Rochester Conference Part 2: Becoming One Species (1996)

The barrier between the Jew and the Gentile in that temple. I don’t see why. I would think with his Jewish mind that would be exactly the image that’s in his head. That temple’s wall has been torn apart in that temple and now he switches over to a living temple, and in Galatians, which was written before this, he was speaking of the new Jerusalem being, the heavenly Jerusalem being, our mother.

Thank you. I appreciate that, brother. Very much. The body of Christ just made a contribution. Actually, it was just one piece of the pie. And when you come into a meeting together and begin to share, honest to goodness, I could wish that some of the sharing in all the churches that have ever existed could be composed together, and it would shame all the theologians. The revelation and insight you get from your brothers and sisters will leave you breathless.

I want y’all to hear what David said. First of all, you have to know that I’m one of the greatest preachers who ever lived. I have more revelation than anybody who has ever lived in the last 5 seconds; ever been born in the last 5 seconds (laughter), or to put it another way, I do preach the Lord Jesus Christ to the churches, and I’m telling you, it’s high. Then I leave. The brothers and sisters are just in awe of what they’ve heard. And then they come together as simple brothers and sisters, mechanics or carpenters, computer operators, and things like that, wives and waitresses, and they sit down in that room, and in the words of brother David, who is testifying to this, there is more revelation in that room than all that I’ve ever preached to them, deeper and more beautiful and more breathtaking and David, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The church of Jesus Christ can always out-preach me in her simple sharing of Christ. It’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Alright, have we come to the end of verse 21? A holy sanctuary in the Lord is what all this fitting together, this building as it comes together, is. In Christ, in whom, 68. That’s perfect.

I want to be interrupted. I want the brothers and sisters to hear the interruption more than the words, in whom you also are in the process of being built together. 69. I’m going to do it again. Just more practice, David. In whom you, I know I said I’m giving you some practice. In whom you are also being built up together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

In Christ, you – plural – also are being built together into a dwelling, and I almost want to count dwelling, I’m not going to, but into a dwelling of God in the spirit. My heart actually aches and cries for this to grab hold of you, that Paul is talking to a group of very poor people in a very small town, a people he’s never seen, and they’re understanding every word “you” in the assembly, in the ekklesia, in Hierapolis, are right now being built together into a dwelling of God, which means that you are being built together. You are being built together, and you are growing up into a place where God, the living God, comes to dwell, that is not inside you particularly. Yes, He is in you, but oh, brothers and sisters, too long for, look for and revel in the fact that this people who came together got built up until they are a sanctuary and God, as He did in the Old Testament, when they got through building the tabernacle, actually came and got inside of it and lived there. And now here is the reality of that tabernacle. And here is the reality of Solomon’s temple. Those were pictures of a body of people coming together and getting built up, and God comes and dwells in the people, not in you the person, but in you the people, a bunch of poor, illiterate folk in Hierapolis. May such things grip your souls.

45 sentences and 69 plurals, being conservative. There is one absolutely clear one that is singular: that no one among you. They’re not there, are they? They’re not. We could give you four or five just for some theologian who might fuss, but you’ve really got one clear one. That no one among you does what? What was that? Steal. That no one, no one among you, what? No one boasts. Okay.

We got all these Bible classes in homes all over America, and they open it, and they begin showing you from the very first meeting why we must know the word of God and be obedient to it. Two things that burden me, and that is that I don’t think that brother or sister would be able to handle what we have heard these last two days, for anything, and that’s obedience to scripture. The other thing is, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had little Bible studies all over America, and people would open Ephesians and open Colossians and read this and teach this to their people. What if these had been the first words you ever heard as a believer? Well, it would be life-changing. You know what I think you would do? I think you would immediately, no matter what I have just said, I think you would immediately say, “That’s wonderful. I think I’ll go down and join the First Baptist Church so that I could be part of the body of Christ, the church.” I think it would be the first thing you did, even if I was screaming at you as you got out of the car. But I think after a few weeks, if you went back and reflected on what you had heard, you would say there’s a little something missing. And probably the pastor, when you went to talk to him, he’d say, “But oh brother, all these things are true. We have this committee. We have this committee over here. And we have functioning in the meetings, brothers and sisters pray, so and so comes up, testifies in the pulpit every Sunday, and we have choir practice on Sunday night or Wednesday night. We have Bible class where we really get into these things,” and you know I don’t know but what many of us or most of us would be convinced and go sit there for a while, but I want you to know something else. The new Jerusalem that city calls to your spirit deep to deep and will for as long as you follow Christ; for as long as you follow Christ.

