The Real or the Plastic? — Art Katz

If I don't have the same cheerful countenance as Derek, it's because we're cut out of different bolts of cloth. He comes leaping like a roe, always delighting in the microphone, and I come like a snail.

For me, it's always an agony, always with deep sighs and groans, wishing that the floor would open and swallow me and that there's some other place that I could be, especially tonight. Not because of the offering, but because of the thing that's on my heart, because I already have a reputation for being the bull in the spiritual china shop and taking things by the horns and being indelicate and lacking tact and causing furor and storms and all that kind of stuff.

You're not helping me repent. It was true. I want to speak in the spirit of the three dominant prayers that have been breathed for this convocation. If Larry will remind us all, one was for a freedom in the spirit, the second was for a spirit of restoration, and the third, dealing with self-complacency.

Authenticity in the Face of Spiritual Complacency

Well, what is in my heart, my touch, all three bases. The kind of thing that usually falls to me to do is not to deliver fixed set pieces, but more and more it's an event that I'm involved in rather than a message.

And what's on my heart has been born not out of study of a word or a theme, so much as the event of recent days pertaining to the very serious decision by a body of responsible men to cast another brother out of fellowship to excommunicate him.

The actual verse that was employed in the letter that was sent was to give him over to the devil for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be saved. That was the first time that I have ever been involved in any dealing of that kind, anything as profound and as total and as serious and as earnest as that.

I was not there in the eight hours of discussion that preceded that decision, but had I been there, I would have assented completely with that decision and felt that it was necessary. And then as you've already been informed, the brother who was involved presented himself here with the statement that he was going to attend these convocations, that we had asked him privately to refrain from coming.

And then we faced him yesterday and he came nevertheless. But this morning, in a meeting of the elders and responsible brothers, he expressed a note of repentance, asked apology, and spoke of a dream that he had had.

And I think that the general consensus was to take this at its face value and believe that it's sincere and authentic and a step in the right direction for the restoration of a brother. And I also hope and pray that indeed it is authentic.

But it's the word authentic that is in my heart tonight and all through the day. Maybe I've not yet sufficiently recovered from our experience of only a week or so ago in Winnipeg, where by the Lord's providence, I was a speaker at Jesus 79.

I had one earlier such experience, I think in 1973 or 74, the first of these Jesus rallies, and that was enough. I vowed then, never again, I would never again be part of this carnival outdoor atmosphere of women in their halters and shorts and cracking of gum and the stuffing of your face with potato chips while you're hearing what ostensibly purports to be serious words of God from the platform.

And the whole atmosphere just chilled my soul. But when this invitation came for Winnipeg, despite my determination, I felt that it was God and I went. I wasn't supposed to be a speaker at the general sessions, but as is the format that is now increasingly becoming popular in these big charismatic shindigs, there's a large general assembly at night, but then the morning sessions are given over to the denominational and non-denominational charismatic groups.

And I was invited to be the speaker at the Baptist charismatic group. So how could I refuse so novel an invitation as that? And indeed those speakings were blessed. Well, it fell to me to sit on the platform on the night of the big general meeting where a internationally known speaker was the message bearer for that night.

The Artificiality of Religious Celebration

And unlike all the others that entered into the general merriment, I sat there like a glum lump. I was completely out of it, hurting actually, stunned and mortified at some of the statements that I was hearing made.

And the whole happy atmosphere in which these statements were being received. There's a general sense of hokiness. I don't know, I don't know of another word like it. I don't know how the English language has gone on this long without an adjective like that.

A sense of artificiality, of things synthetic and feigned, of having the appearance of things real but being somehow false, although it employed real words, real, really meaningful terms, phrases out of scripture, references to the unity of the body.

I don't know what your reaction would have been had you been in my place and you'd heard the speaker saying that he had taken to task a Pentecostal minister at a previous Jesus rally who spoke on the issue of sin and repentance.

And he castigated this man because he felt that such kinds of speaking would interfere with the spirit of unity. Another statement was that let's forgive the Catholics for unity's sake. And that there's no point in pressing past issues in that kind of spirit and sense.

And there were prophecies that came that night from a certain assemblage of men who were called the word unit. Catholic charismatic men who ostensibly have a gift in prophecy and who write them out on yellow legal pads and give them over to a overseer who then calls into the microphone at the appropriate moment to speak them.

I'm just describing my impression, a terrible sense of unreality. All the more because it was couched in things that are very real. You understand what I'm saying? Well, by the end of the night my spirit was such that I couldn't wait to leave the platform but unfortunately I was assigned to bring the benediction at the conclusion of the night.

