The prayer of Jesus must of necessity be answered. This was His last prayer for His disciples before His death. Usually we attach much significance to the last words of our loved ones who have passed on. In connection with our Lord's farewell prayer, He prayed thus, "That they all may be one." (John 17:11,21,22) The prayer of Jesus will be answered and accomplished. He, who had finished the work that the Father had given Him to do, had included also the unity and the oneness that will be among believers. This prayer of Jesus was the grand consummation and final petition on earth for His own, the Church, His Body.
In His omnipotence Jesus could see beyond His disciples who were with him then, into the future when God's children would be divided into a thousand different factions. He knew that because of the disobedience of the children of God and their leaders, they would be scattered like the children of Israel. His great heart of love was moved within Him as He prayed that they should be one.
Let us get a true picture of the people of God today. I am writing as I am moved upon by the Spirit of God and I believe in the same spirit in which Jesus prayed for His own.
The picture presented to us today of God's people is a divided one. We must confess that it has been the subtle work of the enemy that has blinded the eyes of leaders and people alike to the awfulness of the divided condition in the Church today. Now I do not suppose that any of the great leaders in the past, or even many today, are aware that such is the case. But God is in the process of making it known and revealing to his people everywhere that they should be one.
I am positive that Luther, Wesley, Simpson and leaders in the Pentecostal outpouring never realized that they would be implicated in causing denominational barriers. It is something that happens almost unknown to the people and leaders. This was the Apostle Paul's contention with the Church of Corinth. In I Cor. 1:11-17 and 3:1-8 he was warning them of a party spirit dividing the flock of God. May I say here that a sectarian spirit can be found not only in a denomination but also in a local church, or even in an individual.
God sends a revival and uses some individual anointed of God. Some new truth or revelation has been established which is wonderful. People are excited and enthused and appreciate the leader, and love him which is natural. However, this is right where we have made our mistake. In our zeal and enthusiasm we become greatly exercised to do something to preserve it and in our great haste we throw up a man-made fence and forget that the God who sent the visitation is also able to preserve it, if we walk in the spirit and the light. So we throw up a denominational fence and forget that we are fencing more out than we are fencing in. It makes me think of a story I once heard about the farmer's duck pens situated so as to utilize part of the river so the ducks could swim in the river and still be fenced in from the other ducks owned by their neighbors. However, one spring the river flooded and the water arose so high that it covered all the fences. The ducks all got together and had a quacking good time. The reason they got together was that they were ducks. The reason that God's people are coming together is that they are Christians. We have all been made to drink of the water of life and of the same spirit and we are of a blood relationship. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, hath cleansed us from all unrighteousness, thus we are one as far as God is concerned. We have allowed fences, formulas, dogmas and hair splitting doctrines, creeds, colleges and man made traditions to divide us from one another, while all the while we could have walked in the continual unfolding of the revelation of God's Word. The truth of the matter is, there did not need to have been another group after Martin Luther the great reformer. Some may say, "Well, should we all be Lutherans?" No, we should all be Christians as in the church of Antioch. God wanted it to be one continuous revival with a gradual unfolding of truth embraced by all. They could have remained one body and still embraced all the potent truth and could have been a great testimony to the world. For Jesus prayed, "That they all may be one as the Father and I are one, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." The world will never really believe our testimony and thus the heathen will not fully acknowledge our Christ, until there is unity and love amongst God's people.
Jesus said, "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." (John 13:35) How shall the sinner ever come out of his confusion as long as there is a church on every corner crying out, "We are right, we have the truth. I am of Apollos, I am of Paul." You can put every other name in there if you like, it means the same thing. It has the same meaning as far as the unregenerated are concerned. God is pressing these things to our hearts. Today we must strive to come together. I believe that we should be aware that none of us have all the truth.
