What Does it Mean to Be a Christian? "We Wish to See Jesus!" by Pastor Doug Riggs

by John Mark on 11/03/24

This was originally recorded on August 27, 2017.

My notes:

"If we're going to be filled with the fullness of God and go on to be being filled with the Holy Spirit, God requires that we put off the old man." This includes putting to death the members of our earthly bodies (Colossians 3:5). In the NAS version, it says to 'consider the members of your earthly body as dead' to the sins mentioned, but the literal Greek grammar makes it a command for us to 'put to death' the members of our body. To the degree this is done is the degree that the Lord can fill us with His life, light and love. "He will not fill the old man; and what we haven't put off, there will be no filling there."

So, what does it mean to be a Christian? What do people think when they hear the term 'Christian'? "Before Jesus Christ comes, Christianity as we know it will be shaken to the core, and there will be nothing standing except the church that Jesus Christ is building." I have to say when people ask about what I believe or what 'religion' I follow, I don't like telling them, "I'm a Christian." I rather say, 'I'm a disciple of Jesus', or that which doesn't include the term 'Christian'. It's not Jesus I'm ashamed of, it's what Christians have done to misrepresent the name of Christ.

"Just like Judaism in the first century went down at the great shaking in 70 AD, there will be a corresponding great shaking at the end of this age - and we are at the end now, and it's going to happen in the church, and that prophecy is given to us in Hebrews Chapter 12, verses 25-29; and the last two or three verses in Luke Chapter 6, where the house that is built on sand is going to collapse. That house in our generation is 'Christianity'. It's coming down."

"Are we a part of the church that Jesus Christ is building? Are we part of an organization system, something of man? It's all coming down. It's going to be so radical and so shocking."

"How are people going to see Jesus? ... We are to be a people on this earth to represent Jesus with skin on." As Major Thomas would say, 'deity clothed in our humanity'.

"What it means to be a Christian? We only do those things we see Jesus doing ... How do we get there? It takes radical and drastic dealings of the Lord - many blows to crush the outer man to strip off of us the foreskin of the heart, so the inner man, that which represents the one new man, can emerge in resurrection - not just the sinful man; the natural man."

"Something's about to happen, something really big and unprecedented that represents the day of visitation - God breaking into history, and summing up things, and getting everything into alignment so that the bride has made herself ready to be caught up to meet the Lord in the air... The day of visitation is going to be a release of that which represents a prepared remnant - we're going to see a corporate Christ walking this earth prior to the rapture."

Jesus "is the template and prototype of what it means to be a Christian... He Himself is the will of God perfected as Man for man, and in that will, we are sanctified positionally... The more we come into correspondence as one with Jesus Christ, for people to know us, they know Jesus... If the Holy Spirit is governing our lives as Lord, people will see the Father in Jesus Christ, in character, and conduct, and ways."

"The church is nothing more and nothing less than the corporate embodiment and manifestation of Jesus. Anything other than that is religion. And God is going to shake everything that is religion; He's going to burn it off."

"The authority of the truth we preach is only in the measure in which we ourselves are constitutionally according to 'The Way' … ‘The Way’ is the testimony of Jesus."

Link to Audio: https://dougriggs.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/8-27-17%2Bsunday.mp3

Link to Discussion: https://s3.amazonaws.com/bookministry1/assemblies/8-27-17+discussion.mp3

Recommended Resources:

T. Austin-Sparks' "According to Christ" - What is the Church

Maranatha!

John Mark

...hereby committing this unto the providential care of the enthroned Head of the Church; whose Name is blessed forevermore, Yeshua Mashiach - Jesus Christ!