God is changing the Church, and that, in turn, will change the world. Millions of Christians around the world are aware of an imminent reformation of global proportions.
They say, in effect : “Church as we know it is preventing Church as God wants it.”
A growing number of them are surprisingly hearing God say the very same things.There is a collective new awareness of age-old revelations, a corporate spiritual echo. In the following
“15Theses” I will summarize a part of this, and I am convinced that it reflects a part of what the Spirit of God is saying to the Church today. For some, it might be the proverbial fist-sized cloud on Elijah’s sky. Others already feel the pouring rain.
Fifteen Theses towards a Re-Incarnation of Church
1.
Church is a Way of Life, not a series of religious meetings.
Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called “The Way”. One of the reasons was, that they have literally found “the way to live.” The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.
2.
Time to change the system
In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th centuryAD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple(cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on tocanonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of “church” remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it,
but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.
3.
The Third Reformation.
In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through areformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching thewine skins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.
4.
From Church-Houses to house-churches
Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as “a house of God”. At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church,therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God: share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit,have “meatings,” that is, they eat when they meet; they often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings,teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God’s word—dialogue- and not professor-style, pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, ‘lose their face’ and their ego by confessing their sins,regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.
5.
The church has to become small in order to grow big
Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become “fellowships without fellowship.” The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied “sidewards”—like organic cells—once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon’sTemple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither bignor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missingthe dynamics of both.
6.
No church is led by a Pastor alone
The local church is not lead by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating “from house to house,” whereby
there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor(shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of “equipping the saints for the ministry,” and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.
7.
The right pieces – fitted together in the wrong way
In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture,turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christianworld: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms—ice, water and steam—the five ministriesmentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalizedChristianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and “independent” churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new—and at the same time age-old—forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual “ministers” can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker’s original and blueprint for the Church.
8.
God does not leave the Church in the hands of bureaucratic clergy
No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional “holy man” doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalisation of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially intolaity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), “there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ,the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely.Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no.There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God,who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.
9.
Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity
The “Body of Christ” is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces arefunctioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organizationwith a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism.Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong.Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control,therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-mindedpeople with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism isnecessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.
10.
From worshipping our worship to worshipping God
The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically,
as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee.
Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called "worship service" requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour “worship service” is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a "high input and low output" structure. Traditionally, the desire to “worship in the right way” has led tomuch denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to“worship in truth and in spirit,” not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as “the Way of Life.” Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start “acting powerfully?”
11.
Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing the church to the people
The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Churchneeds to stop trying to bring people “into the church,” and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of theChurch will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world,where Christ is not yet known.
12.
Rediscovering the “Lord's Supper” to be a real supper with real food
Church tradition has managed to “celebrate the Lord's Supper” in a homeopathic and deeply religious form,characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the “Lord's Supper” wasactually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning,
than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning.
God is restoring eating back into our meeting.
13.
From Denominations to city-wide celebrations
Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is,converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as acollective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of theChurch of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporateidentity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to thebiblical model of the City-Church.
14.
Developing a persecution-proof spirit
They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. “Blessed are you when you are persecuted”, says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcomeby greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again liveout New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the “repressive tolerance” of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize andobey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologisation, privatization and spiritualisation of politics and economics, Christians will—sooner than most think—have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.
15.
The Church comes home
Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult—and therefore most meaningful—place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots—back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.
As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God's Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution.Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.(From: Houses that change the world, Wolfgang Simpson)
An Analysis of Fifteen Theses by Chris Welch
You might wonder what there is to analyse?
Here is a list of 15 practical steps out from much of what we can view of contemporary Christianity.
But you see when I was 12, my lifelong experience of methodism had brought me to similar conclusions already, and after a year of atheism I was blessed to be caught up into a new kind of Christianity. For me it began with two Billy Graham films, but I and thousands like me didn't stop there, because for us what was special about the Billy Graham films was not just the message.
It was the Presence of God.
I'd been in church 12 years and never been aware of it. Now, I describe the NOW Presence of God, the Eternal NOW, this God who presents Himself always and continually as the I AM, in the same way He presented Himself to Moses,-
I describe this as Life in the Melchizedek Order. This is where our HIGH PRIEST Jesus operates His church from.
