What if God was a Scam-demic?

We are in the age where persons think what we are going through is a Scamdemic, Plandemic.

I want to engage your imagination for a while. I’m going to paint a dreary picture.

Let’s pretend for argument’s sake that you just found out that there is no God.

The results from a major scientific research came back and the evidence can’t be ignored. The church has no response and it’s all over the news. The headline on the newspaper says “Religion is a global mistake, God isn’t real”. The pastors, priests and bishops all over the worlds have come together to make an announcement, agreeing that they were wrong. It’s official, there is no God. How would you feel?

Would you feel Sad? Angry? Confused? Relieved?

If it was finally confirmed that there was no God, what would be the first thing you would do? Would the world fall into chaos, with everybody killing and stealing? Will there be a sudden rise in rape and murder?

Have you ever felt shackled by any of the laws of God, like you just don’t get the reason why these restrictions exist? A law that feels like God is telling you to wear a mask while driving in a car by yourself. I have great news for you, today we are going to throw all of the laws out the window one-by-one just to see What if God was a Scamdemic?

Let Us pray

Oh God I come before You this morning asking for the strength to deliver the message. I pray that what I have to say will touch the heart of at least one person viewing. In Jesus’ name, amen.

There are thousands of laws and instructions in the Bible that help to guide our behaviour. However to make it simple, Jesus had summarized them into two great commandments.

In Matthew 22:37 – 40,  Jesus said: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

So if there is no God we will have no need to follow these commandments. We can simply ignore them.

Let us start by ignoring this one: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart”. This should be simple right?

If there is no God, we don’t need to love Him.

I have been a Christian for so long, I might have accidentally started to obey this commandment out of habit. So let’s find out exactly how to NOT love God. If we first learn how God expects us to love him, we can know how to properly disobey God by NOT showing love for Him.

The Bible has a dead giveaway. It gives us two ways we can show love to God.

Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

John 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.

The first verse basically says that to love God, you must first believe, by faith, that He exists. So to displease God, all we have to do is, believe that He isn’t real, and have no faith in His words.

But, what is faith? For the purpose of this presentation I will give you a very simple, yet clear definition. Faith is believing that everything God says is true and acting like it’s true. So the opposite of faith is not taking His words as truth, and doing nothing about it. That sounds pretty straight forward, and for the purpose of this sermon, we already set the stage for this life of unbelief.

We should also NOT diligently seek Him, that’s also pretty easy. We can just simply stop reading my Bible, stop attending church, stop praying, done!

So far so good, this atheism thing is easier than I thought.

Finally, just so I don’t accidentally love God, because we all now think he doesn’t exist, there is one more command to disobey.

“If ye love me, keep my commandments”. To show the world that we don’t love God anymore, we have to ignore His commandments. No new laws to learn. This feels like freedom, no wonder Satan got 1/3 of the angels in heaven, all they had to do, was whatever they wanted to do. This is the life, now let’s see what other laws we need to ignore.

The first and greatest commandment, that instructs us to love the Lord is a summary of the first 4 of the 10 commandments. So Let’s dig in deep and see what we need to ignore, now that we believe  God does not exist.

Exodus 20: 3 states the first commandment:

1.      You shall have no other gods before Me.

Living like God doesn’t exist means we don’t need to keep this first commandment anymore, right?

You should know that humans have a God shaped void in our hearts. If we choose not to fill it with the one true God, then we choose the closest image of God; ourselves.

Everybody, whether religious or atheist, lives by a set of principles that guide their decisions in life. We forget that our principles, thoughts and choices were influenced by someone or something.

We are influenced by our family, our culture, the media and society at large.

Your clothing is influenced, your favourite food was because of someone’s influence, all of our opinions were influenced by someone.

Every influence that is not of God comes from THE BAD INFLUENCER; Satan Himself.

Regardless of what you do, you will have to choose your god. Either you choose the principle of an everlasting, unchanging, all knowing, loving God. The God that created you and architected a set of laws and principles specifically designed to benefit you. Or you can choose to follow the laws made up by the BAD INFLUENCER, fallible man, celebrities, gurus and governments.

So who will be your god?  Money, culture, the media, your family members? You must choose one, but since we live like God doesn’t exists, you can’t choose Him.

The second commandment is……..

2.      You shall not make idols.

Now that you’ve chosen your new God. Since God does not exist, the next law we need to ignore is idol worship.

God made this commandment to prevent his people from assigning his authority to physical idols .

There is a danger when persons make God physical because we start attributing the qualities of God to the physical object.

The bible is the closest physical representation of God and even in the Bible, God asks us to hide the words in our heart and write the laws on our heart.

