The Restoration of the Headship of Christ in Church Meetings

I want to tell you the story, as best I understand it, of the recovery up to right now, of what you might call worship, or if you wish to call it: “The Proper Way to Meet”; whatever you want to call it. This is the recovery up until right now, the restoration of it.

I want to start back with… Let’s start with Adam. When Adam lived in the garden, how did he meet with God? Did he meet with God through a mediator? No, he met with God face to face. He literally saw him and heard him. He met with him face-to-face. Now then, brothers, is that where the beginning really is? It is not. According to Isaiah, perhaps Jeremiah, and I think the Psalms, we know that worship was going on before the earth was even created. That the angels, something of the angelic hosts, something of the spheres, worshipped God even before the foundation of the earth. The earth was created, and time began out of a problem of worship. The whole creation, or whatever there was, perhaps it was non-creation. I don’t know. I have a finite mind. I don’t know what was going on before the foundation of the earth was laid, but there was the worship of the living God. Then Satan rebelled and refused to worship God, and this is where time began. God began to develop something new. Worship, in some way, is somewhat tied up in the desires of God.

Then, what is worship? To fall before the Lord and say, Oh, I’m a sinner. No, it is to meet with God face to face. It is to meet with God face to face. Satan could not endure this, and he brought sin into the human race. Then the Lord began his redemptive work and his work of restoring proper worship, proper coming to the Lord.

Brothers and sisters, what is Jerusalem? Jerusalem is a place where there is nothing to do but to know God. Jerusalem was a city built to have no social life, no distractions, so that those who came there would come there to meet with and worship God. They would come and worship God. It was built for nothing but God. But what is Jerusalem and the temple there? It is an expansion of the tabernacle. And what is the tabernacle? The tabernacle is Jesus Christ, and a place where the people would come and behold Him, feed Him, and worship Him. There came a day when God looked down on Jerusalem, and it had left its purpose, and it got distracted by other things, and God said, ” Let it go. That city has only one purpose for me, and that is to be a place where man and God can…where Christ can be displayed, and man can worship him, and nothing else in the world will be there except Christ. When other things came in, God leveled it. He leveled that city.

Now we have a spiritual Jerusalem. They came back to the walls; they came back to the torn-down city that they had been taken out of. What are these walls that were torn down? The walls that were torn down mean that something had gotten into the city other than its real purpose. Its purpose was for nothing on this earth, but for man to meet Christ as everything to him and to worship Him there. Then what was the rebuilding of the wall? The rebuilding of the wall is the restoration, the protection, the building up of the proper way to worship God. And as they built, they fought, because the enemy saw what was happening. They built, and they fought, but that is only a picture. Brothers and sisters, we simply let the Lord build us together. We do not build, and we do not have to fight Satan. Maybe I should take this moment to get off the subject. I am now off the subject. Have you switched shift gears?

All young Christians, whether they be 60 or 20 or 15, one day have to get hung up on Satan, and they get distracted by… I saw a shutter move; that was the devil. Satan is really fighting us. Please do not get… You know, Satan has two or three weapons. He has the weapon of doubt, the weapon of fear, and the weapon of unbelief. You take those away from him, and he doesn’t have anything else. He can make you doubt. What can he do after he’s made you doubt? Doubt more? And after you doubted more, what can he make you do? Doubt even more. He has no other weapons with which he can hurt you. Now, never expose Satan. Even to say he’s conquered is to expose him. He’s fighting us to expose him. Forget him. I mean it. Drop the subject. Don’t look for what he is doing. This is his way of getting in. Just drop the subject. Take your position; you’ve got it.

Have you ever studied the life of Adolf Hitler? Well, I have. Now, I lived in the time when Adolf Hitler was still alive, but I didn’t know it. I was just vaguely aware that somebody was giving us a hard time. By the time I got a little older, he was already dead, but when I got to be an adult, as someone interested in history, I read a book and lots and lots of small books, pamphlets, articles, and condensations on Adolf Hitler and his reign. I read a book entitled A Study in Tyranny. As I read that thing, cold sweat broke out on my face, and I literally got scared of that guy. I wondered, oh, what a horrible man. How did we ever beat him? I literally got frightened of a man who had already been defeated…by studying him. Now, you have never been frightened by Adolf Hitler, have you? Has anybody here ever been frightened of Adolf Hitler? You have. Why? Same reason. Okay, thank you, brother. Has anybody else ever studied his life? Well, then you won’t ever get scared of him until you study it. Then when you study it and study it and study it, you’ll get scared. You’ve been scared, and I’ve been scared about a man who is where? Dead, grave, defeated, gone, but by exposing him again, even out of the grave, he has the power to frighten me.

Satan has been defeated, brother. Let it be. Let it be. Take your position. You read Ephesians 6, which says we fight against principalities and powers. You go back and reread it, and you think you’re gearing up for a great warfare, and you think something great’s going to happen. Why? It’s the Prince of Principalities and powers and the darkness of the air. Oh, that sounds like we’re really going to get all turned up. You go back and read the soldier’s description, and it says you’ve got a shield. Hold it up, and it will quench all the fiery darts of the devil. Some battle. “Lord, Satan has been defeated.” I know what it’s like for Satan to be exposed. I will give you an illustration.

Just a few weeks ago, one of the brothers called me and told me, “Wow, we’re really being attacked by Satan…and so on. I hadn’t heard anything about Satan in months. So, I put the phone down, and I knew exactly what was going to happen. That night I went to bed. About 3 a.m… this happened to me recently…I woke up. And there was a sensation. “Somebody’s in this room. Oh, I’m scared!” Brothers and sisters, I took my pillow, I turned over, and put my pillow on the top of my head, and I said, “I refuse to accept that.” I was sound asleep in five seconds. And it went. I’ll tell you for sure that if I had followed this feeling, I’d have heard something else. The more I’d have sweated and the more I’d have been afraid, I’ll tell you, by morning time, I would have told my wife all the wildest stories you’ve ever heard. I could have. Now, let me give you a passage of Scripture. It is so beautiful, and don’t ever forget it. In

1 John 2. I write unto you…who? Little children, because of what? Because your sins are forgiven. When I met…I guess I shouldn’t do it, but I’ll start. When I met in Kansas City, I did not know. I had not seen…you know, the dear brothers you know…for so long, I did not know where they were in the Lord, and they were absolutely in ecstasy. They were beside themselves. They had just learned something fantastic that had dropped all the chains off of them. They had learned that their sins were forgiven, and I listened to them speak, and I actually got under law. Is it possible they know something I don’t know here? That kept on saying, “Our sins are forgiven, our sins were forgiven.” I listened and tried to get excited like they did. I came back and told my wife, and I think she either read something or listened to a tape, and she said, “I don’t know whether to get excited like this is something new, or is this something I already know?” I said, “Well, honey, I have listened over and over, and as far as I know, this is something we have already experienced.” I don’t see anything new in it.”

Brothers, it’s the little children who learn that their sins were forgiven. Little children, I write to you because your sins are forgiven. That’s the first thing you learn. You really learn it, not in a little way, but you really learn it. That’s the little children learning. “Your sins are forgiven.”