Discovering the Body of Christ
Jesus is not
dead. He was dead for a brief three
days, but that was two millennia ago.
Near the end of the First Century, Jesus, very much alive, appeared to
the aged Apostle John on the Island of Patmos, off the cost of Turkey,
I,
John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and
patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word
of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the LordŐs
Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet, saying, "I am
the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last," and, "What you see,
write in a book and send it to the
seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to
Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea." Then I turned to
see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden
lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet
and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow,
and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were
like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many
waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp
two-edged sword, and His countenance was
like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as
dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, "Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. "I am He who lives, and was dead, and
behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of
Death. Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the
things which will take place after this..." (Revelation 1:9-19)
It
was Jesus who announced that He would call out a people for Himself from all
the nations--Jews and Gentiles alike. (Matthew 16:13-27) This "body of
believers" would be empowered by the full-presence of God the Holy Spirit.
The members of Christ's "Body" would be much more closely connected to
one another than were the believers of Israel in the Old Testament. Amazingly,
this new branch of Abraham's family, also called "the Church," would
benefit from the lavish grace and empowerment afforded by the New Covenant, not
the Old. However, the Jews as a nation would not benefit from what is really
their New Covenant until the return of Jesus (Jer. 31:31ff). Today, anyone who
grants Jesus Christ permission to rule in their lives as Lord and Master today
can immediately begin to live in the same mighty Power that raised Jesus from
the dead. These days many Christians have evidently forgotten who they are and
who it is that lives within them.
Jesus
gave to the Apostles, primarily to Paul, the task of describing the nature of
the New Testament community of believers. Jesus began to build His church at
Pentecost (seven Sabbaths plus one day after His resurrection). This work will continue
until His return. The true church of Jesus is richly described by a number of metaphors
in the New Testament. In Ephesians, Paul made it known that every follower of
Jesus was to be very closely connected to Jesus and to all other Christians. The
figure of a human body, with Jesus as the head and Christians as
"members" of that body--like the bones, ligaments, organs, and interdependent
parts of a living body--describes us well. One by one as people come to known
to Jesus Christ, they are added to "the Body of Christ." Since every Christian has eternal life
from the moment he or she trusts Jesus as Lord, most of the church is already
complete, already outside of our time frame waiting for us to join them. Christ's
church is said to be "catholic," (which means "universal"
since membership is open to all people--from every branch of the family of man.)
The
reality of the church as the Body of Christ seems to elude us these days. We
are now near the end of the age. The most common form of Christian gathering
today is typified by the lukewarm church of Laodicea described in Revelation 3.
(See "The Poor-Rich Church," by Ray Stedman, http://raystedman.org/revelation/4195.html).
Also,
a counterfeit, fake form of apostate Christianity is already beginning to take
shape, (See "The Dragon Lady," by Ray Stedman, http://raystedman.org/revelation/4208.html). The devil has kept building a false
church right along side of the real church. After hearing Jesus talk about the
wheat and the tares growing side by side, our Lord went on to say that there
was no easy way true Christians could easily be distinguished from one another
in this life. "Another parable Jesus put forth to them, saying: 'The
kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men
slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But
when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So
the servants of the owner came and said to him, "Sir, did you not sow good
seed in your field? How then does it have tares?" He said to them, "An
enemy has done this." The servants said to him, "Do you want us then
to go and gather them up?" But he said, "No, lest while you gather up
the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the
harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First
gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the
wheat into my barn."Ő" (Matthew 13:24-30)
In
actuality, the fake church is visibly much larger and more impressive than the true
church. This has often intimidated the real followers of Jesus, keeping us from
stepping out and using the power we already have. (See "The Power you
Already Have" by Ray Stedman, http://raystedman.org/misc/4308.html. Another classic message by Ray is
"The Two Churches: God's and Man's," http://raystedman.orgshouldc/0271.html).
The New
Testament speaks frequently about Christians gathering together at least
weekly,
"Let
us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised
is faithful. And let us consider
one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the
assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one
another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching." (Hebrews
10:23-25)
But for many
"going to church" is about visiting the headquarters of an impersonal
organization where many members do not really know one another -- who can tell who
are believers and who are not? Even the pastor is suspect in many cases. It is
often difficult to "connect" with the person next to us in the pew. The
sermons may not be at all relevant to our overwhelming needs, and the music may
not do much to draw us closer to Jesus the Head of the Body and the Chief
Liturgist. (The parable of the
Mustard Seed by Jesus is very helpful in showing how the church as a whole would
move towards uselessness as we approach the end of the age, see "The Case
of the Ambitious Seed," http://raystedman.org/behind/0455.html). Jesus asked the question long ago, "When the
Son of Man returns, will He really find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8)
Reacting
negatively to past unhappy experiences with their own their "church"
upbringing more and more born-again believers have dropped out of the traditional
Sunday church get together in favor of a home Bible class or a diet of audio
messages by favorite national Bible teachers. The problem with all these "solutions" is all too
easy to ignore that we need each other in the same way our liver needs a blood
supply and the digestive system needs a pancreas. Paul argues for our
interdependence in 1 Corinthians 12-14, continuing the discussion of the church
as the Body of Christ introduced in Ephesians. Jesus wants to meet often with
His people to refresh and renew us, to teach us new truth, to cleanse us from
the defilement of the world. We need each other and we cannot function well
isolated from one another.
