What About the Church?
By Ron McGatlin
Will the church be saved? The short answer is yes and no.
In 2010 there was an estimated 2,180,000,000 (2 billion, 180 million) Christians in the world, 247,000,000 (247 million) of those are in the USA. Estimates of 584,000,000 (584 million) Spirit-filled Christians are in the world.
Dream with me for a moment. What do you think might happen in the USA if all 247 million Christians or even a large portion of them would consecrate themselves wholly unto God? What if we all turned from our mixtures of allegiances to fallen world desires and ways? What if every Christian truly obeyed the words of Jesus to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness first? What if every one of them became a holy temple of the living God? What if every Christian family and home became an embassy of Heaven on earth? What if their homes became the center of spiritual life, biblical instruction, prayer, and worship? WHAT IF THEY ALL KNEW HOW MUCH GOD REALLY LOVES THEM? WOULD THEY NOT LOVE HIM BACK WITH THEIR WHOLE HEARTS?
Do you think for a moment if two hundred million believers were truly experiencing the presence of God in their lives that the USA would not be a very different place? All systems of life would change and become God honoring. Everything would change in the USA. Is this what God desires for America and His world?
What if the two billion Christians in the world were to do the same? Would not the whole world be different and literally become the kingdom of God on earth?
God’s plan is that the entire world be under the loving glorious rule of the kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God on earth. This is not an impossible dream. This is the plan of God and why Christ came to earth and became a man.
The existing religious church systems cannot ever accomplish this plan of God. A “corporate meeting centric” spiritual lifestyle cannot do what a “home centric” spiritual lifestyle will do. The home, where life is lived, must become the spiritual center of life in the kingdom of God. Everyday life must be lived in the Spirit, beginning in the home.
Meetings with other families also adds to the sharing of Spirit-led life and affords opportunities for increased worship, prayer, and strengthening one another in spiritual fellowship. Natural organic type groups of families gathering in homes can be highly productive in spiritual growth and personal kingdom instruction.
Larger corporate gatherings of many family home centric groups together in a larger facility will be truly heavenly especially in worship and being encouraged and edified by God-sent apostolic and prophetic gifted speakers.
THE EXISTING RELIGIOUS CHURCH SYSTEMS AS THEY ARE CANNOT SURVIVE. The religious systems as they are must give way to true headship of Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit in the newly restored kingdom of God way of life.
Therefore, considering the “religious systems” as the church, that church and lifestyle will not be saved but will pass away in the fires of persecution. That is not saying the people will not be saved. That is another issue.
Yes, the true body and bride of Christ Jesus, the pure holy people who love God with their whole hearts, those who are truly seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness, the New Jerusalem of God, as a remnant will survive to become seeds of the kingdom sowed into the cleansed world beyond the cleansing world judgments.
Even at this late date, if the hundreds of millions of people involved in the existing religious systems were awakened through a great outpouring or revival to see their true condition and turn from their current ways to seek the kingdom of God with their whole hearts, much pain of difficult and perilous times could be avoided by the everlasting mercy of God.
Sifting of the Church
The billions of Christians of the world are being poured into a big sieve of refinement, and the sieve is being violently shaken.
Amos 9:9: “For surely I will command,
And will sift the house of Israel among all nations,
As grain is sifted in a sieve;
Yet not the smallest grain shall fall to the ground.
10 All the sinners of My people shall die by the sword,
Who say, ‘The calamity shall not overtake nor confront us.’
Proverbs 20:26: A wise king sifts out the wicked, And brings the threshing wheel over them.
Luke 22:31-34: And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.” 33 But he said to Him, “Lord, I am ready to go with You, both to prison and to death.” 34 Then He said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster shall not crow this day before you will deny three times that you know Me.”
“Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32).
Ron McGatlin
www.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net