Heretics from Heaven: How a Few Church Rejects Changed the World

By James Moore

This book documents with facts, quotes and long-ignored scripture, how a handful of Christian church leaders, shunned by the rest of the church, were able to bring heaven to earth. The author claims many religious leaders have unwittingly denied people the tangible, mystical experiences Jesus promised his followers, experiences common among the early Christians. A few revival leaders eventually led millions back to the Way and changed their world, even as the greater church called them heretics. Their incredible spiritual adventures, and some of the authors own remarkable encounters, are documented in this thought-provoking book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449712297

James Moore

James Moore is a professional writer who specializes in bringing to life forgotten aspects of history. His work has appeared in titles such as The Daily Express, Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Mirror and he is also the author and co-author of seven other books including Murder at the Inn: A History of Crime in Britain’s Pubs and Hotels, Pigeon-Guided Missiles: And 49 Other Ideas that Never Took Off; Ye Olde Good Inn Guide and History’s Narrowest Escapes. All have achieved widespread coverage in national and local media.

Book preview

Contents

1. DOES IT TAKE A HERETIC TO TRY CHRISTIANITY?

2. GOD USES HERETICS, NOT POLITICS

3. TREASURES RECOVERED BY HERETICS

4. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF REVIVAL

5. SKEPTICS OF THE FAITH

6. YOU’RE NOT RELIGIOUS MATERIAL, YOU SAY?

7. WHY GOD INVITES REJECTS TO REVIVALS

8. WHERE WE END, GOD BEGINS

9. CALLING ALL DUST PARTICLES

10. THE FOUR STATES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH

10. ADVENTURES OF CHURCH REJECTS

12. GOD COULD USE SOME MORE FAILURES

13. THE HUMILITY-DRIVEN LIFE

References

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; It was found too difficult and not tried.

G.K. Chesterton

How is it we know so much and experience so little? Why is it our heads are so full and our hearts so empty?

Alan Redpath

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1. DOES IT TAKE A HERETIC TO TRY CHRISTIANITY?

I’m probably what most churches would call a weaker member. I have probably been called worse things under people’s breath, like heretic. I see few church activities as being of much use to God, and most as a hindrance—that is, between major revivals. My lack of enthusiasm for various modern church activities is seen as a lack of spirituality apparently. But I don’t mind being thought of as weak, or even a heretic, for saying what I will say in this book. At least I can say it was other weaker members and people called heretics who led the five or six major American spiritual awakenings, plus one in Wales. Leaders of those revivals didn’t think much like other church leaders of their time, or our time either. The church wouldn’t call them heretics now we assume. Or would it?

There are several good books out on the history of revivals, and how they changed whole countries, but the church can’t seem to learn why they came to an end. Today’s church leaders will get up and praise the once-heretic-now-famous revival leader William Seymour. He led a major spiritual awakening at the turn of the 20th century, which is now called one of the greatest. (The Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles). Sidney Alhstrom, a Yale professor, called Seymour the most influential black religious leader of the 20th century.¹ So he was, and modern church leaders may praise Seymour today, yet we seldom see them behaving as he did. They also do a lot of things Seymour didn’t do, like preach for an hour every Sunday. He usually sat quietly praying through a meeting. He came with little or no preaching agenda. He made time for a young girl to get up and sing spontaneously, and he encouraged everyone in the meeting to testify and speak if they had a word for the moment. Visitors to the revival, attended by people from all over the world, might find 200 people crowded into the little church, sitting quietly in the thick presence of God for several hours, while the pastor (Seymour) said nothing. A sermon would have sounded completely out of place. (More details to follow about Seymour’s meetings and the world-wide revival he fueled). It is simply a mystery why one would praise certain revival leaders and never allow a meeting to be run as they ran them. But then again, revival leaders didn’t run their meetings. God ran them, and not one person got bored, as we will see.

Lessons from church history are being ignored

What one finds in a thorough study of spiritual awakenings is leaders who were said to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong things, holding wrong doctrines. As if God was concerned. The apostle Paul said God uses the things that are nothing to bring to nothing the things that are.² Such is the history of revival. On those rare occasions when a few heaven-bound misfits decided to follow the original instructions, massive spiritual awakenings occurred. Unfortunately I can count on my fingers the number of Christian heretics who led such mass re-births. At the risk of being called a disgruntled heretic myself, I also suggest that our most popular mega-church pastor has little idea how paltry his 25,000 member church is, compared to the numbers who followed certain Christian leaders. One colonial-era evangelist we will study, George Whitefield, would find 20,000 listeners in a single one of his outdoor meetings. But the leaders of Christian awakenings never had a mega-church nor wanted one. (They could have had one, easily). Further, no present day pastor I know about has the same spiritual insight, motives, character or passionate humility of the leaders you will soon get to know, or they would see the same world-changing results. Some in the modern church now speak well of those men, to be sure, and yet we seem to have learned almost nothing from their extraordinary and surprisingly similar examples.

