The New Testament Temple - Look No Further Than Your Mirror

1Corinthians 3:16 ‘Know ye not that ye are the Temple of Yahweh and that the Spirit of the Creator dwelleth in you?’

Being a Home Assembly, I have noticed that many people are still confused by its concept.  And due to the traditions and conditioning of denominational worships, many don’t really “feel” like a Home Assembly is a “church.”  Many who used to come now admit they like and they prefer the formality of gathering at set times in sanctified buildings, sitting anonymously in the pews, watching and sometimes participating in the choir and listening casually to the Sunday sermon.  They give their tithes, they might do some charitable works through the church-organization, and they know when they go home to their beds at night there is a tangible structure out there, a miniature kingdom of “God’s doing” waiting for them to attend again.

Matthew 24:1-2 ‘And Yahshua went out and departed from the temple:  and His disciples came to Him for to show Him the buildings of the temple.  And Yahshua said unto them, See ye not all these things?  Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.’

When we first began our Home Assembly, we never had a lot of congregants to begin with but we had a decent number.  People would call us up at all hours and ask for prayer, they would stop over at our home and say “I really need to have church right now,” and we would.  Some even invited us to have a service at their homes, which we also did.  These people we knew and loved were charged and motivated on their own to seek out the Lord when they needed to seek out the Lord.  We didn’t have to set times or days for service.  People were spirit-led.  But those times seem to have changed.

In the past few years, starting back when my wife and I went through some tough and trying economic times, and our studies and lessons got intensely deeper in the word and more faithful to His will, and not our own, many of our former participants strayed.  They suddenly decided they felt more comfortable back in a church, back in a building, back in a place with organization and remote lessons sprayed down to them from the pulpit.  I can’t help but believe many of them started to see our economic frailties as a sign that “God” wasn’t really with us anymore.  (Mind you, we have never collected any tithes or offerings from anyone.  We have always instructed those who participated with us to contribute to homeless shelters and other charities – not us.  We have never made a dime on preaching and teaching.  We will have service in a park if necessary – and have)

When I examine many of Christ’s lessons in the Bible, I notice that many if not all of them told people things they didn’t want to hear.  He often told them that what they were already thinking and believing was actually wrong.  (Are preachers doing that today?)

I think in many circles today, Christ would have been seen as a downer, a person who sucked out all the joy many had in going to church.  I think many thought this back then as well.

I believe in time, people actually started to perceive our Home Assembly in the same manner people perceived Christ.  Despite the joyful singing and the spirit-filled prayer, the lessons and the teachings often got too personal and too intimate for some.  They invoked intense soul searching and introspective cleansings that many had difficulty addressing. 

I truly believe, sadly, many Christians don’t really want to go to great depth of sincere worship.  They prefer the anonymity of pews and sermons.

People want to see the grand edifices around them and enjoy the view from where they stand in life - and the last thing they want when they go to church is to hear some joker telling them “All these stones are going to be knocked down.  It’s time to see the truth behind the veil.”

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Matthew 27:39-40 ‘And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the Temple, and buildest it in three days, save Thyself.  If Thou be the Son of Yahweh, come down from the pole.’

I don’t want anyone to think I am complaining about the current condition of our Home Assembly for this hub is merely observation.  We are quite content to keep doing what we are doing.  But I feel it is important I address the reviling and skepticism, the wagging of the heads that occurred when my wife and I first lost our home early during the mortgage crisis.  Many of those who worshipped and prayed with us there thought we needed to change our ways in the world and “save ourselves.”

It has been my understanding and my experience in life that “saving oneself” goes against the teachings of Christ.

1Corinthians 12:25 ‘That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.’

To assemble with one another, you really have to care about one another.  You have to care about the other people in your church or your assembly in the same manner you care about yourself and your family.  Strangers become family.

1Corinthians 12:26 ‘And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.’

