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In Spirit and in Truth
It's always risky building doctrine on personal revelation. While it is a great mistake to assume that the Lord no longer speaks ("My sheep will hear My voice"), it is equally a great mistake to build doctrine on personal experience. With that warning in mind, let me tell you a short story.
It was October of 1999, and the first morning of the IHOP (International House of Prayer) conference with Mike Bickle. I woke that Friday morning wondering what the day would bring. As I lay in bed, a strange picture suddenly appeared to my mind. As I looked at a picture of a clock with the hands at 12, I realized it was the Lord. In my mind I heard these words: "I am watching over my word to perform it." Then, as I continued to look at the clock, I heard a verse from the gospel of John chapter 4: "the hour is coming, and now is, when those who worship the father must worship him in spirit and in truth." At the time, I didn't understand the significance of the words.
A week or so later the Leadership Center magazine arrived, and on the cover was the same clock with the hands at midnight. The cover was "the church in the new millennium." The magazine was filled with quotes on what the new church would look like, but the heart of it for me was in these ones:
The church in the new Millennium will be successful to the extent that its focus is on ministry that is biblically transforming, relationally shaping and spiritually empowering. Dr. Paul Magnus, President, Briercrest Family of Schools.
The church in the new millennium will be defined through experience and relationship. Postmodern culture is looking for an experience of God, not an explanation. The future church, like the ancient, will live in the mystery of the presence of the risen Christ and demonstrate authentic community in a culture of isolation. Michael Slaughter.
This vision excites me more than anything else, and has been part of my heart since 1983 when I was attending Regent College and got to know a Plymouth Brethren elder who was trying to bring reformation to an old structure.
"In spirit and in truth" was spoken by Jesus to a Samaritan woman, who was confused about the relationship of worship and culture. Jesus, by His example, was already tearing down old things to bring new vision. Consider for a moment what is occurring in the passage in John.
First, Jesus meets her at her point of need. He uses a word of knowledge to get her attention. Then he turns the issue from a personal and cultural one to that of His own person. When he has her attention and has her trust, she asks him a question, a very bold thing for a Samaritan woman to do!
In fact the entire passage is a clash of cultures.
1. Jesus, a Jewish male, is talking to a woman
2. Jesus, a Jew, is talking to a Samaritan
3. Jesus, contrary to the Jewish law, is telling her that worship is not confined to the Temple
Jesus tells her that it doesn't matter where she worships or who she is (culturally) because worship is a spiritual and inner transaction between her and the Lord. The Jews believed one had to go to Jerusalem to the temple.. but God doesn't dwell in buildings made with hands. This is the heart of the new (old) wineskin. Where once the Temple was the center, now WE ARE the Temple. We carry the Spirit.
There are three central elements in the Mosaic covenant: sacrifice, priesthood and tabernacle. Together these constituted the covenant relationship between God and His people. Sacrifice and priesthood and atonement cleared the way to God and were the center of covenant faithfulness.
We stand in a new dispensation, however, where Jesus Christ has fulfilled sacrifice, priesthood, and tabernacle. He is our great High Priest; therefore we need no earthly priest (Heb.4: 14; 8: 1). The priesthood has passed away, or rather has been given to all believers (1 Pet.2: 9).
Likewise Jesus is the true sacrifice, to which all sacrifices looked forward. No further sacrifice is necessary or even possible (Heb.7: 27; 9: 14, 25-28). The sacrificial system has become redundant because all that was foreshadowed in the covenant with Moses was fulfilled in the death of Jesus. The only sacrifice that remains is the church herself as a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12: 1-2).
It is also true that Jesus is the fulfillment of the tabernacle (Heb.8-9). He became flesh and dwelt (literally, "tented") among us (John 1: 14) and "has entered, not a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf" (Heb.9:24). In another sense, the church, His body, is part of the true tabernacle. We are "God's house," (Heb.3: 6; 1 Tim.3: 15), a "holy temple," (Eph.2: 21; 2 Cor.6: 16), a "dwelling of God in the Spirit" (Eph.2: 22).
Sacrifice, priesthood, and tabernacle - all these were instituted through Moses, and all passed away with the coming of Jesus and the birth of the church. The church was born without any religious cult, though it took some time for the understanding of these things to soak in (see for example Paul's dispute with the Jerusalem leaders in Acts 15, reflected in Galatians 2 and 3).
