End Time Church Reformation

	The world has seen many reformations in it's history, but none like the one that God is about to bring upon the church, it will turn the church upside down. Many, Christians today, believe that God is getting ready for a mighty move of His Spirit and are waiting with much anticipation. Many of these people, however, haven't realized that a new wineskin must be formed first, then God will pour out the new wine (Lk. 5:37-39). Our desire is for God to first pour out His Spirit, then we will make a new wineskin to fit it, but Jesus says, "no one puts new wine into old wineskins", and that includes His Father.

	Our attitude has been to wait for God to get with it, but He has actually been waiting for us, to obey His promptings and form the new wineskin. We must be careful not to echo the sentiments of those who have drunken the old wine, that "The old is good enough", and not being open to change. His move will be new and fresh and He isn't going to come in our old ways and therefore those who won't give them up will have a hard time with what God is about to do.

	The fact is most revivals and movements of the past have almost always brought upheaval and shaking, which produces much controversy and persecution; and it always changes the status quo. Are you really ready for something new and fresh?

Do we really Rely and Count on the Holy Spirit?

	If the Holy Spirit didn't turn up to church, this Sunday Morning, would many churches realize it? Sadly many wouldn't, and some would go on for weeks without realizing it, except that they might notice that there are no warm fuzzies. The reason for this is that, most of the church has become man led and man controlled. Even though we say that we are committed to the leading of the Holy Spirit, in actual practice we depend on ourselves.

	If a pastor, teacher or worship leader doesn't get something specific from God, are they ready to do nothing, and wait until God does turn up, or do they put together something on their own and carry on, because that is what people are expecting. If this is the case, then God's presence is a nice addition, but it is certainly not something we depend on it.

	Jesus' ministry on the other hand would have stopped instantly, because everything He did and everything He said, was totally based on the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit wasn't there He couldn't and wouldn't have done a single thing.

	To change the way the Church does ministry, so that it is more consistent with Jesus? way, (remember we are His body), will take nothing short of a reformation.

Are there are times when Revival is no Longer Enough?

	Isn't reformation too strong a word though, don't we just need another revival? Well, the word revival, means "to restore life to that which is dead", is that all we need, to restore life to the church the way it is?

	If you think yes, then consider this; most of our churches wouldn't hire Jesus as a senior pastor, He was too young and didn't have enough education. In fact, except for Paul, it is very unlikely that they would be willing to hire any of the apostles. Isn't something seriously wrong, if we say Jesus is the Head of the church, but if He came today we wouldn't hire Him, because He doesn't have a degree? How did we ever let the present church, become so removed from the early church?

	We did it, by letting education become an idol, and by bowing our knee to the shrine of "human ideas and programs". There is nothing wrong with education and knowledge, unless it replaces God. The Church has gradually shifted from seeking God for everything, to relying more and more on "programs that work" and ideas from the world.

Missing Person Alert! God

	The church discovered that because God doesn't always do what we expect Him to, it could become very frustrating and unsettling to continually live on the edge and actually let Jesus and lead the church day by day. So, to make things a little more stable and consistent, we learned how to do ministry in two ways, 1) How to do it when He turns up and 2) How to do it when He doesn't turn up. Gradually over the years, however, we found ourselves doing #2 more and more often. The problem is, since God wasn't there, we needed to find a new way gage things by, so we turned to, "intellect" as our standard.

	That way, if we seek God about a certain area and He doesn't answer us, instead of be frustrated and waiting on Him to find out why, we can go to method #2 and look for our answers in a book or a conference. Another example is a church that is looking for a new pastor, instead of taking the time to discern his character, his gifting from God, His ability to hear God and whether he is called, they can just check his degrees and make sure he can preach a good sermon. The result of this choice, is a very knowledgeable church with very little real power, love or maturity. All of the recent falls of "knowledgeable" leaders indicate the weakness of this emphasis.

