The Sleepyness of Our Time

Pt.1 The Hard and Dry Road

The following discussions are about the current state we find the visible church in today. I know in my journey with the Lord Jesus Christ, I have struggled many times to be able to speak too many about why the life of God is so different from what is being taught in church. People such as the late David Wilkerson have filled a vacuum in the church, speaking of how the church of today is not the church that should be, and is not representative of the God’s plan for His church. I am going to add my voice to this chorus, but with that which the Lord has given me.  

I apologize in advance, the following articles are about to get technical about spiritual things, but it will turn out VERY enlightening by the end, but I might even through in a few stories for good measure. I know they will be hard to read and digest for those who live in Jesus Christ our Lord, but I hope in this series of articles to arm you with tools that can build a highway between the living and the dead. It will be tough plowing, but there are riches in this field of hardpan earth! May this bring life and understanding to those who are trying to understand why their life with Jesus is so alive, but the church seems so dead; how we can all read the same book and see and hear different things; and how people can make the same confession of faith in Jesus Christ, but one dies and the other lives.

I personally know how hard it is when God took a person who was living spiritually, walking with the Lord Jesus Christ, abiding in Him, knowing (personally and experientially) the fellowship of the Holy Ghost and then be made by Him to walk through the pages of theology books so dead, it seemed like it is sucking the very fire out of his bones and wasting the time of your life.

It was in the late 90’s when I wrote the pastor of my church a letter, seeking understanding about all I was experiencing in my living walk. I cannot imagine how it was received, because in retrospect, I was seeking understanding on topics like open visions, angelic visitations. I spoke of experiences like standing  in the very place that was spoken of by the Apostle John and saw the same things, and heard the Lord say thus-and-so. “I had read that passage many times”, I explained, “but when takes me three months to find that the place I have been is in heaven, and is a real place spoken of in the scriptures, I know I need some professional help from someone professionally trained; and according to the Bible, that man is YOU!”

In a very practical way the problem was my knowledge of scripture was being dwarfed and outpaced by the experience of walking with God. Going to church, listening to sermons, was not enough to sustain the volume of life I was experiencing! To have any hope of “checking if this experience was Biblically correct or not” was just so far out of reach I was getting afraid of doing something wrong, but I was addicted to rivers of living water and I wasn’t going back!

The answer to my letter was not the answer I was looking for, it was a pile of books, and this pile of books wasn’t a pile of books for study, this was a pile of books for admission to the Bible College run by our fellowship of churches, so I could begin study. I read them, and applied for the correspondence program they offered and thus began my journey.

I must tell you, I was in no way prepared for this type of rigorous and mentally challenging activity. I had dropped out of High School, obtained a GED from the State of New York and while studying at a Community Collage had a complete life breakdown which drove me to the Lord. My scholastic accomplishments thus far in no way prepared me for what I was about to dive into, and a dictionary was my companion in reading the writings of some of the best minds the world had ever produced, of which I knew I was not one.

All of the struggles of those days would become the greatest period of growth I had ever experienced! I obtain a “Diploma of Theology,” going through two programs and three years to obtain it. They offered at the time to give me a frame-able certificate, honestly I do not even have the piece of paper that shows I have it; but what I do have are spiritual weapons so sharp they cut flesh away from bone like it was butter, and cut the priestly and stately robes off of the spiritually naked. It was in those days of journey on the road of hard packed dusty roads made of dusty theology books that I became armed me with the most devastating weapons God has ever formed and given to mankind to use. While my historical of lack luster educational achievement continued; at the end of my journey I was a very rich man indeed. It is in a bag of tools and riches that has a label on it; “Necromancy Tools” because it involves talking with the dead: the dead that are teaching, preaching and learning in churches.  

I can hear the questions rising from the very targets of what I am about to say, “Who are you to say such things?” I have gone through great lengths in the preceding paragraphs to make a point: “I am absolutely nobody!” Come, hear my riddle; I’m under educated, unrecognized by anyone, I can preach but I am not a pastor, I can teach but I am not a Sunday School leader, I possess spiritual weapons of war, but not from the factories of theology; a nobody in every sense of the term!

BUT, if no one has to come and speak to you of these things, if the under educated need to become your teachers, if the people of no reputation rise up from the midst of you, then who are you? If I am truly nobody, then answer the points I present, they should be easy, they should simple for you; please show me the error in the way! I might even hear you on certain points; but I warn you, this will tend toward refinement, to strengthening and toward repentance of MANY! If I am no one, who are you?

(More to come on this topic, this is just the introduction.)