As we discern the shape of things to come, we must change. We will not hesitate to stop anything we are doing if it becomes a soulish practice. I would rather we come and stand before the Lord without opening our mouths than get on a merry-go-round as has happened to other movements. So far, we are moving in the right direction, but we want to overcome any tendency toward the errors of the past.
We must understand that a church is not a large auditorium, but a spiritual structure. As long as it is possible and legal for us to do so, we should strive to have a building large enough for the people to assemble on the Lord’s Day and on the Sabbath to worship the Lord and to observe whatever God would have for us collectively. Notice that I said, “on the Lord’s Day and on the Sabbath,” because I anticipate the worship coming in this manner.
We can build large churches and keep them truly spiritual, if we maintain the local level as well as the home meetings. The only thing to hinder this would be, as Paul warned, men who would arise and draw people after themselves (Acts 20:30) in their efforts to build a kingdom for themselves. As long as we have the vision of building God’s Kingdom and not one of our own, there is no limit to what can be done.
We must build the elders and the leadership strong and emphasize the sense of responsibility they must have for building the flock strong together.
We could have one simple, inexpensive auditorium where people could gather together for the Feast of Tabernacles, Passover, Pentecost, and other convocations, as well as for one or two worship services a week to hear the apostolic word. During many months of the year the people would probably meet locally in homes in various places because circumstances would require it. We could change the whole complexion of our meetings by a little closer adherence to the New Testament order. Our services will require more mobility; therefore, the architecture of our buildings will have to change. At the present time, churches are built strictly as auditoriums and are not at all like the meeting places of the early Church. The people sit in rows; this promotes a feeling of conformity and regimentation in the services. If we were to make a profitable move, it would be to shorten our services and take out all the pews so that we could come and stand before the Lord and worship Him. People stand for eight hours a day working; surely they can stand for an hour and a half in church. For those who are not physically able to stand, some benches or chairs could be provided along the walls. Movability is necessary in a congregation, and we need an arrangement that is more fluid.
Not only should we be revolutionary and take the seats out of the church, but we should also consider the pulpit as obsolete. Whoever is to speak could do so from a central point (not from a high platform) with the family gathered around. Our current facilities have all the appearances of a stage with an audience; and if we are not careful, we can become theatrical and soulish. We could drift into the same ruts that many of the big denominations have with their processions and pomp and ceremony; or we could go to another extreme and present illustrated sermons as did other denominations, actually turning the platform into a stage. The very fact that the congregation sits like an audience makes them spectators. This violates the whole principle of the New Testament Church. We are to be participators, not spectators. Everything of this age—television, radio, sports—is designed to make spectators of us, so that we become conformed to one line of thinking. In the New Testament Church, it is in the varied functions of the members, in the flow, that we really have our life. This is what makes unity.
None of our present-day facilities existed in the early Church. For three hundred years there was no church auditorium. The oldest style of church that we can trace had no pews or seats. The people just came and worshiped the Lord. The very architecture of our churches can help produce a soulishness in our worship of the Lord. Although we are very appreciative of an organ, I think we can become dependent on that also. Occasionally we ought to sing without the organ, using only our voices to worship the Lord.
The form that most closely follows the early Church pattern today is not found in Christianity, but in Communism. The structure is called a cell organization and consists of small groups or cells all over a country, each having a few members and a leader. If that country were to experience sudden persecution against Communism this kind of structure would already be practically underground. They would not be dependent on a central building or organization in order to function, for a building could be closed down very easily by law.
The early Church was much like a cell organization. The believers met in homes. One illustration of this was the church at Ephesus. Ephesus was one of the largest cities in the Roman world. Because of the problems of food supply and sanitation, a city in those times could not be very large. Imagine the difficulties of a city with a million people. All the water had to be carried in. Food had to be carted in daily by wagon, on donkeys, or by whatever means they had. The larger the city, the more unwieldy it became and the further people had to travel for food and water and other supplies. Cities then were automatically restricted by virtue of the fact that they did not have the facilities that cities have today. Even so, I would estimate that there were probably a hundred thousand believers in the church at Ephesus.
