See Revelation 21:8.
Fortunately, we repentant cowards (including 11 of Christ’s chosen apostles — Matthew 26:56, but excluding the one unrepentant coward of the bunch) are not left to try to somehow conjure up courage within ourselves, we are simply called to kindle and not quench the Spirit of power that God Himself has put in to us who are His (2 Tim 1:6-7; 1 Thes 5:19).
If you walk into the front room of our house, you will see a poster that I made on a piece of cardboard. Most of the poster consists of a full page newspaper add for Sofa Mart that I saved from 1998. It says, “What Are You Passionate About? For Italian’s (sic) It’s Soccer And Fine Leather Sofas!” Pictured is an older man with a soccer ball and a boy with an Italian flag both sitting on a fine leather sofa with several people standing around the sofa waving Italian flags. That ad has made me sad whenever I’ve looked at it over the last ten years.
On the poster I have written an answer to Sofa Mart’s question: “For our family it is JESUS!” Then there are four pictures: 1) a picture our family, 2) a picture of a sea of Muslims circling the Kaaba, 3) a picture of two bony, famished, Africa kids with hands outstretched, and 4) a picture of the remains of a first trimester baby killed in the womb. The unstated implication is that loving Jesus is, to a large extent, manifest in practical acts of loving “the least of these” His brethren (Matthew 25:31-46) and, in general, obeying His commands (John 14:21).
Why these issues specifically? Why, if you browse this blog and this site do you see so often the repeated themes of abortion, Christ-centered true-gospel proclaiming missions, and sacrificial financial giving to those who most desperately need it? After a bit of self-examination, I believe that the common theme is that I see the issues of weightiest significance to be those with the most profound life and death implications.
It seems to me that if we have received the free, undeserved, and sacrificial love of Christ, and thus had our hearts opened to love others likewise, then the horrors of people dying from starvation, and the horrors of helpless babies being killed for their fathers’ (and mothers’) convenience will both move our hearts and move us to action. Arguably even more significant are the billions who are going to their eternal grave without the sole source of hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ ever reaching their societies.
But there is another issue of life and death overarching these others and uniting them even more deeply. It is the issue of whether the professing church of Christ possesses true vitality or just a dead body surrounded by an external shell of apparent vitality:
I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. (Revelation 3:1-3)
If we harden our hearts in order to feel better about spending more on luxury items for ourselves than on helping starving kids, then as they die the vitality of our spiritual fervor dies right along with them. If we quench the prompting of the Holy Spirit in us to speak and act out against the slaughter of over 3,300 babies per day in America alone, then in the very act of embracing death we take it into ourselves. If we allow ourselves to see the sacrifices necessary for the evangelization of the billions living amongst the unreached nations as too big an inconvenience to our current lifestyle, then by ignoring their death we ignore the means God has given for preserving our own lives (John 12:25).
If there is one manifestation of death that breaks my heart more than parents killing their babies in the womb, children dying from starvation, and pagans dying without the hope of Christ in the gospel, it is the professing church of Christ killing herself by accounting these other deaths to be too much an inconvenience and hence looking away.
Sacrificial missions, sacrificial anti-abortion activism, and sacrificial financial giving to those most desperate meld together in my mind as practically one inseparable issue because much more than I long to see the hungry fed, the babies rescued, and the nations reached, I long to see the Bride of Christ alive. It is only a living church that can prayerfully work to accomplish any of these other things. And more importantly, it is only a living church that can worship the Living Lord, much less worship Him passionately, which is the ultimate aim of all things.
I have not received any prophetic words from the Lord. This opinion simply comes from reading the Bible and trying to understand the heart and mind of God as He has chosen to reveal it to us in Scripture. I could be wrong about this, but I do believe that the Christian church of America (as well as other affluent areas, but I’ll stick to talking about my homeland) is by-and-large, if not completely, “without lampstand.”
