Chaper One (continued)
Discipleship in Christ is a lifelong, all-encompassing involvement of the Spirit of Christ and the principles of the Word of God in each area of your life. A distinction must be made between Biblical Spirituality and the prevailing Christian religious system. Is the Christ of Christianity the Christ of the Bible? Is Jesus as much at home in the cloistered walls of institutional Christianity as He was in the homes of publicans and sinners? The theology of the Christian religious system is to Biblical Spirituality what pork-barrel spending is to the balanced budget amendment. The original intent of any given bill is often negated by pork-barrel riders added on to a bill. Likewise, through religious tradition, man’s philosophies and deceit, the church of the Living God has lost much of its effectiveness to fulfill its purpose in the earth. Any practice, program, philosophy, or doctrine that is not solidly affirmed by the simple truths of the New Testament is to be held suspect. The New Testament church never knew what a church building was. They did not have one minister; they all considered themselves ministers of God.
There was not a single Sunday School or Children’s church spoken of in the New Testament. On and on the list goes citing institutions that are held as intact components of the Christian church that have no basis in New Testament practice. These things must then be held loosely and implemented only so far as they facilitate New Testament goals for the local church. What then are the most important issues? What is the baseline of Biblical Spirituality? What is the minimum array of components to make up a New Testament church? A comparison to car shopping gives a good analogy of this issue:
When buying a new vehicle, what is “standard equipment” and what is “optional equipment?” Every new car buyer knows that adding option after option can nearly double the price of a car. How many people have estimated the price of Christianity and decided it was too high? Could it be because they were given a sticker price that included item after item of the traditions of men that only impaired rather than enhanced the original product? What is not that important? What is the fundamental Christian commitment, doctrine, and practice? It should be understood that what might be critical to walk with God in one generation, is not vital at all in another. This refers to cultural, societal applications of the timeless truth of the gospel. Likewise, there are periods of history where the dynamics of Biblical Spirituality are strikingly similar though they are separated by hundreds of years or thousands of miles. Consider the dynamics of spirituality in the days before Jesus first arrival on the earth. The nature of serving God then strikingly compares with the modern-day. In Solomon’s day, there was pure worship of the One, true God. There was one doctrine and one application of the truth through the teaching of the Levites. By contrast, in Herod’s day, the worship of God was corrupted; the temple was a profane imitation of the original glory of Solomon’s temple. Instead of unity of faith, there were many warring factions and sects. The only answer to this dilemma was the coming of Jesus the Messiah. Even so today, the church has lost its primal glory. There is no longer one faith but many factions and denominations each doing what is right in its own eyes leaving the whole a worn and tattered patchwork that hardly resembles the ancient glory of the first-century church, the church that transformed the known world by the word of God. As concerning the Jewish religion in Herod’s day, so in our day, the ultimate answer to the condition of the church is the return of Christ.
Therefore, the amazing parallel between the Jewish religious system just before the coming of Christ and the Christian religious system just before the Second Coming of Christ. The cry of John the Baptist then is likewise the cry of the Spirit now. “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” You are living in the days just before the Lord’s return. It is imperative for your well-being that you prepare His entrance into your life with an open and willing heart. His paths must be straight in your life. There must be a return to the Spirit of primitive Christianity, for this is what He will revitalize in His coming. He is not returning to revive or rebuild the present Christian religious system. In the first century, He did not restore the corrupt Jewish religious system. He will not, in this generation, come to rebuild the corrupt Christian religious system. Yet those that he came to in the first century were found in the midst of that flawed Jewish religious system. Likewise, today, those he is coming for will be found in some form of relationship to this flawed Christian religious system. The question of separation, then, is to be weighed very carefully. Of all the independent, nondenominational movements in the church today, almost all operate along the same lines of denominationalism. They “Came out of Babylon,” but they found the same principle they rejected in denominationalism at work in their own hearts. One minister commended me for leaving the denomination I was once a part of because I had “come out of that system.” My reply was, “Come out to WHAT, brother? The independent churches have more difficulty and strife in their midst and less fellowship among themselves than the denominational churches.” I resigned from the denomination because that was what God commanded me to do at that time, not because I was deluded into thinking I was marching into Canaan land!