Could we handle a hundred thousand people in our church today? At that time the use of a large building or auditorium was illegal. Paul called for the elders of Ephesus to meet him outside the city at Miletus (Acts 20:17). Where did those hundred thousand believers meet? They met in small groups in homes, following the cell structure that the Communists use today.
Satan is God’s ape, and sometimes he imitates God better than the Christians do. He knows God’s pattern. We will use God’s methods; and because they are true methods, they work, even though he uses them for a false, diabolical plan of destruction in atheistic organizations.
The big church structure found in denominational churches today does not work. They become top-heavy institutions that bog down with organization and then fail to reproduce. In the early Church, as many people as possible met in one home, with several elders to oversee each group. Following this pattern, groups were scattered all over a vast city.
This walk with God could develop into a thousand churches in a hurry. I am very seriously considering the fact that we may be having too many services to grow in the way we should. Looking to the days of the future, we may need to require that everyone be a part of one of many groups located all over the various cities. When persecution comes, the law may prevent our meeting together, and our church buildings may be burned down or destroyed; yet our services could continue if we follow this pattern. It is very important that we think about this now and prepare our hearts for the conditions that are to come.
Our thinking must be revolutionary. We really need to go back to the basic structure of the Church and see the gospel of the Kingdom reach the ends of the earth. In many large cities it is financially impossible to build a church and provide adequate parking. The money that such a venture would require could publish the gospel of the Kingdom in a dozen different languages and hasten the return of the King. We should be very Christ-conscious in this hour and not spend one dime for the ornamental. Everything should be designed for strictest utility, knowing that the Kingdom is at hand.
It would be a very healthy procedure to have every elder set in charge of a certain area with a specified number of people. I do not think there should be over forty-nine people plus the elders in any one group. That is about the limit the average home would hold, and it is about what two elders could take care of adequately. We could still have a large central meeting place where the people could come together from every area for one service on Sunday and on Sabbath. In those services we would stand for several hours, worshiping the Lord and listening to the apostolic word and the directions given by the prophets. The people would then disperse to all the different areas to meet again in different homes and break bread together. These homes would be filled to overflowing. Here ministry would come with authority to meet the personal needs. There would be traveling ministries and prophets, perhaps a band of them.
We need to concentrate on seeing the apostolic companies come forth. We could take care of a hundred thousand people with five hundred to a thousand prophets and ministries deployed to circulate through all the churches.
Some ministries would teach the people the rudiments of walking with God; and others would meet other needs—teaching them, training them, and ministering. This would produce very healthy believers. In this system the principle function of the apostolic ministry would be to deal with the congregation of five hundred to a thousand prophets and ministries who would be ministering to the people. This would keep everything moving and alive, as a living organism instead of an organization. We must eliminate everything that tends to make us an organization and come into the divine order that makes us a living organism, no longer spectators, but every one a participator, every man coming into his own ministry.
I think we still carry some Babylonian ideas concerning the ministries. We still emphasize too much the role of a pastor. It is not given a great place in the New Testament. Only once is the word “pastor” mentioned in the New Testament—in Ephesians 4:11. We must come to the place where we see the elders functioning as they should. Others have seen this pattern in a measure, but they have proceeded to build their own kingdom which could only fall. However, this is a true vision of the Kingdom of God, if only we are willing and open to see it. It could be so completely built in God that one or two or a dozen men would not be indispensable. If the divine pattern functioned properly we would never be dependent on just a few men.
We can see how the New Testament pattern emphasizes churches in the home. Of course, in the United States today churches in homes would continually run up against the law with its building codes. The first Christians could meet in the market places and preach and teach. If we were to do that now, we would be arrested. In our free democracy today, we live in a much more regimented society than the Christians did under the iron hand of the Roman Empire. They had no regulations stating how fast they could drive their chariots or on which side of the road they could drive them; nor were there any rules telling them whether or not they could put up a two-story building. They did not even have building inspectors. There was no question about where they could build a church. That was solved very simply in the Roman Empire; they could not build one, not for three hundred years. After that things changed as Babylon began to creep in.
