Winona Conference Part 1 – Intro to the Spiritual Community

You don’t move off of Christ. And I think that’s what makes her so rare. And perhaps the thing that makes her the rarest of all: so few of us have the foggiest idea of how to know Him. We don’t know how to know Him. Now, can I get some genuine, honest amens here? We don’t know how to know Him. Then I would say that ought to be our first and foremost task: to know how to actually encounter this Living Lord. I’m going to keep on talking to you about the church for a while, but we have got to move to this business of knowing Him.

Brother Alex, Brother Stan, dear sisters and brothers from Chicago, there has to be the input of Christ. It just has to be. It doesn’t take an overwhelming Pentecost. There’s just got to be an inflow of your Lord. And the humblest of us are the best, when we can say: “Show me how to know Him better. Show me how to know Him at all. Show me how to know Him better.”

And it is Him—and it is not things about Him. You can study about your Lord, and study about your Lord, and study about your Lord. And you can know all the facts in the world about your Lord. And you can know so much about Scripture—and hardly know Him at all. I’m going to really risk it here. We have a tendency to replace the encounter of Christ with a great deal of knowledge of Scripture. And my own impression is that we get meaner and meaner the more we know the Scripture without knowing Him the same way. And I was discussing this with someone—can I venture that out in this? I’d like to chase that for a minute. Can I chase that for a minute? Is that okay? Because there’s a seminary located right here in this town, and I’m a graduate of one of those things. I got more degrees than a thermometer.

Let’s take this young kid. Let’s take this 18-year-old kid named Gene Edwards. How’s that? Here’s this 18-year-old kid. He comes into this seminary that is very Bible-centered. Well, let me tell you about this 18-year-old kid. He doesn’t know nothing about God. There is nothing that makes him sanctified or holy. He comes in there saved and rejoicing in his initial redemptive experience. He comes in and spends four years at this institution learning the Bible. Now, forgive me, but it is possible for him to go through the front door and go out the back door at the end of four years and accumulate an enormous wealth of information, the lack of which you cannot imagine. And throughout all those four years going through, he’s told: “The Bible, the Bible, the Bible, the Bible!” And nothing happens inside. And yet he walks out of there saying, “Bible.”

Can you follow me? Now, without his realizing it, he is so convinced—Bible—that he is very, very insecure when anything else comes in his way, such as the knowledge and experience of his Lord, because he has now attached to this, he went in Joe Schmo, he came out Reverend Schmo. No, it’s really true. It’s really true. I went in at 18 years old. I want to be clear. I was a college graduate at 18. I’m not talking about a Bible school. I’m talking about a seminary. And I went through that thing. I was a young, seedy kid who just thought of being called Reverend. But at the end of four years, I was like these guys walking up and down to the hospital. They put this thing around their neck. They’re a first-year medical student, and somebody comes up and says, “Doctor, I’m dying.” And when you come out of there, you are Holy Joe. It is “Reverend this” and “Reverend that.” And you’re burying the dead, and you’re marrying the young couples, and you’re really wondering if their children are going to be legitimate—because you don’t feel a whole lot different. And you’re praying for the sick, and you’re really counseling—spiritual terms all over the place. But through that process of going through those doors, very little happened to you deep internally. And you get very, very, very defensive about Scripture. And you can kill in defense of it.

Now, I’m not telling you something secret or hidden. And I think most men who have later come to be overwhelmed by Him will turn back and testify that this was what was happening to them. And I think it is basically the testimony of the Pharisee who finds Christ, and very few probably did. We think of one in particular. And from that day on, he was impelled by Christ.

When I was 29 years old—and I had had one packed life—I made a very simple decision. Boy, it was revolutionary: that I wanted to be a Christian more than I wanted to be a minister. I wanted—let me explain that—I wanted to know Him. And I was willing to say, “I don’t know You very well, Lord. And I have power, and I have all the success or achievement a man of 29 could ever hope to want. I don’t know you very well, Lord.” And I laid it down to find Him—intimately, personally. And when I did—and when I did—I began not only seeking one thing, but two. One was Him, and the other one was the community of those who wish to know Him. And that’s what you begin looking for. You begin looking for those who also want to know Him. And you don’t care a hoot nor a holler what that man’s doctrines are, or what that woman believes. If they want to know Him, you want to know them. Praise the Lord. Amen. Hallelujah. I’m so glad you did that. Thank you so much. That means a great deal to me.

