As I have said elsewhere, almost without fail, our leadership and our teaching are conflating the two entirely different and separate things into one, resulting in a murky mass of mediocrity which we call “the Church”.
At the very core of things, I believe, this is the most pertinent explanation for what institution-organisation watchers and commentators call the weak and sickly state of ‘the church’.
When Apostle Paul was teaching the Corinthians, he said that a man can bring judgement onto himself “…if he does not judge the body rightly” – some translations say “discern the body correctly”. He then explains, “For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and some have died.” (1 Corinthians 11:29-30)
To me, there is little doubt that a similar explanation applies today. Many of Jesus’ followers are weak and sick and some have died because we are not now – and have not been for hundreds of years – discerning the Body of Christ correctly. But we will go on seeking other explanations because we don’t like the one Paul raised with the Corinthians.
If you take a look at some earlier posts on this blog, you will see that one of the Protestant Church’s favourite sons – William Tyndale – was murdered for taking the position that the church as we know it is not the ecclesia – the body and bride of Christ. We still persist with the error he tried to correct over 400 years ago.
It is time we
agreed with our Divine Physician and stopped self-diagnosing and
self-prescribing. We find it so hard to
bring ourselves to admit that we have got it wrong; that we got it wrong within
one hundred years of Jesus’ life on earth; that every generation of the People
of God from then til now has had its prophets trying to bring us around to the
truth and still we stubbornly refuse.
In point of
fact, it goes well back into antiquity.
Prophet Jeremiah (chapter 13) had a job of work to do when God told him
to go and buy a linen waistband and wear it for a while without washing
it. He then had to go and bury it in a
rock crevice by the Euphrates River.
After some days again, he was instructed to go and retrieve the
waistband – only to find that it was ruined and “totally worthless”.
The
lesson? “Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of
Jerusalem. This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in
the stubbornness of their hearts … Let
them be just like this waistband, which is totally worthless. For as the waistband clings to the waist of
man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole household of Judah cling
to me…that they might be for me a people, for renown, for praise, and for glory;
but they did not listen.” (Jeremiah 13:9-11)
I believe we
can see ‘the pride of Judah’ today as it was in Jeremiah’s day and in Jesus’
day: that as the ‘chosen race’ (God’s ‘kuriakos’),
we are untouchable and we are not sinning.
And I believe we can see ‘the great pride of Jerusalem’ today (again as
it was in Jeremiah’s day and in Jesus’ day) in the magnificent buildings we
erect ‘to the honour and glory of God’.
Israel
pre-Jesus didn’t get it; Israel post-Jesus didn’t get it; the religious elite
of our day still don’t get it. But the
worst thing of all is that we stubbornly refuse to side with God, preferring
the relative comfort of our buildings, our self-assurance and the safety of
being one step removed from the face of God because of our human priesthoods –
just like old Israel.
God, speaking
through Prophet Isaiah, said of Israel, “Because you have said, ‘We have made a
covenant with death, and with Sheol we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach us
when it passes by, for we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed
ourselves with deception’.” (Isaiah 28)
But God’s
response is, “Behold I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly
cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed.
He who believes in it will not be disturbed. And I will make justice the measuring line
and righteousness the level; then hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies and
the waters shall overflow the secret place.”
‘Church’
leadership and institutions and organisations have made lies their refuge and
they think that the overwhelming scourge will pass them by because they are
‘God’s possession’ – His kuriakos. Unfortunately for them, it is not kuriakos that has the imprimatur of God
but ecclesia. That is why institutions, organisations and
unscrupulous people, from the end of the first century to now, falsely claim
the name ecclesia for who they are
and what they do. Fortunately God knows
and, like in Isaiah, “…your covenant with death shall be cancelled, and your
pact with Sheol shall not stand. When
the overwhelming scourge passes through, then you become its trampling place.”
The New
Covenant people of God are, in God’s sight and according to Apostle Peter, “A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies
of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; for once
you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not
received mercy but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:9-10)
But the
writer to the Hebrews clearly warns, “See
to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused
him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him
who warns from heaven.” (Hebrews 12:25)
You can
ignore me all you like (I’m used to it anyway!), but we ignore God at our
significant peril – and this is precisely what Christendom has been doing for
many hundreds of years. And today it
continues.
God has been
saying over and over and over again for hundreds of years that what we call
‘the church’ is not His ecclesia. The central lie is that they are one and the
same thing. And as is the way with lies,
every lie told requires another lie to defend it. In the end, we have a situation, as Isaiah
describes, of making lies our refuge.
Don’t know
about you, but I’m getting on board with God and Jesus and Paul and Peter and
the writer to the Hebrews – and many hundreds of saints throughout history
since Paul died.
The
‘religious club’ is a species alien to God and His kingdom and, no matter how
much we like to think otherwise, it doesn’t figure in His eternal plan as is
revealed to us by John in the last couple of chapters of Revelation.
Or perhaps it
does – could it not be that “a mystery, Babylon the Great” (Revelation 17) actually refers to
Christendom – or what we generally call ‘the church’ – the institutions and
organisations and priesthoods that have for millennia claimed to be God’s
house. Listen to John’s description:
“And he
carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a
scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten
horns. And the woman was clothed in
scarlet and purple, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls,
having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of
her immorality, and upon her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON
THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”
“And I saw
the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the
witnesses of Jesus. And when I saw here,
I wondered greatly.” (Revelation 17:3-6)
It was
Christendom who killed the prophets, killed so many saints and killed men like
William Tyndale and many besides. And it
is she, so drunk with blood that she, like Israel of old, cannot see her sin.
Over 30 years
ago, Robert Burnell wrote a prophecy titled “Escape from Christendom: The
Journey” (1980). It is in the style of
an allegory, but it is of immense importance to us here and now. I will let you secure it for yourself from the
following URL link:
[The image at below is part of this document on the fxmissions website.]
In a way, the title says it all. But let me conclude this post by quoting the final
two paragraphs of Burnell’s prophetic vision, in the hope that more of the people
of God will see what thousands of years of prophetic ministry have been trying to
persuade us of.
"Never has it been more clear to me that two revivals
are in progress on the earth. One is the revival of the Spirit of God, by which
dead men and women are freed from their sins by the blood of
the Lamb and raised to a life which is the life of the sons
of God, a life which bears God’s nature, manifests God’s
mercy. The other revival is the revival of religious flesh, a
revival which is so appealing and gathers such multitudes and
wields such power in this world because it offers all
the comfort of religion, while allowing you to keep your ego and all rights to
yourself.
"Surely each of us has to decide which revival he is
going to embrace. Am I going to invest
my life in some enterprise of booming Christian
City? Or am I going to lose my life in the pursuit of God’s will of mercy? Am I
going to concentrate on building something
that will cause the citizens of Christian
City to sit up and take notice? Or am I going to spend my
life bringing the poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind to the Master’s
table?"
Bless you,
Kevin.
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