And I somehow felt that I should not be involved in anything that took place that night. I should not lend myself to anything that took place and be part of it. And so I went over and tugged the sleeve of the man who was presiding at the platform and I asked to be excused from the obligation of bringing the prayer of benediction.

I said, let someone else do it or end in some other way. But instead he called my name. And so I came to the microphone in that terrible agony and frustration that some of you might know. And all that I could do was to ask them to stand up and take off their sun bonnets and visors and come to a posture of respect before God and to sing with me the Lord's Prayer.

And that's the way the night ended. The Lord sort of bailed me out without further embarrassing implication and involvement. But as I was leaving the platform, a lay man who was in charge of arranging for these sessions asked if I would be available for the general session the following morning.

And at first I abruptly said, no, I want to say I'll have nothing to do with this at all. But then I said, only if God gives me something specific. And so we went where we were staying that night. My spirit still bruised and still pondering that night and our response to it.

Those that were in the car with me had reacted in a like manner. The young lady at whose home we were staying said that she thought that the raucous noise of that night was something akin to the noise that Moses must have heard coming down the mount with the tablets of the law.

The Golden Calf as a Picture of Religious Substitution

And that statement stuck in my craw. It embedded itself in my spirit. And I woke the next morning still thinking of it. And we drove to this open park where this rally was being conducted, where I had to be the morning speaker at this Baptist section.

And discussing with my colleagues whether I ought not indeed take advantage of the invitation that was given me and speak a word distinct and different and other than the kinds of things they had been hearing.

And we prayed together because I didn't want again to fall into that role of bringing that kind of word. And so without making any haste to get there, in fact hoping that we would be too late, we parked the car and walked to the platform where the public meeting was taking place.

At the very moment when it was time for the speaker to be announced. They had already assigned another speaker in my absence. But when the man saw me come up the steps of the platform, he immediately called to me and they rushed me right to the microphone.

And so I began in the spirit of please pray for me. There must be something grievously wrong with me that prevents me from entering into the spirit of general merriment that prevailed last night. That I could not sit there through the night and listen to the statements and rejoice for them.

And that as a matter of fact I shared the impression of this one that I described to you and read from the scriptures in Exodus of Moses coming down the mount with the tablets of the Lord to hear the noise which was not the noise of battle nor the noise of victory but the noise of singing.

And I said I have the impression also that it was this kind of noise that characterized last night. And that has much to do with that earlier event in men and women impatient to wait for God to come down the mount with the real thing.

And therefore simulating something like it but not it. A golden calf of a substitute kind and dancing and prancing about it. Imagine how these words were going forth. And even as I had been walking up to the platform that morning I heard one of the so-called prophecies in which the speaker was saying I the Lord have been with you through this weekend.

I've given you my spirit and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. And for me it was as leaden as anything could be without life. And I said my condition is even so bad I don't even witness to these prophecies.

And I wonder indeed that if my condition is not some kind of idiosyncratic thing I'm some kind of dyspeptic character who always seems to find the negative thing. But if it somehow is an expression of the heartbeat of God we might well ask whether functions and events like this are some kind of massive deception in which we have been inducted unwarily.

And because the phrases have been so rich and so suggestive and because our hearts have panted after true unity in the body of Christ and because we've been impressed with the three or four thousand who gather out of Catholic and Protestant ranks that we have been willing quickly to call this that unity when in fact it is not.

And if we can begin to explore that maybe we need to ask also about the validity of the whole charismatic phenomenon and whether we actually have an authentic baptism in the Holy Spirit and indeed whether we have ever actually been born again of the Spirit or from beginning to end we have been inducted in one of the most colossal jobs that has ever been perpetrated in the religious world in all history.

Those were the kinds of questions that I raised and then I invited as many as would to come to the session where I would be speaking immediately at the conclusion of that morning session where I was to speak on the Spirit of Truth.

A Cry for Authenticity in the Church

There was a cry that was expressed by one of the elders in the gathering of the elders that preceded this convocation here. We sat there awkwardly as such men will in the first meetings when you come together nobody wanting to break the silence nobody wanting to violate against the Spirit of God and introduce some carnal element but this brother, bless him, had the courage to express the cry of his heart which I believe is also the cry of God's heart.

It was a cry for authenticity. It was the cry of one who was increasingly conscious of something plastic a film coming over the religious world. It was a man who had not broken through that film and whose heart was desiring that which is real with God and with men.