So it was natural for me to want to learn more about the One who brings this Presence: the Holy Spirit. But this too was a Melchizedek Order event. Two people individually had a vision or dream of a Holy Spirit teach-in day. So it was organised in a house in Little Kingshill Bucks. Far from church buildings. And this is where the Holy Spirit came down on a roomful of teens like fire. And we took this into school and college with us, and the fire continued to blaze.
Jesus reveals in the Spirit ahead of time the outline of what He wants to accomplish. This is usually verified by others who are attentive to the Holy Spirit. Key of David meetings in Havant run this way, and so do, more and more, the main meetings too.
So after my friends who were older returned from the Jesus Liberation Front Double decker bus operation that drove to the Munich Olympics in 1972, returning via the Sisters of Mary, Darmstadt, and after many of us had got tucked into Watchman Nee's writings, you can understand how already we had reached the conclusions in these 15 theses.
And then......... God began working with us!!!
Point One - The Way
Yes, so Life for us was expressed in loose home gatherings in a few homes of believers who would give us discipleship time. It was adhoc. Spontaneous. We gathered because we hungered to gather. The very outer edges of "rejections" in my life began, like open wounds, to be exposed , then healed. We learned how Melchizedek meetings operate. Songs poured forth. Terry Virgo began carting some of my songs with him round the world.
But saints....this is only the very start of what Jesus would call the Way. The Way is a God- purposed, God designated pathway that exposes the real human condition to ourselves.
Points Two to Five - Regarding outer forms
The forms of church heralded in these theses can be clearly seen in the fledgling church 1st century church. The structures form themselves as a people hungers after the Presence and Person of God. Many of us since have tried reproducing the form, say house groups, only to observe the misery of a people gathering not because they are desperate to know the Spontaneous Melchizedek Life together, not because they are head over heels in Holy Spirit love with each other, not because they really , really , want to pour that expensive alabaster box of spikenard over their Saviour , and can't wait to get together to do it...
they are gathering because their pastor, a CEO pastor has sat at his computer, divided the church up in lists. and because , simply, he has told them that this is a good idea.
How many of you know it's a dreadful idea? Can you think of anything worse than gathering together in one confined home space with people whose last reason for living is the First Commandment of
Loving God
With all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your strength,
THEN with all your mind.
No they are meeting to catch up with the latest gossip on the church. They are meeting to eat food cheap. They are meeting because they have to. They are meeting because it's meant to be the trendy new thing that the 15 Theses recommend and "we must all get in on it".
Points 6 and 7 AHA the old apostle/prophet and other ministries angle!
I say old, because first the Apostolic Pentecostal movement caught the vision of Ephesians 4 and ran with it 60 or 70 years ago. Our Jesus movement began nesting in the Fountain Trust frameworks that were still very denominational in outlook, then we broke away like the theses recommend, initially into home fellowships, which later grew into the present (UK sized ?!?!) megaliths like Derby Church which is threatening Egg Bank on Pride Park in Derby.
So , in our case, within four years, from 1972 -6 , we'd made the leap these theses describe from pastor/vicar led flocks, to a pastor/apostolic led affair with many elders in tow, each with their variety of giftings. Who has noticed the pyramid shape is still unaffected?
In the UK who were some of the names? Bryn Jones,Arthur Wallis,Barney Coombs,David Mansell,Gerald Coates, Maurice Smith,George Tarleton,David Matthews,Terry Virgo,Alan Vincent,Dave Tomlinson. These all split into 2 main groups.
The point though, is that apart from perhaps Bryn and Arthur, how many at this stage were familiar with growth in God? They were for the most part all young leaders who filled the leadership vacuum, and all at least could lead people to the Living Jesus, and show people how to get filled or baptised in the Holy Spirit. But much more than this they really hadn't a clue.
And this is what I am flagging up here concerning these theses?
What is the end goal?
What does an apostle do?
Why are even these theses something like the cart before the horse?
Our end goal is this. Simply to reproduce Christ to maturity in a believer.
