Katz; True Church

True ChurchArt Katz As we come to the end of the age, we must be particularly wary of the phenomena of ‘lying’ signs, wonders and miracles. If there is a void in our lives, if our present church life is dull, and we are not receiving in our relationship with the saints the kinds of things that should constitute the true and apostolic life of believers that makes for our maturity, engaging our spirits and minds and the totality of our being, we will have an itch to fill that void with running to the venues where such impressive demonstrations of power are being displayed; we will be drawn to individuals who seem to have it, and to ministries that demonstrate it. We will be open receptors for this because of the condition of our inadequate conventional Christian life. One of the preventives, therefore, is the work of God in our churches, so that we do not have to find compensation outside of them. To maintain and guard our spirits, to grow in the nurture and admonition of the Lord cannot be performed in an environment of a Sunday service and a mid-week Bible study. True church is not a Sunday supplement. We are coming to the end of the age! God has great purposes to consummate through the Church, but only that remnant of the Church that knows Him and will do great exploits out of that knowledge, and that knowledge only. Paul understood this when he said, “that I might know Him and the fellowship of His sufferings!”There is a knowledge of God in His sufferings that is so exquisite, and it is not to be obtained from any other source. What is our present attitude to the sufferings of Christ? Have we been inducted into the mind-set of the world with its pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, protecting our life, our privacy, and guarding ourselves lest there be any injury or pain? No wonder that much of the Church is hardly more than a conglomerate of individualities living their privatistic lifestyles. Where is the Church of the apostolic kind where those who believed were together?

2. And with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and abundant grace was upon them all (Acts 4:33).We are going to have to break down the brick walls we have built, and the sanctity of our separate and privatistic lives, contrary to the ethos, character and genius of true church. True church is a suffering before it is a glory, just by what we are in ourselves, together, in the intensity of that life, and until we will go that way, we will not move anybody to jealousy, certainly not Jews.When we see a phenomenon touted as revival, in which the word of God is conspicuously absent, or denigrated as not being the source of God’s greatest blessing, our alarm bells should start ringing. When those who are at the forefront of any revival phenomenon begin to deprecate their own preaching, saying that what they are now seeing far eclipses any result that they saw from their preaching, then we have already embraced a deception. If the avenues by which the ‘blessing’ comes are not the word of God, or our response to God’s word, which has always been the operative principle of God, but rather, it comes through the hearing of the testimony of others, or seeing men decompose before one’s eyes in drunken stupor, sagging and collapsing on the platform, accompanied by shrieks of delight and the inducement to join in, then we have already crossed an invisible line of truth. It may be an avenue of receiving alleviation from dullness and boredom from church programs, but we have already succumbed to deception.

3. Even if what we have been observing in recent years is not the lying signs and wonders about which we have been warned as characteristic of the Last Days, when those lying signs and wonders do come, how will they be substantially different in form and appearance from the signs and wonders we presently see? And how will we exercise then the discernment that we are incapable of exercising now? When the lying signs and wonders come, will we recognize them? There will be signs, wonders, miracles, demonstrations of power and much ‘benefit’! But they will be lying signs and wonders, and if we are concerned only with the benefit of them, and not all that much with their source, will we be able to discern the one from the other?

4. There is a gift of discernment, but there is also an exercise of discernment that is corporate, that is somehow the reflection of the stature, quality and maturity of the corporate people of God. Are we able to discern not only the things that are evil, but the things that are ‘good’? The things that are good are most likely to trap us. It is ‘good’ to go here; it is ‘good’ to do this, and it is ‘good’ to take care of that need. But it is ‘good’ that will be our undoing because evil is so much more blatant and evident. The ‘good’ thing is the most difficult to discern unless our discernment has been strengthened by the exercise thereof. Is ‘good’ good enough? Unless we have a priestly jealousy for that which is perfect, ‘good’ will be our downfall.

