Times of Refreshing: Summary and Application

Series 1:    “The Kingdom of Heaven and the Church on Earth.”

Topic 8:       The Warfare from Heaven

Key Text:    Rom 1:18-23; 1 John 2:26-28

1.  Why aren’t these things Clear?

1. If there is so desperate a need for radical reformation and a new wineskin, why is there so little consciousness of these matters?

2. “The anointing” is an inward witness (1 John 2:26-27) of the Spirit (John 14:16; 16:13) that confirms whether a word is truly from God.

3. Many Christians have “outsourced” their own insight to spiritual leaders.
4. This is a problem that relates to spiritual warfare (Eph 6:12).

Application Questions

Do you obey this biblical command, “test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thess 5:21-22)?

Have you ever sensed some teaching was wrong but thought the problem must be in you and ignored it?

You may want to confess these omissions.

2.  Idols, Demons and the Loss of the Knowledge of God

1. Adam and Eve set out to become their own gods by expanding their wisdom and knowledge (Gen 3:5).

2. The key to their limitless imaginings (Gen 6:5; 8:21; Rom 1:21) was access to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

3. They became completely infatuated with the (supposed) powers of the tree and it became an idol.

4. Pride is at the root of all idolatry (Prov 16:18cf. 18:12; 29:23; Jer 49:16; Obadiah 3; 2 Cor 10:5; James 3:14-15).

5. Non-biblical religious, political, philosophical, economic and social systems are human attempts to rearrange all of reality in a way that will make it conform to our desires.

6. God judges all idolatrous rationalisations with punishments of deception that fit the crime (Ex 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8; Rom 9:18; 2 Thess 2:10-11).

7. People become like their idols, blind and deaf to God (Ps 115:5b, 6a, 8a; 135:17; Isa 40:1, 28; Isa 44:17-18; 45:20).

Application Questions

Talk about your own areas of pride.  You may want to pray over these in the group.

The claims made in this section are completely exclusive.  What problems does our culture have with this?

3.  Satan’s Attack on the Church 

1. Satan constantly attacks the church through idolatry (2 Cor 11:3; 2 Thess 2:7; 1 John 2:18-19; 4:1; Rev 2:24).

2. This is usually compromise with prevailing cultural values (Deut 32:15-22; 1 Cor 10:1-22; Rev 3:14).

3. The New Testament warns of false teachers who under the influence of deceiving spirits seek to mislead the church (Matt 24:24; 1 Tim 4:1-2).

4. Spiritual passivity occurs when the authority of the God-given anointing within is replaced by a human hierarchy.

5. Vertical hierarchies of control have their origin in the evil spiritual world and not in the trinity.

Application Questions

Is the church to which you belong regularly placed on alert concerning Satan, idols, false teaching?

Share your experiences of “vertical hierarchies of control”.

4.  Jesus, Satan and Idolatry 

1. Jesus’ presence led to demonic manifestations, including in the synagogues (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33; 13:10-11).
2. The synagogue rulers opposed him fiercely because they loved power, prestige and money and were notorious for their pride (Luke 14:1, 7-11; 16:14; 18:9-14) and special religious privilege (Matt 23:5-11).

3. By attacking the temple practices, Jesus provoked the wrath of the politically powerful Sadducees who plotted to destroy him (Mark 11:18).

4. Jesus symbolic cleansing of the worship centre was taken by the religious leadership as a rejection of the special promises Israel had from God.

5. In the Bible however special privilege means liability to judgement (Am 3:2; 1 Cor 3:18-20; 8:2; 11:30; 1 Pet 4:17; Rev 3:20).

6. To cleanse humanity from idolatry, Jesus on the cross endures the fullness of the idolaters’ experience of God-forsakenness without any of the deceptive comfort of proud rationalization.

7. Jesus refuses to be the attractive “God-like” Messiah the religious ones want (Isa 53:2; Matt 27:38-44; Luke 23:35).

8. The true worship of Christ crucified is the end of all idolatry.

Application Questions

“Whenever God’s people become blind and deaf to the power games and structures of domination they are already under judgement.”  Is this too harsh of us today or should it provoke us to immediate prayer?

