This message is by far the most difficult for me to deliver, yet I feel that it is vital within this present climate. If the message comes via the Holy Spirit, it may test, even shatter just about every concept you may still have of church. It may offend, confuse and divide but I am confident some will recognise within themselves the same insights and callings. Disagree if you must, but don't discount the possible validity you may find here. Revelation not only takes time, it needs to come to each of us at the right time. Our Christianised mind-sets and our entrenched concepts, thought precious to us, may require many painful deaths along the way if we are to be as the wind, set free to walk in steps with the Spirit of God.

- John 3:6-8

The Great Corporate Purpose of God

Hi there again. Today I want to look into the great corporate experience God has for His people. It will be easier for believers to enter God's purposes when each of us accept the fact of what God has already achieved for us in the here and now. For instance, we read that the body of a really born again person has become part of Christ Himself and that his or her human spirit has become one with the Spirit of God. Those who accept this truth will be keen to respond to His Headship and the Holy Spirit's desires within. They are more likely to identify with what I share here and will be encouraged to press on further.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself�. (and that) He that unites with the Lord is one with Him in Spirit - 1 Corinthians. 6:15-16

The question is often asked, To church or not to church? We know of many readers, and many other thousands in this country, who look for something other than church. There appears to be an anticipation of something else God may have for us. And one must say that something else is clearly taught throughout our New Testament. It is called the Body of Christ and is an experience that few have known throughout 2000 years of Christianity. How often have you come across the actual living Body of Christ, moving as one unit under the daily headship of Jesus? Its utter absence must give grief to God as it does to those who yearn to be part of it.

There are many who look for a vastly more real church� somehow� somewhere. Others just hurt so much all they feel is a numbness about the whole affair, and a longing for an understanding friend (usually not found that easily) to stand by them. Jan and I have been through all these stages since called out. We certainly have empathy with you whatever stage you may find yourself.

Where did we go wrong?

What happened? Where did we go wrong? In taking the Bible from the hand of God we have then busied ourselves translating and interpreting it according to our various and divisive understandings of what it says. As man's church systems existed before the Bible was fully completed in any other language, its meanings and messages were squeezed in and misshapen in order to fit into practices and forms that already existed.

Unfortunately, modern Christianity often misquotes the Bible in an attempt to create easier ways of discovering God. But God has hidden Himself from human flesh so that only those with a genuine heart to search for Him will find Him - drawn to Him only by His own Spirit. Not the curious, the academic, the prying, or the self seeker, but only those who search for HIM with ALL their HEART. We have blown out of all proportion the visible elements and have elevated them to where they have become of far greater importance than the invisible issues of God. All this at the serious cost of belittling the more necessary on going intimate and total relationship required of us by the One we will only know by living with Him � Jesus who is the Lord. There is no other way. We may only enter a living and intimate relationship with God through our dying daily to our self-life, the soulish, those things religious within us, and yes, the claims of the spirit of this present evil world upon us. It's either all of Him or nothing.

We have placed the Bible on a far higher plane than the Spirit of God who first gave it to us. While the book is well known and loved by many, few walk daily in step with its author. We surrender to what we think God wants (the precepts), and do everything but lay all down at His feet (the Person). And in moving so devotedly in all the things we believe He wants us to do, we make ourselves captive to them, believing our doing of them is sufficient in itself. This sell out to christian and church practices will likely shut our ears and eyes to further revelations and the much needed personal dealing in our lives by the Spirit of God. But such is necessary if we are ever to be set free, so as to move on into more of a living harmony with God Himself; Father, Son and Holy Spirit � as one � with us� in spiritual union together. How? Not by rituals or routine, nor by religious responses, but out of relationship alone!

What will God do next?

How often do I hear these words, "What does God have for us next? Who can know? We'll just have to wait around in the wilderness until He does a new thingFor goodness sake, what's God going to do next? When is He going to get us into the promised land? Hear Me Now! Know Me Now! Obey Me Now! Then you'll have your promised land". But they would not! It was not a time to passively sit around saying, "We'll do nothing, just wait for Him to take us into the promised land". It was a time to seek God until they could hear Him. For only those who obeyed God in the wilderness would enter in. And few did. Not even Moses himself.

What New Thing Will God Do Next?

There is no next! There is a here and now deep repenting in the great hoax we've been involved in, and that each of us go back to what God wants. Not inwards - but in obedience. The first Adam thing failed. In no way were God's Spirit and man's spirit seen there as one. But in Jesus Christ, God's new Adam, God can now fulfil His greater purposes. And these go beyond just having us live someday in a place (heaven), but to live in a person, (Jesus). It's in having us live as one entity with God, that we might become the actual Body of Christ. I believe in a heaven for the redeemed, but if there was a choice of being in heaven or being in Jesus, from what I've tasted so far, what a privilege just to be in Him! God's purpose is not that we be church, belong to a church or go to a church, but that we may be a living member of His Body, in this present day. Jesus is clearly to be our all, to be in all, and is the fullness that fills everything on behalf of His people.