"When those who are at the forefront of any revival phenomenon begin to deprecate their own preaching, saying that what they are now seeing far eclipses any result that they saw from their preaching, then we have already embraced a deception."#1 Let me say that although I haven't listened much to Brother Katz, I understand that he is a great man of God, I do however have to disagree with him on this point. Some of the greatest revivals in history, including the Welsh Revival, although there was preaching, the movement of the Spirit in convicting power was preeminent. I think it is absurd to make such a blanket statement. But thats just me."If the avenues by which the ‘blessing’ comes are not the word of God, or our response to God’s word, which has always been the operative principle of God, but rather, it comes through the hearing of the testimony of others, or seeing men decompose before one’s eyes in drunken stupor, sagging and collapsing on the platform, accompanied by shrieks of delight and the inducement to join in, then we have already crossed an invisible line of truth."Once again to agree with this statement unswervingly is to deny the Heaven sent nature of many past revivals. There were some moves in history in which every conversion/touch was due to preaching. However in most it was a mixture of both. Again, I think to make such a blanket statement for the sake of looking as far from "Toronto style" as possible is absurd.Just my opinionsJeff

Not sure why this is a contradicition. If we put this back into to the front of the statement again:When we see a phenomenon touted as revival, in which the word of God is conspicuously absent, or denigrated as not being the source of God’s greatest blessing, our alarm bells should start ringing."conspicuously absent, or denigrated as not being the source of God’s greatest blessing"However in most it was a mixture of both.In most?Isn't God's word our plumb line?What is it that we should judge our experiences by?I don't see a disconnect here in what Art is saying. The essence seems to be that we should not be given over to 'manisfestations' where 'the word of God is conspicuously absent, or denigrated'Mike

Conviction is a product of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Preaching produced in prayer chambers is a major tool to bring such conviction. The difficult part of an awakening – staying awakened - takes much preaching and fellowship. Neither is to be seen in modern so called revivals.L. W.

5. There will be demonstrable miracles, an evidence of power with a result, but does that power mean the result is from God? Or is it a work of the flesh, or of the enemy? If men need only to employ the ‘name of Jesus’ to perform many wonders in His name, what do we know about the source of these wonders? It may even be that those men are sincere, that they mean well, and that they think they are doing service to God. One safeguard to keep us from an emptiness and shallowness that makes us responsive to the appearance of power is to be so solidly in relationship with Christ and with God’s people in an earnest and authentic way that the void is filled. That saves us from being easily convinced by lying signs and wonders.

6. Are we in a fellowship that is a fellowship indeed, rather than a mere aggregate of individuals meeting casually on Sunday for an hour or two? Are the people leaving in the same condition in which they came? I am talking about the real thing to which God has called us, moving from glory to glory and beholding in each other’s faces the glory of God, going again from house to house breaking bread, and at the same time hearing and sharing the kinds of things that in fact make up our life, and experiencing the redemptive work of God working through each other. If our Christian life is a boredom and a drag, and we are looking for excitement and demonstrations of seeming power, we need, really, to look at what the structure and the whole make-up of our Christian life is.

7. We are urged to exhort one another daily while it is yet today, because next Sunday is too late. How many of us are in a relationship with saints of God daily? How many of us are willing to give up the privacy that we so enjoy, and the time before the television set to make room for that kind of relationship? I am not talking about merely dropping in, putting your feet up on the coffee table and making small talk; that is not a synonym for fellowship. Do we love the other brother enough to say, “My spirit is disturbed. I heard your singing at the service and I heard your testimony, but there is something about it that does not ring true. It lacked the real joy of the Lord. I sense that you are drifting into a kind of performer mentality and spirit. If I am wrong, forgive me, but love compels me to express the sense of alarm and caution in my heart.”

8. Is there something in our lives, something wrong, that is beginning already to show itself, especially in the place where we think ourselves spiritual? And do we prefer privacy to daily exhortation? Do we prefer coming together for a Sunday wing-ding and feeling good, then going back again into the same pattern of privacy and seclusion? If so, we are guaranteed that the world will have its opportunity to invade, compromise and ultimately destroy us? The church in which the people are not in authentic relationship with one another daily is not church. True church relationship is costly, both in terms of pride and humiliation, as well as in terms of privacy and time. Are we willing to make time for it? Is it of that great a value to us, that the name of God not be blasphemed in the earth, for we are His witness people?

9. The full sanctification we so desperately need in order to live an authentically Christian life comes not by a wand magically passed over us, but in the interaction of the saints. It comes with the grit, the strains and the tensions that are only to be found in true church, where the saints are going on with determination from glory to glory. Sanctification belongs to those who love the truth, and who recognize that there is only one agency by which that truth can be formalized and demonstrated in the earth, namely, a Church that is called to be the ground and the pillar of truth. But if the Church becomes a flaky phenomenon, if it is soft, indulgent and corrupt, if it loves its flesh and its luxury, if it is willing to cut corners, then what hope shall we have for its effectiveness in the world?

