MDMA is the formal acronym for 3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine, known as “Ecstasy” or “Xtasy”, which is used among people who party a lot because it keeps a person awake for a long time (it is related to methamphetamine, as the name indicates), induces a sense of euphoria in the user, and has effects that last up to a day or more on a single dose. Unlike marijuana which makes a man sleepy and hungry, cocaine that causes a sense of invincibility and power, meth that makes a man paranoid, awake for long periods, and inclined to strange behavior (think mowing the grass at 3 AM), PCP that makes a man feel very hot as well as numb to all pain and induces phychosis, alcohol that will either make a man angry, happy, or sad, but eventually confused and tired, ecstasy is a drug that people take if they want to just “feel good”.
There is unfortunately another thing that has drug-like effects similar to ecstasy, and this is called “Xtianity”. Unlike Christianity, which while open to spiritual experiences from God but always prioritizes right belief and practice that a man accepts by choice, the latter tends to emphasize spiritual experiences as a heretical substitute for divine revelation and dogma, which people criticize especially the latter, these same men say that the articulation of divinely revealed truth can be substituted by personal experiences.
This heresy has existed throughout Christian history under many names. There were the Gnostics, Manicheans, and many other syncretic mixes of Christianity and paganism in the Middle East, eventually moving to assume the forms of more European movements such as Bogomilism or Catharism, and eventually into various Protestant-derived sects that broke away from the state churches that emerged in Europe and the United States. Some of these include the Puritans, Quakers, Shakers, and in modern times, many churches in the “pentecostal” movement who prioritize a personal “spirituality” over the primacy of divinely revealed truth.
According to a major Evangelical group, there is going to be a meeting that will take place in Israel about how to get Christians to have more frequent incidences of a ‘spiritual experince’ with God.
When the Empowered21 Global Congress convenes in Jerusalem, Israel, in spring 2020, one of the main items on the agenda will be how to get every person on the planet to have an authentic experience with the Holy Spirit.
In the last 113 years, explained Ashley Wilson, assistant director of the global Spirit-filled movement working to connect the generations for blessing, impartation, and a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the 21st century, spirited-empowered Christians have grown from zero in 1906 to 650 million today.
And he believes a big part of that growth is due to a hunger among people around the world for a personal encounter with God.
Spirit-empowered Christians are generally known as Pentecostals, charismatics, or any other number of groups that emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit and the direct experience of the presence of God by the believer. It is generally accepted by adherents of the Spirit-empowered way that faith must be powerfully experiential, and not something found merely through ritual or thinking. Spirit-empowered churches also stress the importance of conversions that amount to a Baptism in the Spirit. This fills the believer with the Holy Spirit in an encounter revealed through speaking in tongues and other spiritual manifestations. (source)
There is nothing wrong with spiritual experiences.
However, one should not expect them, and they are not the reason that one becomes a Christian, or are a reason why would should continue to be a Christian.
Christ did not promise miracles to people save the salvation of those who accept Him and follow His word. Even then, He directly stated several important points, such as how in John 6, He is the Bread of Life and he who eats Him will live because of Him, and how many rejected Him because of these exact words.
He did not say that one needs to have a spiritual experience and by such he would be saved. Rather, He ordered men to be baptized by means of water, to repent, to believe in the Good News, and to go forth and cease doing evil but doing good.
If there was anything that He promised, it was poverty, chastity, and obedience, not money, power, and self-directed action to whatever one wants.
True Christianity is not a drug, but a detoxification from drugs because one will see the horrible reality for the situation of what the human race was and is in a world after original sin. One can feel good at times, but this is not the main end, and if there is a feeling, it will often be suffering or hardship before indulgence. Yet this is not what much of what is called modern “Christianity” is, but rather the indulgence of the self in spiritual ‘experiences’ and to forget the burdens that Christ shouldered for us but also asks that we carry with Him. It is almost at times that one is saying to God that He is to carry all of a man’s burdens, and that by belief, one is absolved from doing work. Now while man does not “earn” his salvation, and God always does more than what man could ever do, man also has a role to play in his salvation.
Christianity can be difficult, but leads a man to repentance and salvation. “Xtianity”, like the drug ecstasy, gives a man a sense of happiness and peace, but it is only a sensation that fleets away and has to be repeated with more drugs, eventually leading to an overdose or buildup of tolerance where the same sensations cannot come as they did before, and so as a result a man becomes confused, angry, unhappy, and leaves religion as a whole because he associates feelings with belief and is lost without his, for lack of a better word, drug.
God did not come to make men addicted. He came to save them if they choose to be saved. He did not come to give them a feeling of reality, but the actual reality as things are, and as always, there is nothing more amazing than the truth.
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