The temptation has been to reinstate these three elements among God's people and to turn community into an institution. At times, the church has done just that. Returning to the spirit of the Old Testament religious system, she has set up a professional priesthood, turned the Lord's Supper into a sacrificial system, and built great Temples. When Reformation has responded to these backward trends, reformation in doctrine has not always been accompanied by changes in structure. While the modern church is orthodox in theology, she is often heretical in practice.
We have an opportunity to cross all cultural boundaries, because it doesn't matter where we worship. Worship is related to the Spirit, who worships God in and through us. Furthermore, worship is related to service (Ro.12:1,2). We are all priests, and our spiritual sacrifice is our service to Him even more than it is our praise of Him.
All that is required is for us to be in tune with the Father and known by Him. And when this happens to Joe and Susie Lunchbucket, the world is our oyster. We can turn the world upside down. We can truly penetrate our culture with the gospel. There is no more "Jew or Gentile, male or female;" in Christ Jesus the walls have fallen down.
But if we have to call people into four walls for a special service where specially trained people perform elaborate rituals.. we have just returned to the Old Covenant. We are likely to return to a new legalism also, and we will disempower an entire generation. Remember..
The church in the New Millennium will be a major force in society only in as much as its leaders empower all of God's people to do the works of the church, inside and outside its walls. When that is allowed to occur and the people take hold, they will be the evangelistic light that brings people to Christ in record numbers and Christianity will once again be the dominant force in society. -Sue Mallory
Looking back, I can see that the Lord spoke through the Scripture on the morning of the IHOP conference because Mike Bickle was about to teach on the Tabernacle of David. Mike, who is a great guy and a Christian leader of integrity, is also a Restorationist.
Now consider again the events of the Jerusalem Council. Some men went from Jerusalem and were trying to convince the new Gentile converts that they must be circumcised and keep the laws of Moses. Paul and Barnabus head for Jerusalem because the very foundation of the gospel is at stake. James quotes from Amos and then states in interpretation:
"Therefore I judge that we should not trouble those from among the Gentiles who are turning to God, but that we write to them to abstain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled and from blood" (Acts 15: 19-20)."
The context of Acts 15, so often ignored by those who teach on the need for the restoration of Davidic worship, is precisely the opposite! The Jerusalem council declares: "We don't have to make the Gentiles into Jews! God has accepted them! The Jewishness of our faith must end. The law is fulfilled in Christ, and we have died to the law in Him!"
Of course, at the time, they themselves are still making sacrifices in the Temple. They haven't seen the full implications of the Gospel. Not until after the Temple is destroyed do some of these things become clear. Later Paul will write to the Colossians,
"Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths,
which are a shadow of things to come, BUT THE SUBSTANCE IS CHRIST…"
If they do these things they "are not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body is nourished and knit together."(Col.2: 16-19).
All of this points to another problem with Restorationism: hermeneutics. Instead of a historical and grammatical method of interpretation, Restorationists tend to allegorical and spiritual interpretation, and often neglect historical context. Richard Longenecker, Professor of New Testament, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto:
In the end times, James is saying, God's people will consist of two concentric groups. At their core will be restored Israel (i.e. David's rebuilt tent); gathered around them will be a group of Gentiles (i.e., "the remnant of men") who will share in the messianic blessings, but will persist as Gentiles without necessarily becoming Jewish proselytes.
Whether "all Israel" will be saved literally, (Ro.11:26) or whether "all Israel" is the totality of those among both Jew and Gentile who make up the "new Israel" depends on your own reading of Romans.
In any case, it is far-fetched Old Testament exegesis and misplaced emphasis that allows one to ignore the historical context and literary meaning of selective biblical narratives like 2 Samuel 6:217 and I Chronicles 16:1, and thereby claim a restored Davidic tabernacle and pattern of worship.
The Now and the Not Yet
The tension between the "now and not yet" is a difficult one. If we take all the sayings of Jesus and all the teaching of the New Testament we find that there are basically four propositions that Jesus used to describe his relationship to the Kingdom of God. In this section I rely on the writings of Derek Morphew (European Pastors Conference, 1998).
What do we make of this? No wonder there is confused teaching out there.
