Winona Conference Part 1 – Intro to the Spiritual Community

Just to give you one little thing that I was reminded of by someone there when I visited—he reminded me that they always broke the community up into two groups: those who worked to earn money and those who were sent out to preach the gospel. And it was always half and half. One half would serve; the other half would witness. And then after a while, they would switch. And one half would work, and the other half would be sent out—who knows where? All over the Western world. There’s never been a witness in modern history like the Moravians. I want you to know I walked all over that one acre. They have the little blocks that identify everyone. The births began about 1715, 1710, 1720… The deaths began about 1740, 1750, 1760… I think the thing that impressed me the most was that there was virtually nobody there who lived past the age of 40–45. They died young. They said, “We live to work, we work to live.” Their meetings lasted 5, 6, 7, 8 hours.

I was in the Moravian Church, the largest Moravian Church in the New World, in North or South America. I was there in Bethlehem. The message lasted—on the outside—seven minutes. The whole meeting lasted about 40 minutes. And I couldn’t help but think: My, how the mighty have fallen. And I would ask the Moravians questions they didn’t know the answer to. I asked, “Where was Christian David buried?” They didn’t even know who Christian David was. That’s like saying you don’t know who Paul of Tarsus was. They had lost it. That’s okay. I want you to know—for about 50 or 60 years—they were a living light. And I also want you to know—they raised the standard for my heart. And for yours. And I want you to know something else: I belong to those people. And they belong to me. They are mine. And I intend—50, 60 years from now—for someone to turn around and say, “Those people belong to me. And I belong to them.”

My point was: in some way, not only race and nations, but even time and space — dissolve. And we feel that we have known them our whole lives. And you know, brother, I love that term. I love that word. And perhaps that sums it up more than anything else. We meet, and we are one, and we know that we have known one another so long. There are no barriers.

Now, that witness has been born in the heart and the life of those who had a hunger to know their Lord. How shall I say this to you? It’s not an it. It’s a she. She’s a she. She’s a girl. She is not an organization. She is an organism. It is really difficult to explain this. We have barriers to break down up here about her. We left out something a few minutes ago, brothers and sisters, and that’s: We must restore the gifts. Now there is a first-class gimmick if I ever heard of one. Don’t throw anything at me, please, but that is really a gimmick. “We have to restore the gifts!” This is the age for restoring the gifts. By the way, that began in 1790. 1790. I’ll repeat that: 1790. And every generation since then, somebody’s been saying: “We need to restore the gifts.” My cow, I didn’t know it was that hard. We don’t need to restore a gift. We don’t need to restore anything. Let me tell you how foolish that is—from a spiritual viewpoint. From spiritual biology, that’s like me standing up here and saying: “We have got to restore the nose.” And the ear. “Think nose. Pray nose. We have a little baby. May the church all come together and pray it: Have a nose! Oh, have a nose! Oh, have a nose!’ And oh, don’t forget the ear! ‘Have an ear!’” This is the mind of Aristotle that makes a statement like that—that it is a kind of human being that is a structure, that it is an organization, that it is a thing that comes up. Listen. You don’t have to pray that God be God. You don’t have to pray that Christ become Christ.

Do you not understand that she has an organic nature? This thing—of we’ve met one another, known one another all of our lives—is right down at the very heart and soul of this thing. It’s part of her nature to be that way. That’s been the witness in every age. Moravians once met the United Brethren. The United Brethren once met the Waldensians. And boy, it was, brother, way up in northern France from way down in southern Italy, they never met one another. And they did. And it was WowWee. That’s part of her organic nature, and it takes some Baptist preacher like me to step in and say, now wait a minute, we’ve got to believe. And once they’ve always saved, we can’t believe you can get it and lose it, and then the division comes. But that first spark of contact among simple people who are fat, dumb, and happy and have never been messed with is WowWee. Is it not? Is it not? Is that not the organic expression of that girl? Well, she has an organic…she just happens, and she will just be what she’s going to be.

If you’ve heard me use this illustration before, please forgive me, but it’s the best one I’ve got. In 1965, I made a trip to Japan. And I was on JAL Airlines, and that thing was packed. We had to sit there all the way from Los Angeles to Japan. It was a long night. And everybody was packed in and miserable. And I was sitting there reading Life magazine, and it was in the middle of the night. And there was this article in there about how man would ever travel to other planetary systems and go to explore that which is around other suns, because it takes so long to get there, even at the speed of light. And obviously, the writer had never watched Star Trek. And what was being proposed here was that there be a spaceship constructed that would be filled with embryos, human embryos, and at a certain time, millions of years from now, going at the speed of light, machines would begin letting those embryos develop, and then they would grow to birth. And then there would be machines there and educational materials to teach them basic things about life, and so forth. And the question the writer raised was, if that were true and man were totally removed from his culture, would he fall into family units? And I turned to the gentleman next to me, and we fell into a discussion about this very subject. He turned out to be the chairman of the Department of Sociology at Yale—the perfect person to have this conversation with—and his answer was remarkable. He said it doesn’t matter what you do to the human race, it will always form into family units. It is part of its biological genetics.

