I am not trying to get out of responsibilities. But if anything did happen to me, this work and this Word will go right on, because there will not be a contest for position to replace me. There is already an anointing that has consistently led us, and there are people who are commissioned by God to lead. We have to beware lest the entrenchment of positions, the appointments to position, should come to the place where it is dangerous. I think position in time can be dangerous. It has to be that the apostolic company can get a witness and put a brother over any function and he can take it over. The one with a position may feel very insecure. Yet everyone should feel insecure where position is concerned. That is the whole thing God is revealing. God is destroying everything we can lean on in our office or our position. That is where we are.
Actually, things are often totally distorted when someone is defending his position. I think that he really believes that he is telling the truth. But most falsehood has come from the fact that people will sincerely make claims defending their position. Actually, when they are defending a position, they will often sacrifice a brother.
The tendency to seek security is a key factor in all of this. Self-preservation and security run very deep, the drive to live on the human level. That is where the bitterness in a few comes from; it is out of that whole thing of threatened position. Hebrews 12:15–17 tells us about Esau’s root of bitterness. He lost his position, his place. We learned a lot about that. We learned that the Body ministry will never flourish as long as each section of the ministry is independent of the others. Until everything comes under the whole of the apostolic company now, it will not work—whether it is businesses or schools or whatever. Everything is to come under the apostolic company. I will not preach one thing about an apostolic company coming forth and yet allow people to violate that, where I am concerned or where anyone else is concerned. People may feel that I am on a pedestal. I think I may have been unintentionally, and the motivation of a few may have been, “If I kiss his feet, then I can run my own kingdom.” That is ended, of course.
Changes will take place; and as they do, then we must watch that those who are commissioned do not think of their commission as a position. As we flow together, the thing that is so interesting about a commission is that we flow in and out of each other’s commission; and that stops us from building walls around it and having it become a position. It is the vagueness of a commission—and at the same time its specific direction—that gives us its power. It saves it from abuse. In Acts 13:2, the Lord spoke of Barnabas and Saul, “Separate them for the work whereunto I have called them.” That statement is rather vague. Are you working at His calling? If so, then you are all right.
The rock is being cut out of the mountain without hands and it is now slowly grinding to powder the whole image (Daniel 2:34–35). People may not feel it that much yet, but they will, because it will keep grinding until it has ground the whole thing up. That is what will happen.
The local autonomy of the local church is not challenged by the Lordship of Christ and His Word through His bond servants. Local autonomy would not let the apostle John into the church (III John 9–10). Pastors and directors—is your position such that your authority exceeds the authority of the ones Christ commissions and sends to you, to set you in divine order? By your position do you usurp authority to reject the foundation of the Church—apostles and prophets?