He clearly stated that without our living out of His living in us, and the living out of us as we live in Him, we can achieve nothing at all. Is God going to come up with something greater than that?! Maybe some have sat too long under prophetic fantasies which seldom happen and only serve to cause christians to continually procrastinate as they look forward to some greater happening or other. Meantime they tend to ignore the now present Lord as the active Lord over their lives today. "He'll make Himself Lord when He does His next big thing!" No, if you think like that, be warned, for you it may be a case of now or never! In their rebellious state such professing christians often prefer to live in the realm of wishful thinking than face up to the raw truth where God's rubber hits their road. In protecting their self life many seek to selfishly escape the reality that our God wants to reign in lives today. Always living in hope of something more palatable tomorrow is a lie from the pit! Get convicted, not condemned, and seek repentance!

God's Eternal Purposes Consummated in The Two Bodies of Christ

When the Son of God first came to earth in visible form His Father gave Him a human body so that He could bring to completion His very purpose in coming. � when Christ came into the world He said: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire (the old ways of dealing with sin) but a body you prepared for me (that I might be the ultimate sacrifice) � Then I said, here I am - I have come to do your will O God � And by that will we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all - Hebrews 10:5-10

God's purposes for us have hardly begun. For God has given Jesus yet another body, a body we have demeaned by calling it church, something christians go to and something christians do. If we can see the grouping of God's people for what it really is, the Body of Christ, we are immediately propelled into a level of personal obligation to enter something far beyond what we have been willing to face up to so far. Most of the New Testament epistles major in how we are to please God in a lifestyle with Him down here, in a living unity together with Jesus, as His Body. Unlike the body He took into death, God's purposes are that Christ take this other body into resurrection life as found in Him - even while living on earth. And that's where we come in!

We'll look at this within its scriptural framework. Following the Cross, Christ's rising again and His return to the Father, came that great day of Pentecost. In the pouring out of God's Spirit on mankind we see Christ returning to this scene once again - this time to live within His people. Didn't Jesus say, I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you will also live. On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. - John 14:18-20

This time He came to a very different kind of body, and because He lived that body also lived. In that body God's purposes are to be fulfilled, even when completed. This body can only function properly as each part of it is correctly connected to its Head. As in a physical body, it's only as each part receives messages from the brain that it can respond, and more often than not this moving is in co-ordination with other parts. Such is the nature of the Body of Christ. If the members fail to respond to its Head the body becomes dysfunctional and men take it over and turn it into some unified system of man called church plugging it into its own life support system. This first happened in early 300 AD. (See the following article, What Does "Church" Really Mean?).

Just as at Bethlehem, when by an earlier miracle the Holy Spirit moved upon Mary causing the birth of a baby born out of a union of God's Spirit with humanity, so it was at Jerusalem on that day of Pentecost. At Pentecost a church was not created but a living Body. For God's Spirit was poured out and into human life. In so doing He infused their human spirits with His. At the same time bringing these born anew folk into a precious relationship together by that one Spirit of God. For we are members of His Body, just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others - Romans 12:4-5

Think of Yourself As Part of His Body - And not as Part of a church

I need to be a part of Christ's Body where each member in submitting to the Head knows they belong not only to Jesus, but also to all the others. For God has purposed it in their hears. And they will love with God's "agape" love, yet not from any obligation whatever - but because they will find the preciousness of Jesus in each other. But we first seem to need some loud explosion or other under us to wake us up out of our slumber. Maybe a giant pestilence or a full on anti-Christ government might help. For now I'll suggest something less dramatic. See a stage. Nothing on it but a church. See stage-hands come on and push that church off through the wings, right out of sight, gone. Now look. What fills the stage? It came on that day of Pentecost, and all God's eternal purposes are to be completed through it. Yes, it's the Body of Christ, the most beautiful of God's creation. And that's all there is, that's what God desires, and it fits God's purposes to a "T".

On Jesus' first sojourn to earth He had nothing but a human body through which to express the nature and works of the Father. Now the Father has given Him yet another human body. Its purpose is for an ongoing expression of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to a deeply deceived world. And that Body is us!

"To church or not to church?" is not the real consideration. But rather, "Am I living every day as if Jesus Christ is my Head? Am I behaving every day as if I belong to His Body? Am I so connected to the Head that as a member of His Body I live by my responses to His will, and in a full function mode with the other parts -either to support or be supported in moving together as His dwelling place, His Body?" I can only look to God to raise up such a people in the district where I live. The main difficulty is that people are not going to be what they don't believe they are. But I don't hear God telling me that those, many thousands in this country, who no longer attend church, are to wait in some state of limbo until either the rapture, or until God explodes onto the scene with His next great move.

