Minister to Minister Part 1 – Gene’s testimony

Thought I’d pass on a little gossip to you. I was there on Clinton Street and witnessed those people in those horrible conditions. And Sunday, it was the Sunday before Easter, and I went to the largest Christian evangelical church building in greater New York, and I sat in the balcony, and I heard the pastor, nationally known, preach and bless his heart, it was an off day. He aimed at nothing, and he hit it, and I looked at those well-dressed people, and I looked at that well-dressed minister, and I looked at that ritual. I had been through that ritual so many times, and I was so tired of that ritual.

And I looked back at what I had just been through, and that was the real world. And this was what, I did not know what it was; I was sitting in the balcony. I knew it was not the living, breathing organism of the first century that I was certain of. And when the meeting was over, as innocently but as honestly as I’ve ever done anything, I stood up there in the balcony and everybody had left and I said out loud, “Lord Jesus, I will never again walk inside a church building as long as I live, I am good. I’ve been to two or three funerals. I’ve been pushed into a situation once or twice I couldn’t get out of.” And just recently, I volunteered, broke my vow, brothers. And I preached in a Baptist church about two months ago. Can you believe that?

I know where that building came from. I know where that ritual came from. I know where those traditions came from. I am a student of history, I know, and I know, forgive me, but I know about as much about the history of the first century probably as any man living that has to do with the church of the living God.

And brothers, I tell you in the simple retelling of the story, it’s not there. Something else was there, and we are the recipients of a tradition. I’m not angry about tradition. I just want you to know, it has no place in Scripture. And I left, I left that day. I had, I think, one more conference to take in, and it was not in a church building.

I came home, and I shall never forget that it was in April; this is in November. I spent all that time just sitting in my study. I was sitting out in the hammock in my backyard, 1620 …, Tyler, Texas, on a hot and muggy November day. And I think it must have been 1962; it could have been 1963, probably 1962. And I was reading Romans 7. And I closed my Bible, and I said, “Lord, I will never serve You again as long as I live. I am finished forever.”

For I had made an incredible discovery that my God was not God. My God, my God, the God that I fell down before and worshiped, not realizing it, my God was serving God.