The lives of those most distinguished in the days before Jesus came 2000 years ago were lived out in the midst of the Jewish system. Two striking examples were Simeon and Anna, found in the book of Luke. Surely these two were displeased by the strife and corruption they saw in Jerusalem. Their hearts were no doubt grieved, yet they held on to their faith and hope that God would break through the corruption and carnality of the Jewish religion and bring the restoration of God’s purpose to their people. They could have easily thrown up their hands, gotten bitter, and never set foot in the temple again. Many today have done this. There are literally thousands of former pastors, ministers, deacons, Sunday school teachers, and coworkers who got burned out, disgusted and walked out on the church. They did not set out intending never to come back, but it became more comfortable to sit at home than to face pain and disappointment in the church. Pastors, leaders, and churches will disappoint you over and again. You will be hurt and misunderstood but let the taproot of your spiritual life be in your personal walk with God so that when the church dries up, or the leader you trusted fails you, you will not dry up and blow away. Stay involved in the church. Be an agent for change. Find out where God wants you, stay there till he moves you on. Always camp outside your comfort zone. Discipline yourself to decisions that lean away from the path of self-service or personal convenience.
Understand this, the impact Jesus had on the Jewish religious system 2000 years ago was no less drastic than the impact he is having upon the Christian religious system of today. He is not coming to affirm this pathetic caricature of the glorious church he established in the first century. He is bringing a New Wineskin to hold a New Wine. The spiritual vintage of God’s last push of revival will have no less effect on Christianity as we have known it had than the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost had on the Jewish Religious system. This outpouring is not going to come to some obscure group holed up in the desert. It will come to those found in the midst of the activity and religious fervor as was manifest at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.
In one swift generation, God is going to change the understanding and expression of His church. The church in existence just scant months or years before the advent of Christ will be as far removed in its expression from the present day church as the early church was from the medieval church. It will not likely be accepted by the Christian religious system. It will no doubt be branded as extreme and cultic in nature. When Gamaliel the scholar disputed with the Sanhedrin about the early Church, he classed it with the cult leaders of his day.
One of the most drastic contrasts between God’s restored people and the Christian religious system will be the absence of idolatry in the hearts of believers. They will come to see Jesus IN them as being bigger and more powerful than Jesus supposedly in the charismatic, larger than life Christian leaders. An illustration of this can be made from the story of Jesus healing the man at the pool of Bethesda. During the second Passover just before Jesus’ last supper, he visited this pool where multitudes of infirmed people gathered in hope of a miracle. Jesus was crucified approximately one year from this day. The healing he effected on the paralytic he meets at the pool of Bethesda during this feast marks the beginning of the “year of opposition” ending with Jesus’ crucifixion at the hands of the religious crowd.
There are to be found throughout scripture, types and shadows applicable to Christ and the church. The life of Christ Himself is a prophetic foreshadowing of the destiny of the corporate church as the body of Christ. This record of Jesus’ visit to Bethesda and his actions here foreshadow the last push of revival leading finally to the final culmination of the Kingdom of God visibly on earth.
References to the end-times describe great persecution of the church. Expostulating the possible latter history of the church parallel with the life of Christ would be harmonious with that conclusion. When the brunt of persecution and malice was fully measured upon Jesus, he became manifest to the world as the Son of God. Likewise in the climactic destiny of the church, a “manifestation of the sons of God” will be effected, very likely through severe persecution.
What will this manifestation be like? I believe the Sons (plural) of God will be revealed to the world in the manner in which Jesus, the Singular Son of God, was manifest to the world. Consider the scene at the crucifixion. The church will be visible to the world as a people who have taken their cross and carried it to its logical conclusion. Whether by wholesale martyrdom or other demonstrations, they will portray a love for God and one another and love for lost humanity that will go beyond their love for their own lives.