I’m going to tell you, and I’m going to tell the organized church something that they don’t know. Most Christians do not faithfully follow Jesus Christ throughout their…time, even the most devout. I would like to take you to the First Baptist Church in Cleveland, Texas, and I’d like for you to go into our intermediate class, taught by brother Cole, who ran a furniture company in Cleveland, Texas. And there are five or six or seven boys in that class, and we all listen to it. And there’s not one of those who still live there who still goes, but there were Mr. and Mrs. Tanner and Mr. and Mrs. someone else, I just remember the Tanners, they are real close friends, they meant everything in the world to me. Mr. and Mrs. This and Mr. and Mrs. that, and you, unless they’re dead, Mr. Mrs. Lewis, they’re still attending. But if you’ll take all the people who today are 60 years old who once attended that church regularly, you’ll have the Mr. and Mrs. Tanners and the Mr. and Mrs. Lewis’s of our age there, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, maybe 11 or 12, that’s all there is, but there are many more at my age that aren’t there.

One day, your religious faithfulness even gives up, and religious faithfulness is one of the most powerful things in the world. I went to church on December 25^th, on Sunday morning, Christmas day in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, Italy, and there were about 25 cardinals in their robes and about 100 people, in a city of probably 2 million at that time. I was 19, and I am telling you, and God is my witness, I don’t know how many, but most of those cardinals were bored stiff or asleep. I mean, they’ve been through this thousands of times, more than you and I have ever been to church, and they’re just worn out from it. And I looked around in that room, and I saw one old man sitting there with his, I guess it was beads, or maybe he didn’t have his beads, and he was just absorbing that with all he had, believing everything he had ever been taught, trying to absorb that mass that night, high mass, Sunday morning, December 25^th, 100, 150, call it 200 people sitting there. One old man, one old man; the other two million people got tired of that. They weren’t there; now, maybe a few of them were in one of the other two or three or 400 churches in that city.

You get tired, brother, of going to that stuff. That’s going to happen to you because life is supposed to be flowing through you because there’s a member on this side, a member on that side. And life is supposed to be flowing through them because there’s a member in the middle flowing out to both of them. And a leaf on a tree can’t stay forever when there is no flow of life through that tree and to that leaf. You’re just not going to do this forever. And then they’re going to bury you, and the young pastors are going to ask, “Well, tell me something about her so I can tell the people.” And he’s going to say she used to be a faithful attender of this church, or so-and-so church. She used to be part of the WMS, and she used to do this, that, and the other, but you hadn’t been in church for 20, 25 years, you were tired of that thing. That’s a prophecy. You can go to a ritual just so often.

I’ll tell you something else. The other difference between being feminine and being a woman. Can you understand that? And being feminine and being a woman. I want you all to know that Gene Edwards has almost never preached to the people in which there were more women than men. Brothers have always outnumbered the women, and on bad days, they were even, but I have no recollection of any of the churches ever having more women than men. And the churches of this earth have no appeal to men. And yet here I am speaking of a beautiful girl, I’m speaking constantly of her, and always the men outnumber the women, or no worse than a tie. And I’m telling you that this ritual business does not stir men. You go into a Catholic church, and here’s all this color and pageantry that appeals to some women and a few men, but it does not appeal to men. And the church of Jesus Christ by nature should be full of big, brawny, sun-crowned men. A ritual is not going to satisfy any of us for long.