Needed, A New Way to Meet #2: Rediscovering the Biblical Church

Innate, natural, organic, and biologically impossible to stop. Just like your nose on your face, it just grows there by nature. There is not pattern; there is the organic.

I am going to give the Hebrew religion a little problem here for a minute. You’ll forgive me, please, but I’m shooting at everybody else. I might as well shoot at the Jews. Right now, we are just so interested in Russia and Israel. I don’t know why we’re so fascinated with those few places, but we go back to the Holy Lands, and I went there when I was 19. I have kept up with the archaeology of that land, and I know its traditions.  I know what people are speaking of, but without realizing it, we get the idea in our heads that so much of our Christian faith is traced back to the Hebrew religion.

I beg to differ with that. That’s a far-out statement, but my faith has its roots not in the Hebrew religion, but in the Godhead. Well, but He became a Jew, Gene. Yes, I know he became a Jew, but long before he was a Jew, He was God. Long before He was a Jew, He was. He existed. He had personality. He had thought. He had a habitat. He had a place where He lived. He had ways of thinking and conceptualizing. He had a mission; He came to earth to do it. His culture did not hinder that, nor did it greatly influence it. He was against his culture.

Even though He had given the Hebrew faith, and it reflected much of his mind, He still appeared and brought the mind of God…and He brought more than the mind of God. He brought the experience of the Godhead. When He walked on this earth, He also walked in the heavens at the same time. When He walked on this earth, He had the ideas and thoughts that He had in an eternal, eternity past – call it, in our terms, billions of years, and that doesn’t really work- but an eternity past experience in the Godhead. That’s what He brought.

His idea of gathering twelve men together with Him was not Hebrew. It reflected something that happened to Him in the Godhead. When He spoke of spirit, truth, and reality, He was speaking of something from another realm, not something He had picked up in the Hebrew religion. The Hebrew religion was not guiding Him; He gave that religion, and it had elements that reflected His mind, but now He brought His mind to this earth.

I do not take away from the Hebrew faith, but it’s not our origin; it’s not our headwaters. God is our headwaters. Christ, the eternal Christ, the Christ of the Trinity, the eternal, everlasting Christ who came and became a man in the form of human flesh, in the likeness of human flesh, that one spoke from past experience. The twelve apostles touched that eternal past thing, and what you see happening in Israel, in Judea, in Galilee, reflects what happened in Him, in God.

Does the Bible not call Him an apostle? Does the Bible not call Him the founder of our faith? Does it not call Him the foundation of our faith? The cornerstone of our faith? And the top stone of our faith? The building in which we are in? He’s everything of our faith.

I want to go back to this thing, apostle. He, Jesus Christ, is the author of the first church. He raised up the first church ever raised up on this planet, and He began anew. This is the establishment…we’re talking about how to meet…this is the establishment of that, a radical break. We don’t go to the synagogue to find the roots of the Godhead’s fellowship, or how the Godhead met. We don’t go to the temple to find the roots of how the Godhead fellowshipped and how the Godhead met. The first church that ever existed existed in the fellowship of the body of the Godhead. There is the origin of the church. He brought that to the dusty roads of Galilee with twelve men, in personal, informal fellowship around Him.

He was the source of that fellowship. It was Christ. It was not singing. It was not worship. It was not theology. It was not teaching. It was not a mission. It was not a movement. It was not a motive. It was not a vision. It was Him. They were possessed with Him, and they learned that church life gathered around the Lord Jesus Christ and nowhere else. They learned how to meet around Him. They learned how to fellowship around Him. It wasn’t singing…it was Christ. It wasn’t worship…it was Christ. It wasn’t ritual…it was Christ.

He gave to them an element, a chip, out of the Godhead’s fellowship. That’s what they touched on the dusty roads of Galilee, and in living rooms where they sat around, listened to him talk, asked Him questions, and fell asleep on his breast.

It was totally informal. It was utterly without ritual…and it was Christ. That was the church he founded. It was the first…no, the second church; the first was the Godhead. The second one was this embryonic experience in Galilee and Judea. And until you can get obsessed with that, possessed with that, enamored with that, drunk on that, driven by that, you and I are both wasting our time here.