Why Most Christians Never Experience a Deeper Life in Christ

Now, if some of you are shocked at what I’m saying, then there are two things you should know about me. First, I’m one of those rare people outside the organized church. Perhaps the only difference between most brothers outside the organized church and me is that I’m better educated, and therefore I can articulate the situation better than they can. I’m also not dependent on the ministry for my income, and that makes me different…and it makes me dangerous. I’m not afraid of you. You don’t vote my salary. You don’t sign any checks that are handed to me for me to live on…and I can say what I bloody well please…and I do.

If you’re shocked, you need to understand that there are Christians throughout church history who are outside the organized church, and we have always taught this way. We have a historical place in church history; we have a right to exist, and we have always been small in number. In fact, when I, at the age of 30, left the organized church, to my knowledge, on the day I left, I did not know another Christian in the world outside the organized church. Not one. That has changed in my lifetime, but we are still small.

We who are seeking to push the church beyond this 500-year captivity and boredom have made very little progress, and we will continue to do so for as long as we live on this earth. It’s bigger than we are, and I’m going to tell you something else: you pretty much have to be called out of the organized church. If you have not been, please don’t be disturbed. If you can really get up in the morning and put on that tie, and put on all that makeup Sunday morning, yell and scream at your wife, your husband, and your kids, get in your car and make a mad dash down to church, get your kids into Sunday school,

you have sinned more getting to church than you’ve done all week long. If you can sit down on that pew, and I really hope for your sake it’s padded, and you can sit there and even understand anything that man is saying, and you’re content with that, then I beg you, literally, in the name of my Lord, to stay there because you don’t want to get outside of that. If you’re comfortable there, be comfortable there.

You just about have to be called out. You have to come to the day, and this doesn’t happen to a lot of Christians, when you absolutely cannot abide going to church anymore. You can’t stand it. I will tell you, my impression is that among the best Christians in America are people who don’t go to church. I think of all the kids in Cleveland, Texas, I used to go to church with every Sunday morning; to my knowledge, none of them go now. Of course, a lot of them are dead. Who, other than a handful, a scrap full of people who started out going to church at 14 and 15, are still sitting there at sixty? They just don’t do that. There are about five or ten in any good-sized church. They quit. How many of the kids in Sunday school you went to school with today are going to church? Are you going to church? Just how much longer do you think you can stand going to church? Think about it in terms of another 15 years.

This is reality. Compare it to…forget the church in the first century; just compare it with Jesus’ life on this earth. Man, here was someone who was reeling, dealing, and shaking things up, and it was out in the fields and in homes, and He was against Pharisees and religious people, and He declared war on ritual and all of that. Now we are back in a building, and we’re just grinding out Sunday morning—same thing week after week. I’m telling you that as hungry as you are to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you’re not going to get anywhere. You’re not going to get anywhere, and if you get something, it’s going to fizzle…because you’re not in the right incubator.

Audience: Well, you’ve just talked all about these other churches and other teachers and said we can’t get to know anything from the organized church. Maybe you’re right, and that’s not what I’m questioning, but why can we trust you, and why aren’t you just another prepackaged idea that’s something new?

Well, we’ll cancel the meeting and go home. I’ll repeat her question. Who in the world do you think you are, Gene Edwards? I’ll tell you why because my wife is the greatest skeptic who ever lived. She’s…you know the story about the fellow who said I was my greatest critic, and then I got married. The greatest critic I have on this earth is my wife. She’s more skeptical of me than anybody on earth ever will be…and she actually trusts me. I cannot answer that question. I really cannot. I’m looking out over a sea of people who’ve been desperately hurt by trying something, but I can tell you something you’d never have tried. That’s a church without a pastor and a church without elders, where you are responsible for every meeting. The direction…it’s yours.

If I don’t say anything else, then just let me say this. I think most of you know my testimony. I sat down at 30 in Tyler, Texas, and did something that destroyed my life. I wrote out the entire first-century story. I strongly believe two things. One of them is that you need help to get started, and I have proved that, I guess, for 35 years, because groups that try it without it fall on their faces. Do you know why they fall on their faces…why you fall on your face when you try to have a group? Because you and everybody in that group are despicable.

Self-willed, determined to get your way, ready to slaughter anybody in that group who does not agree with you. Let me tell you something, saints: getting up out of the Sunday morning church service and walking into a home doesn’t cure anything. Sitting down and studying the Bible doesn’t cure anything. You’re just moving sin from one place to another…Maybe I should say the fallen, corrupt, murderous nature of man from one place to another.

Herein is the point I will be making in the next few hours if this young lady here will let me. (laughter) It is within the body of Jesus Christ alone that we have any hope of any kind, and I’m not talking about church on Sunday morning. I mean a functioning body of people. I also have to tell you that it includes the cross of Jesus Christ working in your life with a bunch of other people. That involves a lot of time spent with the Lord, which you will do, and you’ll have fun at it. It also means a lot of tears and a lot of dying. It also means more joy and freedom than you’ve ever known. It also means that nobody, including me, is looking over your shoulder to see what you’re doing.

It is the most exciting thing in the world…and the worst. Someone said, ” It’s terrible, but it’s a wonderful kind of terrible. I think that’s the best description I’ve ever known of church life. It’s real. I mean, this is where reality really is. You’re living with a group of people, and there is absolutely nobody there but you to take responsibility for what’s going on. We have no understanding whatsoever.