with out of the box—in fact, you’ve already been thinking about them. Others of you will shake your head and wonder how anyone can even be a “Christian” by questioning something so foundational to the Christian faith.

Perhaps the point is that these are questions and issues that have been hidden from you—from all of us—either on purpose or just naturally because some of them have been forgotten due to the passage of time.

But as we enter the Information Age, the internet has become our “printing press”, and in like manner of the Reformation 500 years before, the Church’s deepest sins are now bubbling to the surface of contemporary Christian thought. Everyday Christian people like you and me, literally millions of us, are bringing to light the errors, pagan traditions, even outright lies that have been installed within this faith we call Christianity for over two millennia.

Perhaps the most foundational of these questions that will demand a truthful answer will be the one we’ve already touched on; one the previous Reformers also considered and took action on—

1. Is the Bible Really the Inerrant “Word of God”?

In asking this question, what is perhaps really meant to be asked is: Did the Church do an honest job of assembling the Bible? Or did the Church’s Pagan (meaning Gentile) anti-Semitic leadership simply assemble a Bible that played more into the hearts and minds of Pagan (again Gentile) Romans than it did with the Hebraic Jewish crowds that Jesus and the Apostles were actually a part of?

It’s a question I do not think the reformers themselves seriously took up.

However, if the Reformers of 500 years ago were able to junk what they saw as “less than inspired” books from the Bible, “God’s Word” as we now call it, did they go far enough? Luther didn’t seem to think so. He wanted to junk Hebrews from the Bible simply because the book had an unknown author.

Keep in mind that excising books from the Bible didn’t destroy Christianity 500 years ago, and it won’t destroy it now—but it could have massive repercussions about what future Christians believe and are taught about GOD, and about who Jesus really historically, and most importantly, truthfully was.

Like the Roman Church he was raised within, Luther was just as anti-Semitic. It was this anti-Jewish perspective that indeed influenced Luther’s judgement. While Luther was all about junking the books of James and Jude for their more Jewish leanings, he appears to have coveted the books of Peter, books known by every Bible scholar worth their salt, both ancient and modern—to be outright forgeries.

Most of us as everyday Christians are not aware that the Apostle Peter did not write the books of Peter. We’re told a lie that the Apostle Peter authored these books. He did not. The Church knows Peter didn’t write them. But the Church doesn’t want you to know this.

Without pulling any punches, the Church, your pastor, is perpetuating a lie. They know it’s a lie because they learned this in seminary; well, if they went to a decent one anyway.

To further the lie, the Apostles Matthew, Mark, and John did not write their respective gospels either. ALL of these books are what scholars refer to as “pseudepigrapha”, books written by “unknown authors” in the name of someone else. In short, they are ALL forgeries.

The Next Reformation will need to deal with such “forged” books.

But it’s not as simple as just junking them from the Bible as Luther and the other Reformers did with the Apocryphal books. At issue is that the gospels themselves do likely contain many historical truths and events about the life of Jesus and the Disciples—although, not everything within them is historically accurate. What is accurate of the life of Jesus and what is just made-up balderdash?

Which dovetails us into the next essential question —

2. Did the Church Lie about Jesus?

If the early Pagan (Gentile) Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church lied about the Bible, meaning what they decided to put into “their” Bible that we now use and call the “Word of God”, were they being truthful about who and what Yeshuah ha Mashicah, Jesus the Messiah, really was?

Did the early Church deliberately manufacture a version of Jesus that was not historically accurate?

Again, in asking this question we need to have some historical background the Church has been willfully hiding from you, from all of us, regarding what has become known as the “traditional” versus “historical” Jesus.

Who was Jesus, really? And what did the earliest of Christians believe about him before the Catholic Church actually came to power?

In some of my previous articles, I point out that there is a divide emerging within Christianity, a movement if you will, that seeks to “restore”, for lack of a better term, the true or original historical foundations of Christianity back to what they were before the fledgeling sect of Roman Catholicism came to power under Constantine.

In my article, Why Jesus Left the Church, I attempt to offer an overview of the stark differences between “historical” versus “traditional” Christianity—as evidenced within the pages of the Bible itself.

In noticing this divide between a historical verses traditional view of Jesus, one man’s writings come to the forefront of the controversy—

3. Should the Books of Paul be Dropped from the Bible?

It may come as a sincere shock to most Christians, but Paul of Tarsus only became an “apostle” after Constantine made the Roman Catholic Church the State religion of Rome. Prior to this, Paul’s fledgling sect of Pagan (Gentile) Christian adherents was all but extinct coming out of the first century.

