ONE ARM STRIKING THE OTHER:
".....It would never have occurred to me in 1000 years that I would be entering a group of Christians with an entirely different conceptual framework, with equal confidence that they were right, with carefully crafted arguments against my position and my whole spiritual framework and the way I intended to operate, and ready to let me know how wrong I was... They were unmerciful in their rejection of the spiritual framework which I held to, a framework that had been such a blessing to me before....They were part of a backlash which I didn't know existed, so I didn't know how to answer their charges-they actually quickly judged me as being just another example of the pathetically sorry state of the church apart from themselves.... What do you say when everyone around you has been indoctrinated to vehemently argue against what you had experienced as the fullness of life in the Holy Spirit, and to say all sorts of evil against you for protesting?"
THE OTHER ARM FLOATING AWAY, DISCONNECTED:
"During the Jesus Movement we had people around with the spirit of rebellion,
they were obvious and obnoxious, and the rest of us considered them useless
to the Body of Christ. The spirit of independence (this may not even be
the best name for it) is much more subtle... .
It perfectly fit our generation, and I lapped it right up-prepared to defend
it to the death because of the fellowship experience I had where it prevailed.
It's an excellent case study as to how the enemy sows leaven into a true
expression of church life in order to work its destruction. Then his "false
church" mops up the remains..."
"False church" mops up the remains:
In year 2005 I read the following post on Andrew Strom's forum set up for the people who had left the I.C in a mass exodus. The post was under the thread, "Out of Church Christians" and was written by a believer who signed it "Gary". Gary had obviously been in the Jesus Movement:
Long story,short:Thirty seven years ago, God showed up in town here and a small gathering (35 people) of prayer warriors exploded into a movement of millions. Tens of thousands were being saved and filled with the Holy Ghost. Miracles, signs and wonders abounded. Broken lives were transformed. Buildings couldn't be built fast enough to hold the people. Book of Acts living seemed normal, sharing resources, joys and sorrows. We used to sing a liitle song "and they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love".
I recently attended a documentary about this movement, and afterwords the son of the main"pastor" in our area at that time (himself the pastor of a "megachurch"in our area) commented " I wonder what the Jesus movement would have looked like had it not combined with the old fundamentalist church framework" Another group handed out a "free paper" with the lead article, "Why the Jesus movement never got off the ground." It featured a drawing of a hippie bus, painted with Jesus slogans, and a pair of airplane wings. On each page, people excitedly boarded the bus, until on the last page of the story, the bus pulled up in front of a traditional church building, parked, and all the people filed out of the bus and into the building. I had to laugh, but it's not really funny...".
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Additional impressions:
God's plan of restoration does not mean the Structured Church rules over the Un(structured) Church. In fact, the leaders of the Un(structured) Church must be extremely careful to not 'plug in' or relate to anyone who arrogantly believe they are there to be overlords. ONLY Jesus is the Head. The Un(structured) Church has autonomy, and should retain that.
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Glorying in a new structure that would supposedly solve all possible problems would lead to spiritual pride and arrogance. It is depending upon something other than Jesus. Rather than depend on the illusion of a fool-proof structure or un(structure), it is wise to responsibly deal with error as it occurs, for it will occur. Errors and excesses occur because individual believers embrace error, deception and sin. The tares are among the wheat until the end of the age.
God Himself will guide the entire process, using only those believers
who are humble enough to facilitate sincere cooperation and true unity
of service to the Head of the Church, Jesus. Anyone else is not of the
Lord for they are not truly cooperating with the Lord.
This refers to a personally powerful vision the Lord gave me at the age of 19 years old. The vision symbolically portrayed a spiritual journey, with accurate markers for both the past and the future. The vision was the second in a series of infrequent visions or dreams over a span of 15 years which used the same themes and symbols. All of these dreams also had prophetic 'markers' of events that later happened, apparently to build my personal faith that once God says something or purposes something, it will happen.
Below is just a small portion of this second vision at age 19 (reproducing the entirety of the vision here and would be cumbersome as this particular vision was quite lengthy), which was near the end of it and had previously been not understood. In the vision, I had been introduced to a house He was promising to me at the end of the journey. This was what I experienced as I walked into the house during that vision:
There was an aquarium in the living room of the house I walked into.
My friend Eric walked in, full of the joy of the Lord, and introduced his
future spouse. We greeted one another warmly. I was suddenly aware that
I also was married and had children at the time. Eric and his wife were
the first ones to arrive, but we all knew there were others who were also
coming. Everything looked so inviting and comfortable. There was a large
aquarium in the living room. As I looked with my eyes at the rest of the
house, my vision was suddenly expanded-----room after room after room after
room. It seemed to never end! Each room was different in furniture and
style, and yet very inviting. I saw many people coming in to visit these
rooms and the people in them. They were teaching each other the scriptures
and there was both intensity and laughter as they fellowshipped with one
another. The whole thing was filled with the Spirit more and more as these
Christians fellowshipped with one another in an informal manner. (*Note:
It reminded me of the small 'Jesus people' group I was involved in as a
young Christian, and also what happened amongst my peer group at the time
of the vision. For instance, ministry often happened as Eric and I visited
each other in our homes.) On and on it went--seemingly to infinity. The
odd thing was that although I knew there were kitchens and other rooms
present in this house I had stepped into, the only rooms I saw in this
expansion were living rooms. The vision ended.
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