An Alternative Perspective on Judgment

A friend published another friend’s letter on a forum today. I wanted to quote some pertinent things from it here and share my response. Too many are torn up over the state of the church in the West today and I’d like to offer another perspective on the matter that may give some hope.

The letter opens with the need for repentance in the Body of Christ in America, a fearful judgment, and a call for “repentance, prayer and the reestablishment of the Kingdom of God through brokenness and a total dependency on Him….” He continues:

Years ago we were hearing the call to repentance, as usual we pushed it aside for our great plans. The call to repentance is going to get stronger as we draw closer to judgment and men and their answers are going to continue as usual. It matters little how important they think they are and how important it is for them to come together. A kingdom divided by the efforts of men is coming down and God will finally speak through His anointed men with the anointing of the power of the Holy Spirit and not through the men with the answers. Often such leaders meet to establish their place in the body of Christ, when the meetings are over the conditions for God’s judgment will still be there because they cannot descern the Lambs body.

What God is attempting to do right now is being hindered more by those who have included themselves as leaders than all of His adversaries, this is because they are damaging the body from within. … Self appointed leaders who are constantly scrambling to the top are feeding into it the mind of man and not the brokenness of spirit.

I remember one day talking to a few of those leaders and we were talking about the unity of the body, they got irritated and said, “where do we begin and how do we know who to include.” a good question for ones seeking to side step the issue of unity and its implication to their ministries. God is blinding eyes and hardening hearts that have taken charge and are running on their own revelations.

We have a ton of answers and yet not an once of power. If all God was waiting for was our better understanding of the operation of things, the kingdom would have been established a long time ago. God builds from life from those truly seated in heavenly places, those who set their minds on things above and have totally died to all of self. Because we lack Life, in God’s jealousy He is sending judgment. the only thing that will stop it is humility and repentance for what we have all done to His body. Each man will one day stand before the Head and the KIng… there will be one question that they will have to answer, “What did you do with My body, its unity and my cross?”. …

There are people like me all over the world (nobody’s) who weep every day for the restoration of the glory of HIs body. …

I remember once feeling exactly as he feels. However, I have since changed my mind. My response was:

…I want to examine some of the assumptions made in his article and see if we can’t come to what I believe is a more balanced way to look at these things. They certainly have a way of disturbing our peace and putting us into bondage worrying about fixing a lot of people.

[name omitted] *____* mentions the “reestablishment of the Kingdom of God”. Two things come to mind. 1) the Kingdom of God has no end and its foundations will never be moved–therefore, why does it need to be re-established? 2) Perhaps he means it needs to be pre-eminent again on the North American continent because those who carried the banner have now died out. Don’t know… but if he has in mind a mass of people — what mass of people might that be? Is it the whole of North America, the masses of organizations that call themselves churches, the masses of people who call themselves Christians, the influence of right/wrong upon the temporal government of the United States and the North American culture? This needs to be established before I know what to agree or disagree with.

I think I “feel” what he’s driving at, though, because it’s the way I was taught to feel. And I have come to believe that such a “feeling” is off-base now. I believe it comes from a mindset of identifying certain groups and people movements as “church” and wanting God to straighten them out. But I really believe we need to drop this mindset as it ties us into relations with people the Lord may not have chosen for whatever we think He must have in mind. We want them to “get” whatever we think we now have. We want them to enter in to something because we have our affections trained on them in some capacity. All of this needs to go the way of the Cross.

Secondly, we have an idea that the early church was THE model church and that they were all one in the spirit and in unity, etc., etc. The entirety of the New Testament shows us that this simply is not so. The legalism of the Galatians and the debauchery and the “orgiastic” pursuit of gifts among the Corinthians show this was not so. In other places we are told of those who loved the present world and had left the fellowship of the saints and of those who drew people after themselves. There is only one account I can think of where the spirit in the church struck someone dead–in the account of Ananias and Sapphira. Thereafter, we don’t read about that. So, this was an immature church in Jerusalem where we are first told they had all things in common and there was the unity of the spirit.