	Does this mean that we are suppose to throw our minds out the window? No, of course not! We just need to get them back into the proper relation with our spirit, under the Holy Spirit. For example, if someone comes into church and your mind says they seem like a good Christian, but your spirit is flashing red alert because something is wrong. You need to make a decision, do you let your mind rule and tell your spirit to shut up, or do you go with your spirit and tell the mind, "something is wrong, find out what it is". If so, the mind would then question them a little more carefully and in most cases find out that there is false doctrine or something else wrong. The goal is to use both mind and spirit; the question is which one is in charge.

	What about books and conferences? Again the issue is priority. If when I am seeking God, He tells me to read a book or to go to a conference, then it is obedience, but if I do it instead of seeking God, then it is self-reliance.

Only a Reformation is enough now

	Each of us have little promptings from the Holy Spirit all day long, do take time to learn to listen and discern them, or we find that it is much easier to simply dismiss them and rely on our mind. The result is, we have systematically cut God out of His own church and then are genuinely surprised that we see very little of His presence and power. We cry out for God to come back in reviving power, but we have made it so there is really no place for Him to come back to.

	In the last few years we have seen a number of movements in the church that seem very positive. Renewal movements, pastoral unity, men's and women's ministry and multitudes of conferences. So with all this happening we should see the church growing, stronger and having a major impact on the secular world around us.

We find, however, that the statistics paint a totally different picture. -

In 1992 - 47% of population in U.S. went to church,

In 1996 it's dropped to 38%. During the same period those who read the bible dropped from 47% to 31%

	These are some of the statistics that were shared by George Barna recently, when he concluded that after more than 12 years of exhaustive research into many facets of the Christian church, that "The North American church is dying and church leaders should have seen it coming."

	Despite his gloomy assessment, he also believes that, where there's life there's hope". Barna's California based research group, does research for many large ministry organizations and it's work is renown as providing the most accurate snapshot of the state of Christianity in North America.

Here are some of the other results of his research and comments:

- 81% of Christians don't know what the Great Commission is.

- 50% of Christians do not know the content of John 3:16.

- Less than 10% of Christians pray for the salvation of another person

- 67% of churches offer no training in evangelism.

	"Christians are now cherry picking their beliefs from all sorts of conflicting sources and putting them together in a customized blend that makes us feel good and then calling it Christianity. In fact, most individuals who claim to trust in Jesus Christ do not have a biblical worldview. They don't think like Christians and they don't act like Christians. They don't even have the basics of the faith nailed down."

	"Three out of four Americans say there is no such thing as absolute moral truth and this is devastating for the Christian faith, however the percentage among those who call themselves born again Christians is virtually identical, at 64%.

	"Although every individual has been given a different vision from God, research shows that less than 2% have identified God's vision for their lives and for American churches it is just as bad, less than 4% of have identified God's vision for their ministry". (This is shocking, it means 98% of believers and 96% of churches don't know God's vision for their life)

	"Many Pastors do not see themselves as leaders, and to place the burden of visionary leadership on them can be an "unrealistic expectation". Nonetheless, Barna says that "a revolution has an individual or group of leaders at the helm". "To the untrained eye, a visionary Christian, looks like a nut, however a church filled with visionary Christians will transform society and make an impact on its community"

	"We need to be open to other approaches of how we do church, the model we now have is based on a Western European approach developed 500 to 600 years ago, for and agrarian culture and non-transient population. It was a great model for that culture, but it has no relevance to today."

Why is the church so weak

	The question then is "why, with all these movements is the church still so weak and ineffective"? I believe the answer is God does not intend to revive the church the way it is. A dramatic change in the way church is done has to take place first, before we see the harvest come in. Or to put it another way, He won't pour out the new wine until the new wineskin is ready. We need to go from, churches that are controlled and led by the mind and man, to a church that is surrendered and obedient to it's head Jesus Christ. This will not happen easily, however, because the religious spirit that has rooted itself in the church will not be driven out easily.

	Reviving the church the way it is now, just isn't going to be enough, we need more than renewal, we even need more than another movement, We need a new Reformation -

	There is only one wineskin that Jesus is looking to and fro throughout the whole earth for now and that is a church that is completely led and controlled by His Holy Spirit. Instead of trying to get God to fit into our programs (and being frustrated because He doesn't always do what we want), we would actually seek God and do only those things He told us to. A church like this would finally be the body of Christ with Jesus as the Head, and not just a figurehead.

