Berkley, Here We Come!
Why do I feel this way when I hear B. McLaren talk about sissy revolution? It's not very nice.
Every so often I run across a cool brother or sister the Lord uses at the most-opportune time to give me a sense of direction. In this case, it was my new friend Lambert Dolphin, from the West Coast, near San Fran. In a series of correspondances concerning our ambition to incite authentic Christian Revolution to the West Coast (as opposed to that creepy, sissy stuff McLaren & Co. yap about), I wrote to him summarizing my position. His answer was most warm and welcoming.
My Letter to Lambert
My dear brother-in-Christ:
As you probably know, I’m agitating Revolution, and there is much evidence of our Savior’s kind favor towards this effort. He continues to bring young, gifted, zealous Christian converts to us from among the “Lost Millennial Generation”. I feel such a deep, heart-rending burden to get these rather uneducated (but terribly excited) brothers heading the right direction—heading into “The Fight” rather than away from it. The poison of “Personal Peace and Prosperity Christianity” is so lethal and pervasive among older Christians!
You mentioned earlier that you thought I was an evangelist, and while this is possibly true, the undeniable truth is that I’m an agitator. (Is there such a spiritual gift? I hope so, because I certainly have it, whether it’s a gift or a curse!) I’m afraid I’m the Abbie Hoffman-type (lots of hot & acerbic air), and I need to be surrounded by the Jerry Reubin-types as organizers.
So this is why we must come to Berkley and foment Revolution. And I think Our Savior is grieved about Berkley and the darkness surrounding it.
And so Lambert responds:
Howdy Keith,
Back in the late 1930s my mom got her first washing machine. It had a rotary, vertical agitator that worked fine on small loads but bogged way down on coveralls and heavy stuff.
Yes, churches DO need Agitators like you. But the situation is so bad I wonder if small foot-ball sized nuclear bombs might be more effective? That might reveal the black hole at the center of a good many congrtegations?
The polarization in the Church of Laodicea these days is amazing to me. Jesus is outside knocking. He would like to be invited in. Many of the Lord’s closest followers are also outside the assemblies just as Jesus is.
This seems to me to be paving the way for the final form of the church—the harlot church of Revelation 17. For the first time, Jesus tells his followers to just plain leave.
Not all churches are Laodicean of course. Churches like the other six depicted in Rev. 2-3 are to be found in the world around us as well.
The folks I know in Laodicean churches have a vague sense of stress and distress, but little awareness of the huge changes in the world scene which started happening about a year ago.
By all means Agitate! I think the reality is that only a remnant of professing Christians in this country is serving our Lord in such a way that the Spirit is breaking into the world through these people.
I listened to Dallas Willard’s Q&A sessions in Menlo Park at least three times with great interest, http://mppc.org/toughquestions. He is a prof of philosophy at USC and is used to faculty members students. He talks about the near-total ignorance of what the Bible says, or our need to read it all, and to begin to act on what we hear. “If you plan to go to heaven, go now,” he says.
It seems to me that God is still very much retraining evil in the world. What we see is more really ugly stuff breaking loose through around the edges, but I think most people live in denial of the “wrath that is to come.” Movie attendance is way up. The people I know who are surviving economically are usually keeping a low profile. Times like these make more and more of the Bible appropriate, timely, applicable but hearing truth and not acting on truth, leaves one worse off than before.
It is nice to hear from you my brother. I think there are several subjects I wanted to bring up, but right at the moment I can’t think of them.
Shalom,
Lambert
Billy Graham, 1949
“When God gets ready to shake America, He may not take the Ph.D. and the D.D. God may choose a country boy …
God may choose the man that no one knows, a little nobody, to shake America for Jesus Christ in this day, and I pray that He would!”
And Then?
So Lambert then proceeds to give me some contacts and further instructions on how to establish a beachhead there at Berkley. I am most-earnest in my prayers that something very concrete and wonderful will come of all this!