Evangelicalism. The charismatic. Both know how to introduce people to Jesus the Saviour. Charismatics know how to introduce people to the Baptiser, Jesus,who baptises us in the Spirit. But you know what?....in Old Testament terms this covers the 390 years of Israel's existence before leaving Egypt, up until the 1st day in the wilderness, when Israel had partaken of the blood covering for sin, and had come through the miracle of the Red Sea, and then started fixing themselves on the Pillar of Cloud by Day, and the Pillar of Fire by night for guidance. So you see....it's not very far really? And all these leaders were believing that God would kind of teach them more as they went on. Which is, to honour them for a minute, a very bold thing to do, with hundreds and later hundreds of thousands in tow.-Or a very foolish prideful thing.
But, it turns out,contrary to the notion of our first generation apostles,what an apostle is....is errrr....somewhat different.
An apostle is NOT a super pastor. ie a pastor gets people saved, an apostle gets people baptised in the Spirit and knows how to string groups of individual churches together into something like a school hall or business unit franchise.
No an apostle, or what this blog calls a Father level ministry knows how to reproduce Christ to maturity in a believer and/ or group. He is also gifted supernaturally with the ability of church planting.
An apostle is not a "pile of stones" collector. He or she plants living interconnected expressions of Jesus Christ in human form, in localities. One way you can tell an apostle is by watching how this kind of electromagnet walks into a place that just has a pile of unrelated stones in, and lo and behold by connecting all the individuals into the Melchizedek Order, into a living relationship with Jesus, what was formerly a shapeless amorphous unrelated mass is now a growing church in the Spirit. I have to add in the Spirit, just in case you are imagining a beautiful church building.
A beautiful expression of Christ is not the same as saying a beautiful bunch of people. Outwardly.
Which brings us further into point 7.
Do you notice that this writer positions himself in his H2O or water example firmly in the manifestation of water? The frozen form he dislikes, but the gaseous form of water that is steam is not to his taste either.
"they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and “independent” churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new—and at the same time age-old—forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual “ministers” can find their proper role and place in the whole"
This whole view is according to the jargon of this blog a secondlevel view and not the view of this blog. Probably because they won't be embarrassed let's take Andre Rabe and Francois Du Toit as examples. These guys are examples of free-flying, independent ministries, accountable to no one. Is this a problem?
The whole secondlevel , still structured approach is this whole fear belief that you cannot ultimately entrust yourselves to Jesus and His Melchizedek operation. It's too fragile. It's a bit like David, who, because it seemed a good idea at the time, put the Ark on a new cart to move it around. When someone did put their hand out to save it, they died instantly.
The entire first generation of apostles have banded themselves into impossibly complicated pyramid shapes out of "fear" that the Melchizedek order alone is just not safe enough. Together with this belief is the fear that if a believer doesn't go to church, or veers too much in the direction of the world that "that way tharrrr be dragons!!" This coupled with the view that "free-flying" is very iffy, and that the only safe place is chaining every operation to a similarly chained group of people is the only safe way.
The truth is the Way is a Person, Jesus Christ. The whole idea of chaining yourself to any human or bunch of humans to bring safety is ofcourse "to go down to Egypt again for your horses". The Narrow Way is to believe what scripture says about us, that we have died, and our lives are now hidden with Christ in God. When we go the Narrow Way, taking everything through the Cross, in order that every aspect of our formerly lying view of ourselves as independent beings be utterly dealt with....guess what?
We find the Way isn't narrow at all...well the entrance may be narrow, but it leads out into a huge expanse...with tons of people here already!!!! You see this leads to the wide extravagant life that God always conceived for the people he loved so much. Life itself gives feedback on how we are doing. Life itself tells us when we are not seeing with a single eye.
"There is no smoke where there is no fire."
The remaining evil eye, if there be any, makes itself increasingly obvious.Contrary to 2nd level teaching, you won't need a pastor's sermons to point it out, both Christians and non-Christians, work colleagues, friends and family will tell you....or better still, Jesus in you as you will pick it up long before they do. The whole secondlevel infrastructure is built on similar lies about the fragility of life, the narrowness of the way and the tremendous, tremendous propensity for deception.
The longer you spend around the Melchizedek order your self, or with others who live there, the more you will pick up the Bewitching that ironically happens in the "Deception-free" yet septic environment of 2nd level churches.