How is the true worship of Christ crucified the end of all idolatry?

5.  Our Response

1. The church-as-an-idol, is the most resistant force to the power of the Spirit in human history.

2. No revival has ever begun within the established structures of organized Christianity.  Institutionalised Christians have not been willing to allow the power of the cross to dismantle all their cherished hopes and dreams.

3. Only a generation that is willing to face ridicule, isolation and rejection by its Christian contemporaries can be freed from the power of religious idolatry.

4. Only when the power of the image of the church as we know it is truly crucified will we discover, hidden within it, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8).

Application Questions

Only when our hope for reformation in the church is crucified will there ever be hope of a reformation from God.  Do you understand this point?

What idolatrous attachments do you have to Christianity as a religion?

Pray over these things.

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Times of Refreshing:

Series 1:    “The Kingdom of Heaven and the Church on Earth.”

Topic 8:       The Warfare from Heaven

Key Text:    Rom 1:18-23; 1 John 2:26-28

Introduction

In beginning this series we listed some of the symptoms of spiritual crisis in the contemporary western church: marriage breakdown, sexual immorality, burn out, depression, control, lack of creativity, marginalisation of prophetic truth, obsession with money and success, prayerlessness, a decline in biblical truth.

[Over successive weeks we examined areas where much of the church seems to be in error: the narrow church- centred perspective, an unwillingness to accept that God is shaking the nations and the church, indulgence concerning the holiness of the Father, spiritual powerlessness, focus on the worldly rather than the heavenly substance of the church, failure to take the difficult way of the cross, corruption in “contemporary Christian worship”.]

If there is so desperate a need for radical reformation and a new wineskin, why is there so little consciousness of these matters?

[We will see no great change if we remain focused on issues of human appearances, inspirations and motivations.  It is our sensitivity to God (Heb 5:11) that has been dulled before our sensitivity to religious seekers, and it is the prosperity of the kingdom of God that needs to be our first thought rather than our own welfare.  It is not in the natural realm of cause-effect, symptom-cure or problem-solution that we will find a way forward, but only in the spiritual realm.]

According to scripture, the basic realities of the faith should be known through the gift of the Spirit who teaches believers the things of Christ (John 14:16, 16:13).  This is what John is referring to when he speaks of “the anointing”

^“26 These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. ²⁷ But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in Him.” (1 John 2:26-27).

“The anointing” is an inward spiritual witness that confirms whether a word is truly from God.  This means that the external authorisation of human witnesses is never final.  Yet in practice we find masses of Christians who seem to have “outsourced” their spiritual authority to popular books, prominent pastors, TV evangelists, song leaders and so on.  The biblical command, “²¹ but test everything; hold fast what is good, ²² abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thess 5:21-22) is rarely taught in the church and even more rarely practised.

Whether confronting old or new forms of institutionalised Christianity, we are faced with the problem of spiritual blindness.  People cannot actually see what is happening.  Erring human personalities and movements must not be our focus, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12).  This leads us into the topic of spiritual warfare, and especially idolatry.

Creation and the Knowledge of God

In God’s original creation his own “nature” was “made visible” so that it was “clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom 1:19-20).

God however put a clear boundary around human knowledge; Adam and Eve were restricted from knowing good and evil.  They were warned that to attempt this knowledge would result in death (Gen 2:17).  It is not completely clear what they understood by this commandment, but it meant that God knew something they did not.]

Idols, Demons and the Loss of the Knowledge of God

Satan promised Eve, “when you eat of (the tree) it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3: 5).   This meant achieving God- like understanding, or, even surpassing God in wisdom.

In trying to become like God without depending upon God (Gen 3:5) Adam and Eve became intoxicated with the prospect of new power [cf. “you have eaten the fruit of lies…because you have trusted in your power” (Hos 10:13).]  Their vision was enormous, because they knew God was the creator of everything in their world they must have believed that they could create for themselves a whole new world order.  They would become counter-gods to God, their own gods.

