God’s Voice Must Never Be Confused With the Voice of an Ecclesiastical Structure

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“The Jews based their hope of salvation on the fact of their connection with Israel. But Jesus says, I am the real Vine. Think not that through a connection with Israel you may become partakers of the life of God, and inheritors of His promise. Through Me alone, is spiritual life received.” DA 675

 

“Whenever a group, be it large or small, prevents us from standing alone before Christ, wherever such a group raise a claim of immediacy it must be hated for the sake of Christ. For every immediacy, whether we realize it or not, means hatred of Christ, and this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanction of Christian principles.”  Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959, 95.

 

The Church Can Substitute Itself for Christ

 

The Church can interpose itself between the soul and Christ. The Church can substitute itself for Christ. When the Church substitutes itself for Christ, it becomes antichrist. One of the meanings of the Greek word antiis “instead of.” This is exactly what happened with Rome. This is exactly what happened with the Jewish Structure in the time of Christ on earth. This is what happens whenever the Church substitutes itself for Christ.

 

Once Martin Luther was asked, If you take away all these things that the Church offers the people, what will you give them to replace it? Luther said, “I will give them Christ.”

 

The False Idea That the Voice of the Church and the Voice of Christ are Identical

 

“That these men (leaders) should stand in a sacred place, to be as the voice of God to the people, as we once believed the General Conference to be, in the past. – General Conference Bulletin 1901 page 25.” Paulson Collection, 422.

 

“It has been some years since I have considered the General Conference as the voice of God. 17 MR 216 (1898).” LDE 50.

 

‘The voice from Battle Creek, which has been regarded as authority in counseling how the work should be done, is no longer the voice of God. 17 MR 185 (1896).” LDE 50.

 

Another fatal concept is that since it is “the Church,” it automatically speaks for Christ-its voice is identical to that of Christ. This can be a very subtle danger. This happened in Rome with the concept of the vicar of Christ, the pope. I have heard ministers who believed that if they received several calls to minister, and the calls came in close proximity of time, that the first call was the call that God wanted them to take. This position cuts the struggle of praying and seeking God’s will, but it can hardly be considered to be a be considered to be a Biblical concept. It, like so much else, is simply spiritual laziness. It requires effort to distinguish the voice of God and the voice of the church.

Substituting the “Fellowship of the Church” for Entering the Strait Gate

 

Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in Thy presence, and Thou hast taught in the streets. But He shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Luke 13: 26,27.

 

One of the greatest threats to the clarity of Christ’s personal, individual, call to discipleship and the personal following of the person of Christ Himselfcan be a blurring of that call, or even a substitution of the “fellowship of the church” for the call of Christ, so that the call of Christ, “Come, follow Me” is never heard, or answered, personally and individually. 

 

Many things can be substituted for the actual meeting of the conditions of discipleship laid down in Luke 14: 26, 27. Many things can be substituted for the actual following of Christ. We have even seen souls who, when spoken to about following Christ, will say, “I believe in the Spirit of Prophecy,” as if an intellectual assent to the validity of the Spirit of Prophecy can substitute for true discipleship of Christ, which is what the Spirit of Prophecy is all about.

 

When  “the Church” Offers False Christs

 

False Christ’s, such as the Christ of self-esteem, the pantheistic Christ, the rapper Christ, the Christ of the Jesuit Spiritual Formation, are all being offered by the churches today.

 

When “the Church” Mutates

 

The danger is compounded when the Structure involves itself in cultural adaptation, or “cultural relativism” to the culture of nihilism, pantheism, relativism, paganism, and gnosticism, morphing itself into a new mutation bearing the image of the beast.

 

God Must Be Seen as Completely Separate From the Structure

 

Both John the Baptist and Jesus by the testimony of their lives, testify to us that if we would be saved, if we would know God, if we would know the voice of Christ, we must be careful as they were to separate the voice of God in our soul from all other voices, especially from the voice of the Structure.   

 

John Took Radical Measures to Guard the Voice of God in His Soul

 

So careful was John about guarding this distinction of influence over his soul that he, at a very early age, left society and even his family and lived alone with God in the desert wilderness, cutting off every influence over his soul except for that of God and nature, providence and the Word. The result was that Jesus said of John that he was the greatest that he had ever been born of women.