First, we acknowledge that the kingdom of God is still future. At the end of his life and ministry Jesus sits down on the Mount of Olives and he is still preaching about something that is going to happen "one day." It is definitely future. We are still living, waiting for the coming of the Kingdom of God. It hasn't come yet. We are still waiting for it. We are living in the hope of the coming of the Kingdom.
Then there are all the that point to the fact that the Kingdom has definitely arrived in Jesus, mostly in reference to John the Baptist introduction of him. These texts signify that it has arrived, because in Old Testament expectation Elijah would come and introduce the Messianic age. Jesus also says things like, "Since the days of John the Baptist" - in other words, since the bâton was handed from John the Baptist to Jesus, the Kingdom of God has been forcefully advancing. At his birth the angels sing, "To you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ, the Lord." The Messiah has come. We are still waiting for it... but it has arrived! Hmmmm.
For this reason we talk about the "already" and the "not yet" of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is here already, but the Kingdom is not yet here.
In other texts, it will arrive any minute. The time is fulfilled. "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." "Repent and believe the good news." Derek Morphew comments:
The phrase, "at hand" uses a very particular Greek word. It means something that is so near, so close as to be hanging over you in a kind of pregnant silence before it arrives. Where I come from we get these dramatic storms and the wind blows for days and all of a sudden it stops and you get these huge cumulo-nimbus clouds, black clouds, and you smell something. It is the smell of rain coming. And all the birds go silent. And it is like, brrrhhh (he shivers). And the mothers say to their kids, "Get inside. Get under cover." And then there is lightning and flashes, and it just comes down in buckets! Now the word that Mark uses there means that moment just before the storm. And so Jesus is saying, "Look! It is so very close."
And then, there are a whole lot of texts saying that it is actually delayed for a long time. He talks about the foolish and the wise virgins. And why were the foolish virgins foolish? Because they had to wait a long time for the bridegroom to return and their oil went dry and they didn't refill. But the whole context is that the marriage banquet was delayed - which is the coming of the Kingdom. And then, absolutely explicit, Luke 19:11. Before he begins this parable he says that there are those who supposed that the Kingdom of God is going to come immediately (he laughs). And he says, "Oh, no. It is going to be a long time before the nobleman returns."
This apparent contradiction, this paradox, is the reason for many distorted theologies, and probably the main reason for the existence of a prophetic and eschatological distortion like the Restoration movement. People simply lose the ability to live in the tension between the times.
Maybe you simply have to be a prophet to understand the tension. Prophets are rarely logical, and are given to symbolic thinking. Furthermore, in the prophetic world views, the immediate future and the distant future can all be telescoped together. Maybe that is why Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God." Derek Morphew comments,
Christians are people who are living in this world and living in the next world at the same time. We are the most modern, the most avant gard, the most future orientated, the most visionary orientated people in the world. And yet we live with our feet on the ground. We, too, have bank managers and overdrafts and children with diapers - and everything is the same. Sometimes you think you are a schizophrenic, because you have moments when the Spirit of God is moving and you say, "We were in Heaven. This is Heaven." And then you go back and the bank manager wants to see you and you think, "Oh, no, no, no... I'm not in Heaven at all!"
And so the way the scholars describe this - the only way to understand it - is that somehow mysteriously, unexpectedly, supernaturally (in a way that no Old Testament prophet could possibly understand it) in Jesus and in Pentecost the powers and the reality and the presence of the future world broke into this present world. And yet this present world was not terminated.
CONCLUSION and Implications
When I gave my life to the Lord in 1977, Hal Lindsey's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" was all the rage. Everywhere there were books and seminars and elaborate charts outlining God's plan for the last days. The detail in some of these charts was astonishing.
What a waste of scholarship. What a distraction from the day to day work of the kingdom. As Paul pointed out, we should not despise prophecy, but there is a more excellent way.
Restorationists argue that the Lord is returning for a pure bride. Obviously, we are far from perfect, so there is much to be done if we desire His return.
While there IS much to be done, sanctification is an ongoing process. None of us will achieve perfection in this life. In spite of that, however, WE ARE ALREADY CLOTHED IN WHITE. We have become the righteousness of Christ. The Lord will indeed return for a pure and spotless bride, but not because of human effort. To Restorationists we may challenge: "Have you failed to enter His rest?"