However, if we don’t believe in God you can make idols physical. Idols can be your country, political leaders, money, our family members, our lovers and even ourselves. However, we must live with the understanding that at any moment, all of these can be destroyed.

So if you truly believe God does not exist, you should have by now, chosen your new idol. Which idol did you choose?

The third commandment is……..

3.      You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

This law exists to remind us to show reverence to God and the principles that define who He is. The name of God is far more than what we call him. God’s name is Holy because He is Holy, His name is His character.

In Exodus 34:5,6 God tells us what is his name.
5 “And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth”,

God’s name is pretty long, it could not fit on an application form because His name is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.” If we say we believe in God and don’t live by these principles, we are taking God’s name in vain.

However, if there is no God, there is no need to worry about being merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. Why should we care about portraying God’s character, if there is no God watching over us?
However, it is hard for you to disagree with me when I say that these character traits offer greater benefits to the person who possess them than to the person receiving them. Nowadays, companies are creating job listings, and in the requirements for the potential employee, they are listing traits like patience (long suffering), ability to work well with people (merciful, gracious), honest (truth), have experience working with a non-profit(goodness).  Anyone who possesses the characteristics of the name of God, will experience the practical advantages it brings. But if you don’t believe in God, then your god can tell you to ignore any or all of these character traits and carry out agendas that will bring you immediate benefit, regardless of the long term consequences.

How is your God free experience so far?

If you are ignoring these commandments well. You should have a physical, fragile god, that possess questionable character traits, and neither imparts or expects anything good from you.

The Fourth Commandment is……..

4.      Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

The last of the commandments under “loving God section” is the commandment to remember the sabbath day. Even though this commandment was made to show love for God, Jesus told us that the sabbath was made for man. Many parents can relate to buying something for themselves, but when they get home, they give the whole thing to their children. The only thing most parents ask for in return, is that their children show gratitude to them for the gift they received.

This is what the sabbath represents, a gift to mankind so they can remember who their creator is, the giver of all good gifts, and sustainer of life and all of creation. The sabbath is a commemoration of God as creator. Just as we celebrate the birthdays of our friends and family, the sabbath is a holy time where God invites us to his celebration.

Isa 58:13 reminds us that “If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, From doing your pleasure on My holy day, And call the Sabbath a delight, The holy day of the Lord honorable, And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, Nor finding your own pleasure, Nor speaking your own words, 14 Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord;

And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

God promises a blessing to those who acknowledge Him as creator on His holy sabbath day. Keeping the sabbath will cause us to delight ourselves in the Lord, and he will give us the desires of our heart.

The sabbath is also a time for us to reset from the stresses of the week. Humans were not designed to operate without rest. Ignoring sleep compromises our ability to function in the same way humans cannot function optimally without a sabbath rest. We see this clearly with the existence of a seven day week.

The sun determines the length of the year and day, the moon determines the length of the months, but only God determines the length of the week.

Many countries and cultures have attempted a 4, 5, 8, 9 or even a 10 day week. However, the only cycle that has endured the test of time to regulate work and rest is the 7 days God had ordained at creation.

Ignoring God’s Sabbath is ignoring God’s authority as creator and sustainer and accepting alternate theories like evolution. We lose the value God has placed on our lives, because according to these theories, we are accidents, coincidental mixing of chemical slime. Evolution claims that you are of no more importance than the bacteria that live in the drain! No wonder so many lives are in the gutter. The Sabbath reminds us that we are royalty, through its observance, God lifts us from the ‘guttermost’ to the uttermost. To ride on the high places of the earth.

Now to properly ignore this commandment. You need to do as you please on this day. Correction, you need to do whatever your god commands you to do on this day. If it means ignoring your mental and physical heath to get a job done, go right ahead. If means acknowledging that you are an accident, a freak of nature, you have to also admit that other humans are no more valuable than monkeys in the zoo, and that these monkeys are your family.  

After all, you now worship a fragile god of questionable character traits that cares nothing about your health or well-being, because you are an accident.

If this sounds like a terrible God, the sad truth is that millions of people are ignoring these 4 commandments and are serving gods just like this.

Which god is real in your life today? Is God a scamdemic to you?

Let’s finish the next set of commandments that fall under “Love your neighbour as yourself”. If God does not exist, we can ignore the 5^th law that says:

5.      Honour your father and your mother, so you may live long on earth.

Lots of parents play a critical role in the development of us as children and young adults who eventually become adults. There is significant sacrifice made by parents to care, train and protect us. As our minds develop, we are prone to making grave mistakes due to lack of experience and underdeveloped reasoning skills, therefore God requires that we follow the guidance of their parents’ instructions. This respect extends to adult children, regarding how we treat our parents in old age.