 

The Only Way We Can Evaluate the Voice of the Structure is to Know the Voice of God First and Separate From the Structure

 

A Structure can either speak with one voice with God or be hostile to the voice of God, but if we would be able to discern how it is speaking we must first know the voice of God, or we have no basis for evaluating the voice of the Structure.

 

I remember my father, as I was growing up, describing the force of the truth he witnessed. He grew up on horseback on the open range in Alberta, Canada. There on horseback, day after day, isolated from the face of man, out on the vast, illimitable northern Canadian prairie, he communed with God. There was an abandoned, broken down house out on the prairie, where, under floorboards, he hid the books Alone With God and Steps to Christ. When, in his herding of the cattle on the open range, he chanced to pass by this abandoned house, he would go inside, lift up the floorboard, and retrieve these books, and read them, pondering their meaning, and communing with God.

 

Then, at one with the Creator, and the Creator’s sky, clouds, and prairie, he would go to Camp Meeting, he recognized that the voice of the living preacher, preaching the truth of the Word, was in harmony with the voice of God he had heard, that voice he had heard communing with God on horseback, reading Alone With God and Steps to Christ. The voice of God, nature’s God, and the preacher, were all one at that time in the late twenties and thirties.    

 

“Though No One Join Me, Still I Will Follow”

 

Even when I was a boy, sitting around the massive camp fire at night with the sparks rising toward the stars, not far from the lake at Junior camp, while aged eight and eleven, I still remember a few good men who knew God and sought to teach us how to hear and follow the voice of God. One of the memorable songs we sang was

 

I have decided to follow Jesus,

I have decided to follow Jesus,

I have decided to follow Jesus,

No turning back, no turning back.

 

Then the chorus of the voices would swell:

 

Though no one join me, still I will follow,

Though no one join me, still I will follow,

Though no one join me, still I will follow,

No turning back, no turning back.

 

 

If only that generation, growing up, had followed that song’s message! However, by the time they were in their late teens the Jesuit-created Hippie movement struck the Structure’s youth ministry in force, like a tsunami. The Jesuits, ordered to renew efforts to infiltrate Protestantism, especially Seventh-day Adventism, at the close of GC31 and Vatican II, using Catholic Youth Action, Legion of Mary, and Knights of Columbus, a new wave of ministers began coming out of the Structure.

 

The Cry of Relevance

 

All that breed of men who knew the voice of God was removed. They were irrelevant.  The new cry was You’ve got to be relevant, and that relevance meant accepting the North American version of the Jesuit Marxist Liberation theology-the preferential option for the poor, the inner city work, strumming the guitar, coffee houses, anti-war poetry.

 

The Shock Wave

 

The Catholic “charismatic” movement had been born in the Maria Laach Abbey in Germany in Nazi years, the same abbey led by Abbot Herwegen who developed  Reichstheologie.  This movement would join forces with the confluence of pantheism and Marxism that had been taught in Jesuit seminaries around the world from the 1950s on. The new Jesuit Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, elected at GC31, burned with Ignatian fervor to remold the culture of the entire world with Jesuit Teihard de Chardin’s theology of pantheism blended with Marxism. In 1966, Pedro Arrupe held the first major “Celebration” service, employing the new directives from Vatican II, at the Jesuit Fordham University before the largest gathering of Jesuit leaders in the history of North America.

 

It hit like a shock wave. By the late sixties and early seventies, the marks of Jesuit influence were suddenly visible everywhere in the Structure.

 

A Voice That Resembled Rome

 

Everything changed with a startling suddenness. By the 1970s a powerful wave of strange new men had flooded into the Structure-men who knew not God, knew not the truth, and hated those who did know god and the truth. Steeped in cutting edge Jesuit promotion of the religious dimension of the pantheistic/Marxist Hippie movement, these would-be “preachers” no longer had a voice that was one with nature, and nature’s God. Rather, they had a voice, and an agenda-that resembled Rome.

 

The Ekklesia, The Called Out Ones

 

“Multitudes are joined to the church who have never been united to Christ.” GC 468.