Restorationists have a crisis event view of salvation history and emphasize the dramatic intervention of the Lord. A "side effect" of this view is that it becomes difficult to value ordinary ministry and ordinary means of grace. We begin to look for "the big bang" and the next mountain top experience. But it is the "cup of water in Jesus' Name," the servants of the main and the plain who are most needful in our time. Paul makes it clear that we can "prophesy and understand all," but love is the better way.
Another side effect of the primacy given to the prophetic is the creation of an elite group of leaders who hear from the Lord with unusual clarity. How many will stand up to a man who proclaims that he now understands what has been hidden to the church for two thousand years? When a private interpretation of Scripture is proclaimed as new revelation, the plain meaning of Scripture is set aside and with it the common authority of Scripture. Now only the enlightened can judge the REAL meaning of the biblical text.
This has two effects: it reinforces the clergy/laity split and disempowers ordinary believers, and it reinforces a passive consumer mentality. And we wonder why everyone is looking for the new word and the new thrill!
When the consumer ethic informs expectations, real priesthood is lost to us. Individuals suddenly seem insignificant in the life of their own church. Furthermore, the only events that matter are the "crisis" events occurring elsewhere in the world. This devalues "ordinary" ministry, which is the bedrock of kingdom growth.
When ministry has to revolve around anointed leaders, the contribution of the "weaker" gifts is lost. Where Jesus anointed common fishermen to change the world, too often Restorationists model that only professional ministry is truly significant. This disempowers the people of God and limits ministry to specialists.
A new liturgy is not a problem in itself. The problem arises when the liturgy is proclaimed as part of a new revelation, and as part of a necessary process leading to Jesus' return. We should affirm the physical element of worship, and the use of symbols can be appropriate. But symbols are only pointers to a greater reality. The fulfillment is Christ. Therefore symbols and physical means of worship have only conditional meaning. We worship "in spirit and in truth."
Restorationists argue that the Lord is returning for a pure bride. Obviously, we are far from perfect, so there is much to be done if we desire His return. Paulk's vigorous exegesis of Acts 3:21 magnifies this law of perfection even further:
Jesus is waiting in the heavens until the earth has been restored by the Church . . . The Bridegroom cannot come back again until the Bride has finished the preparation. (The Wounded Body, p.73)
We live in the Presence of the Future. In Jesus the new age has really dawned. But it is not fully here. We live between the times.
I hope this discussion has been helpful. It is important to remember that we have sincere brothers and sisters in the Restoration movement. These men and women are often an example of purity, humility, and love for God and His people.
May the Lord lead them back to the radical middle. (For further reading, see FIve-Fold Ministry and New Movements
REFERENCES
Earl Paulk, "Form With Power" (Atlanta: K Dimension Publishers, undated)
John Bevere, The Fear of the Lord (Florida: Charisma House, 1997).
Derek Morphew, "The Kingdom of God," Transcript from European Vineyard Pastors Conference, 1998
Sue Mallory, as quoted in Leadership Magazine, The Leadership Center, January, 2001
Bob Johnson, "The Tabernacle of David." http://www.tabernacle-of-david.com/mainpage.html
Al Dager, "Kingdom Theology," http://www.banner.org.uk/res/kt2.html
NOTES: Positive Confession
If all that's necessary for the Church to take dominion is to speak and act "in faith," then the only problem is to get enough Christians to do so. Positive Confession's belief in faith as a "force" into which anyone can tap is a tenet of witchcraft. It places God at the disposal of anyone who can learn the formulas (or "principles") of "faith," and tries to force Him to work on their behalf regardless of His will.
Positive confession is not prayer; it's not communication with God. Rather, it's mental affirmation of what the person "confessing" wants accomplished with little or no practical consideration of what God's will might be. While Positive Confession has no definitive eschatology, it has established certain teachings that prepare Christians to accept Dominion Theology.
See also the new apostles and Five fold ministry
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• © 2006 Len Hjalmarson.•
Last Updated on September 9, 2005
The church in the New Millennium will be a major force in society only in as much as its leaders empower all of God's people to do the works of the church, inside and outside its walls. When that is allowed to occur and the people take hold, they will be the evangelistic light that brings people to Christ in record numbers and Christianity will once again be the dominant force in society. Sue Mallory, Executive Director, Leadership Training Institute