As they looked at the tree their creativity ran riot and they began to imagine (Gen 6:5; 8:21; Rom 1:21) a new form of greatness on the earth with everything subject to them and they being subject to no-one (cf. Ps 8 with God omitted).  The realization of their dream hinged on access to the tree, this tree was suddenly seen as the source of all power and wisdom — through it there would be no death, no need for God and complete God-like powers.  This special tree became the object of all of their desires and the symbol of their whole meaning.  Suddenly God was no longer in the picture— not seen, heard or sensed.  They experienced a complete infatuation with the object of their desire.  The tree had become the sum of all idols.

In the realm of spiritual warfare this sort of encompassing experience is called “unaccountable infatuation”: for example an almost overwhelming attractiveness for a member of the opposite sex without any previous or subsequent feelings.

Idolatry drives people mad (Jer 50:38) by robbing them of their God-given spiritual discernment. Idolaters are caught in an intolerable contradiction.  Like Adam and Eve they have immersed themselves in a wisdom whose essential character is pride, they “claim to be wise” (Rom 1:18).  “The pride of your heart has deceived you” (Jer 49:16; Obadiah 3), [“¹⁸ Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov 16:18 cf. 18:12; 29:23).  James warns of wisdom that is “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” of “envy and selfish ambition in your hearts” (James 3:14-15).]  Paul speaks of “every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God^” (2 Cor 10:5).  On the other hand, like the first couple, humanity’s guilt and shame infallibly testifies against it that they are guilty and foolish (Gen 3:7, 10, 13).  It is this combination of pride (i.e. self-convinced rightness) and guilt that makes repentance humanly impossible. Cf. very proud friend, JY used to push him and push him; he said he was an atheist, until one day he angrily said, “If I ever meet God I’ll spit in his face.”

If there was one idolised object in Eden, human life today is saturated with idols. Idols are mankind’s way of re-inventing/structuring the world in his fallen image so as to justify his sinful state of existence.  Human behaviour is now dominated by rationalisation.  Apart from the revelation of the Bible, all the religious, political, philosophical, economic and social systems of the world are human attempts to rearrange reality in a way that will make it conform to our desires.

Fantasy is not restricted to literature, day dreams or entertainment; it is the space that people live in each day.  They are unconscious to God, sin and judgement  because their world-view is itself a distortion and parody of reality that exists to legitimate their own consciousness of good and evil so they need not feel guilt before God and come to repentance about their evil ways.  Reality, as they perceive it, exists for them.  Let me illustrate.

At the heart of our so called “post-modern” age is opposition to all movements that “totalise”.  The reasoning of post-modern philosophy is that human suffering is due to authoritarian systems e.g. Nazism, Marxism, patriarchy, colonialism, Christianity that seek to explain and control everything.  We need a different way of interpreting reality today if people are to enjoy life to the full without oppression.  Evil must be translated as unhappiness, needs replace “sin”, “help” replaces truth and truth becomes “truth-for-me”, self-esteem is substituted for the image of God and the individual is encouraged to live for themselves.   From God’s perspective, this massive shift in cultural thinking is itself merely the latest totalising strategy of humanity to rationalise, to reinterpret all of reality in a way that suits us.

All rationalisation falls under the judgement of God where the punishment follows the crime. Man has sought for God-like certainty, so his punishment is to be given over to deception.  The heart that is “deceitful [above all things]” (Jer 17:9) and hardened against God (Eph 4:18; Heb 3:13) is handed over to hardness and deception by God (Ex 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8; Rom 9:18); God sends a “powerful delusion” on those who “refuse to love the truth” (2 Thess 2:10-11).

[It is because the human mind tries to reinterpret the whole of reality that Satan can now be described as “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4) and that “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one^” (1 John 5:19).]

Joe Aldrich adds a dimension by saying, “idolatry is a demonic strategy to give an individual permission to indulge in his strongest natural desires without guilt.”  In scripture the power behind idols is always demons.  “What do I imply…?” says Paul, “That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything?  No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God.”(1 Cor 10:19-20 cf. Deut 32:17; Ps 106:36- 37).

The combined power of natural desire and demonic influence leaves the idolater in a deluded state of spiritual blindness and deafness.  “he makes (it) into a god, his idol…he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!” they do not know nor do they comprehend; for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so they cannot understand ” (Isa 44:17 -18).  “They have…eyes but do no see, ears, but do not hear…Those who make hem are like them.” (Ps 115:5b, 6a, 8a; 135:17).  Invincible ignorance is a feature of idolatry (Isa 40:1, 28; 45:20).

