The Great Apostasy — Paris Reidhead

The Prophecy of Apostasy in 2 Thessalonians

Now this evening we've announced to speak on the theme, the great apostasy. Will you turn please to 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2. The English word apostasy does not occur in the New Testament, but in the third verse the word falling away is a translation of the very word from which we get our word apostasy.

So we find our text residing in this chapter which I shall read for you. Now we beseech you brethren by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from us as that the day of Christ is at hand.

Let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed the son of perdition who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God.

Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things and know ye what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work only he who now hindereth will hinder or preventeth will prevent until he be taken out of the way and then shall that wicked be revealed whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming even him whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie that they all might be damned to believe not the truth but at pleasure in unrighteousness.

But we are bound to give thanks all the way to God for you brethren beloved of the Lord because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth where unto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore brethren stand fast and hold the teachings the traditions which you've been taught whether by word or by our epistle now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God even our Father which hath loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.

This is a tremendous portion of scripture and one that has through the centuries led to a great deal of speculation. Or if you will read the writings about the time that Paul wrote you will find that they were attributing the man of sin to Nero and Diocletian and then others of the those who persecuted the church and it's carried on until the present.

I remember some years ago when they were finding in our newspapers the ones who identified with this man of sin and so we are not prone to speculation. I believe that it's wrong for us to do that because more often than not we are wrong when we have identified some particular individual with the scripture.

The scripture gives us principles and when we understand these principles and see them then we are able to understand what's taking place in our newspaper. It makes it has to make sense. We we can realize that whereas the personalities will change the stream is flowing in a given direction.

So I'm not proposing at all this evening to try and identify the details of this portion with the day in which we live. I am particularly concerned about this third verse. Let no man deceive you by any means for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed the son of perdition.

The part of importance to us today is the falling away as Paul wrote it had not yet taken place. We would like to think at times that the scripture were written directed toward our day and toward our time.

But remember that this was written about 54 AD some 24 years after the ascension of Christ. By that time Paul would say that there had not been an apostasy of falling away from the simplicity of the gospel.

Oh there had been corruptors that had tried to get in Judaizers that had tried to bring them back to legalistic observance. There had been those that brought Gnostic heresy in. But this was not called the apostasy the falling away that had not occurred according to this text by the time Paul wrote.

Or else this of course would have been irrelevant. What is this great great apostasy. Has it happened or is it yet to happen. We will see it in three different lights. First individuals have apostasized.

Personal Apostasy as Deliberate Revolt Against Christ

We recognize that this falling away is more than just being overtaken in temptation or falling into sin. It has reference to a complete return or turning back attempt. I think the scripture would have us see this word used in the connotation of a deliberate revolt against the government of Christ.

Repentance as you understand is an open and complete break with the past in the government of Satan. It's a renunciation of Satan's rule in the life and a commitment to Christ a receiving of Christ as he is presented as a prince and as a savior.

Therefore falling away as it's understood in the scripture would be the reverse of repentance a re-repentance or a changing of a mind back again to what it was a complete re-changing of the mind. Now we understand that a child of God can be overtaken in a fall let aside by appetite and fall into sin.

This book does not teach a state of grace where that one will attain where he cannot be tempted. We've heard in the past criticisms of teachers of sinless perfection. I have yet to find anyone that teaches what we usually see attributed to them.

Most of my friends that would be in such a camp would be the first to repudiate it. But I understand from the fact that there's so much smoke and there must have been some fire. And someone went beyond the scripture and said he couldn't sin.

So we'll allow that as a possibility. But the scripture does add that there are those who hold it not a scriptural possibility. But the scripture does not so teach that there is any state of grace where one cannot sin.

But it does teach that God gives victory in temptation and enables one to have the life of Christ made manifest in him delivering him at the time of temptation enabling him thus to stand. But whereas this is true we also recognize that a Christian can sin.

Someone whose face is headed toward the new Jerusalem having the cross current blow catch the sails and drive the ship off course can cause that individual to sin. And of course sin is sin and it has to be dealt with.

The scripture says do your first works again. And this includes judging it to be sin forsaking it as sin confessing it as sin and doing the cleansing of the blood of Christ. And when one does choose to disobey the Lord there is of course sin in every sense of the word not to the destruction of the soul but certainly to the grief of the Lord and of the individual.

