The DEEPEST Truth Paul Ever Taught

I’m afraid that if I try to explain to you what I want to do this week, it will be too much for you to grasp. But I’m going to say it anyway. First of all, I personally am very aware that I’m standing just a few miles away from where they burned John Hus, and I also am aware that we might not be here if it had not been for men like John Hus who gave their lives to make our day possible. So, I am very aware of the historical implications. Secondly, I am back in my second home. I lived in Switzerland longer than any other place I’ve ever lived. Well, maybe it’s my third home. I just remembered I lived in Canada longer than in Switzerland, but I never think of that. I’m not very far from the place where I studied, nor am I far away from the place where the Anabaptists began in Zurich, and the Roman Catholics used to give them an ironic way of dying, in that the Anabaptists believed in adult baptism, so the Catholics gave it to them by drowning them. I am aware of that.

Now, the things that are on my heart…I guess one thing I would like to do, if I could in one week, but I can’t, is completely destroy your way of thinking, just smash it to pieces. I would bring down the evangelical Christian mind if I could. That would take a little time. Secondly, I would like for us to come to a whole new approach to the Word of God, one that is…and I’m going to use the word “new,” because I am absolutely certain that it’s not happened before, because I’ve never found it, and I’ve searched hard. You’re not going to understand this, but I declare the gospel of the Lord from a model. Now, that doesn’t mean a thing in the world to anybody in this room but me. As far as I know—this is not a boast, this is just history—as far as I know, I am the first and only person who ever preached the gospel from a model. Now, would one of you like to ask me what I mean by “a model”? Okay, now then, would anybody in this room like to take a stab at what I mean by a model? You don’t know?

When people who believe in evolution talk about it, they have to build a model because they weren’t there: how fish evolved, how man evolved, how the universe evolved, so they build a model. When scientists work on something new, they often will build a model and say, “This is the way it’s going to be, we think.” Of course, architects always build a model before they build their building. That’s more or less a present thing. Models are used in just about every area of human endeavor, one way or the other. A creationist will use a model to prove that Earth was created by God in a very short length of time. That’s a model. Are you beginning to understand what I’m saying? They weren’t there; therefore, they have to build a model. Can someone help me now that you’ve heard this with a model? A pharmacist may sometimes build a model of a molecule to better understand it. Astronomers build models of the universe and study and understand them. They have to because time is warped.

Now then, I have either succeeded in explaining to you what generally a model is, or I haven’t. Do you want to ask any more questions before I describe what I mean by a model in my own life? Are you following me at all? To my knowledge, there has never been a model made of the first-century church, or the first-century experience, including the Lord’s life. We kind of stick it together with glue as we go along. Trouble comes up—here’s a verse that says something else happens—this is the way I think God’s people did it. Then, with the evangelical mind, we go to the Scripture, and we find Christian universities, Bible schools, church buildings, pulpits, pastors, pews—they’re all in the New Testament…but we find them there when we need to find them.

When I was 29 years old, I began building a model. It started on the day of Pentecost and ended with John on Patmos, and I included everything on Earth I could find, and I have never varied from that model. I don’t try to find something that’s not there. I don’t try to justify something new tomorrow. I looked at it as a student of history, and I looked at it as someone who has spent his whole life, up to this very hour, studying first-century history so that I might be able to better understand the model that was created. I will speak to you from a model. It’s the first time I’ve ever said this publicly. I don’t expect you to understand it, but if I could, I would force everyone who has ever spoken or ministered the gospel to first build a model.

I would like him to justify the Bible school, the seminary, the pastor, the pew, the minister of education, the mission board, the mission field, and the missionaries. What else can I throw in there? Sunday school…from his model. Lots of other things. A Bible study class. Sunday morning church service. The Sunday morning ritual. You have to build it into your model and say, “This is what they did in the first century, and here is the story from beginning to end.” If you build a model of the first-century church, you cannot put those things in there. They’re not there. Now, I’m not beating this thing with an axe. It’s a very private thing to me, but I’m going to talk to you from a model. That’s another thing. Then, that’s why I kind of hated getting up here and telling you what this week’s about.