A Quaker gave an illustration that was perfect. He had a wheel, and he said—seeking to explain this thing I’m discussing with you—at the center of that wagon wheel is the hub. And here are the spokes that move toward the hub. And you will notice that as the spokes move toward the hub, they also draw closer to one another. It just happens that way. You can’t prevent it. Now, he said, if you take that hub to be Christ, and those spokes to be the redeemed—the saints, the believers—as they move further and further toward Christ, they automatically are drawn more and more toward one another.

Dear brothers and sisters, our unity lies not simply in saying “Christ,” but in the experience and knowledge of Him. In laying down the sectarian walls, that which denominates you from me and me from you. But it isn’t even the laying down of them, because that really doesn’t accomplish a lot, but it is Him. And when you touch Him, and when I touch Him, and when we touch the glory that is Him—something happens between us that is automatic and organic. It just happens. Now, if at that moment you will slip that little thing that says,
“Aha! Now that we’ve got to know one another, let me explain to you why you must believe in the pre­millennial, post-tribulation rapture, and I shan’t be happy until you see what I have seen…”  If we can just for one precious moment lay that other thing down—whatever it is—then there comes this glorious intimacy, this divine encounter between spirits. This, for the first time, the knowing of one another.

Again, I think it was the Quaker who said: “No man knows another believer until he knows that believer spirit to spirit.” Spirit to spirit. What happens when that happens? You really get to know somebody, like you’ve known them all your life. Yes, like you’ve known them all your life. Exactly, brother. And I don’t know if you understand this or not, but race dissolves. Nationalities dissolve. Political feelings dissolve. But—you may not know this—there is also, and this is almost never mentioned… I want you to be impressed with this: Time and space dissolve. The deeper you plunge into this, the more profound grows your unity with those who’ve come before, and a sense for those who will come after. You begin to understand that you belong to a long, rich heritage—an incredible witness to Christ. And truly, if you plunge into that thing—whatever it is—you will become so keenly aware of those who came before, and you will seek to draw something of their witness into your own lives, and you will care. You will trust me. Believe me. You will begin caring for the year 2020. No, I’m not going to be alive in 2020, and I want you to know, I care. I care about what’s going to happen then. If the Lord has not come, I wish to know and believe in my heart and soul that that community is going to exist on this earth. And frankly, I don’t care where. I’m not an American when it comes to that. I don’t care where. And I figure probably Africa, but I want to be sure it happens. And I am driven by that. And when I pick up my pen to write, I write to you. I often write to me. I write to you, but I write to a brother who’s not even born yet. I’m hoping he’ll pick up a book, because very few people have ever written to Christians within this community. Throughout church history, the literature is almost nonexistent. It’s all written to the structured church. I hope someone picks up a book, 40 to 50 years from now—100 years from now—and reads the story of the early church, and says, “I’m not crazy,” and has a witness from an age gone by.

There is a group of Christians who’ve influenced my life a great deal, and I have visited several of their places in Europe, but I was never able to go to their main home in America. And that’s Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And just before I started on this trip, there’s a clinic in Pennsylvania that treats people with some of my health problems; some, not all. And I went there to get some of the new treatments they have. By the way, they didn’t work. And this is in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. And while I was there, I made the first trip I ever made to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Now, many of you may not know this, but Bethlehem was founded by Christians. And I think when it was founded, they were 60 or 70 miles from the nearest next town. It’s been called the city in the wilderness. And it was a city, and it was built by a people, a whole city. It was a community of the redeemed. And it was a spiritual community of the redeemed. Today it’s a physical town. Then, it was a spiritual as well as a physical thing.

Have you ever heard of the Moravians? Now, please don’t quote me as having said “Mormon.” I said Moravians. That’s a province over somewhere in Germany or something like that. It’s behind the Iron Curtain today. My daughter went to Herrnhut and visited there. I’ve been to Herrnhof, which is on this side of the Iron Curtain. But a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to Bethlehem. And there is an acre—one acre of land—which is their cemetery. They will hold their own with the testimony of first-century believers. They were incredible. I’m not even going to tell you about them, but they were the greatest witness to Christ since the Reformation, and even just previous to the Reformation. And they’ve been a standard to me.