It's also my own heart's cry and this afternoon as I spent the entire afternoon pondering before the Lord the events of this morning a man making the statement of confession the desire on the parts of those men who were in the room so anxious for reconciliation to receive such a word as being authentically that of repentance no one knowing for sure whether indeed it was or not and not wanting to be the victims of well-meaning intention knowing that we have responsibility and can I just say a word about that?

That the responsibility goes far beyond the issue of the individual involved. And I say that it touches the whole issue of the validity of the Church of Jesus Christ and the earth. It touches the whole issue of the government of God whether it's a mock or a truth.

It touches the whole issue of whether indeed there's going to be in the earth an actual kingdom of heaven that can be recognized and discerned not only by those who make it up but by the world who presses their nose to the window to look in and to behold the enormous phenomenon of people living in the truth and in love.

It touches all these issues when serious and responsible men will come to a determination to cast and give a man over to the devil for the destruction of his flesh I would say that this is an ultimate judgment not to be done in pique or irritation or because it dismisses an irritating problem and well they were right in taking eight hours to come to such a conclusion.

In fact if you would know the tens and the hundreds of hours that preceded discussion and involvement with that same individual you would know that the whole thing was very soberly considered from beginning to the end.

The whole fellowship had been devastated its members dispersed to the winds it was a brave work that seemed to us to be going down the drain there was injury and damage and bruising the issues were not light.

There was the issue for the individual himself his own restoration there was the issue of the preservation of that expression of the body of Christ and beyond that there were the larger and the eternal issues of the validity of God's word of the seriousness of God's men covenanting together to come to such a statement of agreement and the necessity to see it through to its ultimate conclusion.

The Cross, Atonement, and the Cost of True Repentance

And so I pondered these things as I left this morning service all the more because of the references to suffering to the cross, to atonement of the things that have been paid for in excruciation and blood and agony lest we find ourselves trampling on the blood of the Son of God ourselves guilty of some kind of plastic cheapy counterfeit kind of charismatica when the cry of God is for authenticity in the earth.

Would you believe it that I took down a dictionary and looked up the word plastic in that the word has been spoken so often in these days. Here are some of the meanings given in the dictionary soft enough to be molded yet capable of hardening into the desired fixed form easily bent, twisted or manipulated easily let an influence, lack of will and real character easily modified to suit needs, conditions or uses subject to precious.

I'll tell you that a plastic world is devoutly to be avoided but a plastic kingdom is a tragedy of such proportions that I could break down and weep for the kingdom of God to be plastic subject to pressures and influences to accommodate and suit the needs and moments of men is something that cannot be considered.

I looked up the word pseudo because I have a sense that we need to be alerted for the kinds of end time deception the spirit of Antichrist which is already so rife. You know where it says in 2 Thessalonians that these things shall not be till there be a great falling away.

The Amplified gives an amplification which reads this way let no one deceive or beguile you in any way for that day will not come except the apostasy comes first. That is, unless the predicted great falling away of those who have professed to be Christians has come and the man of lawlessness is revealed who is the son of doom of perdition.

That's a little amplification that the King James and other renderings do not give. The falling away of those who have professed to be Christians I think there's a lot of profession without actuality and in fact I have invited and encouraged Derek to come up after me tonight if there shall be sufficient time and I don't know how long my remarks will take to speak on a subject that God has given him about the true being born again of the spirit of God.

So we're very much concerned with the things that are plastic the things that are pseudo, false, artificial, synthetic imitative, counterfeit the things that are spurious, the things that are false. I even looked up the word sham which says feigned, pretended a trick that deludes, a hoax imitation or counterfeit purporting to be genuine to act intentionally so as to give a false impression.

Was this statement this morning of a brother a true expression of repentance or was it a sham? Was it feigned or pretended? Was it a trick that deludes? Was it a hoax, an imitation or a counterfeit? I'll tell you that the answer to that question goes far beyond this morning far beyond the individual far beyond the men who are making such reckonings.

It affects the whole corpus of God it affects the whole body of Christ everywhere in the earth and I am absolutely convinced, determined you cannot shake me from this that what we will do with regard to this issue shall affect the body of Christ throughout this entire nation and in the earth.

And it doesn't matter whether anyone else in any other expression of the body knows of this particular incident or not they will be the recipients of our ability by the Spirit of God to discern the things that are authentic or the things that are sham.

They will be either the victims or the beneficiaries of an issue of truth that was seen to its ultimate conclusion or that was allowed to slip by because of a disposition in men to reconcile the nitty gritty thing.

