IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS GOD: God all-knowing, God all-powerful, God the essence of beauty and light. God all by Himself spoke the universe into being, and God all by Himself ordered every star and atom. God all by Himself calibrated every system, and with precision He fine-tuned them in interdependence one upon another. Stars and planets synchronized in perfect harmony. Order looked out from every ecosystem and every creature–until man showed up and introduced chaos.
Man wasn't a problem before he became self-sufficient. In his original created state, man carried the image of God himself. It was a beautiful image, the Divine nature invested in humanity. The whole family of mankind was meant to carry the image of God–part of God inside each one, so that by the harmonious operation of them all together, God's beauty and order could be expressed in human flesh.
Sin, we know, broke the Divine order for humanity. Where the first image cast had been the image of God as man, the second image–cast by the words of the serpent into the imagination of Adam and Eve–was a perverted image, the image of man as God. When Adam and Eve partook, by their own human wisdom, of fruit God had forbidden, they partook of another image. The ingredients, one might say, were the same as the true image, but the order was fundamentally different; and in this false order, supremacy was born.
Supremacy has always lived in false order, and it has always been defined by the wisdom of man. Nimrod, instead of building God's city, built his own city and gathered the people unto himself. Were city-building and the gathering of communities wrong? No, but Nimrod's city rebelled against God's order and gathered the people to a carnal imagination. Some men found a plain in the land of Shinar and built themselves a tower. Their efforts resulted in Babel: why? They sought to make themselves a name. The wisdom of man organized entire systems–beastly systems–which gathered people through false imagery, from Babylon's Nebuchadnezzar proclaiming, “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?” to the kingdoms of Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome. The gathering of the people into economies was not wrong, but the exaltation of man in the place of God produced economies riddled with carnality and supremacy, where the exchange of gifting was defined and executed in carnal wisdom.
Beastly systems gained sophistication with the passing of time. Judaic heathenism took the very lineage God had chosen as a vehicle for the gospel message, and turned it into a man-made image by giving that lineage the authority to define the message rather than to merely steward a message defined by God. God had instituted a seat of government for His true church. Popery made a man-made image by letting the message be defined by the man on the seat rather than the God who gave the seat.
Protestantism had already learned not to trust a lineage and not to trust a seat. There was something else God-given which was surely the one thing left for them to trust–God's provision for the household of God to hold in check the overreach of gifts in its midst–the voice of the people. And in their zeal to fight false imagery and free the gifts of God in their midst, they walked straight from one supremacist image into another. They too fell into human wisdom and arguably enabled the most pernicious beastly system yet known.
The book of Revelation, describing this beast with the lamb-like appearance and the dragon mouth, identifies it by the mark it carries: “And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark…Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man.” (Rev. 13:16, 18).
We cite examples from history, not because we believe we are or have become a beastly system. The message that gathered us and has kept us together is not a message that exalted man or made provision for the flesh. But we do believe we are in hand-to-hand combat with a beastly system that combines all the angles of attack and all the false imagery that has materialized throughout history into one seven-headed supremacist monster. And we do believe this monstrous system has made every effort to infiltrate our thinking and to requisition our voice. We are vulnerable if we do not understand how the beast works.
“Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils,” warns the prophet, “for wherein is he to be accounted of?” (Isa. 2:22). “And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish…In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver, and his idols of gold, which they made each one for himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth” (Isa. 2:17, 18, 20, 21). “Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou didst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men” (Hosea 10:13). “Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” (Jer. 17:5).
It is God's church that we are a part of, and God without our wisdom is capable both of organizing it and of keeping it clean. God certainly works through the agency of man, yet His work is not defined by men's success or failure. Noah built the ark, but he had to follow heaven's instructions. Moses led the people, but only in the direction given by the pillar of fire. The angel ministry of Matt. 13:47-50 have the sacred and stupendous authority of holding the gospel net, drawing it to shore in their hands, and sorting through its contents, yet even they do not define the net, for the net preexisted them and will outlast them. We are not owners of the prophecy. We are stewards and must give an account of our stewardship.
If there has been a sin in our midst, it has been the sin of self-sufficiency and presumption. It has been leaning on man-made wisdom instead of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost, and too often discounting spiritual gifts through which the Holy Ghost was working to check us. The gospel net being drawn in to shore has been handled unilaterally where it was designed to be held by a body of ministers capable of challenging and correcting one another. And the people themselves, lean in prayer and spiritual power, have exchanged spiritual agency for external form. Not all have given room, but enough have for the atmosphere to be affected. And God has forced us into a struggle designed so that ALL flesh would fail.
Where has our doctrine failed? We have not, generally speaking, taught falsehoods for doctrine. Our core, defining beliefs remain scripturally sound. But carelessness in the pulpit has allowed flesh to be mingled with the administration of truth, and carelessness in the pew has interpreted truth through flesh-filled ears.
Wherever flesh has gained a foothold, death has followed, for truths held in the flesh are as deadly as falsehoods. God, deliver us from muddying the waters of truth with the footprint of man!
“Be silent, O flesh, before the Lord, and before the glory of His majesty.” God is speaking, but there is a quietness of spirit which we must practice if we would hear His voice. Until the voices of human wisdom are quieted, until we are still and know that He is God, we cannot hope to hear His direction. If we would have God's anointing, we must rid ourselves of flesh, for “upon man's flesh shall it not be poured” (Exodus 30:32).
