Winona Conference Part 2 – You’re Made for Two Realms

Boy, this thing of weddings is just really a heavy thing within the community of Christ. You cannot imagine how many mothers have come in after the wedding. They’re saying, “Oh, this is terrible! Oh, there wasn’t a clergyman present anywhere! They just got up there and talked to one another. And now all my grandchildren are going to be illegitimate!” A lady threatened to sue me. She was going to take me to court because her son and daughter-in-law had actually just gotten up there and agreed with one another, everybody clapped and praised the Lord, and that was it. A marriage is tied together simply by four people signing that thing. They all have to be over 21 years of age, and that’s it, and there is no ceremony to it. That’s all there is to it. That and $10. And it’s for the government—and you don’t need that stuff. It is not necessary. I will not marry you. Let your kids be illegitimate. I won’t do it. You can’t make me do it. I will not visit the sick, I will not bury the dead, and I don’t like to go to weddings. And if I see two people in the church who get married that I don’t like, I stay home.

Now, how long do you think I make it as a pastor? I’m telling you the truth. I am an ordinary human being. I have no sacred facilities about me. Counseling should be in the hands of the church. One of the rest of them—I will not baptize. I’ll baptize my two children; I’ve baptized a few other people. I’ve quit baptizing. I won’t baptize. Sister, you want to be baptized? Then find three or four sisters in the church. Tell the church. Let everybody who wants to come out and let the sisters baptize. Say amen. There is nothing sacred—no sacred person to baptize you. If you find that in the New Testament, I’ll eat the thing. Neither the Lord Jesus nor Paul of Tarsus baptized. And Paul finally remembered about six verses down that he had baptized one brother. Let the brothers baptize the brother. Let the sisters baptize the sister. And now you begin to understand a little bit about the community of the believer.

Now I’m going to tell you what the church is. But before I do, you got anything you want to say about this? This is pretty heavy stuff here, folks. If we’ve got some good religious Baptists here, I know you’re going to have a fit or a hissy or something—but I’ll back up everything I’ve said with historical data. And there is nothing more exciting than studying what the 2nd- and 3rd-century church was before Constantine came along. And I recommend a book written by a gentleman named Snyder, put out by Mercer University. And the name of the book is Ante Pacem. It cost $30. I know it’s expensive. It’s worth every penny. Oh, it’s in English, not Latin. Yeah. It means before the Peace of Constantine. And it is the archaeological evidence—all the archaeological evidence put together—of what the 2nd- and 3rd-century churches were. And they were nothing like the 4th-century church; they were like the 1st-century church. The story is gripping. And I hope to put it in a more popular variety someday.

Do you have any questions before I go? Yes, brother? The holidays. Oh yeah. You know, those are fairly well-known. Yeah, they are all pagan in origin. Probably the Lord was born in April. I think the New Testament—you can even figure it out from Elizabeth’s birth. The birth of John the Baptist. Look through it and see. Oh, go ahead. Tithing? No, sister, we don’t tithe. We give our life, our soul, our air. It’s more than tithing. It’s less than tithing. It’s our very beings. “I am not after yours,” said Paul, “I am after you.” And the community of believer has that sense, and I also want you to know in that respect—it’s very sectarian. It cares for its own, not for the heathen. Let the heathen take care of the heathen. Do you know I’m quoting a scripture? Let the dead bury the dead. The community of the believer really does take care of her own. And that can be a beautiful thing to watch. And it does become organic. Yes, brother?

Okay, I’ve heard this before. I know of no authorization. I’ve said it—I even would say it today to appease some poor mother: “By the authority invested in me as a minister of the gospel by the state of California, the state of Indiana, I marry you.” Go read the license, and it says: three witnesses and a clergyman, or an elder, or some religious figure in the church, or some other designated person. He does not have to be ordained. No state in America can dictate to us how we recognize leaders within our fellowship. And if we do not recognize leaders in our fellowship, they cannot dictate to us that we have to have leaders in our fellowship. They cannot, under the law of this land and under decisions made by the court, force us to incorporate or take names. And they cannot hold it against us when we turn in our tithe and announce it. Not in the United States of America; in Canada, it’s a different proposition. This is really the land of the free. Those things exist in our minds. They have been fought out by courts and ruled over and over again for the church, because our forefathers gave us that freedom. Yes, sir. I thought I saw something over here. Okay. Yes, brother. And then we’re going to quit this.

