If you take a closer look at Christianity today under the Lord’s shining light you can see that Satan utilizes religion to keep people away from Christ and the church as God’s will. Where can we see or hear about our personal relationship with Christ and the enjoyment of the all-inclusive Christ as the good land? Where can we see the practical building up of the church as the Body of Christ?
What we see in Christianity is all kinds of doctrines, practices, performances, organizations, and a lot of falsehood; the religious system in Christianity is the present evil age today from which we need to be saved (Gal. 1:4). The Lord wants to save His people to the uttermost, and He desires to obtain the built-up Body of Christ; however, He cannot build up His Body in Christianity, and He cannot fulfill His purpose in this religious system in today’s Christendom.
When Paul wrote the book of Galatians he was clear: Judaism was a present evil age hindering the believers from enjoying Christ and building up the church, and he testified wholeheartedly that the religious world was crucified to him and him to the world.
For us today the present evil age is the degraded and deformed Christianity (see Matt. 13:31-33, 44-46 with footnotes in the Recovery Version). Christianity has become a big tree (instead of being a small plant of life, sojourning on earth and being available to men) where there’s all kinds of evil, unclean, and false things taking place all in the name of God and for God. Christianity has become a big leavened bread, a religion that is easy to chew and digest, but it is impure, with many evil and unclean elements, and not according to the divine revelation in the word of God.
Christ is versus religion; He was crucified mainly by the religionists of His time (who held the present Scriptures to the letter), and His pure seekers were persecuted throughout the ages mainly by the religionists in Christianity (more genuine believers have been killed by the Roman Catholic church than by all the persecutions initiated by the Roman emperors).
Today we live under a thick cloud of religion, and even though we came out of religion in Christianity to be in the church life in the Lord’s recovery, we need to be detoxified and decontaminated from all the impure and evil elements from Christianity. May the Lord shine on us through His living word and remove any elements of religion from our being!
We All need to be Delivered from Religion, from Christianity as the Present Evil Age
Today we are in the church life in the Lord’s recovery, and we are outside of religion; however, we need to realize still how much we need to be delivered from the influence of religion in the present evil age. If we don’t realize what religion is, we can’t be delivered from it but are clueless and oblivious, a setup for the enemy to come in and do what he wants.
The church is the living Body of Christ, and we meet on the genuine ground of oneness, but what surrounds us today is a religion – the deformed and degraded Christianity – which is full of traditions, organizations, performances, and falsehoods; the Lord cannot accomplish His purpose in such a situation!
We are surrounded by Christianity with its traditions, performances, and falsehoods, and the Lord will not remove it until He returns. What we need to do is to exercise our spirit to touch Christ and experience Him as grace in our spirit; in this way we participate in God’s economy, which is versus religion. By enjoying Christ and seeking to fellowship with the saints in spirit to be built up as the Body of Christ, any religion is exposed and we are released from the influence of religion.
In religion there is no light, no life, no truth, and no reality; Christianity has Christ only in name but not in His person and living reality. What God wants is to reveal His Son Christ in us and thus rescue us from religion. We need to be saved from the snare of religion and be delivered from Christianity so that we may enjoy Christ with the saints on the ground of oneness and build up the church as the Body of Christ.
The Christian life is not about keeping the law but about having Christ living in us (Gal. 2:20), and we are not here to keep traditions but to have Christ revealed in us in a fresh way every day (Gal. 1:15-16). We all need to be delivered from religion, from Christianity as a present evil age; we must come OUT of Babylon, and Babylon must come OUT of us (see Ezra 1; Rev. 18:4).
In Zech. 3:1-4 Satan was accusing the high priest because, even though he came out of Babylon, he was still clothed with the filthy garments from Babylon; but the Lord ministered to him, rebuked Satan, and took away the Babylonian garments and clothed the high priest with the beautiful garments of the priests.
It is unavoidable for us to still have some religion in us, but the Lord ministers to us, He washes our feet through all the saints, and He slowly removes any element of religion from us until we fully function as priests to God.
The Lord wants to remove from us every element from the present evil age that got into us; we have no idea what a mixture we are – we are filled with love for the Lord, personal desires, ambition, and many elements of religion, so the Lord with His seven burning and searching eyes is shining on us to detoxify us, decontaminate us, and remove any element of religion from our being.
We should always be on the alert – not paranoid but watchful – and allow the Lord to rescue us out of the present evil age and remove every element of religion from our being. We shouldn’t trust our subjective feelings but open to the Lord and ask Him,
Lord, is there anything of religion still in our being? We trust in Your light and discernment! Lord, deal with anything religious in us, and make us God-men for the building up of the church! Fill us with Your resurrection life and grow in us unto maturity so that Your Body may be built up. Lord, expose and remove any religious element from our being! Shine on us and search us with Your seven eyes until we are fully purified from any element of this present evil age!
