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How Can a Church of Millions
of Members Repent?
The assumption held by many for decades is that Christ’s call to Laodicea to repent is addressed to individuals alone, whose problems are confined to miscellaneous personal failings. We don’t deny that the call includes individuals; the point is that it embraces much more.
It has become obvious that His call is to “the angel of the church” in the true Biblical sense of a body. Immediately therefore the question arises, Is it possible for an organized body to repent? Does increasingly complex organization get in the way of the Holy Spirit’s true work on earth? Must the “body” on earth become more disjointed and uncoordinated, like a quadriplegic patient whose spasms and jerks are uncontrollable by the head? We believe that the Bible has an answer that is clearly understandable in the light of history.
The essential quality of repentance remains the same in all ages and in all circumstances. People, not machines, not organizations, repent. But the repentance called for from Laodicea is unique in circumstances, depth, and extent. The church is not a machine, nor is its organization impersonal. The church is a body, and its organization is its vital functioning capacity. The individuals comprising this body can repent as a body.
As we have seen, metanoia (Greek for repentance) is literally perceptive “afterthought.” It cannot be complete until the close of history, nor can it be complete until corporate guilt is discerned. So long as a “tomorrow” may provide further reflection on the meaning of our “mind” today, or so long as another’s sins may yet disclose to us our own deeper guilt, our repentance must be incomplete.
But it will grow. Ellen’ G. White offers this perceptive insight into the ever-deepening experience that repentance is:
At every advance step in Christian experience our repentance will deepen. It is to those whom the Lord has forgiven, to those whom lie acknowledges as His people, that He says, ‘”[‘hen shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight.’ Again He. says, ‘I will establish My covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that 1 am the Lord; that thou mayest remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord Cod.’ Then our lips will not be opened in self-glorification. We shall know that our sufficiency is in Christ alone. (Christ’s Object Lessons, pp. 160, 161.)
A Bright Future for God’s Work
A most beautiful experience is on the “program” of coming events, an experience unique, in history. Zechariah, Christ-centered prophet of last-day events, tells us that there will come to the denominated church and its leadership a heart-response to Calvary that will completely transform, the church. Speaking of the final events, the prophet says:
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one is in bitterness for his firstborn … In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. (Zechariah 12:10-13:1.)
Who are “the inhabitants of Jerusalem”? Clearly, the members of Christ’s church. Jerusalem is a “city,” a symbol of the nation of Abraham’s descendants, the organized body of God’s people. In Zechariah’s day, “Jerusalem” was the word that denominated as distinct before the world that particular group of people who were called to represent the Lord to the nations of the world. Jerusalem was a corporate, denominated, organized body of professed worshippers. She had just completed seventy years of disintegration and exile as punishment for centuries of rebellion and apostasy. Now the prophet, has been called to predict her reconstitution and reinstatement as the denominated people who will again represent Jehovah Co the nations of earth. “The spirit of grace and supplications” is not to be poured out on scattered individual descendants of Abraham invisibly connected by mutual faith, but on the inhabitants of the “city,” a visible body of God’s denominated people on earth. in the setting of Zechariah’s prophecy, it is implied that no descendant of Abraham choosing to dwell outside “Jerusalem” will share in the outpouring of the “spirit of grace and supplications.” And we do know that those Jews were “lost” to history who chose to remain in the nations where they were scattered, refusing to move back to the ancestral nation in Palestine.
Who are “the house of David”? Obviously not Christ Himself, for “the house of David” share with “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” the guilt of “piercing” Christ. As it was the “house of David” that was anciently the government of the denominated people of God, it seems reasonable to conclude that the term refers to the leadership of the last-day church or “the angel of the church.” “The house of David” are “the king and his nobles,” to borrow Jonah’s terminology regarding the city of Nineveh. They are “the men of Judah” whom Daniel speaks of in distinction to “the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Daniel 10:7), Judah being the reigning tribe of the nation. “The house of David” includes all levels of leadership in the organized remnant church. Every community served by a congregation is a microcosm of the world, and the church there is its “Jerusalem.” To the world itself, the world church is its “Jerusalem,” its world leadership, “the house of David” designated to receive “the spirit of grace and supplications.”
Does it seem fantastic that such a “spirit” shall be poured out on a body of leadership congested by organizational complexity? The more complex the church becomes, the more involved its multitudinous departments, the greater is the danger of the collective self of its large organization choking the simple, direct promptings of the Holy Spirit. Each individual catching a vision is tempted to feel that “his hands are tied”—what can he do? The great organizational monolith, permeated with pride and lukewarmness, seems to move only at an agonizing snail pace. Aside from this “spirit of grace and supplications,” the nearer we come to the end of time, the bigger the church becomes, the more complex and congested are its movement, the more remote appears the prospect of accomplishing its worldwide task.
Why the Organization is Needed
Zechariah’s prophecy calls for denominational repentance as the only possible remedy. The world needs a “Jerusalem” as a “witness to all nations.” Without “Jerusalem” the task cannot be done. The history of the failure of old Jerusalem proves that without “the spirit of grace and of supplications,” denominational organization inevitably becomes proud and misrepresentative of its divine mission. Zechariah says that the sense of contrition that a correct view of Calvary imparts (“they shall look on Me whom they [not the Jews and Romans of a past millenium] have pierced”) will provide the ultimate solution to the problem of human “sin and uncleanness.”
What is “the spirit of grace and supplications” poured out on the church and its leadership? Two distinct elements make up this phenomenal experience: “the spirit of grace,” an appreciation of God’s grace, a view of His character of love completely devastating and annihilating to human self-sufficiency and pride; and “the spirit of supplications,” prayers arising from broken, contrite hearts. The difference in essential quality between these prayers and formal ordinary petitions is very great. Sinners will immediately detect the genuineness of these “supplications” because they will come from hearts transformed by corporate repentance. When prayer comes from a heart broken in contrition, “then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee” (Psalm 51:13).
The spirit of worship and service pervading every congregation will be immediately recognized. In close context to Zechariah’s prophecy of chapter 10, we find another prophecy showing what could be the soul-winning results of such denominational repentance:
People from around the world will come on pilgrimages and pour into Jerusalem from many foreign cities to attend these celebrations. People will write their friends in other cities [denominations] and say, “Let’s go to Jerusalem to ask the Lord to bless us, and be merciful to us. I’m going! Please come with me. Let’s go now!” (Zechariah 8:20, 21, Living Prophecies, paraphrased by Kenneth N. Taylor.)