After all it's an irritation and a nuisance. And how long will this go on? Listen, the guy sounds like he's repentant. Why not take it at his face value give him an opportunity to demonstrate it and let bygones be bygones.

Reality, Holiness, and the Kingdom of God

I even looked up the word real not artificial nor fraudulent illusory or apparent genuine, occurring in fact necessarily existent true. If you don't have to wipe the saliva off your chin after hearing those words.

Something is amiss with you. Don't these things excite something in your salivary glands? My God are we so destitute and so numb that we don't appreciate what is at the very heart the knit, the fiber the texture of the kingdom which is reality.

Don't we understand that the world is freaking out and dying for the want of it. Don't we understand that there are men who are going berserk and absolutely beside themselves because of the meaninglessness of the universe that they occupy looking for some novelty some cheapy, some diversion to take them through the length of their hours because they have not glimpsed anywhere that there's an alternative that is available to them called the kingdom of God the kingdom of reality.

It simply has not yet surfaced nor been demonstrated by God's people. Dear children, if we need to be anything foremost it is to be eminently real eminently loving eminently living in the truth speaking the truth, walking in the truth doing the truth.

Being true it's much more than just being correct or scriptural or doctrinally sound. It's something that is suffused right in the marrow and the knit and the maw of your makeup. It's in your eyes in your speech, in the inflection of your voice in your posture, in your walk, in your talk not artificial or fraudulent or illusory or apparent but genuine, occurring in fact a true saint true conversion true baptism in the Holy Spirit true utterance in tongues true interpretation, true prophecy a true word of God.

I was sitting in Aunt Bibi's living room the other night my hand fell to the ground and I picked up some publication that he'd received in the mail and I looked at the article because it said something about that dearth of the word of God that would come in the end times men would be running to and fro to find and to hear a true word and he went on to speak about the oil crisis, always the interesting parallel between what is happening in the natural world and what is happening in the spiritual world the extreme crisis for oil but nowhere near as extreme as the crisis that is in the kingdom for the holy anointing oil of God.

I don't know about you but I'm starving for a real word. I want to hear an anointed word out of the heart of God. I want a word that's incisive and penetrating that illuminates and lays bare real words real gifts real saints because there's real conversion born out of real repentance and real godly sorrow.

Nothing feigned nothing illusory, nothing deceptive, nothing imagined nothing counterfeit, nothing substitute real. I hope I'm not presuming against God if I say tonight all unreality is sin that the very God who is true and his anointing anything which is true anything that is inimical and opposed to that God that is hokey and feigned and makeshift that is a collaboration or a dealing or devious or wrought by men or imitated or simulated is sin and it has its corrosive and its deadly effect not only in eternity but in the here and the now all nature and creation is groaning groaning for true sons for true fellowship.

And I would say that part half of the friction between Charles and myself and our fellowships over the years that have sometimes surfaced in the course of these summer convocations has been this cry for authenticity this sense, hey aren't you guys a little too playful.

Aren't you perhaps dangerously at the doorstep of some new kind of gamesmanship however attractive and however much it employs apostolic vocabulary watch it far better. We don't know the words but have the corresponding fact than we should deal in the words and have only a pseudo effect of what it is.

That we're so desperately seeking apostolic reality truth, glory. All unreality is sin. It's the sidestepping of the cross the avoidance of pain and suffering. It is through much affliction that we enter the kingdom of God.

Refusing Shortcuts in Repentance and Restoration

You know what the temptation is? To say, okay brother, sure you had a dream. And you're saying repentant words this morning. Why not let's forget this terrible issue this division, this strain this conflict at our doorstep that continues to surface, we don't seem to be able to reconcile it.

It'll be a relief to receive your words as being sincere. And I somehow sense that. And I'm not saying that the words are not sincere but I'm only saying that God has triggered something in my heart that goes beyond the episode of these days to raise the larger questions of authenticity before the body of Christ.

Are we willing for authenticity's sake and for truth's sake not to take shortcuts not to grasp at the first straw that floats that seems to present the possibility of resolution and an end of conflict.

Are we willing to see an issue pressed to its uttermost. Because if we are not we may see men bend but we are not going to see them break. And you may be content with bending but I'm not. I want to hear.

I want to hear snap, crackle, pop. I want to see something crunch right at the foundation of that citadel of rebellion and self-will and independency of spirit and insubordination and raucousness and resentment and hatred and bitterness.

I want a breaking not a bending, a little dent which will soon enough pop out again at the slightest provocation and I'm convinced it's the issue of the cross. And Charles brought up this morning with the references to suffering.

