08 February 2022
As my friend likes to say, there are no Lone Rangers in the Kingdom of Heaven. It was always meant to call us together in communion. On the other hand, discerning the times means putting a very heavy emphasis on being able to serve in social isolation. Communion is not possible outside of the Covenant boundaries. Holiness comes first; if being faithful to your convictions isolates you, then stand alone.
The churches of the First Century AD faced a totally different situation. They were facing a tribulation that increased over the next century or so, and it seems we share that with them, but their historical context was different. The survival of their faith against the rising persecution offered only one path: forming what amounted to Christian synagogues. They were tiny tribal nations. They didn't have the luxury of instantaneous communications, so that kind of clustering was the only way. Besides, they had the blessing that it matched their cultural conditioning.
In our world today, that kind of clustering in genuine faith is flatly illegal, and often well nigh impossible. Nor can we share the gospel in public forums the way the Apostles did. Their mechanism of sharing faith is no longer even possible. We must wait until the Creator changes the context by His own hand. And so He will in due time.
Until He does that, we are in a very strange pattern of life. The New Testament brand of fellowship is extraordinarily difficult. And it seems the Lord has not seen fit to make it easier for us. I have been part of a virtual community on the Net who have been praying for this very thing. We have been asking the Lord to pour out His wrath on sin in order to provoke changes, and we have all agreed together that we will ask Him to start with us individually. Bring Your cleansing fire on us, O Lord, and start with me! Yes, such a prayer will change things, but unless the Lord responds by bringing in souls from our geographical proximity, it means we need to wait until the time is right. It was the right prayer; the answer wasn't what we were expecting.
So the Lord has spoken in my heart. My convictions tell me that I will remain in social isolation for a time yet. I can't say that's the answer everyone else got, but it applies to me and my Kingdom service. So despite all my noise about the proper way to do church, I don't expect to see any of that for a long time. The emphasis for now is on carrying forward a nonconformist faith, a maverick spiritual existence.
Were I to attempt attaching myself to an existing church somewhere, I could not avoid being a threat to the leadership. There is no way the Lord will let me sit quietly and participate without comment. And there is no way my comments won't disrupt their organization. I'm not willing to provoke a split in any congregation, though I can assure you that I know how to do that. What I would end up with is a bunch of malcontents, and the only way to keep them organized is to make it close to a cult, with a central cultic figure. I'm not that man. My convictions won't allow it.
My mission is to call for something entirely new. It rests on people sensing the call on their own individual terms. It requires that they rebuild faith and religion in new and radical ways. And they need not ape my ways at all. The focus on this blog is the call to come out from among them, and that means mostly as individuals refusing to conform to a system that restricts God's hand. I'm not calling them to me, but to my Lord.
I've already shared my ideas about how to build. The bigger issue prophetically is how to destroy what should not stand. The foundation for that is calling out to the individual soul feeling chafed and restricted from a full faith shalom. It's all about the Covenant. There's no way to avoid iconoclasm of a sort. We have to call sin "sin" and cut down the old ways completely, pulling up the roots so that it doesn't grow back. This is going to be a very rough Tower of Babel situation, and eventually more like another Noah's Flood.
This time, your faith will be a virtual ark, and there will be many other arks of faith out there. Don't be shocked when precious few are willing to join you. If this thing calls your name, be ready to stand alone against billions. What we will have in common is that it's the same God, the same Covenant of faith, and our shared nonconformism. Social chaos is not contrary to God's will at all. The chaos of what ended the Tower of Babel was God's own hand insisting that mankind remain in a politically chaotic state. It's the false peace of social conformity that is so evil.
You want a defined purpose? My mission from God is to provoke radical spiritual individualism in order to destroy what mankind can build. We need not put our hands to destruction directly; rather we magnify the Spirit against human awareness, knowing that He will by His own power fracture false human unity. Only when it becomes apparent that human capabilities are inherently flawed can we build what God intended for us. We fight sin in ourselves, not in the world around us. It's our shalom that convicts the world of sin.
There is peace only in the Holy Spirit, and He will not tolerate any man-made counterfeit.
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