Satan’s Attack on the Church

[How does Satan use the power of idolatry against the church?  Martin Luther said, “The devil is God’s ape.”  By this he meant that Satan is driven to imitate God in all he does.  This comes out most clearly in Paul’s warnings about the antichrist who “takes his seat in the temple of God and declares himself to be god.” (2 Thess 2:4).  Scholars debate whether the temple here refers to the Jerusalem temple or the church, but the principle is the same, Satan seeks universal worship.  This symbolic language does not mean that all people will become devil worshippers, rather, the worshippers of the beast (Rev 13:4; 16:2) who have his mark on their foreheads and hands are deceived into a way of thinking and living that is idolatrous i.e. they put the ways of the flesh before the way of God.]

Satan constantly attacks the church through deception and idolatry.  Paul says, “the secret power of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thess 2:7), “I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Cor 11:3).   John says, “many antichrists have come…They went out from us; but they did not belong to us…do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (1 John 2:18- 19; 4:1).  Jesus says some in the church of Thyatira have learned “the deep things of Satan” (Rev 2:24).  This seems to refer to the sort of rationalisation practised by the Israelites in their idolatry (Deut 32:15- 22), by the Corinthians who thought they could participate in idol feasts without harm and by the neighbouring church at Pergamum who considered their “fornication” (which in Revelation usually means spiritual compromise (13x)) to be tolerable.  The whole book of Revelation is directed to a church in an idol intense culture (like our own) that is being tempted away from pure allegiance to Christ.

Perhaps the most straightforward warning is in 1 Timothy 4:1-2, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in the last times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. ”  Under the influence of deceiving spirits false teaches will seek, as Jesus warned, “to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Matt 24:24 cf. verses 4,5,11).  All of these things happen in a time of great lawlessness (2 Thess 2:3, 7; 1 John 3:4) when “the love of many will grow cold” (Matt 24:12).  Clearly we are in such a time.

The “seared conscience” Paul warns of is a loss of moral discernment, the inability to test the difference between good and evil.  People in this state truth progressively lose the ability to hear the Spirit and under the influence of evil spirits are led progressively away from the centrality of Christ and his cross.

Have you ever been in a church where something that was clearly unbiblical was being taught and nobody seemed to have noticed?  This lack of alertness is what is meant by “spiritual passivity”.  Passivity in Christians always corresponds to a hierarchical arrangement of ministry where leaders tell the people what to believe.  Gradually people hand over the authority of the anointing within to those outside themselves who claim to be “anointed”.  The more intense the hierarchy and the greater the claims that are made for its senior leaders, bishops, apostles, prophets etc, the deeper the inability to discern good from evil.  This arrangement is so entrenched in the church that it cost the last Governor – General of Australia his position.

Hierarchical arrangements in the church are spiritual in origin.  We either believe that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a vertical hierarchy of super-ordination and subordination, (which practically means the Father is more God than the other two), or we attribute the origin of all human hierarchies to the demonic realm, with Satan at the top of a system of total rigidity.  The evidence of spiritual blindness speaks for itself.  cf. Peter Wagner on how to identify an apostle; if someone disagrees with the teaching of an apostle they exercise their authority by showing them the door!  Apparently he couldn’t see how this contradicted the father- heart of a true apostle like Paul (1 Thess 7, 11-12).

[According to scripture, if we are “hearers of the word and not doers” (James 1:22); “if we say we have no sin”(1 John 1:8), if we think we are “something” (Gal 6:3); or are “wise in this age” (1 Cor 3:18), or we believe that “bad company” (TV/films) does not influence our morality, then we are already “deceived”.]

[The devil is quite able to produce a counterfeit sense of the presence of God.  His aim in this is to get the believer centred on their own earthly experience and away from their position with Christ in heaven.]

“Success” or “defeat” is no sign of a work being of either Satan or God.  Satan is quite happy to allow certain churches to grow in the knowledge that that others will try to imitate their strategies for success and stop seeking God for themselves.  This is a very successful strategy to forestall genuine revival.