This is a great theory, but can it actually happen? By the grace of God it must, because if this reformation doesn't come we will not see the great harvest in gathering at the end of the age.

Just recently a number of leaders have been expressing similar thoughts, here are a few

Dr. Bill Hamon

During a recent conference he shared about what he saw on the horizon. He began by proposing that we are in the throws of not just "renewal"; not just "revival"; not just a "new awakening"; but a "Third Apostolic Reformation".

1st Reformation)

The first was when Jesus appeared on the earth. Major foundational changes occurred at that time; changes in the religious structure, changes in how we relate to God, changes in the rise and fall of nations, changes in the social, economic and political climate, changes in virtually every area of significance. The apostolic and prophetic ministries were there to lay a new foundation, with Christ Jesus, of course, as the Cornerstone.

2ndReformation

Then, approximately 1,500 years later, once again there came a foundational reformation, referred to by historians as the Protestant reformation, restoring truths of Scripture that were lost during the great "falling away", and in one generation, with Martin Luther, began a period of approximately 500 years of doctrinal restoration.

This took us up to what most people now call the charismatic movement, which was sort of a "catch-up" movement, touching every denomination with present truth and calling out of every denomination, those who wanted more of God's fullness.

3rd Reformation

Dr. Hamon stated that, with the birthing of the prophetic movement in 1988, he believes we began the Third Apostolic Reformation.

Much more than just another "movement", a "fresh revival" or even a "major awakening". We are seeing prophets and apostles coming forth for a strategic reason.

How Can the Foundation Be Last?

The question was posed, however, that if apostles and prophets are foundation layers, why are they coming back last, as if they were to add the finishing touches to an already existing restored church? The picture is of an existing building, being jacked up while foundational repairs are being done. While that is happening to an extent, could there be much more to this emergence of these foundational ministries at this time of church history than we are seeing right now? The answer is YES! We are being positioned to lay new foundations for a new era all together, foundations for the dawning of a New Kingdom age.

A Third Apostolic reformation!

So God is raising up apostles and prophets who are speaking some new and radical things; are setting the stage; are laying new foundations for a new era. Not just patching up what is already existing, but preparing the church for a new dispensation! WOW!

Al Houton

"The consistent heart-cry has gone forth from the church beseeching God to intervene and bring an outpouring of His Spirit. In the last 50 years, through 1988, we?ve had seven distinct thumbprint Kairos moves of God and the truth is we are closer to losing nations now than 50 years ago. We?ve had a Healing Revival, a Latter Rain Movement, a Worship and Restoration Tabernacle of David Movement, we?ve had a Jesus Person Movement, a Five-fold Ministry Restoration Movement, we?ve had a Charismatic Renewal and we?ve had a Faith Movement.

After seven distinct moves of God, plus the Toronto Blessing and several others, we are still, as a nation, in worse shape than we were 50 years ago. It is obvious we don?t need another revival - we need a reformation.

Rick Joyner

The Greatest Reformation

In preparation for these great events, the church is about to go through a metamorphosis. She is going to change from a worm into a butterfly. A caterpillar in confined to the earth, and its path must conform to the contour of the earth. Likewise, for nearly two thousand years the church has often conformed more to the ways of the world than to the ways of the Spirit.

Soon the church will go through a change so dramatic that it will seem to emerge as an entirely different creature. It will be like another birth. This time we will have wings to soar high above the ways of the world.

Possibly the greatest struggle that a butterfly will ever experience is freeing itself from the cocoon where the great transformation has taken place. However, if it were not for the strengthening of the butterfly that takes place during this struggle, it would never be able to flap its great wings and fly. Not only does the church have a transformation to undergo, buy it must then prevail through the struggle of freeing itself from the place of the transformation.

The church has been bound by forces that have greatly inhibited her from becoming all that she was created to be.