Are we willing to enter into those sufferings and share in those sufferings that we might also experience his glory humanly. We desire shortcuts. Unwilling to suffer the tension of seeing an issue through to its true resolution in God.

See I'm struggling some issues of my own. Isn't it interesting, ironic that I should be preoccupied with such subjects as bridal love when I'm not a Derek Gitchin somber what can I say. God has given me the theme but he has not yet given me the corresponding reality.

And one of my own tensions is not to jump the gun and to simulate something of my own that has the appearance of love and is not. I want that which cometh down from above however long I've got to bear the terrible agony and the reputation of lovelessness.

I don't want a saccharine counterfeit a slap on the back and a bear hug and a twiddle of the cheek and some adept phrase that makes me seem like one of the boys who's really interested in you when I'm not.

I want the burden from God for you as I want the burden of God for you for Israel. And again not some sentimental thing that will as easily burst the moment that you're denied your petrol at the pump.

Cry for authenticity in God's people. For if we have it not how shall the world know and see that there's a God who is true and a kingdom that is true. Are you willing to suffer the tension of seeing an issue through to its true resolution in God.

A precious saint I know in California a profound woman of God said she had more hope for my marriage than any number of Christian marriages that she has known that have started so beautifully and auspiciously when ours has started almost from the beginning in wretchedness and problems and difficulties of adjustment.

Beyond speaking. I said how do you say that. Look at the history. Look at the history of this relationship. She said that's why. And she said I don't man over to the devil for the destruction of his flesh is to be lightly disregarded and laughed at or to be countermanded or sidestepped by some kind of devious strategy.

If that were the case. It's the stake of the issue of truth and the reality of God in God's people. It's the stake and the issue of the corruption of deceit and sham as the very leaven of deception which can permeate and corrupt the entire lump.

You just let one phony confession get through. You give a brother the benefit of the doubt because you're too lazy or unwilling to suffer the true resolution. And you allow to come into the lump a leaven that will surely corrupt it and bring upon you the very spirit of deception which has affected him.

The Church’s Lost Witness

It's the issue of judgment in the church and the judgments of God being exercised through the church and in the world. You want to know something dear children for all of the hullabaloo about revival and this great happy charismatic thing and the hundreds of thousands that have been swept in my own opinion is that the church of Jesus Christ has never been in lower repute it's authority more questioned it's character more assailed the dignity and the honor of God more traduced, the name of Jesus more blasphemed than it is in this present hour.

I'm broken over the condition of the church because we have not been jealous over the issues of truth because we have chosen easier ways, because we don't have a disposition for tension and suffering.

God has called the church to be a judge and a government, an exemplar and an influence in society and in nations and in the world. Instead we are a backwater a hiss and a proverb a Sunday addendum providing the ministers to invoke the sessions of congress with prayer and the various other sanctifying things that society will give us tax deduction for but not the powerful alternative of another kind of kingdom that lives in the totality of God's truth and righteousness and love.

We ought to be sobered by the fact that Christianity has lost it's witness and credibility in the very areas of the world which spawned them. The church at Ephesus in Turkey. Have you been to Turkey lately?

I have. I've been to Ephesus and some of the other vestiges and the archaeological ruins of what was once the glory of an apostolic church Muslim land from beginning to end. And what do you say about this Muslim resurgence which flaunts in the face of God's people a gauntlet that we can't even answer.

Have you had my experience of standing in the church at Bethany outside of Jerusalem and trying to speak a word on the resurrection of Lazarus when out over the wall next door comes the wailing of the electronic megaphone of the call to prayer in the minaret of the Muslim mosque that drowns out your words and the spirit of it was intimidating.

It wasn't a happenstance it was a malicious gleeful delight of Islam in silencing the voice of God through His service. Don't you ever pick up a magazine. Do you know what's happening in the world. There's a Muslim resurgence in the earth and the little handful of believers that are in Muslim lands are going to catch it.

You pray for us that the Lord will seal the trip to Egypt next spring where we've been invited to bring a five day conference where the Egyptian saints will face reproach and persecution, suffering and martyrdom.

How do you think that this Islam resurgence has taken place. Where was God sleeping. Or is it God's own statement and judgment against a sleeping church that He has allowed this phenomenon to taunt us and to cheapen us and to disparage us in the world.

In the very places where the church was born there the Muslim resurgence flares up. In Greece the condition of the church is pitiful beyond all speaking the land of the great church of Ephesus and Thessalonica 400 Pentecostal believers in all Athens and everyone divided against the other.

