The ONLY WAY To Move Forward In Christ

I have a friend who listened to a message of mine. He is not in a local body of believers, but somewhere, he got hold of a message I brought many, many years ago. His eyes lit up, and he said, “This is wonderful. We’re going to use this.” Family began to use it, and they began praying as the church, and I don’t know, I don’t ever ask him. He said, Gene, it’s working, it’s working. I am a sweet, mild-mannered, really tender, gentle person with a very even temper underneath my mild-mannered exterior…I’m a Clark Kent on the outside…but I’m a human being on the inside. I am enraged when men try to harness God. We got this verse, this verse, this verse, and this verse, and God has got to be faithful to His Word, and He promised this, this, and this, and therefore we can do this, this, and this, and we’re going to do it.

Excuse me, brother. Please don’t feel insulted. I’m going to talk real, real directly. You Pentecostals are the biggest bunch of liars that ever lived. You know, you tell— forgive me, don’t take this personally, brother. You know, I hear all these verses, we’re going to do it, we do it, and boy, if it works, they tell everybody. If it doesn’t…I watched an organization get a hold of something, and they were praying for someone not to die, and boy, they came in the next day, and they said, and the doctor said what was happening was miraculous. They were cheering and ranting and raving and jumping up and down, and they had harnessed God. She died the next day. Those brothers and sisters should have apologized to the Lord. I’m telling you, I hope this is the truth. If it had happened among us, I would have stood up and apologized. I am not going to live in an unreal world.

I’ve had some amazing things happen to me. I don’t mean little things either, I mean things that have happened on the stage of this world. The whole world.  I’m not going to tell you about them for nothing. Maybe sometime in the privacy of my home, I may talk to some brothers who are workers about them. But I also want you to know there are times I fell flat on my face, and I don’t mind admitting that, and I don’t fully understand these things, but I will never use what you have heard me say to you for myself, nor my ministry, nor my work. May God help me to be faithful to that.

Now I am saying to you, as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been given all rule and power and dominion and authority, and I am speaking of a local body of believers. As those things affect your church, your city, what you are doing, and what is to be accomplished in the kingdom of God, that authority has been given to you, which has been accomplished by Jesus Christ. And friend, you better not abuse it.

Now, in some ways, I’m taking back all I gave you, but you don’t know how clean I feel in talking this way. I have not given you a gimmick, and you cannot harness God. In the words of C.S. Lewis, Aslan is not tame. He is wild, and I don’t care what the Bible says. It says right here—well, let’s look a little bit bigger at that. Let’s look with spiritual eyes. I’m sorry, but organizations have not been given these things, and a Baptist church has not been given…it would be an insult to God for a Baptist church…I just shudder at the thought. And what did the Roman Catholic church do with the idea that these things have been given to the church? They started lopping people’s heads off and burning them at the stake.

I fear what the Pentecostals would do. When I was a little kid, I didn’t know what a Pentecostal was, but I knew that everybody poked fun at them. They were called holy rollers, and they had all sorts of problems; some of them were thrown in jail, and God loved them for that. Well, they had a story: Will Pentecostals get to heaven, and the answer was, if they don’t shoot right past it. They were a wild bunch of people. I’m telling you now today, the Pentecostals are in a real position of influence, and they persecute. How do I know that? Because I is one. I would name some other organizations; they’re supposed to be really wonderful Christian organizations. When they get in the saddle, they persecute, and I don’t mean mildly. I mean, really heavy-duty stuff you might read about, maybe in Argentina or China. I’m off the subject.

Brothers and sisters, may a body of believers be built together. May they somehow find humility. May they find brokenness. May they find genuineness and honesty. May they have a revelation of Christ, and may they have a revelation of the church, but may they never corrupt what they have seen, nor seek to egotistically use God. I will tell you that the Lord Jesus Christ will take off and go somewhere else. Whatever the Lord has given a local body of believers…the Holy Spirit Himself…you ought to be able to be in contact with Him enough to know what He has given, to pray with His prayer, and to know and to do the will of God on this earth, because you have been prompted by divine means. Did you follow that? Do you understand what I said?

Anybody got anything they want to say here? Does anybody want to react to this? I’d like to see an honest bunch of people on this earth who wisely use that which God has given them. In fact, He’s not going to give it to anybody other than those. I would not hesitate to ask the brothers and sisters in any locality to sit down together or fall on our faces together and ask God to stop the moon in its orbit if I felt that was the will of God. By the way, if I ever ask you to pray with me to stop the moon in its orbit, and I don’t have some really good reasons, if I were you, I’d slip out the door fast.

By the way, I’m going to tell you something else that’s quite interesting. For those of you who are drunk on the desire for power, I’m glad you are drunk on the desire for power, because it will destroy you. God did not give these holy things to an individual. He gave them to a body of believers of whom you are but one, and when I see an individual out there with power, I can only think of one thing: imminent destruction. Imminent destruction. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that fail. I have a friend who recently saw something in the Bible that he thought was the secret to power. He kept working at it, wrote a book about it, and it never worked for him, and I’m really grateful, because if it had, I think it would have destroyed him. I’m really grateful…individuals going after the things, the holy things of God, to use them to their own ends. I’m sorry, you got the wrong God.

These things have been given to the local assembly with the understanding that Jesus Christ corporately dwells in all of us. Brother, when that moment comes, you walk into the throne of God with as much boldness as Jesus Christ, and you start doing business with the Lord. Then, when that is over, you lay it down, and you don’t think about it, and you don’t talk about it, and for sure you don’t brag about it, and maybe God, in His mercy, will continue to allow you to be a steward of that which he has given the church.

Are you hearing me? I just gave you something wonderful. Now you say, “Gene, you’re trying to take it back.” I’m not even just trying to… There’s one person in this room who’s going to pervert this. I don’t know which one you are. I’m trying to stop you. No, that didn’t help. I thought maybe I could see you. Which one of you is it? You’re in here. I love what the local church—I don’t like that term—the local body of believers does to power-happy individuals. They bring them down two or three notches. You’ll never successfully talk the church into your view of power and authority. The church has been raised right, and if she knows the Lord right, she will have a certain balance within her. I don’t want to talk too much more about this because I don’t want to be negative. I just want to take away from those Christians I know who have always sought the power of God. That is so foolish, brother. Let your eyes be open. These things are for a body of believers and no other.

Now, please listen to this because…It’s really… By the way, this is my point. You should listen to this. And the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, which is according to the working of the strength of His mind. He’s still working these things out. Which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at God’s right hand in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ and gave Jesus Christ as head over all things. He gave Jesus Christ to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. And then we drop down here to verse 6: And raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.