Since there is now no God, you now agree that we are free to choose when to listen to our parents and parents should have no expectations of support in their old age. It should be totally up to us to choose our bed time, food, gender, friends, and the moral guidelines we think are best for ourselves.

6.      You shall not murder.

Patriarchs and Prophets Pg. 308 defines murder as:

·         All acts of injustice that tend to shorten life;

·         the spirit of hatred and revenge, or the indulgence of any passion that leads to injury of others, or causes us even to wish them harm (for “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer”);

·         a selfish neglect of caring for the needy or suffering;

·         all self-indulgence, and that includes our addictions to drugs, food etc. or unnecessary deprivation

·         or excessive labour that tends to injure health—all these are, to a greater or lesser degree, violations of the sixth commandment AND MAKES YOU A MURDERER!

God is the creator of life, He assigns great sanctity in the gift of life. Each breath is an opportunity for that person to experience the love of God. When one of His children is hurt and their life is snuffed away, you have destroyed a dear soul to the Lord. God seeks to protect our life so much that even speaking hurtful words against your neighbour is comparable to murder. God loves life and wants everyone to respect the sanctity of it, including our own by protecting our health and taking care of our mind.

If there is no God, you are free to choose to murder. No longer is self-defence the only excuse, you can now use self-offence to kill someone if you think that they might harm you in the future. You need not have control over your tongue, you are free to destroy the lives and abuse strangers, friends and family with the sword of our tongue. You have a right to your own body, you can choose to kill yourself with unhealthy food or kill your innocent, unborn child.

7.      You shall not commit adultery.

Marriage and sex are holy unto God. Marriage represents the relationship between us (the church) and Christ. When the marriage bed is defiled, it is as if we have gone after other gods, ignoring our first love. Marriage is also the glue of the family, and if the trust and sacredness of family is corrupted, the entire entity suffers. Sex outside of a marriage is like using prescription medicine without a doctor’s instructions. It may seem harmless but it has the potential to cause serious damage with a lot of side effects.

If there was no God, it would be fine to seek sexual partners before, during and after marriage. You can ignore the value of marriage. You will have nothing to say if your spouse decides to spend the night with a stranger, expressing their love sexually, since it is no longer limited to marriage.  This is what happens when we act like God is a scamdemic.

8.      You shall not steal.
In the book Patriarchs and Prophets, page 309, Ellen white has this to say about the eighth commandment:  “It condemns theft and robbery. It demands strict integrity in the smallest details of the affairs of life. It forbids overreaching in trade, and requires the payment of just debts or wages. It declares that every attempt to advantage one's self by the ignorance, weakness, or misfortune of another, is registered as fraud in the books of heaven.”
Stealing is a terrible act of selfishness, it places importance only on what we have to gain and ignores what the other party is losing. We often excuse our theft by saying things like: “they won’t miss it” or “they can afford to lose it” or “nobody will die”. Many who were caught stealing millions from the government had their first taste of theft in small acts like stealing a classmates pencil at school, overcharging an ignorant customer or not returning change when asked to make a purchase.

If this law is ignored, your rights as a human will be totally ignored. No one will see the need to respect your possession. Everyone will be open to exploitation by their neighbour. Stealing is often a gateway drug to breaking the next commandment.

And you can comment what commandment numero 9 is in the chat.

9.      You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

Ellen white in the book Patriarchs and Prophets, page 309 also admonished that any attempt or intention to deceive our neighbour is included in the ninth commandment.

By a glance of the eye, a motion of the hand, a facial expression, a lie can be told as effectively as with words. All intentional overstatement, every hint or insinuation calculated to convey an erroneous or exaggerated impression, even the statement of facts in such a manner as to mislead, is falsehood. This commandment forbids every effort to injure our neighbour’s reputation by misrepresentation or evil surmising, by slander or gossip. Even the intentional suppression of truth, by which injury may result to others, is a violation of the ninth commandment. 

In a world where the 9^th commandment is ignored, honesty is honestly an optional policy. You cannot trust your closest friend to be truthful. Every word uttered by even the most trust worthy individual is taken with a grain of salt. Mistrust is everywhere, everyone is viewed as suspect.

The last commandment is …

10.  You shall not covet.

“The tenth commandment strikes at the very root of all sins, prohibiting the selfish desire, from which springs the sinful act.” PP 309.5. Every act of selfish desire starts in the heart. If the 10^th commandment is kept, we will extinguish all evil desires to our neighbours and we would be able to keep the others laws with little effort. When we cultivate covetousness in our heart, it drives out love and sin will enter. Let’s set our love on fire and “bun out bad mind!”

