In The Eye of the Storm

Part II     
The Second Phase of the Church
Corporate Relationship Concept

Chapter 6

The History of Theocracy Vs.    Monarchy Church Government

   In order for today's church to reach its maturity in Christ, I believe there will need to be a shaking of church organizations, leaders and structures. Today's church is still far from the church government patterned after New Testament organization we just proposed in the previous chapter. It seems many churches today are feverishly patching and painting a sinking ship, with a traditional church structure that fails to focus on the real purpose of the church—people development.

Believers end up bored and unused, polishing the pews of a church building and not understanding each believer's commission to proclaim the glorious gospel of God's grace. If churches are to thrive today, they will need to recognize that in order to weather the storms coming, they will need to focus more and more on family oriented cell groups which allow all Christians to be ministers. Whether they do it with lifeboats on a large ship, with a fleet of small boats only, or both, they will need to recognize the operation of biblical church government.

In the years since early church history, the church has departed from the original foundation of using apostles and prophets in church leadership according to Ephesians 2:20, ... "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone." Without apostles and prophets to lay the foundation, the church lacks the empowering of God to build properly. If we are to recognize apostles and prophets in church leadership again, we will have to totally reorganize our church structures today.

Old Testament and New Testament Theocracy

In order to understand God's plan for church government, let's take a look back into Old Testament history in I Samuel. Up until this time, the Hebrew nation had a form of government called a theocracy, that is, God himself was the direct ruler of the nation. They had no king.

Instead, they were governed by judges, such as Samuel, who ruled the people by divine authority. In other words, Samuel heard directly from God and related what God was saying to the people. He traveled from place to place, listened to the people's problems, giving them direction and ordaining local authorities. The Hebrew people were governed this way for 300 years.

This form of theocratic government compares to the New Testament history where the apostles of the early church heard from God and traveled from place to place, laying the foundations for the churches, ordaining leaders, while giving them direction and guidance. Apostle Paul's letters are filled with church government directives for the early church.

Old Testament Monarchy

In I Samuel 8, the Hebrew people eventually demanded a human king. By doing this, they were not only rejecting Samuel their judge, they were rejecting Yahweh by demanding a king.

Because they were not properly honoring Yahweh as their king and the judges as His spokesmen when they chose to be governed by a king or monarchy rule, God warns them that their national king would be no more righteous than they had been. The king would draft their sons into his army, take their daughters as "bakers," use his military power to steal the best land for his favorite bureaucrats and take a tithe of the people's grain and wine. The king literally would put himself in the place of God and receive the tithe.

Sad to say, history fulfills these predictions with the ups and downs of King Saul's reign and with King David falling into sin. The kings with their monarchy rule reduced the nation to slavery, because they ended up losing the anointing God gave them and instead lorded it over their people without receiving the counsel of God.

New Testament Theocracy

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ came as King. As the chief cor­nerstone of the church, He set the apostles and prophets to build the foundations of the church (a theocracy) while He returned to heaven to sit at the Father's right hand and to intercede for His people. With this theocratic church government "ruled" by the Holy Spirit through apostles and prophets, the first century church flourished.

During this time, Paul the apostle set up local bishops in local areas who helped oversee the church. In every city where there were groups of believers, Paul made sure there were also elders or bishops to "feed the church of God" (Acts 20:28).

Monarchy Church Government Rule Begins

The outstanding growth of Christianity was regarded as a threat to Roman authorities who began persecuting the church. When heavy persecution hit the church, many of the apostles and prophets were put to death. By the second century, the bishops in various cities elected super or monarchial bishops.

By doing this, the church was moving away from their original role as theocratic or God-centered rule into a monarchy-type church government, paving the way for one bishop to actually govern the church. By the fifth century, the bishops of Rome began to claim universal supremacy in the church and Pope Leo I claimed the right to command bishops everywhere. The church became a full monarchy rule.

During the subsequent Middle Ages ( 500-1500 A.D.), some reigns of the super bishops brought reform, bringing the church back spiri­tually, while others' reigns were terrible, giving way to holy wars, the Crusades of 1096 A.D. Are you beginning to see a pattern? When God's people in the Old Testament demanded a human king, the results were disastrous. When God's people in the New Testament rejected the apostles and prophets in favor of bishops ruling, the church lost its God-centered church life, reverting to human-centered rule.

Challenging the Dead Traditions

Without the anointing and guidance of the apostles and prophets to keep the church in a close relationship with God, the church lost its power, bringing about the need for a reformation. Drifting into meaningless religious traditions, people started trusting the man-made church structure and organization rather than God. By the time the Reformation came about, the church was reduced to selling indulgences to raise money to build cathedrals in Rome. Martin Luther attached his Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg attacking these teachings of the church.

When Luther found a passage in the Bible telling him that faith in God would save him, he had a personal experience with God. Many reformers would follow, each having a personal experience with God and teaching that the Christian could find salvation through faith alone, and that the clergy was not essential to salvation.

Christians once again thought of themselves as a priesthood of all believers and the huge distinction between the clergy and laity declined. With the Reformation came a new openness as the Spirit of God invaded people's lives and made many sweeping changes in an impotent church.