And so the Bible teaches that there is this possibility of a child of God sinning. But this is in contrast to personal apostasy. I do believe that Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 teach the possibility of a deliberate apostasy now I didn't used to believe this.

I would have said years ago that this was impossible. But Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 are there. I've collected innumerable books that expound it and take away the sharp edge from it. But after I've read the involved and sometimes intricate explanations that take the edge off of these chapters I go back and the chapters are still there and the edge has not been changed and they stand as a dire warning to anyone and anyone that would try to minimize them and just to make light of them is certainly doing harm to his own soul and being dishonest with the people that might listen to such.

Now Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 remain in the word and they're there and they're terrifying and they ought to be. And when the scripture says serve God serve with godly fear and reverence. This is exactly what it means.

For I personally hold to and believe that there is the possibility of apostasy where one can come to that place where he deliberately turns his back upon Christ. He turns his back upon the truth and commits himself to a life of rebellion.

Now Hebrews 6 says something like this that if one deliberately sins there is no place found for repentance in him. It didn't say that if he repented he wouldn't be forgiven but something happens to the human spirit and he doesn't want to repent.

I've told you about that individual the former pastor and one whom I met some frequently for some years that would be in services especially down at Washington DC and elsewhere in Delaware and Maryland and southern around Philadelphia when I'd be ministering I'd see him he'd come in and he'd be there in the service and several times tears would stream down his cheeks as I'd be preaching and I'd go to him afterwards where he always spoke to me and I'd say why were you weeping tonight.

And his answer invariably would be something like this. I'm weeping because I have no heart whatever to repent. I'm weeping because my heart is so hard I don't want to change. And this is the thing that makes my tears come.

He wasn't repenting and finding that he wasn't being forgiven. He was weeping because of the fact his heart had become so hard. No place found for repentance in him. So let's just accept. Then you search the scriptures on the point that there is the possibility of personal apostasy that one can having had some state of grace who knows what it was.

I'm not prepared to say well he wasn't saved in the first place then. Well this is to my mind a begging of the question because he had a testimony he was accepted for the testimony and as far as I'm concerned that we will see that the scripture does teach that personal apostasy.

We have one of the cases in history was Julian the apostate one of the associates of the early church fathers. He was given the opportunity because of his being related to the emperor of becoming the emperor of Rome and he renounced Christ took up his place as a as a head of the state religion of idolatry and be absolutely repudiated all of his connections with the Christians and his dependence upon the Lord.

He was engaged in battle he was mortally wounded by a sword thrust and tradition tells us that as he fallen to the ground he reached down and took the the sand that had been moistened with his own blood squeezed it between his fingers and there he saw in the sky a vision of the cross and he flung the sand and blood at the vision in the sky and cried out O thou Galilean thou hast conquered.

At last Julian the apostate one that had walked with the children of God before gain had turned his back. We know the demons had forsaken all and forsaken the church having loved this present world. So let's allow that there is this possibility not become involved and down in the what the state was.

As far as I'm concerned let's accept it that they had some testimony and they've done it now when the child of God falls into sin and temptation there's a difference between that and this kind of final and unchangeable apostasy and unchangeable I say because of the heart of the individual.

Doctrinal Corruption and the Erosion of Spiritual Reality

Then we recognize a second kind of apostasy or falling away and this we will have reference to a doctrinal corruption. This takes place wherever truth is intellectually held without being inwardly experienced let me say it again wherever truth Bible truth is viewed simply objectively and held intellectually without having been inwardly experienced you have the gradual erosion and the the decline the gravitational pull that's going to change that or if you will study the history of of the church going back to the Greek Orthodox and the Syrian Orthodox and to the Roman Catholic you will find that there was a time when truths were vitally real.

Then to one generation they were not real and so they attached a ceremony a symbol, a form and gradually there was this evolvement of ritual and ceremony and symbolism that took the place of reality before the stations of the cross are an excellent picture of our identification with Christ.

And many times individuals in that context that have found the Lord Jesus begin to see the meaning and it has some little measure of life to them. But there's this falling away from the vitality. There's this falling away from the reality of truth.

Now this could be happening in your life. And we're certainly not equating this with the great apostasy in that sense in which the scripture sets it forth. It is a process that takes place in any mind or in any group of people whenever they allow truth to be objectively held without being inwardly experienced takes place on the mission field.