No, the chronological Bible is a mess. I’m reading Genesis, and suddenly I have to read the whole book of Job…that’s dumb. What we need is—well, I don’t want to get into that now, maybe some other time. But I will say something. I’m going to do a little promoting here. If there’s anybody in this room—I’m looking for a person—you can type faster than anybody else, and you can do shorthand, and you’re independently wealthy, and you have absolutely nothing on this earth to do: would you like to be my secretary? If you come to my study, you’ll find lying on my study floor, probably, 15 manuscripts… of the best books ever written. And they’re all in the first draft form. And there they sit. And if something doesn’t change, they’re going to sit there until the day I die. They’re handwritten. I can’t type. Besides, a good writer would never stoop to a typewriter—or a word processor. I mean, that’s not love. That’s not love. It ain’t. I mean, you make love to a book when you write that thing. You don’t sit in front of a screen doing that. That’s for people who want to make money at what they’re doing. This is love. These books are love. They are passionate. And there they sit. And I don’t know what to do about it. And it’s getting to me more and more every day and every year. And they keep coming. And there are more. And they’re just sitting there. Some of them I don’t even finish, I get so discouraged. Then I get enthusiastic about something else and start, but they’re all there and they’re waiting.

(Audience – That’s what happened to Watchman Nee) Is that right? Yeah. Astute? That’s right. Well, nobody can read my handwriting except my wife. And I intend to outlive her. And her mother is 88. And her grandmother was 99. I’m very concerned about this because—forgive me, I’m really not as arrogant as this all sounds—I pretend this to keep you from discovering I’m humble. Most books are not worth reading; those that are good are not well written, and the rest aren’t Christian. And a lot of what is written isn’t Christian. I want those books to sing. I want them to stand up and sing the Hallelujah Chorus. You’ve read The Divine Romance, and you’ve read The Tale of Three Kings, and I have 15 more of them just like it sitting out here. And it takes a lot of work, and nobody’s going to be able to do that after I’m dead. It’s not until the fourth or fifth manuscript that the book begins to emerge.

So don’t talk to me about publishing things after I’m dead. It gives me the creeps. I wouldn’t read anything I’ve left in its first draft that was written by Gene Edwards…okay, where in the world am I? Alright, now what is the community of the believer?

The community of the believer. This is what she is. I do not know who used this term, but it was perfect: The ekklesia.  The fellowship of the redeemed. The koinonia of the believer. The spiritual community I am speaking of. The ekklesia is—and hear this term: a colony from heaven. A colony from the other realm, in this realm, on this planet. Now, the first thing that you have to get clear about is that there really is another realm. Can you imagine another sphere? Another realm? I would say another dimension, but there’s no dimension to it. Don’t think “heaven”—think “other realms.” You can’t get there in a rocket ship. You have to go through a door to get there. It’s not in the time continuum; It’s outside of the time-space continuum.

It can be penetrated. Both directions. Most of the commerce throughout history has come from there, but it’s possible to go from here to there, as we’re going to discover this weekend, but also from there to here. Can you imagine a civilization in the other realm? But it is not a human civilization; it is a divine civilization in which Christ is King and Lord. And He rules over His throne, over the angels, and over the archangels, and over the cherubim and the seraphim. And there is fellowship there. Most of the fellowship…because most of what’s there is God…most of the fellowship is the fellowship of the Godhead.

Now grasp that: what goes on in that other realm? It is mostly the fellowship of the divine—the Father with the Son, the Son with the Father, by means of the Spirit. The fellowship of the other realm. And a civilization that exists there. And a door opens, and a colony of that realm goes through eternity into time, through time, and comes and descends and rests upon this planet. And there is a colony there. That is what this community really is.

Let me illustrate it. Oh, let’s say it’s 1650, and you are an Englishman. You live in London. A very proud British person. The king sends you to the New World. It’s 1650; you don’t particularly want to go. You’ve heard about the Indians, the wilderness, and the arrows. But because you’re loyal to the king, you go. You get on this ship. It leaks. It stinks. You don’t sleep well. It takes three weeks to get there. A storm almost sank you. You go up a river. You disembark. Your luggage is put on a mule or horse, and you come up that river.