Coming out of Religion and Maintaining the Gap between the Lord’s Recovery and Christianity
In the Lord’s recovery our history has been of coming out of Christianity – we have seen something of the Lord’s purpose and economy, we realized that Christianity is the present evil age, and we have come out of the present evil age unto the Lord, answering His call in Heb. 13:12-13 and Rev. 18:4.
We now stand for the pure church life, and we want to practice God’s economy on the local ground of the oneness in the Body of Christ. Others may criticize us or be offended with us, but we are not here to be man-pleasers (Gal. 1:10) but we obey the word of God and God’s economy.
We have burned the bridges between us and Christianity, and we forsake any religion and degraded element in Christianity today. We don’t want to “bridge the gap” between the Lord’s recovery and Christianity because the Lord’s recovery is absolutely different from today’s religion!
We are not concerned with merely knowing the Bible in letters, the main doctrines in the word of God, or having an organized church in which everyone is taken care of; we reject any wood, grass, and stubble, and we want to enjoy and experience the Triune God as the gold, silver, and precious stones with which we can build up the church.
I am afraid that in the coming years, if the Lord delays His coming, some subtle ones will be used by the enemy again to try to bridge the gap between us and Christianity. We need to maintain such a gap between us and Christianity. The wider this gap is the better because it is a gap between us and the present evil age. Thank the Lord that Brother Nee was a pioneer ahead of us to come out of Christianity into the pure church life to accomplish God’s will to have the Body of Christ. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1973-1974, vol. 1, “The History of the Church and the Local Churches,” p. 95)
We do not reject other believers, and we treasure the fellowship we have with many fellow saints in Christianity, but we will not compromise with Christianity. All believers in Christ on earth have Christ as their life within, but the system of Christianity holds them into a present evil age, and pure fellowship in spirit is close to impossible unless we all come back to the genuine ground of oneness.
We will never build a bridge between the Lord’s recovery and Christianity but rather maintain a gap – as shown to us in the word of God – but we are open to fellowship in spirit with those who are willing to walk in the light. The wider is the gap between the Lord’s recovery and Christianity, the better it is, because it is a gap between us and the present evil age.
We stay away from the system in the religious world, but we are open to fellowship and enjoy the Lord with the dear believers in Christianity who are open to fellowship in the light. Oh, may the Lord save us from building a bridge between the Lord’s recovery and Christianity, and may He maintain a pure and genuine church life in the Lord’s recovery!
Lord Jesus, we love You, we love Your living word, we love the teaching of the apostles, and we love the church. Lord, thank You for bringing us out of the present evil age and into the pure and genuine church life in Your recovery. Save us from trying to build a bridge between the Lord’s recovery and Christianity. Lord, show us that it is impossible for there to be any reconciliation between the recovery and Christianity, and keep us in the enjoyment of Christ in oneness with the saints in the fellowship of the Body of Christ in the local churches!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, brother Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1977, vol. 1, “The Lord’s Recovery and the Present Situation of Religion,” ch. 4, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Crucial Points of the Major Items of the Lord’s Recovery Today (ITERO 2015 fall), week 9 / msg 9, The Lord’s Recovery versus the Present Evil Age and the Eschatology of the Church.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Up from Babylon, where the sects abound, / From division we must all rise up! / Brothers, Babylon’s not the proper ground; / From division we must all rise up! / Rise up! Rise up! / From division we must all rise up! (Hymns #1252)
# I’ve come out from Babylon; / I’ll never go back anymore. / I’ve come out from Babylon; / I’ll never go back anymore. / Since I found the local church, / I’ll never go back anymore. / Since I found the local church, / I’ll never go back anymore. (Hymns #1127)
# We have found the local church, our home; / We are home and home indeed! / Nevermore in Babylon we roam; / In the church is all we need. (Hymns #1153)
Paul began to see Christ. It had pleased God to reveal Christ into him, and he was rescued out of religion. This is why he said that Christ gave Himself for our sins to rescue us out of the present evil age. Now he is writing that the Galatians might obtain the same deliverance. They had been trapped in a snare of religion and needed deliverance from religion. Now it is not a matter of keeping the traditions but of having Christ revealed in us. And it is not a matter of keeping the law but of having Christ living in us. “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Christ should not only be revealed in us but also live in us. Christ has to be both our life and our living. (Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1973-1974, vol. 1, “The Indwelling Christ in the Canon of the New Testament,” pp. 604-605)