You can't believe the pitiful condition of Pentecost in Greece 4 ,000 Pentecostals in all Yugoslavia. In a land that is 50 Muslim. The church has lost its witness and credibility in the very areas of the world which spawned them.

Contending for the Faith and the Kingdom’s Public Witness

Societies and nations once acknowledging the sovereignty of Christ have become totally secularized even hostile to Christian witness. Was the process of that decline and diminution different from what it is today.

How much of the responsibility for it was due to the failure of men to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. And I have a sneaky feeling that doesn't mean the doctrines the tenets of the faith.

It means the faith the utterness toward God the jealousy for the righteousness of God for the truth and the purity of His body. We need to contend for that faith. How much is it the same issue now we need to watch lest we find ourselves among the many that will have a form of religion but deny the power thereof.

The stakes are enormous. It goes far beyond an individual far beyond the decision of a body of men who have responsibility. In northern Minnesota it touches a kingdom it will have eternal reverberations.

It has to do with whether there shall actually be in the earth a kingdom that has its origin in heaven and shows forth heavenly things to a despairing mankind. A church that will not be a backwater but will be a leader not the tail but the head that will set the tone for society and for civilization and will show men what truth, verity, integrity, righteousness true love, unfeigned is.

And it has to do with issues like this now the government of God and the integrity of God himself. The kingdom of God as an actuality in the earth. An alternative to a plastic age to a bankruptcy of the spirit in which there's no oil.

An answer to the cry for authenticity. A final statement. I'm reading today in a magazine about Christianity in Greece this Greek spokesman writes. If you were to take away lay efforts the initiative of certain labors in the gospel it is questionable whether a church as an organized body could raise up an army of warriors as an offspring of her spiritual stature and of her historical splendor.

The result of this situation is glances of pity at her expense. An extreme fomenting of religious pride merchandising in religious things and an inability to take a saving initiative and to shake the ground of Satan at its foundations and to inflame the hearts of believers.

An inability to take a saving initiative in the world of backwater, no influence nothing really to be regarded. A bunch of hokey pietists at best and little charismatic hand clappers. Little choruses that are innocuous charismatic clinics that affect nothing.

Where is that ponderous presence of God on the earth. That force, that voice of judgment that clarity that teaches men how to live and shows what truth is to take a saving initiative and to shake the ground of Satan.

Paul I know and Jesus I know. But the body of Christ in La Porte Cass Lake Bemidji who? Spokane, Washington, who? It's going to take an utterness toward God. If the church is to be to have a saving influence to shake the ground of Satan at its foundation and to inflame the hearts of believers.

Will you pray for me for the church. Will you understand why it is that we have been trembling over the responsibility of these days. Why it is we're not so quick to grasp at what seems to be the the olive leaf of peace the sense of things plastic things famed things hokey, things counterfeit.

Hail hail the gangs all here Jesus 79 hokey things over the nation. Great cavalcades, thousands of souls in their halters cracking gum and stuffing their face with potato chips listening to pontifical addresses about let's forgive the catholic church without the necessity for repentance of the blood of martyrs that has flown incessantly for two thousand years.

Well some hot shot speaker may have the privilege of forgiving them. It's not my prerogative. And especially without any evidence of true repentance. Where's their breaking. Where's their acknowledgement of what they have wreaked on the Hutterites and the Mennonites and the Anabaptists and the brave men and women who were tied back to back and thrown into streams to drown or were burned at the strike or cut into pieces and flogged to death.

I'm not so quick to pronounce a cheapie. I'm waiting to see the authentic signs of brokenness acknowledgement of true sin. That there might be true restoration, true reconciliation true fellowship at the cross of Christ Jesus.

A Prayer for Reverence, Repentance, and a Real Church

Shall we pray for truth precious God and head of the church. You who gave your life's blood for your eternal masterpiece the church of Jesus Christ. That it might be a glory unto thy name Lord. Will you break our hearts.

Mighty God would to God I could experience the relief of tears. Let this lump mighty God that is in my chest break. Let there be a groaning and a crying and a writhing for the lamentable condition of the church that bears your name in the earth.

That is a reproach to your holy name that is smiled at by knowledgeable men and reporters and slicksters about the born again football players the born againers and all of the cheapie phrases that touch holy things and defile them precious God.

Will you restore to us a sense of reverence for you. Will you restore to the church the fear and the awe of God. We're willing precious God to see your glory and power restored to the point that if it means some of us being carried out feet first we're willing.