"There is no perfect church or perfect people, we are all broken jars,... imagine hunting around trying to find the best broken jars to be with! God forgive us!
We all have our places to be in the kingdom of God. And at times God raises up new men with new movements when things around them become very shallow and unreal. And they pursue Jesus Christ afresh in authentic reality and find Him and therefore a new camp is born."
Amen Greg.[one of the deepest insights I have gleaned from you.... ]
And you will be hated for it....for both exposing the camp that has grown into stagnation and control, and the general persecution that comes from manifesting the free grace of God with the sign of Jesus's approval , His presence, following.
Luke 5:36-38
36. He told them this parable: “No one tears a piece out of a new garment to patch an old one. Otherwise, they will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old.
37. And no one pours new wine into old wine-skins!"
"Otherwise, the new wine will burst the skins; the wine will run out and the wine-skins will be ruined.
38. No, new wine must be poured into new wine-skins."
It's the same with church splits. Often it is the Lord himself extracting those willing to be filled with Himself that manifests the tension that brings the division. Often, church splits can be designed by God, in order to create this new vehicle that will actually CONTAIN the living glory of Jesus.
Consider the Pharisee's [ the existing wineskin of that age..] reaction to Jesus himself and the early church.;The intense persecution upon the Reformation fathers, John Wesley, Azusa street, to name a very few of the "radicals" that dared seek a fuller representation of their Lord.
I think that this process goes on and on and on, cascading through time itself always bearing a witness of the Cross, and Jesus's glory....and historically always has become stagnant...[Wesley's organization, the Methodists now ordains Lesbian and homosexual ministers...] This has created the need of revival and "New moves"...[always despised by the status quo...].
Remember, the war is about control. Is Jesus receiving the worship due Him, or is man, controlling the strings to gain pre-eminence?
There is no scriptural basis for ONE MAN to control a church, or a central organization....EVER.[Be it Denny Keniston, Bill Gothard, or Zac Poonen..among the multitudes...] The only time this was exposed in the New Testament, was under the basis of confronting HERESY!....division....when Diotrophese was confronted by the apostle John, in John 3, as loving the preeminence.
There is no scriptural basis for a man, or hierarchy to make a living, be supported by the church, as their minister....none. Jesus called these hirelings.
There was always a plurality of shepherds, in the first church according to scripture, who did not live for money, control, power, or any of the benefits of rulership, as the gentiles did, [and modern corporations do today..]
LUKE 22
24. Now there was also a dispute among them, as to which of them should be considered the greatest.
25 And He..[JESUS..] said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’
26 But NOT SO among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves."
It seems to me, that any Revival, or move of God, that actually held the true Glory of god, for any length of time, had this core belief in common.
In God's fellowship, the very least of the brethren are honored and used as much as the so called greater , or more ambitious and gifted ones; as it was in the early church, and so it is today, in God's economy.