While later Catholic Church tradition manufactured a narrative that Peter and Paul were best buddies, most seminary-trained Christian scholars know that was not the true history. Paul and the “Super Apostles” (NIV) leading the Jerusalem Church were, in fact, bitter rivals. There are historical accounts of Paul even attempting to murder James, Jesus’ brother. These are things the Church hides from all of us.

“But—but how can you even have Christianity without Paul?!”

Exactly the point. You can’t. The truth is based on the witness of two or three. But within the Bible as assembled by the Roman Catholic Church, we really only get the witness of ONE, Paul. Just Paul. And only Paul. (Or people from Paul’s group, if you will.) You could honestly say that Christianity as we know it is the exclusive invention of Paul—not Jesus.

“But Keith, if we get rid of Paul the whole idea of a New Testament, the New Covenant, disappears!”

So it does. In fact, as an experiment, if you remove the books of Paul and Paul’s group from the Roman Catholic New Testament, what we are left with is simply—Jesus. A very Jewish Messiah, and a very different but also a very Hebraic “Gospel” message.

And it was this deeply Jewish Gospel that Paul rebelled against.

Later the Gentile-centric, anti-Semitic Catholic Church would even stoop to calling the Hebraic or Jewish Christians who followed the Jewish Messiah “Judaizers”, a prerogative term designed to bully Christians into accepting their State-sponsored version of Pagan Pauline Christian thought.

So the question begs asking, “Was the so-called “New Covenant” really of GOD?” Or was it something manufactured by just one guy and then inserted into Christianity by the Pagan (ie. Gentile-centric) Church in Rome?

“God would NEVER allow such a thing! The Bible is the Word of God! The Bible is the—”

… same “Word of God” that the Reformers of just 500 years ago dropped all kinds of books from. And some of whom were willing to drop even more from for the sake of getting to the truth.

Regardless of what we have been led to believe, the question remains: Was Paul really an “apostle” of Jesus, someone Paul never once met? Or are we just believing Paul because the Church told us to—or else!?

The final essential question comes after we have answered all the others, but it stands on its own as well—

4. Does GOD Really Need Sacrifice To Forgive?

If you remove Paul from the Bible, a very different and much more historical Hebraic versus pagan Roman Jesus begins to emerge from within its pages.

Perhaps not so ironically, many Christians today have already answered this question within their hearts, even if they don’t discuss it with their Christian brothers and sisters openly.

Was Jesus really a human sacrifice GOD needed to forgive us of our sin?

We see that a truly loving GOD would not need any kind of sacrifice to forgive. We don’t know why, but it’s just what we feel within our spirit.

I know, it sounds “heretical” to some of us. No, I get it, it does—until you realize that human sacrifice was never something GOD ever asked for. I’ve written somewhat pointedly about this in some of my other articles.

The prophets wrote extensively about what GOD thinks of blood sacrifice. But with Paul at the helm of the Roman Catholic New Testament, all of what the prophets wrote gets overshadowed, swept under the rug. Ultimately ignored on our way to declaring Jesus a pagan human sacrifice sent to absolve the wold of its assumed sins, many of which are simply more godless inventions of the Church.

What the Next Reformation Will Look Like

I know what you’re thinking. You’re possibly not on-board with any of this. And that’s okay. But now you know what’s ahead for you to think about or just outright reject. No one is telling you what to think or believe.

But some of us are already nodding our heads in agreement at least with some of these points. But whether you agree or disagree is going to be moot in another century or two. Left on its current path, the Christian Church as we know it will cease to exist.

Reformation is already here. It’s already happening. The Church is already crumbling beneath it.

People are leaving the Church literally by the millions each year. You maybe don’t want to see it because you don’t understand why, but GOD is bringing Reformation and you, dear Christian, will not escape the controversies that are even now arising from it.

If the previous Protestant Reformation is any indicator, you and I will fall into one of several camps of thought, or belief as the case may be:

• Traditional Catholic or Protestant—You don’t see any reason to change. You’ve been a “practicing Catholic” all your life and you’re not going to change now. You will literally die still believing that Jesus saved you from your sins and nothing is going to change you mind. Protestant believers will feel the same way. In fact, as belts tighten and the money dries up, these Protestants will likely set aside their differences with the Catholic Church and merge into the ONE Church for financial stability as the Christian Church deflates and fractures. But the ONE Church won’t really change; their beliefs will be status quo and just as Pagan (Gentile) as what the Roman Catholic Fathers created.
• Historical Christianity Returns—Something in your spirit tells you that the Church founded in Pagan Rome hasn’t really been led of GOD, at least not lately, if ever. The simple teachings of Jesus resonate with you. You know GOD doesn’t really hate gay people, that sex isn’t a sin, nor any of the other manufactured sins the Church has created. You’re starting to look at the Bible more like an anchor around your neck than something GOD actually supposedly wrote. Sure, there is value in the Bible, but you stopped calling it the “Word of God” a long time ago. And Paul is looking more and more like he is the true “god” of Christianity, or at least Paul’s Mithraic version of Jesus.
• Somewhere In Between—Some of us will recognize that the tenets of the Next Reformation are in fact true and offer a much better understanding of GOD. But even so, some of us are just not going to be able to let go of worshipping “Jesus” as opposed to dedicating our worship directly to GOD. The irony is that Jesus never once told anyone to pray to himself. But the man-made traditions of the Church have turned the Jewish teacher into a kind of Mithraic demigod people in Christianity now venerate, pray to, and even worship. We just can’t let go of it. I’m not condemning anyone for worshipping Jesus, I’m just pointing out what people will do and believe. The implosion is happening now as you read this. It will take time for the dust to settle, centuries in fact. But one thing will be for sure, as Christians, we’re all about to become much better scholars.

MOST OF US are in the “Somewhere In Between” camp right now. The Next Reformation is here. All over the internet, the tenets, understandings, unraveled lies, and historical truths are just beginning to bubble to the surface for us to look at, chew on, and pray about.

This article is but one of those, one of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, being published all over our modern “printing press”. A press the Church no longer exerts control over.

And just like the Catholic Church did 500 years ago, a lot of leaders in traditional Christian circles are beginning to preach against the Next Reformation, mostly because they don’t see it, they don’t understand it. They think it’s just more “Liberalism” run amok within the Church.

Like the Pharisees Jesus chastised, the Church’s leadership are blinded by their own traditions of dogma, so they don’t think there is a need for Reformation at all.

But there is a need for it.

There is a deep need because Christians today are LEAVING your Church by the millions. They have a need to see GOD as GOD really is.

Call me a heretic if you like. But many reading this have experienced exactly what I am talking about.

I know, reading something like this seems like blasphemy to you, like I’m some kind of hell-bound apostate for daring to even utter such a thing—for daring to challenge God!

Stop.

As much as the Church thinks it’s following GOD, it’s not. Questioning the Church is not challenging GOD. This is exactly what the Reformers did 500 years ago—they challenged the liars of the Catholic Church. Not GOD.

The fact is, it is GOD who is leading the Next Reformation! Hundreds of millions are leaving the Church. It’s not because they are being led astray by the devil. It’s because they are through with the unloving people the Church created.

Conclusion

We as honest, everyday Christians need to grow up. The Next Reformation is not going to allow us to just sit idle and not dig deeper.

We need to stop looking at the Bible like it’s “God in book form” and start looking deeper into the ancient scriptures, perhaps especially the surviving scriptures the pagan Church refused to canonize. We need to begin looking at the Bible with the minds of the scholars, with intelligence, and with deeper introspection of the people who assembled the Bible and why they chose the books that they did.

There should be NOTHING about GOD, about the Church, about our faith, that is outside of questioning. We’ve been down that road and all it leads to are lies and disinformation being spread as “truth”.

We have to UNlearn a lot of things now.

And there are some things about GOD we need to learn for the first time as Christians — like the name of GOD, something the Church itself has never known.

We have to stop with the MANufactured “holy tradition”, or the “God-will-strike-you-dead-if-you-don’t-believe” whatever nonsense.

We need to have the freedom and the safety to explore and debate openly without some self-avowed leader, bogus prophet, or fascist Church demanding we must believe their dogma or we’re going to hell.

We have to start thinking more like scholars and less like lemmings.

In fact, we already are. Many of us. By the millions.

The Next Reformation is going to be about facts, history, and undoing the falsehoods the Church saddled us with from its anti-Semitic Roman past.

It’s not going to be a fun ride. It wasn’t for the Reformers 500 years ago. It won’t be fun for any of us either.

But it will be necessary. And it’s LONG overdue.

In the end, when the dust clears, hopefully, the truth will be exposed, and that truth WILL bring us closer to GOD and the true Hebraic teachings of the GOD Jesus knew.

So to paraphrase Joshuah,

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the Roman gods your ancestors worshiped, and serve the Lord AHYH. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the pagan gods your ancestors served in Rome, or the gods of the Persians whom Paul taught you to live by. But as for me and my house, we will serve the GOD of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we will serve the GOD Jesus knew—we will serve AHYH!”

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Keith Michael is a Christian author and lay-scholar who has spent nearly 40 years within various Christian churches; he is the author and contributor of numerous Christian books, including FALSE WITNESS — How the Christian Church Built a Foundation of Lies