Truly the phrase "If the light within you is in fact darkness, you can see how great the darkness is."
The Holy Spirit has given us His peace as umpire. Your mind may be sold a complicated yarn that seems true, but if your heart is unsettled...you'd better listen. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your insight"
"Walking in the Light with other believers "describes this walk together in open communion with the Lord Jesus. This is yet another safety tool we have.
There are spiritual gifts of discernment that specifically target "iffy" seeing.
Although you cannot always tell immediately by your surroundings, because, being in warfare conditions, the demonic, or those operating in the spirit of this world are often working behind the scenes adversely for our lives...yet
by experience and maturity of walking believing we are Christ in our form, soon we get a taste for the source of problems. A lot of 2ndleveller's problems, (that is those who think of themselves as quite separate in their existence to God, as if they had a self-powered life of their own)are simply the rebounding stench of their own bad "seeing".
Points 8 to 15
I finished earlier by making the distinction that a beautiful expression of Christ is not necessarily the same as a beautiful bunch of people....outwardly.
2ndlevel organisations like their pretty "model catwalk men and women" for worshipleading. The fragrance that Paul was looking for was the sense that there was a dying and a resurrecting Body going on in a place. While this is going on, things do not necessarily look that pretty. Church has to be free to be a messy place. How else is our wrong "seeing", or "lying seeing" going to be dealt with?
Point 9 describes the organic nature of church.
A more basic point is that Christ removes our own individual rigidities and brings us into His Life. Put a bunch of these sort of individuals together and you are bound to be organic!! These theses are really still written at one stage of remove.
The WAY, or the corporate life only comes out of each individual entering into the Way and Life. So after around 1973, we went a tortuous route, because there was no one around much to teach us, where we saw that the emphasis on network churches, although a necessary framework to grow and discover the third level in, was really way too early to be even thinking about.
Individuals have to be the "seed that falls into the ground alone", where in the earth the seed, the true plant DNA of God's Word, germinates and grows this time into a new form entirely: a fruitful plant , making its own way out of the dirty brown soil.When this process is completed with a bunch of people, we can begin to determine what a church in the Spirit really looks like.
Grouping a whole array of ungerminated seeds together in an independent church like Emsworth, allbeit they are anointed, prophesying, worshipping,healing seeds,- STILL DOES NOT A CHURCH MAKE.
A true ( and temporarily I am calling these 3rd level churches) will have ministry coming from "fruitful plants" and not pregerminated seeds. This kind of church needs more than anointed individuals. The Elders, mutually submitted, with not a pyramid-shape in sight, have that mature Life within them, have that single "eye" within them that they know how to feed the flock to promote the "Way,Truth,Life" Holy Spirit cycle in a believer.
This is a tiny bit beyond just arranging for meals together in homes, or in fact any talk of homes or church buildings. This gets down to the level of what each individual is believing about his or her identity. It's raising a church that believes :
As He is , so are we in the world.
Finally, about persecution
This author writes"Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcomeby greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power."
Even this has a slightly moralistic 2ndlevel detached tone. The truth is the very Life of Jesus is Light. When we are consciously believing this Life...believing ON this Life. When we are saying to our insides "I am Christ living as me in my form," when we are nailing our faith to this kind of specificity, the life that is in us will immediately unearth some of what is going on in our vicinity.
It seems, as we read the gospels, Jesus was always in a conflicting position. He states He came not to bring peace , but a sword. It is no different for us.But it's not some sort of left-brain obstreporousness that deliberately winds people up by its moralistic obnoxiousness. It's something that comes out of our Spirit, which attacks the hidden beliefs and wrong seeings that are the true motor which drive flesh behaviour.
It is way beyond subjects such as materialism, jealousy, ethics, sex, money and power.We're talking lasar-level Light like Jesus talking to the rich man about theology and the Law. All of a sudden the Spirit has Jesus turn on the man and say...."OK then, sell all you have give to the poor and come follow Me."
The rich young ruler turns white. Jesus has hit him point blank right where He lives. In the security of His possessions.
To conclude, I think many of us see the trend that the writer sees in the Christian world at large. The point of my comments is to examine them in the light of the third level of seeing, in order to show that they still only move us to the far externals of where Christ is really taking His Church.