If we are thinking in terms of a revolutionary concept, why do we accept and follow closely the pattern of Babylon in our buildings, in our organization, and even in financial enterprises? Many churches control tax-free businesses in the Babylonian system, thereby creating unfair competition with private individuals, who must pay a high percentage of their profits in corporate taxes. These churches have an unfair advantage. Are we doing the same thing? No. Any businesses that do come up will not be exempt from taxation or from assuming their responsibility in society. We refuse to follow the pattern of Babylon in business or in spiritual organization. We do not want to get into a rut and be only an extension of some other movement that has missed God by just being busy, building a few churches, and then sitting back to survey its handiwork. We are not going to fall into that rat race. We are going to walk with the Lord.
God will bring down the great multibillion-dollar monstrosity that parades as Christianity and has controlled much of the wealth of the world. Our thinking must be geared to something besides creating a rival for Babylon. Our strength is not in money nor in building institutions; our strength is in speaking the Word of the Lord to this generation. Therefore we should not give ourselves to some program requiring promotion: a bleeding and fleecing of the people, taking that which should be the dedication and sacrifice of discipleship and turning it to the corruption which builds another monument to Babylon.
Our thinking shall be: What will glorify the Lord? What will magnify Him? The beautiful, ostentatious structure of Babylon, built in the name of Christianity, is not glorifying Jesus Christ in any way; nor is it intended to do so. Men are building monuments to their own egos. Some have gone through the land raising great sums of money to buy radio stations and other business ventures. God will curse such endeavors.
Those who have had the light and the truth and have walked away from it will be brought down.
We must move further away from Babylon. We are still too close to her shadows. We still smell her stench. We still are influenced by her feelings and her emotions. We waste too much time on the personal level of emotions. We waste too much time looking for fulfillment in life, an idea that has been drilled into our heads. We do not have to be fulfilled. Life is not made for our pleasure; we are made for God’s pleasure. Is there any greater joy, any greater fulfillment than doing the will of the Lord? Self-centeredness must go; we must become wholly given to do the will of the Lord with all our hearts glorifying Him as His worshipers. Nothing will make us more miserable than living on a personal, emotional level, rather than being totally dedicated to the will of God.
There is one hope for America. The gospel of the Kingdom must be preached with dedication, with power and signs following, with the gifts and ministries in the divine order. It will come forth by real living sacrifice. Let us move away completely from this idea of building something that will rival in glory the churches and institutions of Babylon.
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Romans 1:25. I have ignored every bulletin and questionnaire sent to us from those who want to list us among the sects or denominations of Christianity. Requests have been made regarding our headquarters and the number of our churches and members. I will never authorize such a report because we are not a denomination. If we look around and begin to worship the work God is doing, we are worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. This must be a work absolutely Christ-centered if it is to continue to be blessed.
When David numbered the children of Israel, God brought judgment, David took the census to find how many men of war he had, to see what he would be able to do in warfare, instead of asking the Lord whether or not they should prepare for war (II Samuel 24). He was leaning on the arm of flesh, on his own strength, on statistics, numbers, and resources. We dare not do that. If we look to our resources, we would not dare to make a move. At no time can we ever evaluate our position by counting our numbers. There may not be many of us, but God has always used a remnant. Churches are beginning to come forth everywhere. We should not even count them but believe God for a tidal wave. We worship the Creator, not the creature, not the blessing that comes from His hand.
We are revolutionary in the sense that we have abandoned the old ways of thinking, but we must be careful that we do not fall into any new ruts. We must be flexible, new wineskins that God can use for His Kingdom. We must become sensitive to the leading of the Spirit. One service may come with such sweet worship that we stand weeping before the Lord as He meets every one of our hearts. Another time we may have a service comprised of the psalms sung by the little children. We do not know what will happen, but we know that God will break forth on His people. We dare not create a liturgy. If we do, God will bypass us, and we will be frozen at one stage of progress as the denominations before us.
Be flexible. Learn to follow the leading of the Spirit. Learn to be open to God. Do not build a rut for yourself that becomes a spiritual grave. Do not make your worship and walk with God a form that you give no more thought to than you give to the way to drive home.
You cannot walk with God by habit; you can only walk by revelation. If they are not done in the Spirit of the Lord, religion and rituals become habits that are the prelude to deadness. Keep the vision clean and clear in your mind.