Self-Centered Church 10. When sitting in meetings, I have often been astonished when the appeals for healing come. Almost everyone comes out of their seats. I see such a sick Church everywhere, and I think that we will continue to be sick, both physically and spiritually, so long as we live egocentric lives. For example, what is the first question you raise when you leave the building Sunday morning? Is it, “What did you think of the speaker? Did you like him? Did you like the worship? Did you like the sermon?” Is your ‘like’ the center of your being? If we have shifted from carnal centrality to spiritual centrality, we are still the center. No wonder we are sick; no wonder we need continually to be healed. Until we make God, His glory, His honor, His name and His eternal purposes the center, we will continue to be sick. We have a false center, and it is in ourselves.

11. To think in terms of our own benefit and to have our central focus on what we receive is, in itself, the breeding ground of deception. The saving grace from God is to have another center outside of ourselves and other than ourselves, namely, the eternal purposes of God, which redound to His glory. Our sickness is a preoccupation with ourselves, even our spiritual selves, which makes us candidates for deception, and the only corrective is to replace our self-centeredness with that which God intends, a jealousy for His glory. Our mistake is to think that our concern with spiritual things is not as much a form of egocentrism as a concern with carnal things. Let the spiritual benefits come, not because they are our principal focus, but let them come out of a life of obedience and discipline that seeks first and foremost the things that pertain to God. Out of that may come the benefits that accrue, but we are not to be seeking them as the things in themselves. That would still make our focus egocentric, and therefore, by very definition, the posture of deception itself.

12. To seek God is painful to the flesh. We are lazy and indolent; we cannot find the time; there are too many distractions, even of a valid kind. Another safety for the Church is the seeking of God in the ‘closet’ and in the holy place. The first results of that seeking will be dullness, deadness and nothing; our prayers will not go up beyond the ceiling. It is a testing, and we need to persevere beyond that point until finally we come into a place of grace where God Himself is giving us divine assistance, and we are not looking for an experience, and we are not looking for the benefit of receiving the fire of God, or revelation for preaching. No, we are seeking Him because He is God, and He is the thing in Himself, and not for any benefit that accrues to us. Any seeking of God that seeks benefit is by that definition no longer a seeking of God. Seeking God must be without any concern or consideration for ourselves. We seek Him because He is God, and God deserves our prostration before Him; He alone is God. Only in that place can we begin to sense the awe of God, the fear of God and the holiness of God. These are some of the criteria that will save us from the things that are false.

13. “The bar is open. Come on in now and drink! Have your fill! There is no limit!!” The vulgarity of that invitation (which I have witnessed) is flagrantly contrary to the holiness of God and so patently a contradiction of God. How can we even respond to invitations of that kind unless we are mindless and so bent on ‘experience’? When we see people ‘slain in the spirit’ or in a stupor of drunkenness, we mindlessly want it too, though, if we had even the most rudimentary sense of God, we would be turning and running in the opposite direction.When the Lord reveals what all of this is about, those of us who have opened ourselves up for this kind of thing will be astonished that we had been so easily deluded. Out of the depth of the repentance and the acknowledgment of our sin there will come a seeking of God and a true knowledge of God that will enable us to endure in the Last Days’ stresses and trials. Who is a greater candidate for deception than those who think that they cannot be deceived?

14. The enemy’s whole purpose in deception is either to destroy or to divert. Deception that springs from wanting to ‘do’ for God and to be used by God is the most subtle, the most powerful and the most difficult to recognize. Are we in a fellowship predicated on a man’s vision for a work? Is it a situation where he can be corrected, or is he surrounded by affirming people whom he calls ‘intercessors’? And how much are they working toward the success of that ministry for the benefit that might accrue to them? In other words, the whole basis by which those people are related to one another and to him is a soulish vision, rather than the vision of the Lord and His over-arching and eternal purposes. Can you predicate a fellowship and a ministry of intercession on the basis of this one thing? Where is the safeguard?

15 Why is the fellowship dull and the services predictable? What is lacking in our normative Christianity that makes us susceptible to this kind of alternative? My own answer would be that we have forsaken, or never known at all, the apostolic and prophetic configuration of the faith centering in the Cross. We do not know the sacrifice, the suffering, the embracing of the eternal purposes of God, not the least of which is the mystery of Israel in the Last Days that requires a Church of an ultimate kind. For the lack of that kind of format and orientation enlivening the entire faith and the issues of the faith, we condemn ourselves to finding an alternative to the blandness in our lives, the end thereof being spiritual death. END