I want to tell you something else: I don’t like to pray. I can do about all the praying I’m going to do in about two minutes. I also don’t like to kneel unless it’s on the carpet. A little louder, please. I find prayer boring. I find it—man laughs—most of it scripturally unjustifiable. But there is something I do believe in very strongly, and it bothers me. I believe in knowing the Lord, and touching the Lord, and experiencing the Lord, and embracing the Lord, and fellowshipping with the Lord, and encountering the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, what brought me out of the organized church was not the model. Two things brought me out of the organized church. One was pure, unadulterated boredom; I just couldn’t go to church again unless I was horse-whipped all the way there. But the other thing is that I had a hunger to know my Lord, and I went after that with everything that I knew. I have in my library most of the writings of the mystics of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, although I’ve thrown away a lot of those books, as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church mystics, and anything else they ever had to say that might help me a little bit about the Lord. And all the Protestant and Evangelical books I could find, and most of it was worthless, almost all of it, in fact. I can’t think of anything that helped me other than Jeanne Guyon’s little book, and that was in one chapter.

What frustrates me is that I just came back from a conference of the house church movement in America. It was my third time to be there, and I blew my stack. I got frustrated. I’ll not dare say I got angry, because that’s not true. I couldn’t possibly get angry. Fortunately, they are a very gracious bunch of people with a wonderful sense of humor, and you can say things to them and not offend them. I watched those brothers preach and preach and preach out of the Bible, and they were putting together the church. One brother spoke for an hour and a half on why women should be silent in the meetings. I don’t remember what another brother spoke on. Someone else probably spoke about elders and all that. One of the things I said to them is: in my library is a book written by Alexander Hay in the early part of this century, and there’s not one single thing they have said but what has been covered by Hay, way back at the beginning of the century. There’s nothing new there. I said to them, “Brothers, I do not understand why you are not passionately trying to find your Lord.” And it bothers me that the house church movement doesn’t have passion.

Brothers and sisters, I’m going to qualify this a little bit, but most of the Christian faith has moved forward on the basis of fanaticism. Good fanaticism. Burning hearts of people who cannot stand what’s going on. They got up and caused a stink, and then some things happened that brought us a little further on. My point being, this is the longest opportunity I will have to be with the brothers and sisters from Chicago, and I’m looking forward to it. We’re going to talk about touching the Lord, perhaps more than anything else. Other than the time that we spent together in Louisiana, and y’all all went home and diligently had a fight, and the whole thing fell on its face. Margaret, is that not accurate? You don’t know? Well, I’ll tell you after the meeting. Y’all got home and got a little sidetracked from Louisiana. We spent the week there. It was some of the healthiest things that ever happened to the church in Chicago. If you think about it sometimes, you’ll figure it out, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. It concerns me that most of our preaching is done on the level of the earth rather than the other realm, and most of our experience is very earthly rather than heavenly.

Now, the last thing, and if I can do any of this well, I will be very surprised this week. We have reached a place in Christian history where we are virtually without the church. Now, that may not be true of the people in this room, but even those of us in this room, and I count myself as part of that, it is still difficult for us to break away from our evangelical mind and see the centrality of the church. Now, I’m using the word “centrality,” and I know what that means. So, I must be very careful to say: the centrality of Christ in the church. We have a Bible, we have a New Testament, that we can just stretch in any direction we wish to justify just about anything. And when we come to the Scripture, it is our natural inclination for the last 1700 years to minister to you, the individual. We have almost no capacity whatsoever to find the Scripture addressing a body of believers, and that’s one of the things I’m going to attempt to do this week: to take our brains and crack them open. I want you to know that I struggle with doing this myself, and if I struggle with it, I can only imagine how difficult it must be for many, many others of God’s people, because this is something that I am consumed with. I am consumed with the church. She is my breath, my love, my passion, and yet I also find it very difficult to come to the Scripture and realize that most of it is not addressed to “me.” That it’s addressed to “us.” Now, you try sometimes to minister anything, and it’ll come out “you,” and it’ll come out “me” every time…but it’s to the church. Okay, now, I’m through with that. That’s my introduction. Does anybody want to say something? I’m going to tell you a story, and the brothers and sisters from Chicago, when they hear it, they’re going to think that they’ve heard it before, but I’m going to tell you a story that nobody in this room has ever heard before. In fact, this is the first time I have ever told it. It’s a long story. It will seem to have nothing to do with this week. It has everything to do with this week.