If we ignore this final commandment, we set ourselves up for the insatiable desire to keep up with the Jones’s. There will always be someone with more money, better car, bigger house, more beautiful spouse. Nothing is wrong with being ambitious but the 10^th commandment protects us from cultivating the thoughts of doing whatever it takes to get what we desire, which tends to lead to ignoring God’s law.

We must admit, when we look at the character of God as displayed in his laws, they are meant to protect and not restrict. Many of the consequences of ignoring the commandments of God, like he isn’t real already exists with us today. We can directly attribute many of the worst crimes and situations in the world to a total abandonment of God’s law. The unfortunate part is that many of these commandment breakers testify that they believe that God exists. We say it with our lips but in our lives we ignore the laws that define his character.

Many think that if there is some great discovery that God doesn’t exist that the world drastically change. There may be a few weeks of confusion but most people would continue living their life just as before. Especially now, during a pandemic when there is no church, the routines of many would barely change. This is because many of us are already serving other gods. These gods have blinded our eyes to the reality that we are lost believers. It is more than just believing that God exists, we have to ACT like he exists. We have to TALK like He exists. We have to WALK like He exists. EVERYTHING that we do, we must do, because He exists.

2 Timothy 3: 1 – 4, But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

The character traits listed in the previous verse are the gods of today. Love for Self, money, pleasure, and anything that goes against the character of God. We are often deceived because our gods don’t demand that we break all the commandments. Just break one, and follow the rest. But the Bible clearly states in James 2: 10 - For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

Many live their lives as if God does not exist, but I am here today to let you know that He is alive and well. The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handy work. God is real, in spite of the rampant disregard for his laws, his mercy endureth. It is by His mercy why we are not consumed. He has protected us from many of the consequences of our actions. Eccl.  8:11 says “Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

Don’t confuse God’s mercy for inaction, or that he does not exist or even that He in himself is a Scamdemic. On the contrary, the wicked will get their reward. But God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, He wants us to turn from our wicked ways, and live.

Brothers and Sisters!  I want to loudly declare that there is a God. He is alive and well. He has existed from eternity and will exist till eternity. Our own existence is what is at stake. We have been given an ultimatum in Duet 30:19 “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live”

God has declared a state of emergency, the world is in chaos. The pandemic of evil is ravaging the society. He has declared a lockdown on sin, to curb its spread. In this SOE, he has laid out the laws we should follow. We should only carry out the essential service of loving our neighbours as ourself. Reach out to your neighbours. But before you can work on the front-lines, you must first protect yourself. You need to ensure that you have love for God. Love for God is hate for sin. So only when you vax-sin-hate, can you operate in this lockdown.

The best way to show that God exists, is to show that the symptoms caused by this virus of sin have no effect on you. Because you serve a God that exists, you have a peace that the world cannot afford. Regardless of whatever you might go through, you will be able to wear a smile in the midst of your storm. Depression becomes only a passing feeling NOT a diagnosis. Your family life is a model to the world. Your children are courteous, respectful to both God and people, obedient to their parents, and have avoided making terrible life-wrecking decisions. The adults are true and honest in their dealings, they live an exemplary live and display unbridled love for people. The couples are faithful to God and each other, they show respect and build each other up. The church is active in seeking out the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the community. Mercy and graciousness, patience, goodness and truth is obviously present in the life and character of everyone who walks with God.  God exist in you, they see him in you, they see him in me, then they see him for themselves.

Are you struggling to live free of the consequences of sin? Have you made decisions that have infected you with the deadly virus of sin? Do you suffer from the symptoms of living like if God does not exist?

Did you lose your peace? Are you struggling to maintain good relationships with those around you? Is your family life in shambles? Are you having difficulty finding true friends? Are you living in constant depression and anxiety? Do you keep making the same terrible mistakes and sabotaging your progress? Are you feeling perpetually tired, physically, mentally or spiritually? Do you have addictions that are in control of you?  Are you ready for these to end?

In God’s SOE, He wants to make a difference in your life, He wants to work a miracle TODAY!

He wants to free you from the shackles of sin that sin have so long held you down. Will you accept him today?
Will you believe that he exists and that He wants to make you over into a new man or woman? This is all he requires.  Come to him believing, then act like you believe by opening the door of your heart to Him. The Lord promises a reward for everyone – anyone, who seeks him. God is ALIVE and ABLE. Will you seek Him?