You find the missionaries going to a tribe of savages, head hunters cannibals perhaps living in gross worship of Satan and as the gospel is preached there's a complete change from vile black to white.

But these are Christians now and so they have a Christian home. They've given up all these vile practices their bodies may have the marks made by the witch doctor or in the evil practices of their heathen religion but their hearts have been cleansed and their minds have been enlightened.

So their children grow up in a Christian home and a Christian home is a Christian home in anywhere regardless of where you are. So these children have acquired the idea that they're not quite as bad as their cannibal fathers were.

They grow up and there's some reality because father had such a transforming experience such a glorious experience that the boys get the reflected light and the little girls see something so different in their mother in contrast with the mothers around them but they have less of reality and sometimes there's just a form of godliness, just the doctrine, just the plan and the little girls then marry Christian boys and the boys marry Christian women.

And there's the third generation and so frequently you find that in that third generation things which were vitally real to grandfather are just so-so to the grandchildren the religious Christian movement that can live past the third generation and hold its vitality because of this falling away, this eroding of reality, if it could be that every generation, all the churches fell down and all the organizations disintegrated and all the groups just disappeared and everybody had to start all over again, there might be some preservation of reality but as it is, there's this continuous erosion, doctrinal erosion, practice devotional life it's just going on around us constantly and it's going on in my home, it's going on in your home, we have to be constantly alert to it continuously resisting it and seeking to have our everyone we touch in need not brought into a formula but brought into a vital relationship with the living Christ because it's just so easy for them to go through a little ritual and miss him and then years later stumble over this fact because as they come under the real tests and pressures of life they found that it wasn't real and so they just give it up and this I say behooves us to recognize that this eroding this ritualizing is a continuous thing.

I put it this way whenever you do anything in your Christian life today, just because you did it yesterday and because you don't want to break your record, you've already started to make your own rosary whether you have beads or not whether it's saying the blessing, whether it's your quiet time, whether it's reading the scripture, you say well isn't it valuable?

Yes it's valuable. It's certainly better than not doing it at all but it's infinitely better than it should be done with vitality and done with reality lest you should be eroding your life and you should be just sort of inuring, you know the scalpel that can cut if it's properly wheeled, it can also callous if it's just lightly scraped across the skin and you take that scalpel that's designed to make a deep incision and remove the malignancy and just rub it in such a way that it doesn't actually cut and you'll soon callous and so there is this aspect of apostasy the eroding of reality and the eroding and the washing away of vitality in the life of a group or the life of a church we see history filled with this but this is not the apostasy of which the scripture speaks.

Liberalism, Fundamentalism, and the Loss of Biblical Authority

What is it? Does it have reference to some great invasion such as took place a hundred years ago and the effect of which continues until the present hour when we add the impact of science, falsely so called in my estimation carrying over into the church and the inspiration of the bible was brought into question when the principles of evolution that were then being propounded to nature were extended over to the bible and it was said to be simply the groupings of primitive pastoral people across the century and did not represent the revelation of God.

This attack that struck at the very foundation of our faith that divided christianity over liberalism and fundamentalism. Is this the apostasy the great falling away. Well it could be in some sense perhaps muted there's certainly been nothing quite as blatant and quite as overt as what's transpired in the last hundred years but my feeling personally would be that this is not what we're referring to.

I think it's more subtle than this and I think perhaps it's even far older than this. I would suggest to you that the great apostasy that we have set forth here, this falling away that has not yet occurred it took place far earlier than 1850 it probably was beginning in the time that the church was recognized by the state and christianity became state religion may I put it this way that the actual apostasy in my mind is the worshipping that you can grasp very years ago 1600 years ago when men lost sight of the person of the lord Jesus Christ and began to meet creeds are important and I recognize that but I also think that something terribly disastrous has taken place because there is the effect of a continuous extension of any creed.

The moment that you accept a creed as the foundation of fellowship and you take out 5, 10, 15 20 statements from this book and you hold those 20 statements up and say we're meeting on the foundation of these 20 statements literally what you've said is this nothing is important but these 20 and all the rest that the word has isn't as important as that.

Well where are you going to pick out something that isn't important in this book? What is it that God has said that isn't important? And so I would say that the falling away the great apostasy took place back in centuries gone by when men were content to meet around a creed instead of a person because there's something so deadening something so destructive to human or to spiritual life and vitality that it could almost be said to be Satan's grand masterpiece and strategy for having impoverished and weakened and divided the church.

