Consider Your Ways!

    "Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, and this temple to lie in ruins?" Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: "Consider your ways!" Haggai 1:4,5

     Haggai the prophet was saying to God's people to consider their ways of neglecting the temple of God and being concerned with their own lives. So it is today with everyone's busy lifestyle, who has time for God?

     In Haggai's time it was the same as today, the people had neglected the rebuilding of the temple for eighteen years and the time had come for them to repent and build up the house of God. The temple is not a building but an assembly of blood bought priests trained and equipped to reap the harvest of the earth and to establish God's kingdom.

     The devil has deceived millions into believing that Sunday morning is the only time to meet and that the building is the "House of God" and the pastor is the leader of God's church, the supreme authority over God's people, how not so! This demonically inspired scheme was dragged up out of the recesses of the old testament priesthood and erected as the model for the modern day church.

     "You have sown much, and bring in little; you eat, but do not have enough; you drink but you are not filled with drink; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes." Haggai 1:6

     No harvest, no provision, no teaching and no spiritual covering, a watchman's hut in a cucumber field. The modern day Laodecian institutional, consumer driven, seeker friendly church of the last days has become a laughing stock to the whole world with no power and no Message, always begging for money, but offering nothing in return to a love starved world needing a Savior.

     It is definitely time to consider our ways and repent of this foolishness and build up the true body of Christ in which all the fullness of the Godhead dwells! Jesus is our model and He built His church with apostles first, men trained and equipped to be engaged in spiritual warfare and intersession for the harvest to come, men filled with the vision and blueprint of God.

     Today there is no apostolic vision because the house is built on the wrong foundation, pastors instead of apostles are leading God's people into sheep pens, dominating them by guilt and shame and separating them from their brothers and sisters in the world. Think about it, there is a church on every corner but they don't communicate with one another, thus becoming a potted plant instead of a living, growing vineyard.

     "You looked for much, but indeed it came to little: and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why?" says the Lord of hosts. "Because of My house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house." Haggai 1:9

 HOW DOES IT LOOK TO YOU?

     Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Haggai 2:3

     For the Jews to whom this was written, the former temple was burned with its walls torn down, filled with refuse and lay in ruins, but to us, our former temple was the first assembly of Pentecost, a body built by the Lord with twelve apostles in place and filled with the Holy Spirit, sold out for Jesus. Today it is just an empty shell of good intentions filled with needy people wanting to be catered to by their pastor.

     Compared to Pentecost today's church is woefully inadequate to fulfill the mission and mandate of God. Unable to move in the Spirit throughout the world and spread the gospel, it remains encapsulated and isolated from the world it is commanded to reach. Attached to the world system with an umbilical cord of fear it trembles at the least trial of faith and turns away in politically correct unbelief.

     I seriously doubt that this traditional church model can change this side of a Holy Ghost nuclear explosion because of years of tradition and doctrine passed down from generation to generation, so the only answer is: start from scratch and build anew with the direction of God's Holy Spirit, men of faith and power going out for the prize of the upward call of Christ, winning the lost and making disciples of all nations.

     Having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! II Timothy 3:5

Your servant in Christ, Timothy Laughlin
   Minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