Church history raises many questions the modern church doesn’t answer:

1. Relatively few people since the early church days claim to have had the experiences described in the New Testament. Why is that, if the church was following the original directions?

2. The great revival leaders were surprisingly uninterested in politics, yet the typical modern church demonstrates more faith in the power of politicians than the power of God. The religious right and the religious left, I might say, want to tell us how to vote. Isn’t this evidence of a lack of faith in God himself? Do they think God can’t do anything if we elect the wrong president?

3. No large church at the moment conducts meetings as the early Christians did, a primary reason the church today does not have their remarkable experience. How can a large church, the goal of most pastors, hold a meeting as the early Christians did? It’s not even possible to experience what Paul clearly describes in the early church, in 95% of churches today.

4. The few leaders who decided to try the original version of Christianity over the last four centuries were not from any particular denomination, but were remarkably similar in character, manner, experiences and teachings. Yet as we study their lives, we note how remarkably different they were from the typical church leader today. Why is that?

From heretics to gifted saints

Church history shows a consistent pattern: God gives his greatest gifts to those least worthy in the eyes of humans. There’s more hope for us weaker members and misfits than anyone knows, at least between revivals. God’s gifts and powers are given to church rejects probably because they stay humble longer. A strange religious idea was born in the 4th or 5th century which destroyed the church life up to that time. It was decided that some people, properly indoctrinated, must be more worthy than others to receive or exercise the remarkable gifts Paul named and described. The priest class was born, never to fully die, except during a few great spiritual awakenings. It would be twelve centuries before anybody really tried Christianity again, and some were killed for doing so, by the church. By the 4th century, leaders had began to confuse limelight with spiritual light. The leaders of our few genuine, world-changing spiritual awakenings since Martin Luther’s time had no problem being known as weaker members, and made a notable effort to stay out of the limelight.

Apparently zealous Christians can’t seem to understand why Paul said that God uses the lowly things and the things counted as nothing, to change everything. He makes heretics into saints, regularly. Paul didn’t see any limit to what God could do with virtually nothing, and he had personal experience. He claimed, I was in no way behind any of the chief apostles, though I am nothing.³ Paul called himself the worst of sinners because he persecuted a church upon which God was showering favor and gifts, nine distinct gifts of the Spirit to be exact.⁴ These marvelous gifts were common in the early church, so common that Paul had to warn against the abuse of them. It’s surprising how the church today rationalizes the lack of them. Or assumes some weaker members of the church are somehow unworthy of them, a logically silly idea in view of Paul’s experience. He was nothing in his own words, and had these gifts in abundance. Christianity, at least the original version of it, is about rejects getting the best things from God. It’s about ordinary people getting gifts some seminary graduates don’t believe exist. A church convinced it can try Christianity without the gifts of the Spirit is the one most likely not to be trying it.

Those who did recover some of these nine gifts are called various things by those who don’t have them. That’s because religious or zealous-looking seminary graduates think that if they didn’t get these gifts, nobody else should either. They have accused the receivers of faking the gifts at best, or of being heretics at worst. I only ever got two of those gifts, or maybe three, but seemed to lose them for years at a time. In hindsight, it was because I spent too much time in churches where only certain leaders are considered worthy to exercise their God-given gifts in meetings, not that most leaders understand what Paul was talking about. Only a few heretics got over the worthiness idea long enough to lead meetings where any person was allowed to speak, and it’s amazing what happened, beginning with the early Quakers. The least among them had extraordinary spiritual gifts, including the youngest. It’s also amazing how the larger church persecuted the Quakers and later, various other humble heretics, who had gotten closer to God, and changed their worlds more than any other leaders had for a hundred years.

In the days of George Whitefield, God well proved his power to change people in ways that made Ben Franklin remark, it was wonderful to see the change soon made in our citizens, change his famous wisdom had not made in them.⁵ He was speaking about the American colonial Great Awakening, stirred primarily by Whitefield’s itinerant preaching, which irritated almost every church leader in New England. Whitefield is only now getting sufficient credit for an awakening which made church misfits from all denominations, even the outcast Quakers of the time, rejoice together.

Only the lowly

Trying Christianity does not mean we will grow stronger, richer or more famous. Its primary goal is to produce much humbler servants than we find in say, the U.S. Congress (?) Perhaps that’s why so few have really tried Christianity, and why even Christians seem to doubt God can do much without our help. The Way, which is what the first Christians called their simple faith, was not the way of those who think they can change this world by their own force of will or by putting different leaders in office. They will not see real spiritual change. Only those who have given up on the world are able to put all their faith in God. Jesus said, Of myself I can do nothing. I try not to think about where that leaves us. Jesus is saying the will of God (paradise, in a word) will not be realized by people exercising their own talents. We will keep repeating history over and over, both in the world and in the church, until we grasp what he is saying. Changes we make on our own are only temporal, and mostly affect the material world. Medical miracles are wonderful, but can only offer a longer physical life, and cures can be as bad as the disease. Jesus also said, There is none good but God.⁶ There is a time to honor one another, but if there is a God, than we are nothing by definition. Logically, the more distant we are from him, the less likely we would be aware of it.