We are monogamous. And all the immorality in the world will never change that. We’re a monogamy. The wolf is a monogamy. Eagles are monogamous. They don’t just do like dogs do. They have a girl, a female, and a male. What more are monogamous? Huh? Geese? Is that right? Okay, what else? Swans, doves, mate for life. Hawks, mate for life. Anything else in the animal kingdom besides the wolf? It’s the only one I know of in the animal kingdom, but I’m not up on this.

Okay. Now, we’re just going to be that. It’s a part of our genetic code. Do you not understand that the redeemed are put together in community? Knowing Christ, knowing Christ will automatically, ultimately express these things that we call New Testament offices. Forget the New Testament offices and remember Him. They will come out of her. It’s part of her genetic code.

I have a friend named Tom, and their little boy, Matthew, did something. They brought this story to me, and I thought it was classic. Barbara, the mother, takes the eggs, boils them, puts them in the refrigerator, marks an H on them to distinguish them from the eggs that have not been hard-boiled, and the children come in and see the hard-boiled eggs. There’s a label on it, they break it open, eat it, close the refrigerator door, and go about their business, and the little H shows them which one is hard-boiled. One day, Matthew opened the refrigerator, and the little boy looked around, saw all those eggs, no H’s. He went over to a drawer, pulled out a marking pen, and put an H on that thing. Took the egg out, closed the refrigerator door, and he wrote that thing. And he made an amazing discovery that most Christians have never made. And it is this: that putting a label on something doesn’t make it that! Praise the Lord. You got it.

And you, we, this gimmick of we’re going to have this non-movement. And oh, brother, what’s your gift? Oh, brother, our gifts. And so, we’re going to ordain you as a deacon. We’re going to make you an elder. Ah, but you’re going to be an apostle. Putting a label on you don’t make it so, and brothers and sisters, if you’ll leave her alone long enough she will genetically organically, it’s part of her very biological structure, she will produce these things, and I believe now this is my personal opinion, I’m not selling it strongly, but it is my personal opinion that this thing has been so damaged that we would all be wise to drop all those labels. They have a tendency to destroy men and just let be what is. The labels are not necessary. I see young men who are so ambitious to be super apostles, Super, super apostles. And I’m not sure they’ll ever make deacons. In fact, I’m not sure they’ll make it back home tonight. And they’re either going to be or they’re not going to be. I can’t make you one. You can’t become what you’re not. We will be what we’re going to be. This is what she is.

Now I’ve got one more thing to say to you tonight. Did you get that? You got that? She’s got divine genes in her. Not just human, but divine genes in her. And let that divinity grow, and these things come out. All of these offices are part of the divine expression. Why labor for a nose? It’s going to come for sure. Say Praise the Lord. Amen. One last thing, Chicago, hear me; history, hear me: you’re never, never going to know him as well alone as you do within the spiritual community, this place where brothers and sisters commit their lives to one another, not for a day, a weekend, or a week, but for a lifetime. Chicago, saints from Chicago, you’ve been together for, I understand, 10 years, and nobody ever even knew you were there. You’re hiding there under a bushel, and then I stumbled in one day, and there you were, and you look beautiful to me. I’m going to tell you, you look beautiful. You just belong to that little area there in Chicago. You all live near one another, and the fire department, notwithstanding, you’re going to be there together. It’s an in-house joke, folks.

You don’t know how blessed of God you are. You never miss the water till the well runs dry. Oh, oh, I know, I know the mess she is. I know she drives you crazy. I know that Alex is being driven crazy; I know that Alex got those gray hairs, I know where he got every one of them. I’m the only person in my family who is gray-headed. The church gave me every one of those. Yeah, the church of Jesus Christ: this is my scars right here. She is a pain, but when you have her, she is wonderful. And let me just talk about this for a minute. See, you see folks, you don’t know how bad off the human race is until you come to community, and then you know, and you find out how bad off all these people are. And they find out how bad off you are. Yeah. Oh, I meet spiritual giants all the time. They are like Lindbergh. You know, they’re flying this thing all alone. Oh, you can be anything when you fly it all alone. You look so good. You look so great. And you can bluff. And, you know, I don’t like you. I want you to know I don’t like you. These people who pretend spirituality. There’s not anybody in this world that’s living more spiritual than I am. I’m one of the most spiritual people who ever lived, and I stink to high heaven. And for those of you who think I’m serious, please — my point is I meet these bluffers who just, oh brother, oh brother, so good to see you, oh, let us pray, oh Lord, oh.