When Jesus told
His disciples that he intended to build HIS church, he continued, "and the
gates of hell will not prevail against my church." (Matthew 16:19)
Clearly, our Lord was thinking of a mighty army, small in numbers but
triumphant and invincible in offensive warfare against the entrenched evil of
the world system. (The example of Gideon's mighty army of 300 men routing
135,000 Midianites comes to mind, Judges 6-8). When God undertakes to do
something in the world guess who will win?
"Now thanks be to God
who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance
of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ
among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we
are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading
to life. And who is sufficient for these things?" (2 Cor. 2:14-16)
Every Christian
has one or more spiritual gifts--because God has called each and every member
of the Body of Christ to be engaged for a lifetime in "the work of the
ministry." (See "Body Life," by Ray Stedman, http://raystedman.org/bodylife/). Belonging to the Body of Christ puts a person in
the Army of the Lord where there is more than couch potato, passive entertainment
going on. Physically limited followers of Jesus, the old, the bed-ridden, can
always make a huge difference by learning the art of the pulling down of enemy-held
strongholds through prayer and the simple spreading of true-truth.
Gradually, down
through the course of twenty centuries, most local churches now bear little
resemblance to the early church. It would seem that Jesus Himself has been
gradually marginalized by the leaders of today's Church of Laodicea. Jesus is
seen as outside of His church, hoping
to be invited in! Needless to say, the main admonition our Lord gives to this
church is that we repent from head to toe.
God is
incredibly sovereign and when we fail to do His work in His way, thinking we
can improve on His marching orders for the church, our Lord usually leaves us alone
and uses someone else to get his work done.
God the Holy
Spirit indwells every follower of Jesus Christ. He is the One who makes Christ
known in us. In order to work effectively the Spirit needs us each to be
available and cleansed, free from the numbing, tranquilizing spirit of the
world. The Holy Spirit accomplishes His work best when the Members of Christ
know one another and understand unity. Using the metaphor of the human body,
Paul makes vividly clear how the human body would immediately fail if the
organs and systems were not in close cooperation with each other and with the
Head.
The real reason for this newsletter is to
suggest that we Christians find ways to "connect" more closely with
our fellow believers whether they live next door or in Australia, or are
members of a different church. We all need the healing and the vitality of
sharing closely together, sharing the resurrection life of Christ within His
Body.
I was struck
this past week by an email from a Jewish-Christian friend of mine. He marveled
at the incredible invisible restraint of evil we have been seeing around the
world in the past couple of years. Aric called my attention to some of the many
dire predictions to be found in the daily news, on talk shows and blogs. Then
he pointed out how God has been caring for His own in amazing ways. Many of us
will suffer as Christians; the Apostles considered it a great privileged. But God
does watch over His own--each one of us who know Him.
We may not see
any major awakening of the church in our day, but it stands to reason that
establishing closer relationships with other true Christians will increase the silent retraining work
of the Holy Spirit in the world. God will solve the big problems of sorting the
wheat from the chaff and finally bringing the true church home soon to be His
Bride.
Horrendous
judgments against human evil are stored up in God's storehouse against
thousands of years of evil in our world. The Book of the Revelation describes
the sudden unleashing of God's "holy anger" abruptly when the Body of
Christ has been completed and removed from the world at the Rapture.
"Revelation
6 says that the Tribulation will begin with a series of judgments that will
result in the death of one-fourth of Mankind. The world's population is
approaching six billion. That means one and a half billion people will die in
the initial judgments, reducing the world's population to 4 1/2 billion. The
next series of judgments, recorded in Revelation 8 and 9 will kill another
third of Mankind. One-third of 4 1/2 billion is another one and a half billion.
Thus, in the first 3 1/2 years of the Tribulation, a total of 3 billion people
will die. That's half the population of the world!" (Dr. David R. Reagan, http://www.lamblion.com/,
an excellent resource).
The Bible teaches that the Holy
Spirit residing in the true church here on earth now holds back the forces of
destruction waiting to be unleashed upon the world. The final events of this
age, the "Seventieth Week of Daniel," the seven-year Tribulation
period, the coming world rule by two especially evil men, and the destruction
of the entire world system will not begin until the removal of the true church
by Jesus at the rapture. The Apostle Paul describes this removal,
"Now, brethren, concerning the
coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you,
not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by
letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive
you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes
first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and
exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he
sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not
remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you
know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the
mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so
until He [the Holy Spirit in the true church] is taken out of the way. And then
the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of
His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless
one (the "man of sin) is according to the working of Satan, with all
power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those
who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might
be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they
should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the
truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks to
God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the
beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and
belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of
the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold
the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. Now may
our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and
given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts
and establish you in every good word and work." (2 Thessalonians 2:7-17)
God our Father
has adopted us who follow Jesus Christ as Lord into His family. Like any loving
Father He is diligent in caring for all the members of His household, whether we
are young or old, as yet untaught in His ways, or those who are well grounded.