Jesus, Satan and Idolatry

There were no material idols in Palestine in the time of Jesus, but his presence brought more demonic activity than in any other place in the Bible.  This is because idols are lodged in the heart. (Examples of JY teaching on idolatry and people having sorts of visions of hearts made half of flesh and half of stone idols.)

Some of the deliverances Jesus performed were in the synagogue (Mark 1:23; Luke 4:33; 13:10-11).  The synagogue rulers opposed him fiercely because they loved power, prestige and money and were notorious for their pride (Luke 14:1, 7-11; 16:14; 18:9-14).  They had special religious garments, titles, places up the front and so on, (just like today); all of this Jesus forbade (Matt 23:5-11).  It was not that some elements of synagogue worship had become demonized; the structure of Jewish worship had become corrupted.

Jesus was able to attack the common form of village Judaism and win the support of the common people (Matt 21:46), but when he began to confront the worship of the Temple he encountered a group who had real political power.  The Sadducees were wealthy, aristocratic land owners whose families controlled the high priesthood and access to the Temple with its sacrifices.  The temple was the largest economic generator in the eastern Roman Empire where Jews (who formed about 5% of the population) came from all nations to offer sacrifice.

In cleansing the Temple of its exorbitant money- changers Jesus sealed his fate.  The same prophet who warned, “Do not trust in these deceptive words, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’, went on to prophesy words Jesus quoted against the Temple industry, “this house, which is called by my name has become a den of robbers”  (Jer 7:4,11).  As Jeremiah was the prophet of the exile so the spiritual leaders of Jesus’ day understood that his prophetic action of judgement was another claim that God was signalling the destruction of the centre of their worship.  Jesus was proclaiming the temple had become an object of worship so corrupting (so idolatrous) that it had to be destroyed.  Therefore in their eyes, he had to be destroyed (Mark 11:18).

In their thinking Jesus could not be the bearer of the Word of God.  They were the elect of God, they were the people of the promises and the light to the peoples, a holy community, a royal priesthood.  They had a place in history like no other nation.  Did not their elevated status put them above God’s judgement?  (Do churches ever cease to exist?)

It was just the opposite to their expectations; they were to be judged so strictly because they were loved so intimately, “you only have I known (intimately) out of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will punish you” (Am 3:2).  God was patient with the nations but would not tolerate Israel’s false consciousness and rationalisation.  This principle always holds true for God’s covenant people.

“For this reason”, Paul explains to the worldy- wise and spiritually ignorant Corinthians (1 Cor 3:18-20; 8:2), “many of you are weak and ill and some have died” (1 Cor 11:30).  They were drawing the judgement of God upon themselves because of the way they were treating their poorer church- members.   Judgement begins with the household of God (1 Pet 4:17). Jesus says, “I rebuke and discipline those whom I love.” (Rev 3:20).

Whenever God’s people become blind and deaf to the power games and structures of domination they are already under judgement.  For decades I have heard people prophesying that judgement is coming on the Australian church by way of persecution, economic collapse and so on, maybe so, but surely judgement is already here and manifesting itself by the seemingly constant blindness and deafness of the church to the gospel of Jesus.

The cross is God’s judgement on Satan and the power of idolatry in human life.  Jesus says to those who arrest him, “But this is your hour when darkness reigns.”  (Luke 22:53).  How does darkness reign?  By delusion, by deception, by deafness, blindness and ignorance of a holy God?  This is what Jesus must endure on the cross— the fullness of the idolaters’ experience of God-forsakenness, but in his case without any of the deceptive comfort of proud rationalisation and false consciousness.  He experiences the full terror of having the idol heart exposed for what it is.

Jesus refuses to be the Messiah the religious ones want, he refuses to come down from the cross and save himself, he refuses to be an object compatible with the longings of human worship, he refuses to be an idol to the very last, he refuses to look to corrupted human eyes like God’s Son, God’s chosen one (Matt 27:38-44; Luke 23:35).  “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isa 53:2).

