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A fatal thing is that which is represented by the present "Church system." The present system which obtains in the largest realm is almost entirely a matter of congregations and preaching places, places where people gather together or congregate in a religious way-- yes, maybe an evangelical way, yet but congregations-- and they come together to go through a certain rota and, in the main, to hear something preached, and they go away. Now, while there are variations and degrees in that system, that very largely is the postion; and that is not a corporate expression of Christ. That is a congregation . That is not a body. That is not the Body locally expressed and functioning. It is something less. What is the result? Namely very little spiritual growth.
I am being very frank now. I want to talk out of my heart because I feel the Lord wants to get us somewhere is this hour on this matter, and I must run the risk of treading upon sensibilties in order to get there. The result spirtually in this instance is very largely the same as in the other case of the merely individualistic, and we are elsewhere finding people today in that present Church system who has not a glimmer of light on the Lord's fuller purpose and do not know what you are talking about; and multitudes of them have no interest in anything else. This thing, this going through a rota, this place of the public worship line of things has come into the place of the true local expression of the Body of Christ, and has set that aside.
Today , speaking of the Church in that sense, it is the Church like that which is in a state of terrible spirtual infancy and immaturity and unenlightenment after all these centuries, and people born and brought up in it do not grow spiritually. I know there are some who do grow despite it, but I am speaking of the thing itself. It has become a fatal menace to the real purpose of God.
This is an excerpt from the book "God's Spiritual House" by T. Austin Sparks.
I am being very frank now. I want to talk out of my heart because I feel the Lord wants to get us somewhere is this hour on this matter, and I must run the risk of treading upon sensibilties in order to get there. The result spirtually in this instance is very largely the same as in the other case of the merely individualistic, and we are elsewhere finding people today in that present Church system who has not a glimmer of light on the Lord's fuller purpose and do not know what you are talking about; and multitudes of them have no interest in anything else. This thing, this going through a rota, this place of the public worship line of things has come into the place of the true local expression of the Body of Christ, and has set that aside.
Today , speaking of the Church in that sense, it is the Church like that which is in a state of terrible spirtual infancy and immaturity and unenlightenment after all these centuries, and people born and brought up in it do not grow spiritually. I know there are some who do grow despite it, but I am speaking of the thing itself. It has become a fatal menace to the real purpose of God.
This is an excerpt from the book "God's Spiritual House" by T. Austin Sparks.
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