Today we have 312 groups known and recognized and registered with the government. 312 so called denominations and if you take the number of independent churches or one or two you probably will get it up nearer to 500 or 600 you name it.

Nevertheless we have seen this continuous fragmentation of the body of Christ and it's been on the basis of creeds. Often times it's been personalities that have differed and clashed and they've simply tried to dignify rather than having a personality squabble and trying to, I'll come right out honestly and say it's vanity and ambition that's led to it.

They've had to find some place where they differed and then they'd get a doctrinal or a biblical basis and this would be it but if the truth were known it was probably that somebody wanted to be the Duke of Goatville instead of what he thought he was the Goat of Dukeville and so he found a biblical basis for this and he could make a division then and with the dignity and with some degree of approbation of the general public.

He was fighting a good fight of faith. And so we've had this fragmentation 666 someone said. The man of sin, the number of the man of sin, of the divisions that have come over doctrinal differences. Now the tragedy of this is that the moment that you assemble around a statement of doctrine anyone that agrees with that doctrine is thereby eligible to participate in that assembly because you've advertised to the world that the basis of assembly is on a doctrinal statement and you can recognize that it wouldn't be long then that if a clever evil genius such as Satan were trying to rob the church of power that he would soon get people in to support the doctrine who had no experience even of that fragment of the doctrine.

So then it would be doubly, doubly poisoned having divided from all the others over a point of doctrine then to have been infiltrated by people that hadn't even experienced that much of the biblical statement and of the truth of the doctrine on which they met in fellowship.

And so we find this strategy has continued down across the centuries and it has been so eminently successful until today we have this place where the church is not split, it's actually splintered. It's like a bundle of toothpicks scattered on every hand.

And it's been going on across the centuries. Now I could spend a good bit of time on this but I think it's preferable that we should move on and see what else has accompanied this great apostasy if you're prepared to think with me.

At least it'll, I trust stimulate you. The second aspect of it was that we now had to have, and I'm thinking back 1600 years ago, we then had to have priestly interpreters to help keep us on the doctrinal rails.

You understand that if your fellowship is not with the risen Christ but it's with a portion of scripture, then you've got to have somebody there to sort of as an engineer to keep you from getting off because along the way somewhere you might meet someone that loved the Lord Jesus Christ and had a real warm, vital relationship with him but didn't have to cross the T and dot the I the same way and so you need someone to warn you as to who the ones with whom you're to have fellowship.

Clerical Mediation and the Nicolaitans

And so we find developing at that same time the idea of the clergy as over against the laity. And this I believe is that which the Lord said he hated when he spoke of the Nicolaitans and the error and the falsehood of the Nicolaitans.

The idea that we could hire somebody to do for the body of Christ what the risen Christ by the Holy Spirit wanted to do through every member of his body. And that this is the second great strategic attack of hell that was so eminently successful in achieving this goal of impoverishing the church of Jesus Christ.

If we understand this book at all it teaches that God has no stepchildren that what he has done for one he willingly does for all. And he's quite willing to give any relationship to you that he's given to anyone in the past if you're prepared to meet his terms and in the context of his will and purpose for your life.

So this thought that we could hire somebody to do for us what the Spirit of God wanted every member of the body of Christ to contribute to the health and the welfare and the blessing of the whole body of Christ or the curse of the Nicolaitans has been the second great successful attack on the church of Jesus Christ.

Denominational Fragmentation Around Partial Truths

Now see the effect of it. Here is a division over something that's extracted from the Word. Instead of taking the Bible as the rule of faith and life and we gather to the Lord Jesus Christ and see him exalted and risen and in the midst is the one whom we worship that we gather not to some fragment of truth but to the person who himself is the truth.

What is the contrast? What has actually happened? Well we find that here are the Presbyterians and they have taken the sovereignty of God and this is a truth that's very precious to their hearts. Over here are the Methodists who've taken the responsibility of man and this is very precious to their heart.

And so we find that the whole denominational spread in this land of ours has been over some emphasis of the Scripture. Well these things, if the Bible teaches the sovereignty of God and it does, doesn't belong to the Presbyterians, belongs to the Lord and his people.

