The Restoration of the Church: Why God’s Work Is Harder Now Than Ever (Part 1)

And oh, the gift of the power of negation, the negative we are told is nine times more powerful than the positive, and in every case, there was an effort to change what those men had done. And now we live in an age of options, and we live in a world of endless choruses of voices. Let it be said and said again: in Galatia, a group of delegates came in there strong with twisted words, to either make those churches into Judaizers or proselytes or destroy them and certainly cause every person there to question Paul Tarsus. Those words can destroy a man, destroy a ministry, destroy a work.

In Thessalonica, why work? Jesus is coming, a reinterpretation of Paul’s words. The church does not know whether to work or not. People being put upon by the lazy who showed up at my times praising Jesus. By the way, their tribe is not dead. In Corinth, four voices crying out: it’s Greek oration, no, it’s Jewish miracles. No, it’s Jesus. No, it’s Paul. The church is on the verge of disaster. Get ready for it. It will come. The day you begin to hear those voices, walk back into the Garden of Eden, and listen to those negators, open your eyes and see just how bad the church is you belong to. Or how far greater would the church be, if those who have seen visions, and who have the discernment to see other men’s faults, would but lead you in their stead? There are always the voices that change the direction, meaning, and interpretation of the church. There’s one thing I would like to tell you. Look at their lives. Not how wise they are, but what they have done and what they have been through in comparison to those men who fought and bled and died to the cross and to their own selves. Always compare, compare pound for pound, day for day, work for work, week by week, week for week, and year for year. Just how much have they done, and with what success? Restore. Restore also means to suffer. It also means using the wisdom of God to discern the events that surround you.

The church in Philippi, read it. Church in Colossae, read it. A Church established in Rome, meeting in Priscilla’s house, read it. Philippi, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Rome, and Corinth. Forever for the reinterpretation by lesser men with greater visions. I would like to say this, and I have observed it after 50 years in the church; they’ve got a better gospel. Step back and look at them because it all sounds so reasonable and so much better, and ask yourself one thing. “Can they live under the pressure that this job calls for?” If they respond, “It’s not necessary if we just all love one another.” Do the critics have a background and a backbone to do what was called upon Paul and Barnabas and the others to live? You’ll never have the church if you ever have lesser men than they. Perhaps a Prem Pradhan, who had his scars to show. They have not yet been shot at, killed, or wounded, but if they are still alive, they have the scars of nails deep within them, and they have laid down their lives for God’s people.

Now, if you think these are unnecessary, then close the book that tells these tales and take off from your shelf the one that takes up where that book leaves off. Pick up a book that tells the story of church history. The radicals, the extreme reformers, the iconoclasts, the dissenters, and see if you can see any change in the story. Attacks, twisting words, and always the cry from governments without, from churches, traditional churches from without, and voices within, crying out…the criticism of the governments and the religions: You should not exist. And cries from within: we can do better. We can do better. Just come follow us. When you eat thereof, you shall not die. Your eyes, let them be open and see that I have a better idea.

I wish that every Christian who comes among people who are giving it all to restore would make a simple promise. If you don’t like it here, leave without taking anyone with you, and please don’t slam the door. Gently walk off all alone, not one disciple is allowed to follow you, and go out there and build that church of which you have so great a vision, but of which you cannot raise up without first stealing someone else’s foundation.

A young man who came among us…he’d been sent by some other group for the purpose of destroying us. He joined in with all of the young people, and so help me, he led every one of them out. I don’t really know what happened to those people. It was done quickly, and I hardly even got to meet the young people who had just arrived. Just before he left, I said, I think I’ve got this right. I told him, “Sir, if you had never been born, young man, would these people be leaving here right now?” And he said, very quickly, “Yes, because I have opened their eyes.” He couldn’t have opened their eyes if he had never been born. If you had never been born, would there have been this split? Of course, there would, because they have seen how bad this situation is. What have they seen? They’ve seen a church less perfect than you are.

Are you prepared to know that there is glory in restoration? But there is also sometimes nothing less than gore, always at the hands of a voice that says, “Open your eyes, and I can show you something better.” There is no man of God who has ever been recorded in church history among the radicals and the dissidents who built on another man’s foundation. Those two-fisted men went out and did it all on their own. Two books that tell the same story, and despite all idealism, will not change.

(Continued in Part 2)