Knowing Christ in a Profound Way (DCLC – July ’87, Part 1)

So, sometimes I was one of the speakers in one of those conferences, and here I come out of this prayer meeting with all these preachers, and they’ve been preaching, praying this, and praying this, and praying this, and I thought, well, praise the Lord tonight, maybe the Lord will answer the prayer. Man, I step down from the pulpit. Meetings ended. Here they come. One throws a net over me. Another one’s got a fire extinguisher. Another one’s got a rope, another one’s got a chain, another one’s got a ball and chain. And it’s, “Oh, oh, Gene. Gene, you’ll upset people. Don’t do that.” Or “You’re being negative, brother. You’re being negative.”

Now listen, I am not a negative person; I am not. Now I know what people mean by negative, that’s some sour puss or who stands up there just attacking anything and everything and declaring the world’s going to hell and this and that. He’s against everything on earth, and he sits down and he calls that boldness, but he doesn’t have any solutions. Or maybe he takes a verse of scripture out of something. My position has been and will forever be. I will never attack anything specific. I’m not going to go after the Catholics. I’m not going after the Methodists or the Baptists. But I will speak on general problems that we have with all my heart. And I will almost never do it from the viewpoint of Scripture, and perhaps this is a unique thing on my part. I will not do it from the viewpoint of scripture; I will almost always do it historically.

Now, there’s a reason for that. You can prove anything with the Bible. You have a much harder time moving history around. History is pretty well solidified. They didn’t break it up into verses and chapters so that you can pull a little word out here and a little word out of the third century and something out of the fifth century and something out of the 10th century to prove it. I’ve stayed within history. And last of all, I never jumped anything until I knew I had something better to replace it with. Never, never will, never have. I have never preached beyond my experience. There have been a few occasions in my life when I felt it was necessary to speak beyond my experience, but when I did it, I did it and said so. But I have not preached beyond my experience, and I have not preached without a solution, but I am standing here absolutely convinced that when you hear people say what we need is bold preachers and prophets like the Old Testament prophets, and what we need, you know, is to tear down and shake and move, forget it. Brothers, I don’t think somebody out there praying those prayers doesn’t mean that.

Now, I’m a southern gentleman. I’m one of the most gracious people you will ever know. I am not a negative person, but there are some things that need to be removed from our lives. They are just horrendous, and they’re standing there like boulders in the middle of the road. And I’m not made like to stand up here and preach around them or ignore them or think that they’re going to go away, especially if they’re standing between us and knowing the Lord better. Now, you only hear a few of them, yeah.

What are you going to do when I start getting tomatoes up here? Are you still going to be really bold? And when they carry me out of here, you’re still going to be really bold. Okay, alright. Now, watch what I said. I said I will not attack it unless there’s a solution. And I’ll not attack it except on the basis of history.

Now, one of the things I’ve already brought up a few minutes ago, I am so ticked off about sermons right now, I am full right up to here with sermons. Sermons are not Christian. They have no background in the Christian faith. Now, before you fall off your chair, what they did in the first century and what happened after the 4th century are two different things. In the fourth century, something changed. There was a blending of the New Testament prophet, evangelist, church planter, whatever you want to call some of those men, and the different things they did.  You get up to about the 4th century and a little past Constantine, there comes a vocabulary with it, which we got out of the New Testament. But coming over here out of left field is something that was a large part of the pagan world. The movie stars of that day were the orators, and there was a school of oration that was probably more complex than anything that any man studies today in making speeches. They spent lifetimes studying the art of how to speak.

After the Greeks were defeated, and they were so attached to their orators, they would actually gather in coliseums, and they would present a show; they couldn’t fight the Romans. They had been defeated, and they were conquered. They would present a hypothetical situation, and then they would have three or four of the great orators of that city come out and debate this thing, and make speeches on it, and the crowds would go wild. It was an art form. And those two things met in about the fourth century. They met in about four or five men who honed this thing together. They were Greek pagan orators, and when they converted, they picked up the Bible and began to be orators of it. Until that time, preaching was sporadic. It was to meet specific needs. It was to build a local congregation and get out of there. It was for the purpose of handling problems and emergencies. It was not an art form, and it wasn’t something that God’s people were subjected to every Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m., now and forever, world without end.