If it teaches the responsibility of man, it doesn't belong to the Methodists, it belongs to the Lord and his people. Do you see? And yet we've had these crystallizations of groups around a fragment of truth that's divided the body of Christ until we have this 312 groups that now are around us and very much part of us.

Bob Finley was here a few years ago and told of his experience up in Chongqing, China. There he met a man obviously a believer and he went to him and said by the way, I gather you're a Christian, are you?

And the man said, I'm not only a Christian, but I am a Missouri Synod Lutheran. Well now, Mr. Finley said, what pray-tell business did the Missouri Synod have in making its stamp on someone who spoke the Chinese language up in the very heart of China?

Nothing wrong with the Missouri Synod Lutheran, but you see what has happened is then we've exported all of these and all the confusion that it raises. So we've got these two errors, these two things.

The one is the meeting around a fragment of truth and we get that fragment in front of us instead of the risen Christ who is himself the embodiment of all truth. And the second is the clergy which have had to take the place of what the head of the church wanted to do through every member of his body.

And out of these two things has grown the weakness that we're facing. We're losing the race against time and we're losing it on every front, if you please. But we keep hoping and praying that sometime we're going to come back to give the Lord a chance to demonstrate again the glorious power that is resident in our head, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Organizational Ecumenism Versus Fellowship in Christ

What is the answer to this great apostasy? This falling away that has resulted in our leaving him and gathering to a fragment of doctrine and instead of being to him what he wants to be, raking our own arrangements.

What is the answer to it? Well, we find today that the answer that's being proposed by the World Council of Churches is an ecumenical, a political ecumenical union that is going to mean the ultimate control of all of these groups by some theative governmental enforcement so that all the 312 groups will ultimately have to come under one head and we can then be Christian again.

You understand that Pope John, shortly after his accession as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church called for an ecumenical council. It's been rarely done. I think the previous one was in the middle of the last century.

It's been some hundred years. Three things are being presented at this time we're told. We're in the Herald Tribune a while ago. First, the mass, if the intent of this council is carried out after it's done, the mass will always be rendered in the language of the people rather than in Latin.

Secondly, priests will be able to marry, especially the deacons and those who do not wish to go on to the higher echelons of church responsibility and administration. And the third thing that is being proposed to this ecumenical council is that the Pope will be elected no longer by the cardinals but by the archbishops.

Eleven being the number but the archbishops of the Syrian church, the Orthodox church, Romanian and Serbian and so on will elect the head of the role of the church but he will be elected from the cardinals.

This is a tremendous concession from the world religious point of view. It was set up, I think, as a trial balloon. There's been no one that's taken any exception to it. And so probably this will be the effect of the ecumenical council that's called for next year.

And we, you heard just a while ago, Eugene Carson Blake and Bishop Pike on television who said that the union of the four great denominations was just the first step in the ultimate union of all Christendom.

You see, when I see something like this happen and see all this excitement, all I can think of is that this is a hate. This is a sort of a distraction on the part of the enemy to get our minds off of what the Lord is doing.

Now you recognize that in all denominations there are multitudes of people that are just nominally members. Not just through the Roman Catholics, but it's through the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, the Alliance, through all of us, nominally members.

I've had some little interest and then the interest lapsed and waned and they're no longer to be found. Their names are there and they're counted in all the statistics, but nevertheless they're not personally participating.

And it seems, therefore, that this ecumenical movement that's so obvious, that's so political, so material, so organizational, is, if I can use the word, a thing to get our minds off of the real thing the Lord is doing.

A Christ-Centered Alternative Through A.B. Simpson's Vision

There is something that he's doing. I think it began back 80 years ago, right here, with this church. If you were to ask me to name one of the most historic dates since the time of Martin Luther, I would say it was that Sunday that A .B. Simpson met with seven people down here on 23rd Street where he had an entirely new, biblically new concept.

A concept of meeting no longer around some fragment of doctrine, not even around the fourfold gospel, but it was Christ, only Christ, putting the Lord Jesus back in the center. And it was to be a people of all different groups they met Sunday afternoon so that the Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians could come to some neutral place other than right here at this point, but around the country.

They met, meet in the women's club, in the YMCA. They meet in the neutral ground so that people could come without prejudice and have their hearts fed. He didn't want to start a denomination at all. He wanted people to come, to be nourished, to be strengthened, and sent back to their own churches as Fifth Columnists for the Spirit-Filled Life, there to live Christ and witness and preach so that they could be the means of blessing.