He alone does this because he alone has no guilt.  “The ruler of this world is coming; but he has nothing in me.” (John 4:30).  Satan has nothing in Jesus because he has nothing on Jesus, in Jesus there is no guilt and therefore no motivation for that idolatry which gives Satan power over humanity.  Jesus must endure the state of God- forsakenness, for that is the punishment that fits the crime of abandoning God for idols.   The cross reveals the terrible cost to humanity of submitting to Satan under the power of idolatry.  Therefore the true worship of Christ crucified is the end of all idolatry.

What is our Response

If idols exist to pacify human guilt, then the most powerful force that exists to pacify guilt in history must be religion e.g. the decline of communism was inevitable, but the “great religions” of the world have endured for millennia.  This logic leads to the inevitable conclusion that “Christianity-as-a-religious-system”, or, the church-as-an-idol, is the most resistant force to the power of the Spirit in human history.

No revival has ever begun within the established structures of organized Christianity.  If all discernment comes from an experience of the cross, then institutionalised Christians of previous generations have not been willing to allow the power of the cross to dismantle all their cherished hopes and dreams.  They were wedded to their idols and so they could not see.

I was praying seriously earlier this week about the amount of pain I was feeling concerning certain church related problems: about the isolation of having recently moved on from a fellowship we were a part of for 5 years, of the ongoing problems in the lives of Christians, of the seeming inability of leadership to see foundational issues.  I sensed God was trying to tell me that I was in too much pain, and that my heart was in the wrong place.  Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21).  He was trying to tell me some of my treasure was not in the kingdom of heaven but in the church on earth, and that the church had become for me an idol.  How embarrassing, I have been teaching, writing and preaching about the crisis in the church for more than a decade and here was God humiliating me with the most obvious illumination.

Like the Protestant Reformers, like Wesley, Booth, the early Pentecostals and every wave of deep renewal we must all die to the church, not just in it gross organisational forms, that is easy, but to all the hopes, aspirations and dreams we project upon it from the depths of our struggling subconscious.  The church as we see it is not our mother, the church as our mother is in heaven (Gal 4:26), in the same place as our spiritual Father (Matt 6:9).  Only when our hope for the reformation in the church is crucified will there ever be hope of a reformation from God.  Cf.  JY some years ago had read a couple of articles about revival in other parts of the world and the Spirit said to me, “You have made revival an idol.”

Only a generation that is willing to face ridicule, isolation and rejection by its Christian contemporaries can be freed from the power of religious idolatry.  Only those who sell all that they have will discover the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price which is the kingdom of God (Matt 13:44- 46).  This means being willing to abandon all our inwardly “unanointed” understandings of the church, the gospel and God.  “He is no fool, who loses what he cannot keep, to keep what he cannot lose.”

None of this can happen without prayer.  A wise prophet of said, “Not to pray is not to discern— not to discern the things that really matter and the powers that really rule…. The deeper we go into things the more do we enter into a world where the mastery is not to talent but to prayer… only in illuminated humility… a man truly finds his soul.” (P.T. Forsyth).

A famous missionary who saw revival in China (Jonathan Goforth) tells this story.  “It was the practice of Mahmoud the Moslem conqueror of North India to destroy every idol that fell into his hands.  He came at last to a city in Gujarat, where there was an idol held in unusually high esteem by the people.  The leaders of the city came to him and pleaded that he would spare them this one idol.  He could do what he wished with the others, but if he took this idol from them too, they might just as well die.  They pleaded with such intensity that for a moment the heart of the conqueror was touched.  It seemed more than heartless to bereave these poor people of what was apparently life and death to them.  Then he remembered his vow to spare not one idol.  He had a sledge hammer brought to him, and with it he dealt the idol one terrific blow.  To his amazement there poured forth from the crack in the image a stream of jewels and precious stones.  The people had hidden there treasures in the image hoping to move the conqueror to spare it.  Consider what his loss would have been if he had stayed his hand at the sacrifice of that one last idol.”

So far, “the dethronement of the idol of (church) ecclesiastical self- sufficiency” has been too great a price for us to pay. Only when the power of the image of the church as we know it is truly crucified will we discover, hidden within it, “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8).

May God grant us wisdom in these things, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21).