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About Jesus Steve Sweetman My Journey Through The Ecclesiastical Maze Part 31 The
Fundamental Problem From My Prophetic Perspective I’ve now come to the
year 2009 in “My Journey
Through The Ecclesiastical Maze”. It’s
been “a long and winding road” as Paul McCartney once sang.
I’ve seen many sites along the side of this road, too many to
share. Hopefully I have a
few more miles left, but whatever happens, I know the road ends at the
feet of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve
enjoyed my journey. I’ve seen the “good, the bad, and the ugly”,
as another old pop song from the 1960’s put it. I know some of you can
sympathize with me and relate to what I’ve said.
I’m sure others of you think that I’ve been too negative, and
such negativity can’t solve problems.
But let me remind you that if I have any ministry at all, it’s
“a teacher with a prophetic edge”.
This means I attempt to clearly and systematically state what I
believe the Bible teaches in a spirit of prophecy,
and like the prophets of old, they spoke many negative words
before speaking the positive alternative. Think about it this way.
In order to renovate a house in need of repair you must first
realize the house needs some fixing.
Many of us don’t realize our spiritual house is in need of a
major work-over. Once you
recognize the house needs fixing you must do some deconstruction before
you reconstruct. The
deconstruction process can be painful, especially if you were the one
who built the house in the first place.
Not many of us really like seeing what we’ve built torn down.
For the most part, much of the ecclesiastical maze we know today
was built by our own blueprints, not our Lord’s blueprint, and for
this reason deconstruction is necessary.
The word “repent” is
fundamental to the message of a prophet.
To be clear, I’m not a prophet, but when teaching God’s Word
in the spirit of prophecy, our downfalls must be pointed out in order
for repentance to occur. Without
real repentance there can be no real faith and no real change.
And to borrow an over-used phrase of late, the church
“certainly needs change”.
Along the way in my
journey our Lord has used me from time to time with both the gift of
prophecy and the gift of specific knowledge that I would not have known
apart from the Holy Spirit. These
two gifts of the Spirit can be found in 1 Corinthians 12:8 to 10, and
there’s no Scriptural evidence or logic to suggest that these gifts
are no longer available for us to use.
I recall one time seeing
a brother in Christ laying prostrate on the floor, weeping before the
Lord. Jesus told me why my
brother was weeping and gave me a prophetic message to speak to him.
I could only speak part of the message due to its sensitive and
personal nature. No one else needed to hear this message, so I shared
what I could and prayed for an opportunity to share the rest later.
I received a phone call
later that day from this brother. He
asked me to meet him for coffee the next day.
We agreed on the time and place and I asked Jesus to give me the
opportunity to finish the rest of this prophetic message.
Well, Jesus answered my prayer.
This brother brought the subject up without any prompting by me.
That was our Lord’s doing, especially considering the nature of
our conversation. I was able
to share what I believed was God‘s word for him at that time in his
life. I’ve had many
opportunities over the years to speak a word of prophecy, and I’ve
received divinely inspired words of knowledge as well. And
let me add this, I take “personal prophecy” seriously.
I’m very careful what I speak.
I’ve seen too many abuses by people trying to direct other
people’s lives with “personal prophecy” which usually does more
harm than good. I’ve also blown it on
occasion. Once in a very
large meeting of about eight hundred people the Lord gave me a prophetic
word to speak during an appropriate quiet-time in worship.
I just refused to speak what Jesus wanted me to say in front of
so many people. I simply
“chickened out”, as we used to say in my youth. My
heart was beating pretty hard and fast during the next three or four
minutes of silence. Everyone
knew that someone was to speak. That
someone was me, but I wouldn’t speak.
Eventually someone else gave pretty much the same word of
prophecy I refused to give. If
we don’t speak what Jesus gives us to speak, He will find someone else
to speak. So I speak what I feel is
the Word of the Lord based on a firm foundation of Scripture to those
Jesus has placed me with. I
speak to those I know face to face, and to those I know through the
internet. Can you imagine
what Isaiah could have done with a web site and email?
I’m sure the Jewish leadership of his day would have either
blocked his emails, or deleted them without reading them, something some
people probably do with my emails.
The fundamental problem
as I see it in the ecclesiastical maze is the devaluation of the Bible.
Some Christians hardly
pick up a Bible. Some read
it on occasion out of obligation and think of other things while they
read. Still others read for
the inspirational value, only to make them feel good. That
means they’re very selective in what passages they read. Not
too many people study the Bible to see what God wants for them or for
the church. Few Christians
have ever been taught the common-sense concepts of Biblical
interpretation, otherwise known as “hermeneutics”.
Can you tell me why very few churches teach a detailed course on
how to interpret the Bible? Is
it because the Bible isn’t important enough to understand properly?
I hope it’s not because leadership is afraid that the
congregation might get smarter than them if they knew such things.
That’s already been tried throughout church history.
A pastor friend used to
say, “I want to preach and teach my way out of a job”.
He had it right. He
wanted to teach them all he knew, so much so that those he cared for
would leave him in the dust so to speak.
At that point he would have to move on and teach others, while
those he taught could teach others as well. My
friend wasn’t afraid of being “out-smarted” by those he cared for.
I believe Paul had the same mentality when he said “he did not
hesitate to declare the whole will of God”
(Acts 20:27) Don’t
you think Paul should have saved a few nuggets of truth for himself and
for a select inner circle of followers so they’d be wiser and more
superior than others? This
is the root of Gnosticism that began to plague the early church and
still plagues us today. Because of the
devaluation of Scripture we’ve become Biblically illiterate in many
respects. Much of our thinking about church has come from this
illiteracy. Therefore, the
“ecclesiastical maze” that presently exists isn’t necessarily
Scripturally based. It’s
based on our poor understanding due to this illiteracy.
So the world doesn’t see Jesus in the church as it should.
It sees our faultily constructed church
systems instead. For this
reason, it’s my thinking, as this age comes to an end,
judgment will come to the church. (1 Peter 4:17)
God’s judgment will deconstruct what we’ve built, and that
which will be left will be the Body of Christ, the counter-cultural
community the Bible teaches.
In the next few chapters
I will briefly state what I feel the New Testament teaches concerning
church. After many years of
walking through the maze and studying the Bible I’ve come to certain
Biblical conclusions. You
can consider what I say, and I pray that Jesus will give both you and I
the understanding in all these things.
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