And so the concept that he had that motivated the movement was distinctly new, something that we do not find expressed or proclaimed elsewhere. But of course, there again in the erosion of time you have that process we've talked about.

Until today, the genius is somewhat obscured by the mechanics of our present responsibility. But I firmly believe, dear heart, that the Lord is moving in this day to answer the great apostasy on the part of the spiritual, on the part of those that love Him.

For we find everywhere around the country that the hungry are finding each other. Baptists are meeting with Presbyterians, and Presbyterians finding delightful fellowship with Episcopalians. And Episcopalians are rejoicing that they are being helped and encouraged along the way by the Methodists.

And the Pentecostals are finding that they can sit down with the others, and the sheep can eat with the lions, and they can have blessed fellowship together in the things of the Lord. And there's been a marvelous new thing happening, even in the very present hour.

And we find that the hungry are finding each other. Now I believe this is just the first little indication of what the Lord is going to do for His own. I believe that we're going to see two things working concomitantly.

The first is going to be the ceaseless increase of ecumenical power. You've heard me expatiate on that. That this is an insult to intelligence, and the kind of a world that's represented by the building at the other end of 44th Street in the United Nations will no longer countenance a Christianity that's divided into four, five, or six hundred different fragments.

And so the process is going to be organizational, political, ecumenical union. But at the same time, there is going to be, and there is now, this increase of personal fellowship on the basis of individual believers that find fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, and are brought into a place where they share the same hunger, the same delight, and the same blessing.

It's happening now. And out of it then, the strategy of the enemy is going to be for, I think, to some degree, nullifying, because we're beginning to realize that there is a true, biblical, spiritual ecumenism.

And it isn't on the basis of organization, and it isn't on the basis of membership. It's on the basis of our meeting around the Lord Jesus Christ on the basis of his word. And it's not a doctrinal derivation from his word, or an extraction from it.

But we meet him on the basis of this. It's simple. It's clear. And I believe it's understandable, and hearts everywhere are responding to it. Evidenced by the tremendous increase in groups, hundreds, hundreds, and hundreds of groups, starting all across the country, that have no recognition of denominational lines.

The only thing that qualifies one for being part is a hunger for the Lord, a desire to know him, and to go on and do all that he has for us. This, I believe, is the Lord's answer to this organizational ecumenism, where an individual discovers that his heart has a corresponding hunger with someone else's heart, and so they begin the fellowship together in prayer, and meeting in the word.

I've had testimony of one of the people of this congregation who said that they had wanted to have from among the membership of the group. You've heard me speak about this at such length in the past, how I've tried so hard to get groups going.

Well, I'm beginning to realize that this is something the Lord is sovereignly doing, because, she said, well, there was a person from another, from a Baptist church, and from an Episcopal church, and someone that's come from another church, and the four have been meeting, strangely drawn together by an accident, and yet they find they're sharing the same interest, and birth, and hunger, and they're fitting it into their already pressed and busy schedule.

The Great Apostasy as Fellowship Around an Extraction from Scripture

Know, dear heart, I believe that this is the great apostasy, this meeting around an extraction from the word that obscures the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and allows people to come into an organizational relationship that do not have a vital living relationship with him.

That all of this is going to be gathered up, it's the tentacles are reaching out even now, pressing and drawing, and as this is drawn off that way, then the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, is going to draw this way.

And there, in such groups, without any plan, without any enlisting, without any membership, and any statistics, I believe we're going to see the release of the Spirit of God, the power of God made manifest in our communities, and made manifest in our homes, and perhaps even to some encouraging degree in our churches.

So has the great apostasy come? The opinion of the one speaking to you, it has. And it was the strategy of Satan, back there 1 ,600 years ago, to get Christianity to organize around fragments taken from the word of God, and so to obscure the blessed head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is this going to continue indefinitely? I think not. I think the time has come when the ecumenical pressure on the outside is going to correspond to the inward pressure of the Holy Ghost, as he causes those of like precious faith to find each other, and to share together in their hunger one for another.

And it encourages me, therefore, to pass this word on to you, and to ask you, how real is your faith? Are you just loyal to a church, a building, a statement of doctrine, a fragment of truth? Or has the Spirit of God done something so transformingly wonderful in your life that you are finding others of similar hearts, similar hunger, similar burdens, and you're sharing together with them?