I think what I saw in evidence during those days and months of trials were the naked truths about people’s regard for money and success in life.  As long as our little congregation was prospering and people could come and get what they wanted out of the assembly, they were content.  But when a portion of the body they considered to be the head of the assembly began to have financial woes and troubles, they weren’t prepared to suffer with it.  (How did people react to Christ being arrested, tortured and crucified?)  They expected us, the head, to always be strong, always be economically viable, always victorious, and always a means of salvation for them.  Losing made them turn elsewhere.

While Christ was being crucified, many no longer saw Him as a leader they wanted to follow.  They wagged their heads at him and said, “If you want to be our savior, save yourself.”

The truth is my wife and I have never positioned ourselves as the head of the Home Assembly or as other people’s saviors.  We tried to make it apparent that we were all in this together.  (This of Camelot’s Roundtable)  Our headship was merely an assumption they were comfortable making because, due to their past religious conditioning, there always had to be a nearly faultless head – a success priest or pastor. 

A freeborn, Spirit-based worship was too demanding and put too much responsibility on them.

Churches on the whole maintain worldly prosperity with a head and a solid building that gives their flesh minded constituents a semblance of stability and security because this is precisely what people want – not because it is what they need.  In the minds of the parishioners, the mighty concrete stones of their holy buildings should never tumble and their pure and certified ministers should never be disgraced, persecuted and crucified.   If these people were to fall or lose anything, it is an indication of the Lord forsaking them.

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Luke 10:1 ‘After these things, the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before His face into every city and place, whither He Himself would come.’

Matthew 20:16 ‘So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.’

John 6:60-61 ‘Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard this said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? When Yahshua knew in Himself that His disciple’s murmured at it, He said unto them, Doth this offend you?’

John 6:66-67 ‘From that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him. Then said Yahshua unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?’

I don’t preach and teach and have a Home Assembly to make money or to build a following of anonymous sycophants. I don’t believe Christ did either. He had a lot of disciples at one time and man fell away and “walked no more with Him.” From where we are in history now, it is easy for us to look and think back and believe we would not have fallen away – but is this true? Would the hard sayings been too hard for us in a harder time than we have today?

My parents were Catholic when I was born. When I was about seven, my father had a blow-up with his priest and took our family into the Lutheran church. From then on I was nominally a Lutheran, that is, until I met my someday-soon-to-be-wife, Susan, who was Pentecostal. Her grandfather, Bishop Roy McCain was her pastor and he had a small little church in a dodgy part of Milwaukee. The size and the membership of his congregation ebbed and flowed, people came and went; and most of the time the numbers were small. Sometimes he skipped church all-together and simply took everyone up stairs and we met together sitting on the couches and chairs of his living room.

But as small as it was, and as undiscovered as it was in that urban wilderness, I heard and saw a message I had never experienced in my whole religious history. Bishop McCain was a licensed Pentecostal minister but he was not your typical Pentecostal minister. Other Pentecostal messengers in the city had a difficult time absorbing and accepting the things he preached. They often told him when he spoke as a guest in their churches, not to speak on certain subjects, not to talk about certain things. See, it didn’t matter to them if what he was going to say was true or not. It only mattered to those preachers that their congregations not be offended.

In reality, the heads of those churches weren’t really the head at all. The body told them by their attendance and by their tithing, what the preacher should preach and speak. Those ministers knew that if they challenged the people’s faith, like Christ did, with hard sayings, many would take their souls and their offerings to some other church.

I’m not saying Bishop McCain was a perfect man or that his message was perfect but I learned to respect his integrity towards what he believed. He stated it boldly and lovingly, and left it on the Lord to send whosoever would come.

I’m not saying I am a perfect man or that my message is perfect but I know I have to speak as the Lord motivates me, and I cannot do that if I am overtly concerned with how the message is received.

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The Acts 7:47-48 ‘But Solomon built Him an house.  Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in Temples made with hands. . .’

The Acts 7:51 ‘Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit: as your fathers did, so do ye.’

The Acts 17:24-25 ‘Yahweh that made the world . . . dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.’

