The Lord needs a new way because Christianity presents us something different from what is revealed in the New Testament. Acts 2:46 and 5:42 show us that in the early days the church met from house to house. In Greek this means that they met according to the houses. Each and every house was a meeting place. This practice is absolutely different from today’s practice in Christianity. In these home meetings, they did three basic things: 1) They broke bread to remember the Lord. 2) They preached Christ as the gospel, as the good news. That means they preached the gospel to save sinners, to bring sinners to the Lord. 3) They also taught. No doubt, they taught what the Lord Jesus taught the disciples. In Matthew 28 the Lord charged His disciples to go to disciple the nations and teach them whatever they were taught (vv. 18-20). In the home meetings, these three things were going on-the breaking of bread, preaching the gospel to save sinners, and teaching the believers that they may know what God’s economy is.
In 1 Corinthians Paul refers to the whole church coming together in one place, the big meetings. Thus, in the early days, the way the church met was in two aspects: the small meetings in the homes of all the saints and the big meetings for the whole church to come together. But even in the big meetings there was not a practice of one man speaking and all listening to that one speaker. First Corinthians 14:26 says that whenever we come together, each one of us should have something of the Lord to share with others. There was no single, particular speaker speaking to a passive audience. This is the practice of degraded Christianity, and this practice kills, annuls, the function of the members of the Body of Christ. Today’s practice in Christianity is not according to what is revealed in the New Testament.
In 1964, the Southern Baptist denomination, besides the Catholic church, was the biggest denomination in the United States. The statistics in 1964 showed that the Southern Baptists had over ten million members. The Southern Baptist denomination still ranks second in membership today. The Catholic church today has about fifty-two million members, and the Southern Baptists have about fourteen and a half million. Although the Southern Baptists increased by four million, their rate of increase since 1964 has only been about 1.4 percent yearly. This is too low.
In 1964 the population in the United States was close to two hundred million. About half of this number, one hundred ten million, were professing Christians. Of this approximately one hundred ten million about sixty-five million were Protestants, and forty-five million were Catholics. The number of Christians in the United States since 1964 has increased by about sixteen million. Since 1964 the Protestants have only increased by about nine million. This rate of increase is too low. In today’s Christianity, there are many activities. There are many preachers and evangelistic campaigns, and there are reports that many thousands of people made a decision for Christ. But eventually what came out? For the Protestant denominations to only increase by nine million in over twenty years is much less than a one percent rate of increase yearly.
This is due to the killing of the traditional practice of degraded Christianity. The present practice in degraded Christianity is a killing of the functions of the members of Christ’s Body. With an army of one hundred million, one should be able to take over every country on this earth. But what is the use of such a great number of Christians? Where are all the Christians in the offices and on the campuses? In many offices you cannot hear a word concerning God. It seems that all the offices are Gentile offices. Where are the Christians? Their function, their ability, their Christian capacity, has been annulled, killed, by today’s practice in Christianity.
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