This Body Is For the Fullest Expression Of God

But I do clearly hear Him saying that we're to seek Him as never before, and with total integrity in our hearts. That we are to seek one thing above all else � our lives to be so yielded, surrendered and resting in His presence, that He may begin to establish a genuine and intimate relationship even with a few, and between such a few, on His terms. Only then can any of us even start to understand His purposes and begin by His power to now share as one living body in expressing the outward workings of Jesus own life within ours.

Just as my brain right now has all the fingers on my right hand, and the arm and wrist that guides it across the page, working together to express precisely my mind, so when we become as yielded as that to Jesus can He then move us in a co-operative unity together � to demonstrate by His mind and power within us, His desires, His values, His nature and compassion. (See 1 Cor.12:12-27). Just as Jesus said to Philip, He who has seen me (in my allowing my Father to work through me) has seen the Father , so Jesus may be able to say, He who has seen my Body (in their allowing me to work through them) has actually seen me. Jesus referred to this in His prayer to the Father in John 17:21-23 � that they all may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one; I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Only our oneness in God, and not our preaching, will impact the world.

Do you want to be part of that kind of oneness with God and His people? Wow! It's His greater purpose and He can make it possible. But at a price. (I'll gladly pay it!) Though we dare not try and organise God's Spirit into doing anything, yet our yielding to Him daily may well precipitate His purposes in us and others. In our yielding He will then show us the corrupt things in our lives, that spoil our capacity to function in a spiritual harmony with both the Head and each other. Jesus has once again limited Himself to ministering on earth through a body - us. What a privilege to wake up each morning, no matter the weather or the mood, knowing that he is my Head. He is to call the shots that day, my joy to respond. Each day is His responsibility, not mine. Mine is but to respond to Him that day. I have this extreme privilege of sharing in the divine activity of His life and Spirit, not only in me, but between my brothers and sisters who have also entered this same realisation.

Search the Scriptures! Seek His Will! Surrender All!

The unique oneness of it all! In Ephesians four we are told, that the Christ who fills the whole universe gave spiritual abilities to certain parts of His Body in order that they prepare all the other parts, that each may effectively function in serving the others. All the Body is to minister in the building up of the Body - (not just a privileged few) - in this way the whole Body (at Ephesus or elsewhere) will reach a stage of unity in its faith and its full and precise knowledge of Jesus Christ Himself. (No one part of the Body will discover this on His or Her own. That's been our downfall - all living our christian lives as each an island. Never has this been in God's plan).

Such people will find themselves as if they are one completely mature person , (Not by external cloning as suffices in systems today, but by each hearing the same voice and knowing the same heart.) God tells us that this body will be so knowing of its Head and so responsive to Him, as one body they will actually reach the stature of Christ's fullness. In this way believers will no longer be so immature, like very young children; childish, fickle, easily mislead, tossed this way and that, carried about aimlessly in never ending circles by every wind of new teaching, easily deceived by their gullibility. No, instead, speaking out only those things that are true and at the same time displaying mature love, they'll grow up into the Head. From Him (Christ) the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament (the part that joins bones together) grows and builds itself up in love � as each part does its work . - Ephesians 4:10-16. The only condition is that each part plays its part. I believe that is why Ananias and Saphira were so suddenly removed by God in the early stages of that Body's life on earth. Their lying was against the Holy Spirit and well may have quenched his work within the Body in that crucial early period.

Will we ever see this Body actually going around in its full health and strength. Its members able to manifest the very presence and life of God as it walks out amongst this planet's sorry citizens? Yes, I believe that many will yet see it, but only those willing to be seen as fools for Christ's sake (by both christian and heathen) will be part of its fulfilment. For the sake of Christ, and those who truly have his hallmarks, as a member of His Body I'm willing to be as He was, of no repute whatever before men - for the sake of Jesus and those I'm walking with, as His precious Body.

Notes: As the subject matter may be strangely new to many readers, please don't take offence. The Spirit of God puts clear teaching and instruction throughout the epistles, and the importance of our Body - life in Christ to the heart of God is as clear as daylight once our blinkers are removed. The revelation must be yours. Here are some scriptural references. If you read them, examine their context, seeking clear revelation by His Spirit. (Don't just believe me!) Romans 12:4-5; 1 Cor. 10:16-17; 1 Cor. 12:12-27 ; Eph. 1:22-23; Eph. 2:14-16, 21-22; Eph.4:1-6, 11-16; Eph. 5:29-30; Colossians 1:17-19, 24-27; Colossians 2:17-19; Colossians 3:12-17. In the following article we discuss the problems we encounter in the deceptive use of the word "church' in our English Bible translations. I would gladly enter correspondence with readers on this subject, even should you wish to disagree with me.

- Lovingly His, John