The Organic Church | How Paul Planted Churches Without a New Testament

That’s not in the New Testament. That’s not even remotely near it. I’ve never seen a New Testament church. Ah, but we have in this verse, and we believe in that and this and the other. I have two things to say to you that I wish you would listen to and take to heart. Somewhere around 200 A.D., somebody did a sin. I don’t know who he was. Nobody has any idea who he was, but he bound books; that we know. So, somebody would come in with Cicero’s books, and he would bind all of Cicero’s writings and all of his books into one book. And so, he would put Cicero’s longest letter first, and then his next to the longest, right on down stair-step until he got to the smallest one. And that’s how you read Cicero. And that’s how you would read any writer: Aristotle, Plato, Cicero; it didn’t matter. It was the longest letter to the shortest letter.

So, when this bookbinder got to Paul’s letters, he took the longest one first, Romans, and stair-stepped it till he got it down to the smallest, which was Philemon. It had nothing to do with chronology, and I’m saying to you, if you are going to have a New Testament church, then I would beg you to read Paul’s letters in their chronological order. Well, if you get a pen really quickly, I’ll tell you.

Galatians. I Thessalonians. Look where Thessalonians is in your index, it’s almost at the end. That’s his second letter. II Thessalonians. Third letter. The fourth letter is I Corinthians. And the fifth letter is II Corinthians.  And the sixth letter is Romans. It’s not the first one. And then there’s a gap, and there’s Colossians, and Ephesians, and there’s Philemon – the little bitty one, which, if you look in your index, is the last one. Then Philippians, and then I Timothy, then Titus, then II Timothy.

Now do that. And then do something else: add the dates. Date for Galatians: 50. First Thessalonians: 51. Second Thessalonians: 52. First Corinthians – big leap – 57.  Second Corinthians: 58. Romans: 58. Then a big leap again. Colossians is in 63; so is Ephesians, and so is Philemon. So is Philippians. And then you jump up to 65 for First Timothy and Titus.
Then you go to 68, the year Paul died, for Second Timothy.

Oh, that’s interesting, Gene. Well, let me tell you what else to do. Between Galatians and Thessalonians is about a year. You won’t find that in your New Testament, but you can find out what happened between Galatians and Thessalonians, the gap there of a year. And when you do, you’ll understand Thessalonians. About six to eight months between Thessalonians and Thessalonians. Figure out what that is. And by the way, just about the time that you’re doing all of this, you’ll discover, looking at Acts, which will be your help and guide to this, and Paul of Tarsus went into a place called Philippi, and he didn’t write a letter to them.  And there are no Jews there. Why? Because one year earlier, in 49, even before Paul wrote Galatians, Claudius threw all Jews out of Rome. And then you read about that in Acts, when Paul goes to Corinth. Corinth is running over with expatriated Jews. Jews had been forced out of Rome. (Philippi was a Roman colony, and Roman laws applied there)

Now, if you’ll just keep on doing that and finding the time between each one of Paul’s letters, you’ll have a New Testament, and you will discover something else. That’s our first need. The first need is to put it in order. The second need is to add dates and the passing of time.

Where have we been all this time with what we call a New Testament church and the teachings of the New Testament? And dear child of God, this is not easy to do, but if Paul’s letters are in absolute chaos in our New Testament, and they are, Romans is not his first letter…. By the way, I used to hold seminars, and I taught revolutionary Bible study, and I was shocked to discover something. Because Acts ends with Paul in Rome, you turn the page, and the next page says the book of Romans. Everybody in the room thought that that was the continuation of the story, Paul in Rome and Romans. That’s where Acts went, to the book of Romans, because Acts ended in Rome. I was appalled. There were pastors and Bible teachers in that room who did not know that Paul’s letter to the Romans was not supposed to come next. In fact, Paul’s letter to Rome is written in about Acts 23. It was written after First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. Did you know you can go to Acts 15:40, point to it, and say, “Right here is where Paul wrote Galatians”? And go to Romans, Acts 23, and say, “Right here, this is where Paul wrote Romans.”

And so, what did that leave us? We’re going to have a New Testament church? No, that is impossible for us to have a New Testament church. All we can have is a “verse church – that’s not “first,” that’s verse, V-E-R-S-E. That’s a “verse” church. Got a verse here…try to imagine that Paul’s letters are flat, one-dimensional…ah, let’s rearrange Paul’s letters. Well, they’re a little bumpy there; we can see a little dimension. Then we discover that Paul wrote Galatians—his first letter and first piece of Christian literature ever—in the year 50 at Acts 15:40. And know that the year before that, everybody in the Roman Empire was talking about the fact that in 49, Claudius had thrown the Jews out of Rome. Paul was upset because he wanted to go to Rome, and he was a Jew, and he couldn’t. Then he is in Greece. First place he goes to in Greece, there are no Jews in the city of Philippi. Read the story now and see how mad those magistrates are and why they beat Paul and throw him in prison. They threw him in prison because he was a Jew. They forgot to ask him if he was a Roman citizen. Even Roman citizens had to leave Rome, but Philippi was not Rome, and they had beaten a Roman citizen. This is not good news.

So, we get a little dimension. He goes down to Thessalonica and Berea and then to Corinth, and in Corinth, he writes a letter to Thessalonica, and Thessalonica is having some problems. We understand that, and we begin to get a sense of what the church in Thessalonica was like and what the people there were like. We meet somebody named Aristarchus and Secundus in the city of Thessalonica. I’ve never heard of Secundus and Aristarchus. Yes, but if you put the times and dates in, you will. And pretty soon, dimension begins to crop up. Suddenly, you realize you just can’t grab verses out of everywhere and sew them together; you’ve got to be tied to the ongoing, flowing story that emerges to you, before you, in three dimensions. And you walk through the first century.
You find out what happened in Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, and in Corinth, and then realize that Paul left Corinth and did not, after he left them, he did not write them a letter for three years. And in fact, it had been five years since he wrote Second Thessalonians. I say five years; you want to fill in the gap there. What happened in those five years? And again, dimension. Highways. Buildings. People walking. Events happening. Suddenly, things come into focus and in reality.

Gene, I can’t follow all that. Well, fortunately, you won’t need to very long. There will be a book out entitled Revolutionary Bible Study. And all of this will be yours. Now, if you want to go through all of Paul’s writings and bring in the dimensions, bring in all of the events, and then go build yourself a New Testament church, have at it, but you’re going to find that on his second journey, there were four churches planted: Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, and Corinth. And he was in Philippi for about one or two months, Thessalonica for about four or five months, and Berea, maybe only a few weeks, but fortunately, he had someone with him, and he left him there to carry on the foundation in Berea. Then Paul went down to the city of Corinth, and wow, he really backslid this time. Paul was there for 18 months, and every chance he got, he walked away from those churches, and they had the opportunity of being left alone to find their own native expression.

And you can be sure that the church in Berea and the church in Thessalonica didn’t look like the church, not at all, like the church in Iconium or Lystra or Derbe. Two different nations, two different cultures, two different languages, far apart, especially if you remember that everybody walked, no matter where they went. Organic. Natural. And all under the underpinning is Christ.

I said this in the book, but I’m going to repeat it: If you open the Bible, let’s say the New Testament, and find the New Testament, you’re in trouble.  If you open the New Testament and find Christ, you’re on the right track. Is the New Testament supposed to disclose Scripture? Or is it supposed to disclose Jesus Christ, your Lord? The New Testament – is it there to give you Scripture and Scripture information and scriptural knowledge? Or is it there to reveal Jesus Christ in you?