Let us look anew to the speaking of the Lord for our own day and not try to infuse the kingdoms of this world with the spirit of Christ in attempts to prop up the old order. Let’s also consider everything we’ve ever done with regard to denominations, ministries, house churches, etc., as yet more of the old order that does not need to be propped up by the KOG. Instead, let’s reckon that the KOG smashes everything in its path and sets itself up in their stead.

Let’s look at the watchword someone gave me last night: “God is just.” It seems we ought to run from the judgment of God. We ought to warn everyone and help them get out of judgment’s path… But I submit to you that the judgment of God is very, very good. It is not to dispense death but to dispense life. Death doesn’t need dispensing; it is already everywhere. It is the last enemy of God to be judged in Revelation.

God is just and knows the hearts of all. We do not. This word came to me after a lifetime of handwringing over other people’s lives and fearing the judgment of God upon them. God is not going to mete out anything to anyone that isn’t fair. That means that if people are simply ignorant of God through no fault of their own, He is not going to judge them as if they had perfect understanding and simply rejected Him. That means that if people failed Him over and over while humbly asking His pardon, He is not going to judge them along with willful reprobates.

Judgment is not only about the hills melting like wax, but it is also about God wiping away all tears from the eyes of His people. We know that His ultimate intention is to subsume everything and to show forth Himself to the principalities and powers out of His people. (2 Thess. 1:10 and Eph. 3:9-10). So, let us hesitate before filling people with fears and bondage about re-establishing God’s kingdom. There’s no rest in that, but only works (unless of course, God has given YOU a specific word on that–I don’t believe it’s a generic word to the Body).

The Lord’s Body is already full of glory–people have just been focusing on the wrong things and don’t notice. Here’s a post [elsewhere] … on the topic.

Let’s get our focus straight so that we can have the right perspective regarding these very legitimate things that *__* brings up. To talk about the Cross is very, very good. To remain at the Cross is to concentrate on the wrong thing. Everything of the self must die at the Cross — yes. But we are participants in a life that proceeds out of that death and that is why the Lord deems us to be “new creatures”. If we are spiritual, we should operate out of the New Creation and quit trying to dress up the old — even when it wears the banner of Christianity over it. Every thing in us should begin to operate out of the mind of Christ, which saturates us as Christ is formed in us and as we are brought in more fully into the new creation. This is not something we can will ourselves into, but as the Lord gives us discernment, we can enter into it more fully here and there.

I speak in this manner, because the issue that *__* brings up — while it’s a good start — is also something I have begun to leave behind. I don’t know what will come of what has been called the “Church” in North America. It doesn’t matter. We can pray for people and we can talk to them about the Cross and resurrection life (and we should), but the choice is theirs. It does not affect us ultimately if we remain in the life of the Body. It simply makes our temporal lives more difficult in some ways. But we still have the choice to go on, with or without others (and we should choose to do so). God will deal with others as He sees fit, but we must pray and live out Christ.

I have become quite aware lately that I am looking over the cusp between what WAS the Church Age and what is coming upon us as the saturating age of the Kingdom. (Please don’t take the term “age” too strictly here, as there is no time in eternity, but we are seeing something played out here.) The world has been evangelized already (for all practical purposes) and has mostly rejected the Gospel. In a few places, evangelization is still necessary, but on the streets of America a lot of the homeless can preach it better than I can.

What has not happened is that people have not gone on to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. I can tell you about this but I cannot show it to you. This is something that MUST be revealed by the Lord Himself to you. You cannot teach it, preach it, demonstrate it. The blind will not see. Pray that the Lord will open eyes. This is the way to go and I’m going. The Lord has been gracious enough to begin to bring people across my path who are beginning to see this, too, and I’m watching the Body begin to come together in some small unity while others are still talking about the state of things in the temporal expression. I have already “come out of her” and am taking the high road into the life of Christ.

I hope this helps someone. It’s not a big panic thing if you see what the Lord is doing. All these things coming upon the earth are necessary to bring His plan about. Stay in Him. Hide in Him. Do not participate in the outrage that many have devoted themselves to in fear. The evil is simply the way of the world and we have no part in that if we belong to Him. He is able to lead us in the way we should go. He is able also to separate the chaff from the wheat. Watch and pray.