Similarly, one cannot
dismember the Body of Christ. It is an invisible reality being built by God.
Each of us has our place and our part in this great organism. We are few in
number, but it is the Holy Spirit working through Christ's true church Who
restrains the final collapse and destruction of the old world system! In the
past few years we've all seen horrific violence, terrorism and disaster leaking
in on us around the edges of the dam. The dam is about to break.
Seek
the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked
forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the
LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly
pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My
ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.
"For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return
there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give
seed to the sower And bread to the eater, So shall My word be that goes forth
from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I
please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. "For you
shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; The mountains and the hills
Shall break forth into singing before you, And all the trees of the field shall
clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, And
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; And it shall be to the LORD
for a name, For an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." (Isaiah
55:6-13)
Recommended Reading:
1. Barry
Setterfield and his wife Helen are dear friends of mine. His scientific work
is, in my judgment, right on the leading edge. (Please visit their web site
often: http://setterfield.org/). A friend of mine excitedly told me last week that
he uses Barry's new booklet, "The Bible and Geology" along with the
secular "Roadside Geology" books available on secular science
shelves. Tim says it's very exciting to see how the vast ages of conventional
science and the long-lasting effects of the Flood of Noah can now be reconciled
beautifully with the Bible (and a recent creation) now that we have a good
understanding of Zero-Point Energy, which is the energy reservoir of the
vacuum. Lately Barry has been
studying the role of plasmas during creation week. Big Bang physics is gravity
driven, but this ignores the evidence that stars and galaxies and interstellar
gases are all ionized and therefore subject to electric and magnetic forces
that are many orders of magnitude stronger and faster than gravity.
2. Sexuality and the Bible. Last month a
small group from a sister church invited me to join them for a discussion of
same sex marriage and gay rights. I realized that the big moral issues of our
day are much more easily answered when Christians take the time to first build
an overall Christian worldview.
Where did we come from? What is wrong with the world? What is God Doing?
What Does the Future Hold? My notes are here: http://ldolphin.org/sexworldview.html.
Everyone should
read George Gilder's book, "Men and Marriage," available from Amazon.
"A
chilling indictment on the state of the American family, and the recent drive
to deny the fundamental differences between the sexes, Men and Marriage is
"an outstandingly important and well-argued book, strangely moving in its
combination of scholarly diligence, common sense, courage, and devotion to the res publica of human
civilization."--National Review.
3. Global Climate Change: See "On the Central Question of
Climate Sensitivity, by Lord Monckton of Brenchley," http://ldolphin.org/sensitivity.pdf
4. Don't miss "Dangerous Times," A classic
message by Ray Stedman on 2 Timothy 3, http://ldolphin.org/dangerous.html. Very relevant to circumstances around us right now.
5. The Third Temple. During October a
number of Arab-instigated disturbances broke out in Jerusalem at the Temple
Mount. An amazing flurry of voices has been responding, suggesting that it is
now time for the Jews to build their Third Temple on Mt. Moriah in
Jerusalem. I can't follow all the
news, but I do periodically update a running set of news articles on the historic
Temple Mount. See http://ldolphin.org/recent.html. Don't miss our separate site on the Temples, http://templemount.org. There are three separate references in the New
Testament to a functioning Jewish temple being in existence when Christ
returns. For many years many of us Christians have wondered how God would make
the building of such a temple possible on the hottest most politically
sensitive piece of real estate in the world.
6. Finances: Most people are feeling the effects of the current
disastrous national and international economic realities. The forecast is for
more to come. My own retirement check has been reduced by over a third – well
below current monthly expenses. Through it all, your faithful gifts have been
sent of the Lord to sustain me, and they are needed now more than ever! I
continue to thank my God for my every remembrance of you all. Your ongoing
contributions may be sent to me through PayPal, or for a deductible receipt,
mailed to Ray Stedman Ministries, P.O. Box 615, Mount Hermon, CA 95041
(checks should no longer be sent through Peninsula Bible Church). Be sure and
mark your check, "Lambert Dolphin ministries." Thank you again for
your friendship and support. Our God is a sustaining God!
Contact Me. My
disorganized collection of articles is found on this page: http://ldolphin.org/asstbib.shtml.
Previous newsletters are here: http://ldolphin.org/news/.
To ask a question to our email team at the Paraclete Forum, write mailto:inquiry@paracleteforum.org.
As much as I'm able I answer all my email, mailto:lambert@ldolphin.org.
Lambert Dolphin
November 9, 2009