The concept of a human being standing in a pulpit and preaching every Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. emerged out of the Reformation 400 years ago. And since that time, God’s poor people have been subjected to that again and again and again. And what I’m ticked off about is that it doesn’t ever go anywhere. This week it’s David and Goliath. Next week, it’s Paul on his third trip. And the next week it’s King Saul. And the next week it’s Samson. And the next week it’s something out of the life of Jesus. And next week it’s the second coming. And you’re just getting entertained. And it goes back into the history of entertainment through oration.

I’m not going to sit up here and take three or four hours to tell you this. Please trust me. This thing started 400 years ago in the Protestant tradition, based upon the oratorical skills that had stayed within the Christian faith that had come to us through the orators of paganism. You know, when I got to the seminary, by the way, I’m a seminary graduate. And by the way, I’ll tell you something else, I am better educated than most men that I meet in the ministry. They got out of the seminary, and they started to stop looking, and they stopped breathing, and I know this doesn’t sound modest, and I know, Lord, I’m supposed to be humble, but those guys don’t know anything. And that’s something else I’m ticked off about. They don’t know their business. They have simply become people who do a little thing every week. They preach and they pat old ladies on their hands and visit them and bury them when they’re dead, and all of those things, and that’s about the end of it. And we know as ministers in a pulpit that we don’t, we watch what we say because we’re there, we’re salaried. You give us a check, and man, you get outside of that and you’re in big trouble. Oh, we do have some ministers here then, do we? Oh, I’m not going to ask. I’d better not now. Let me get off. We might get off on another subject, and I’ll come back, find out how many ministers we got.

Saints, hear me. You come into some Christian gathering, and you want to get to know the Lord, and you hear a sermon on prayer, and you ought to pray, and you ought to pray, and you get so guilty. You ought to pray. Pray. You ought to pray. Brothers and sisters, go stand, go sing, go out, and you have to shake his hand at the door when it’s over with. That was a great sermon, preacher. We really enjoyed that. The next Sunday it’s going to be tithing, and the next week it’s going to be baptism, and the next week it’s going to be something else. Where do we come to grips with the issues that are ripping our spirits to pieces, and why are we so hungry? And who’s going to teach us something? The eternal, everlasting sermon. Say it again. It goes on and on, over and over. It never ends.

Now we sit and we listen, and we listen, and we listen, and we go home. I don’t understand why you have not had a nervous breakdown. Now then, I’m going to say to you that I hope to turn your prayer life upside down before this week’s over. Now, I can’t make you go home and give up sermons, but I told you where they came from. Give me three hours, and I could still talk about the exact evolution of how this sermon came to us. It had nothing to do with first, second, or third-century Christianity. It emerged in the fourth. It is an art form covered in ritual. We hear it; we can’t get to anything. Everything’s boxed off from us. I hope, and my goodness, I hope to crack through everything you do about praying.

Now then, this is my next frustration. What the Deeper Christian Life Conference is for and about. I’ve been listening to Christians pray by the beaucoups, and I’m just like this. Right now, I am. I’m just like this. I think if I hear another Christian pray, I go screwy. Here comes Christian praying; he’s going at about 100 miles an hour. Oh Lord Jesus, we think, and he’s just going as fast as he can. He’s just, I’m sorry I can’t talk like that. And I’m listening and I’m thinking, “Brother, do you know the Lord?” Oh, I know you’re saved, but do you know the Lord? And another brother, right beside him, he’s praying (strange sounds), and on he goes. And I look at him and I listen, and I think to myself, “You sure you know the Lord?” And then there’s this third brother, and he’s intimidated by those two brothers. And here’s his prayer. And this is the typical Christian prayer. Here he goes. “Lord, we thank you, Lord, that you have Lord given us this Lord this day Lord to pray you Lord for every Lord everything you’ve given for to us and Lord we are so grateful for this conference Lord and we pray that you’ll make us Lord really openhearted Lord to hear this message tonight Lord.” And poor Lord, you know he’s just up there, worn out. I just know he is wherever he is, so here we got one brother running at a million miles, and we got another one shouting at him, and we got another every four seconds repeating His name.