First of all, what does it mean to have your lampstand removed, as in Rev 2:5? Well, in Rev 1:20 we are explicitly told that the seven lampstands are the seven churches. Commentators are agreed that this warning was indeed fulfilled and executed as seen by the fact that the church in Ephesus completely ceased to exist. But at what point was the lampstand of the Ephesian church actually removed? Was it when the last believer in Jesus Christ disappeared from the city? Or did Christians continue to gather in that city for many years after the Lord “removed their lampstand out of its place”?
Many have observed that a lampstand in the Bible, with its oil, fire, and light, is closely associated with the Holy Spirit (compare Zech 4). Jesus promised His disciples that after He ascended to the Father He would send His promised Holy Spirit. And a major reason for that was to powerfully equip His church to be a witness to the world (Acts 1:8), a city on a hill, a lamp on a lampstand (Matt 5:15).
It seems to me most in line with a complete Biblical theology to understand that the Spirit of God, indeed the presence of God, in some sense departed from the church in Ephesus just as the glory of the Lord departed on more than one occasion from rebellious Israel (see e.g. I Sam 4:21-22, Ezekiel 10). A gathering that considered itself the Ephesian church may have continued to exist for some time, just as the temple in Israel continued to exist, but it was desolate. Ichabod. The glory has gone.
Second, is it reasonable to believe that this has happened to us as well? As Protestants we look to the Reformation as the return of the glory of the gospel of justification by faith out of a 16th Catholic church that was, to a large extent, spiritually dead (or worse). True enough. But fallen human nature is such that we are continually in need of reformation.
I’m not talking about doctrine, at least not right now. Sure, there are theological weaknesses in much of modern evangelicalism and we yes we are in continual need of reformations of doctrinal truth. But thankfully, “faith alone”, “Christ alone”, and “Scripture alone” are at least holding strong in many branches of American evangelicalism.
But here is the bombshell which I believe rocks our complacent American Protestant evangelical world: the Ephesians weren’t heretics either. The Lord in fact commended the church of Ephesus on some doctrinal points at the same time that He threatened to remove their lampstand. “You cannot endure evil men; you reject false apostles; you have persevered; you hate the sect of the Nicolaitans which I also hate.” God didn’t threaten to remove the Ephesian’s lampstand because they had turned to a doctrine of salvation by works. They hadn’t! They’d kept the creeds, but they had lost their first love.
Let me restate the point for emphasis and clarity. In the Bible, we read of a church which apparently was doctrinally grounded, not heretical, and yet the Lord was so displeased with their love for Him being dispersed elsewhere that He threatened to remove their lampstand, the very thing which identified them as His own church.
Brothers and sisters, judge for yourselves: have we lost our first love? Look at the height from which we as a church have fallen! Do we do the deeds that the bride of Christ did at first? Joyfully selling property in order to give to the poor… boldly proclaiming the Word of God in the face of persecution and accepting the consequences without backing down? Perhaps I am mistaken, and I don’t want to put words in the Lord’s mouth. But I do want to take seriously the words which have already come from His mouth. Do we love God more than our money? Do we love God more than the comfort and security that our nation has come to take for granted? Did we count the cost before setting out to follow Jesus:
“So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” - Luke 14:33
We still sing songs like, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also…”, but do our actions show that we are ready to lose everything in order to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness?
I hear stories that tell me that there are places in the world were the church, despite its many faults, sins, and weaknesses, does love the Lord first and foremost - above life and above possesssions. The lampstands have not been extinguished. God will always maintain a remnant witness on earth. But as long as we seek to serve two masters, and keep each foot in one of two kingdoms, our name here in America is Ichabod. The glory and the Spirit have departed.
That is how it appears to me. If I have been too critical, may the Lord lead me to repentance. But if the bride of Christ in America really has left her first love, and lost her lampstand, then may the Lord lead all of us to repentance, that we may do the deeds she did at first; and may He have mercy and restore His glory and His Spirit to us, despite our waywardness.