There are several things I wish I could impart to everyone that hears what I speak and reads what I write.

First, Yahshua is in charge because Yahweh has made it so.  Despite all the inventions and plans of man’s misguided evolutionary doing, the Lord has an arrangement already pre-designed and preset.  Things are going to occur eventually in this world as He purposes in His heart.  We cannot resist His will.  Those that do resist His will, may find some success in this world but that is fleeting success and on earth is the only place they will have it.

Secondly, be zealous.  There is a great healing power to be found and had in Christ and many never discover this authority.  They see only great cathedrals and financially flourishing ministries and they believe the Lord must be in it.  These ministers never display any spiritual power, and never propose the hard questions, the difficult questions that Christ asked and challenged with.  Anonymous attendance with a few dollars in the plate is considered service enough for salvation – time served.

Thirdly, be a temple.  You are everything Solomon wished to build.  You are the place the Holy Spirit wants to reside in.  It’s never been about buildings and communities and organized rituals on earth.  It has always been about individual people following the Spirit and doing what is necessary, when it is necessary.  To meet and to greet, and to touch and agree when one member of an assembly feels the necessity to do so is more satisfying to the soul than many will ever know.  Near as I can tell, the Sermon on the Mount wasn’t a pre-arranged, advertised event.  Christ didn’t have to pass around a plate to pay for a license to stand on the hill and talk.  People just came seeking.  When Paul and the other apostles went around from city to city, town to town, they often met in people’s homes – people being temple to temple.  Don’t miss that.

1 Corinthians 3:18-19 ‘Let no man deceive himself.  If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.  For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with Yahweh.  For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.’

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When my wife and I lost our first home and our finances were nothing more than a train wreck due to protracted unemployment, no one saw us as being wise in the world.

It seems to me that many who go to church today are looking to follow ministers who are supposedly wise in both the spirit and the world. I don’t believe for a second you can have it both ways since the wisdom of the world is foolishness to Yahweh. You have to choose one – and no one really wants to choose.

If people think me a fool for Christ’s sake, so be it. If people don’t want to listen to me or read my words because they think I am an un-prosperous fool, so be it.

Hard sayings are said to challenge the status quo and to weed out those who think they are worthy of unjustified supernatural glory. Hard sayings are meant to humble the proud and take the wise in their own craftiness.

John 15:20 ‘Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you; If they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also.’

They didn’t listen to Him. They didn’t listen to Christ. They did not keep His sayings. Why does anyone believe so many more would listen to today if what we are saying today is what He said back then? Only those wanting to justify their worldly prosperity in Christ today would believe that.

They persecuted Him. This is our fate. If you are not speaking things that are hard to hear, who is it you are trying to appease? Are you really trying to help people grow in the Lord including yourself, or have merely become a soft and comfortable Q-tip for itching ears?

I ask, Are you afraid your disciples will fall away and leave – taking with them their pocketbooks?

If the Holy Spirit resides in you, then you are the New Testament Temple He wants you to be.

You are not the Temple because people come and congregate with you. Always keep that distinction in mind.

You are the Temple because He has chosen to reside in you. And where He is, there is power – there is healing, helping, comforting, and charitable authority. No one is anonymous in a body such as that. Everyone suffers and rejoices together because everyone’s business is everyone’s business.

If you think your business is no one else’s business than you are missing the whole point of congregating and assembling in Christ’s name. Your search for salvation has turned ugly and selfish. You might be standing anonymously in a great building designated as a temple, but there is no Spirit of the Lord in you.

2Corinthians 6:14-16 ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers . . . what agreement hath the Temple of Yahweh with idols?’

The things of your life in this world that you call your business are your idols. Think about it. Perhaps it is time to reveal more about your true self to the Lord and your fellow man in a more intimate and challenging setting than a church. Shadows and darkness are where people want to remain when they don’t want their business revealed.

A Home Assembly is a great place to shed light on everyone involved – it is all so revealing – so telling – so freeing. What a magnificent truth it is.

Amen