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Revolution for Jesus! |
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 "I'm here to start a revolution! I'm here to turn the System upside-down and do what Jesus did" |
David's new ministry to the hippies marked not
only the beginning of the movement that eventually became known as The Family, but also
his rupture with mainstream Christian denominations. While he had long been convinced of
the ineffectiveness of established churches, David had still to some extent been involved
in them, partly because there did not seem to be any viable alternative. However, he knew
that his new converts had no interest in assimilating into mainstream Christian churches,
and he had no desire to convince them to do so. As he later explained: "My converts ... for some reason or other did not want to follow me back into [the churches'] confines ... but for some reason or other preferred to remain free. ... Can you blame them? "This new breed of Christians preferred to be and to live like those in the beginning, like Jesus and His disciples, free and unhindered by the sabbatical laws and formal templism of a religious System that had not only lost its meaning, but its God in a lifeless, loveless, endless round of theological hairsplitting and hierarchical politics and going through the motions of beating the air and accomplishing nothing. "These new Christians wanted only to love God and their fellows and to worship Him in the limitless cathedral of His beautiful creation and to fellowship in the freedom of His Spirit and Truth! "So who needs churches? -- And who was I to try to force them [new converts] back into the moldy molds of the coffins of the dead?" [30] "What I wanted to see them do was become like the early little bands of Christians who met and lived together in homes, and not only worshipped the Lord in the Spirit and studied His Word avidly, but also spent most of their time out … winning souls to Jesus and adding to the Church daily new, alive, on-fire members of their little Christian families, and setting the whole world on fire with the Love and Spirit of God!" [31] At Huntington Beach, David became convinced that the time had come to break with the church completely. He recalled, "By this time we were so bitter against the churches for their hypocritical do-nothing religion, their multi-million dollar Gospel entertainment business, and their multi-billion dollar fancy church buildings that were robbing the rest of the world of salvation and sending millions of poor lost souls to Hell, that we were ready to declare war on the church system!" [32] David also recognized that his newly saved hippie congregation wanted the raw, uncompromising, unvarnished truth of the Gospel, rather than the watered-down version that had permeated mainstream Christianity. And he was happy to oblige them. In a talk given in September 1968 at the Light Club, he explained to his audience that Jesus was a true revolutionary, and that the Bible advocated nothing short of a complete spiritual revolution as the answer to society's problems. "I'm here to start a revolution! I'm here to turn that System upside-down and do what Jesus did, and show you what real Christianity is and what real religion is! And it's not going to church on Sunday! "The church today is about as far away from what Jesus preached as capitalism is from communism! I'm here to preach revolution! -- A revolution of the New Church of Jesus Christ to turn [the world] upside down and do what Jesus said to do. He never said to build one single building! He never said to start one single Bible college. He never said to organize one single denomination! He never said to go to church on Sunday! "I'm here for revolution -- the right kind, the kind the Apostle Paul wished to start. Not violence, not guns, not swords, not that kind of a revolution, not one of Molotov cocktails and rocks and beer bottles, but a revolution started by the sword of the Spirit! "This sword doesn't kill, it gives eternal life, and that's the only kind of a revolution that's going to work and last and accomplish anything that really means anything. Churchianity, denominationalism, religiosity, go-to-church-on-Sunday isn't gonna turn the world upside down. They've been doing that for the last 1,800 years and have accomplished little or nothing as far as changing the world is concerned. "Jesus was a revolutionary! Jesus rebelled against the status quo. He said, 'You ought to learn something, I'll have mercy and not sacrifice! I'll have love and mercy and not a bunch of churchianity!' Dressing up pretty and going into a nice pretty little building and sitting in a nice pretty little plush pew and listening to pretty little pious platitudes from the pulpit, and pretty little songs and pretty little organ music and seeing pretty little windows, is not Christianity! "The only answer is this: the Love of God, the Love of Christ, non-violence, mercy, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. That's the only thing that will ever do it, the only thing that will ever bring real revolution. Communism, Marxism, Leninism, socialism, any other kind of 'ism' might be able to overcome the world with guns and bullets and propaganda of the mind, but only God can change hearts. Only this Truth here [the Bible] can bring freedom. "Thank God for these [the hippies] who want that kind of a Jesus, the kind of revolutionary who walked the dusty roads and wore coarse clothing and ate common food and had nowhere to lay His head, with long hair, long robe and long beard, and just preached love and peace and salvation through God and His Love. No buildings, no denominations, no services, just a sweet message of love, feeding the hungry, helping the poor, that kind of a Jesus." [33] |
