#truerevival

I Samuel 8

4Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,  5And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.  6But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.  7And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.  8According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.  9Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.  10And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.  11And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.  12And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.  13And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.  14And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.  15And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.  16And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.  17He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.  18And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.  19Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;  20That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

This is actually the same heart we see in churches today. Men are content with the modern concept of church, and a pastor as its head. The Lord Jesus built His Church upon the Gospel of the Kingdom, and the revelation that He was the King both promised and anointed by God. That is exactly why He is called Christ. He, like Samuel in the days of Israel, was god’s representative of rule in the earth. However, at the point of Samuel aging, and their being no successor the people had confidence in, they desired a king like the world. Though God had sanctified Israel, and called them holy apart from all the other nations of the world, they now wanted to be ruled just as the heathen nations. As history progressed from the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus, men lost confidence in those who had been made disciples through the pattern established by Christ Himself. Then men began to seek out other men of their own choosing to rule over them because they had lost sight of God’s rule in the earth.

It is from this desire to be ruled by men who were as infallible of themselves, that The Church began to take on another form from the one built by the Lord Jesus. Now, rather than being a governmental entity in the earth of the Kingdom of God, we began to witness the establishment of religion, sets of rituals, and patterns of outward display, with no fruit. Hence, fig leaves on a tree out of season. Today, this ideology has progressed even further away from The Church we see in scripture, that men have become comfortable, and even validate the actions of other men ruling over them, carrying out the same displays Samuel prophesied to the children of Israel their kings would enact. So, today, rather than having The Church on display in the earth, ruled by God, and demonstrated by men who have been discipled, simply preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and making disciples of the Lord Jesus, we have churches, rather religious organizations, preaching feel-good messages which appeal to the desires of the masses, operating just as the organizations of the world operate. Instead of their being elders ordained in each city as Paul instructed Titus, we see “kings” being “anointed” in congregations within a city, further dividing what was established as one body with many members. The people are gullible enough to receive their own fleecing as truth because they are promised a life full of pleasures and self-exaltation, when in fact the truth of the Kingdom is that we must suffer with the Lord Jesus in order to reign with Him, and the first demand of the Kingdom of God is self-denial.

Men continue to justify the spiritual raping of people who have no understanding or revelation of the truth. Unfortunately, many times it is because the ones doing the raping have no understanding and revelation of the truth themselves. No one ever preached the Gospel of the Kingdom to them. No one ever told them that they must completely unlearn what they had learned in order to learn of Christ and be His disciples. So, they are then licensed and ordained to preach a false Gospel that tells people they have all the best of the world, and still “go to heaven”. The problem is, the Lord Jesus didn’t come so we can go to heaven. He came so we could enter into the Kingdom God, His Father, had promised first to Abraham thousands of years prior. So, rather have leaders who are the least of men, and the best of servants, we have leaders who twist and misconstrue scriptures to fit their own dreams and visions, and satisfy the lusts of their own flesh, all the while really just demonstrating that they are none of His.