Although many reforms occurred during the Reformation, the church did not return to recognizing apostles and prophets in church government. The monarchial reign of the church really did not come to an end, instead many denominations grew out of the reform with one leader as the head—still a monarchy system.

Apostle Paul, speaking to the divisions in the Corinthian church, warned the people not to idolize or follow one leader, but to only follow Jesus: "Now I say this, that each of you says, 'I am of Paul,' or 'I am of Apollos' . is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?" (I Corinthians 1:12-13). When people choose to follow one leader because of a personal preference, rather than choosing leaders that God's anointing rests upon, they get caught up in a cycle that is hard to break.

Cycle of a Church Denomination

To understand this cycle, let's look at what happens in a 60 year cycle of a church denomination. The first phase of the cycle involves the reformer and his personal experience. The reformer tells his personal experience to others—this begins a following.

As large numbers of people also have these experiences, a move of God occurs based on the experiences, often leading to rapid growth. For Martin Luther, these experiences included "the just shall live by faith." For the Pentecostal church 75 years ago, a Pentecostal experience included the practice of divine healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues. The separation of the church and state was an issue for another group, leading to the start of another denomination.

When people in a parent church are threatened by the new experiences of others, opposition often begins to arise. Those people in the parent church who have put faith in their religious tradition often persecute and oppose the reformers. The Catholic church excommunicated Martin Luther. In more recent history, many experiencing the baptism of the Holy Spirit during the great outpouring at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles in the early 1900s were asked to leave their churches.

If the new group is persecuted this way, another phenomenon occurs. Often a "martyr mentality" inflicts the group. Perceiving themselves to be victims, the people then grasp fiercely onto their spiritual experience and make a denomination out of that spiritual experience. Rapid growth may still continue, but the gospel continues to be spread on the history of the spiritual experience, not in the power and anointing of God.

By the time this spiritual experience reaches the second or third generation, it means less and less. Gradually the new generation accepts a new tradition which sets in and starts embedding itself deeply in the church. The new generation often rejects the old, stale spiritual experience (which, we must remember, has now become , only a tradition even though it may have originally relied on the fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit).

The new generation may start to require high ranking credentials for their leaders now as the group experiences social acceptance in the community. They seek people who can give ^"professional leadership." A contemporary church is then built on a corporation-style model of leadership with one man at the helm (a monarchy rule) rather than a Spirit-led theocratic model which chooses leaders according to God's recognition of their anointings.

As the criteria for leadership changes, people begin to trust in the faith of their founder, totally disregarding the once ^"Holy Spirit energizing" spiritual experience that was behind it all. Once again, the church finds itself, after 60 years, back to where it started. The traditions may be different, but the peoples' faith in the traditions are just the same. In addition, the group or denomination often classifies themselves a certain way with a label they wear proudly as they befriend their tradition and defend it with an ethnic pride. And the cycle continues.

I contend that most reformers never imagined themselves starting a new denomination. They received a piece of the puzzle, in faith moved out on that spiritual experience, and God graciously moved with them. In fact, many of these denominations that rose up often viewed themselves as a theocracy and thought of the old denomination as a monarchy because the old denomination was so rigidly ruled from the top.

But the new groups were never a true functioning theocracy at all because their whole basis for reform was on a spiritual experience. They did not see the big picture with the apostles and prophets laying the foundation for the church. Additionally, often the men­tal frame of mind of leaders in the new groups or denominations was one of ownership which is really a form of monarchy or "king rule." (See more about this on page 69).

Will the Apostles and Prophets Please Stand Up?

I strongly believe God is about to change this. He wants the spiri­tual experience to walk hand-in-hand with a theocratic church government. He wants to stop the cycle of established church groups being threatened by new ways of conducting church affairs. After 2,000 years, I believe God is calling the apostles and prophets to take their God-ordained places in the church so that it can again become a theocracy as God originally intended for it to be.

A new wind is blowing in the church today, preparing us to bring in the end-time harvest. When the apostles and prophets are functioning in their proper place in the operation of the church, the rest of church government falls in place—pastors will pastor better, teachers will have a greater anointing, and evangelists will evangelize more effectively.

Throughout church history, we see that in the hands of men lead­ing out without God's anointing on their lives, the church has often almost died. Yet God has always brought fresh life to His church. ,Will today's institutionalized church be more committed to the survival of their own traditions, systems and programs than to seeing the church return to first century theocracy? Will we again see apostles and prophets founding churches, equipping believers, hearing from God and bringing unity to local assemblies?

I believe we will. With God all things are possible. God will build His church, "not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit." He will bring the church into a proper functioning place. As God's people and church leaders seek after Him, they will know they are not stuck in a traditional system, lacking Holy Spirit power. Because as the Holy Spirit moves, we can break out of our old way of thinking and witness the church become what God meant for it to be.

Is the church going to have problems in the future? Of course. Satan will continue to attack, but when God is in control of the church—a true theocracy—Satan will be on the outside. With the storm all around us we can be at peace because the apostles have built the ship well, and the prophets have directed the ship into the eye of the storm. The church is in a place of calm and safety where God dwells.