Before we can fully try Christianity, God must turn our thinking inside out. The greatest Christian is only the greatest servant, (which it turns out, is what makes heaven a perfect heaven). The least become the greatest.⁷ The first will be last. Those who mourn here will laugh in heaven. The meek will inherit the earth, sooner or later. Hence the thirsty church reject is the person God best uses to bring heaven to earth, as church revival history proves. God uses them because they are first to see the distance between us and God, and the foolishness of claiming otherwise, as some Christians do.

I can’t imagine being anything but a Christian now, but it took me forever to find the peace and power Jesus promised, with many false starts, until I realized what God can do with nothing. So much in me needed weakening—so much false humility, pride and narcissism had to go first. At times I was just too good or busy to follow Jesus. But he proved to me how spiritually needy I was, and he never let go of me. Now I don’t mind saying myself, Of myself I can do nothing. Being weak isn’t as bad as folks think. It’s a huge relief actually. If God empties us, it is only so he can fill us more fully. The strongest Christians were the weakest once, reduced to nothing like Paul, rejected by former friends, and called heretics except by the few who were seeking the same God. We can go to a seminary or not, but if it doesn’t somehow produce more humility, it is useless to God, and even a hindrance. You can get closer to God sitting next to a praying grandmother in church, than reading a theologian.

Jesus and the human ego are completely incompatible

One reason Jesus hung out with sinners, and various humble heretics, instead of religious people, is that most bad, irreligious people have no problem with being nothing. The same goes for the church rejects God used to start massive revivals. The atheist argument that the Christian God is intolerant is logically false. Jesus consistently takes in all kinds of intolerable people. Take Paul and me for example. Our human ideas of goodness aren’t much good to the Christian God. Compared to the standard of goodness Jesus laid down in his ego-deflating Sermon on the Mount, where thinking adulterous thoughts is the same as committing adultery,⁸ none of us have much claim to holiness. The good news is, God doesn’t talk much to those who claim it. Heaven is for sinners. Most righteous people won’t like it there. Some people, sad to say, are too good for heaven. You hear them say so in their criticisms of Christians. Skeptics like to say, I don’t need a crutch. Or, I know Christians who do bad things I don’t do. Some skeptics sound much like the religious people they condemn, religious people who are above getting revived at a revival, just as most skeptics are. Some Christians are too good to be around people going to their own church, let alone other churches, which they assume have doctrinal cooties. How ironic. But the rest of us lowly, irreligious sinners know we need continuous help getting into heaven. God knows that, and he comes a lot closer to us when we simply admit it. It would be foolish of God to do otherwise, just as it is foolish to try to give gifts to a willful, disobedient and self-absorbed child. It’s unloving. The child will only grow more distant.

Nobody comes remotely close to the standard Jesus raised in his famous, irritating sermon. I like to give money to help people, but Jesus said I have to give without letting anybody, including myself, know about it. Of course I do know, but Jesus said we have to give without letting the left hand know what the right hand is doing. Rich people typically let someone know how much they are giving, as if it was a sacrifice anyway, and even do press releases about some gift. But Jesus says sorry, they haven’t done anything he would reward anyone for, if they can’t keep it a secret. He says calling my brother a fool is roughly equal to murdering him, probably because when we do that, we are murdering a person’s spirit, which is what Jesus cared about most. His standard is quite impossible. Compared to it, weaker member is an understatement for 90% of Christians, who should be a lot more humble and forgiving than most are. The first time I read Jesus’ standard of goodness, I backslid for two months. Any honest, sane sinner would, at least until they learned what the Christian God can do with nothing, and prefers to do with nothing actually. Like God used to do, back when Paul said I will rather boast about my weaknesses.⁹ What Christian would say that today? But of course Paul would brag about his weaknesses, being an apostle made from nothing, and so gifted, by God alone.

I didn’t understand the book of Romans at first, and it took me fifteen years to figure it out, simple as it is when medieval religious notions are stripped away. Jesus doesn’t really expect us to meet his standard. He expects us to read it and admit we could never do it. Then he has us read Romans, written by the chief of sinners. He just wants us to admit we are more work than we can do, and ask God to help. He wants us to read it and realize just how lost we are, instead of going around with some righteous fig leaf on, wishing Democrats would repent. Or in the case of the minority liberation preachers, wishing Republicans would repent. We all live in various shades of darkness really, until we grasp what Jesus was talking about, and what the apostle who wrote Romans was talking about. Jesus makes the law impossible, and Romans tells us we are covered anyway, by his own works. This sac-religious, ego-deflating, uniquely Christian paradox is difficult to grasp,