 

The Sovereignty of Christ Comes First

 

The sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of Christ, the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, the sovereignty of the Word interpreted by the Holy Spirit, comes first. Once that matter is settled, once and for all, and decisively in the human heart in full surrender, two or three, or more, can come together in Christ’s name, and Christ’s presence will be in the midst, making that gathering an ekklesia, a gathering of called out ones.

 

Only Those Who Are Taught By the Father Who Christ is to Them are Members of His Ekklesia, His Church

 

Only those who truly confess with heart, soul and life that Christ is Christ, the Son of the Living God, to them, are members of His ekklesia, His called out ones.

 

“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” Matthew 16:13.

 

Whom Do You Say That Jesus, The Son of Man, Is?

 

This is the first question that must be asked and settled, Whom do you say that Jesus is? Is He Lord of your life? Have you surrendered your all to Him? Has every thought been brought into captivity to His obedience?

 

“And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and other, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” Matthew 16:14.

 

Do you see Jesus as John the Baptist, mighty in spirit, greatest among those born of woman? Do you see Him as a mighty prophet who can control the elements by his word-Elijah? Do you see Him as a prophet-Jeremias? There are religions which see Jesus as a great teacher, but not divine-such as Islam. There are religions, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses who deny the deity of Christ-just like the “Anti-Trinitarians.”  Today a pantheistic Christ is being presented, an ecumenical Christ is being presented, an ecclesiastical Christ is being presented, and a rock and roll Christ is being presented. False Christs.  

 

The Primary Question: How Do I Relate To Christ?

 

Jesus is questioning the disciples ever more closely as to how they viewed Him, and how they related to Him. This self-examination is necessary for a person to become a member of the ekklesia. This was to establish the basis for understanding whom the ekklesia, the church, the true church, is. Those like the anti-Trinitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Muslims, who deny Christ’s deity, are not the ekklesia. They view Christ as a great teacher, a great prophet, but not as fully divine.

 

Neither could the Jewish leaders be part of the ekklesia, the true “church” the called out ones, for it was impossible for them to even believe, because they received honor from one another and not from God only. Indeed, at the very moment Jesus told them this, they were seeking to murder him.

 

Jesus later told them, “But ye believe not, because ye are not of My sheep, as I said unto you.” John 10:26.

The Church of His day disfellowshipped anyone following Christ. John 9. The “Structure Church” of Christ’s day sent out an arrest warrant for Christ. John 11:57. The “Structure Church” of Christ’s day tried through extermination to stamp out the followers of Christ. See Acts of the Apostles and Saul’s work. 

 

The Structure Church of Jesus’ day was not the ekklesia, the called out ones.

 

Christ Explain Who the Church Really Is

 

“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?

 

“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

 

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My father which is in heaven.

 

“And I say also unto thee, That thou are Petros, and upon this, the Petra, I will build my ekklesia: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  Matthew 16: 15-18.

 

Christ Defines His Ekklesia, His Church

 

1.      The issue is, Whom do you say that I am? The issue is personal and individual between your soul and Christ. Christ must be all that He is to us.

2.      Peter confesses, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

3.      Jesus blesses Peter for this, and says, “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.

4.      Flesh and blood can never reveal to our hearts Who Christ is to us. Only the Father in heaven can reveal Christ, as divine, as the messiah, as the Son of the Living God to us, and what it means to us.

5.      Jesus built His ekklesia, His “called out ones,” His church, upon the Petra, Himself, the Rock of Ages.

6.      Christ’s ekklesia is built on Christ alone, not on a human hierarchy, a human structure.

7.      The gates of hell will never prevail against Christ’s ekklesia that is built on Christ, the Petra, the Rock, alone.

8.      The gates of hell will prevail against every entity, no mater how large, even calling itself a “church,” which is not built upon the true, Biblical Christ alone.

9.      Even if there are only two people left on earth who are true followers of Christ, the gates of hell will not prevail against them.

10.  In truth, if there is only one person left on earth who is built on the Petra, the Rock Christ Jesus alone, he is not alone, for Christ said, Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Christ and that one makes two. Christ makes that one person a majority, for Christ is greater than all creation, and the gates of hell will not prevail against that person who is anchored in Christ.

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