This is a very good picture of what we find in the church generally. God has given many groups a portion of truth because we know only in part, but like the six men of Hindustan, we spend so much time opposing the other man we cannot see the kernel of truth that he may have, and he cannot see the truth that we have for the same reason. Whereas if we all would contribute to the whole catalogue of revealed truth from God's Word, we should get a picture of the Body of Christ in its completeness with its many members and ministries. So in many ways we are all right and we are all wrong. It is by that which every joint supplieth. (Eph. 4:16)
I could not use such boldness of speech if I did not know the plain teaching of the Word of God. The word emphatically states that we will come together in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man. (Eph. 4:13)
Sometime ago I was flying my little aircraft on a beautiful Canadian summer day. It was calm and one had scarcely to touch the controls. While flying along praying and meditating upon the things of God, God spoke to me. He said, "My Son, I want you to recognize all of my people." The word of the Lord revolutionized my life as well as my ministry. Until that time I recognized particularly one certain group, but since that day, God has given me the ability to fellowship with all of God's born again saints. What a joy it has been to meet men of God from every walk of life and Christian background and have a part in uniting God's flock. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. (Ps. 133:1)
I do not think we can over-emphasize the need of a cooperative effort in evangelizing the world. The writer of the Corinthian letters said, "We are workers together with God." (II Cor. 6:1) We have a common enemy to fight and we have a common objective in Christian service, the salvation of immortal souls. A conversation with a group of soldier boys while doing missionary work in Japan, bears out what I have been relating. I was asking them questions about the war in Korea, for they had just returned from the front lines. In due course of the conversation they told of the tremendous push that the Communists manipulated. They had pushed one battalion right down to where they were to board ship to be evacuated from that section. They were almost captured and would have been if it were not for the heroic stand that the men made. Every man stood in his place. The fanatical mob of Red soldiers swarmed down over the hill screaming at the top of their lungs in a final effort to surround and capture our boys. The front held as every man held his ground. In that critical hour no man asked another whether he was American, Australian, Canadian, or Norwegian. They were facing a common enemy.
This is the way that each child of God should face the future. It is too late now to worry about whether a man is a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Pentecostal, whether a Christian is a Canadian or a Chinese, or if he is black or white, rich or poor. We face a common foe, the devil, therefore we should work together.
The great difficulty of the past has been that we were so busy attacking and fighting one another that we didn't have time to fight the devil. Having spent a good deal of time in Hawaii, different ones have related to me the story of Pearl Harbor. On that dreadful morning when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, killing many hundreds of our men and leaving many of our ships on the bottom of the ocean, I am told that every person, especially the Christians, volunteered their help. Preachers, missionaries, and lay workers gathered together in prayer in the mornings before their tremendous task of gathering the dead and caring for the wounded during the day. Now this is commendable, but I ask the question, "If we can work together in a time of tragedy, why do we lapse back into our old sectarian ways in peace time?" God is speaking to our hearts today. We are in peace so far, but we are facing a crisis. Let us work together.
Before I go on to prove that the Body of Christ should be one, I would like to tell you of a vision that the Lord gave me sometime ago. God had given me a partial revelation of the Body of Christ when He spoke to me in the aircraft experience, but now I was due for some more enlightenment. Time had elapsed as several months had gone by. The preaching on the Body of Christ and the necessity of unity had brought me real joy on the one hand and some heartache on the other. For while many came together rejoicing in their fellowship with other Christians, there were those leaders and their people that did not come, but rather found fault. So I began to worry about the details of this new move; who would come in and who would not, and if they did come in, would they pay the price of humility in acknowledging other Christians. The main reason that leaders do not like this teaching of God's Word is that it involves their position. If they were to flow together with others, what would happen to their standing or their denomination. So these things began to trouble me. God had to undertake for me in some way for I was becoming very burdened about the details to the extent I would lay awake at night. In some way God had to show me His purpose in it all.
Another reason that God gave us the vision that I am going to relate was that I was very ignorant about Body teaching having preached mostly evangelistic messages. I still do preach on the level of the sinner, but I needed more of the Pauline teaching about the Church. I might say that I have in the past been very skeptical of visions and dreams. As a pastor in bygone years when a brother would come to me saying that he had a vision or a dream, I would hasten to say, "Be sure now brother that it is in the Bible," thus discouraging him.
I still believe it has to be according to the word, but I have been made to understand that there are such things as real visions and dreams from God. God in his sovereignty gave me a vision of the Church to help me that I might help others to whom I tell it.
We were holding meetings in Minnesota and crowds were attending. People from different churches were coming together, rejoicing in fellowship and seeing the signs and wonders being performed through the operation of the gifts of the Spirit. Sick bodies were being healed, cripples miraculously delivered. It happened at a prayer meeting one afternoon while we fasted and prayed for the night service. While we were all on our faces before God, a holy hush came down on the meeting. We all felt like Isaiah of old in the year that King Uzziah died. He saw the Lord high and holy. We felt like the old prophet, unworthy and incompetent. My heart was melted before the Lord, thinking of the condition of Christ's Body, the church, all divided and powerless to meet the overwhelming need of the world, knowing that we were even losing ground. The population in the world increases 65,000 souls daily. The church as a whole is not keeping pace with this increase because of our lack of cooperation in a common effort.
These thoughts were running through my mind and having studied church history, I knew that whenever God revealed a new truth the ones closest to it rejected it. Would people reject the truth that God is wanting to make His people one? I thought of my friends in the ministry. Would they accept or reject? For my part, I had made up my mind I was going on with the Lord, but what of my friends. These things troubled me.