Have you ever heard a brother claim that God called them out of man’s institutional church to follow Jesus alone? If you’re like most believers, you probably thought they lost their mind or shipwrecked their faith. It’s not an unreasonable conclusion for someone who thinks Jesus Church and man’s institutional church are one in the same.

But what if they’re not?

Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “COME OUT of her (religious Babylon), My people, so that you will not share in her sins or contract any of her plagues.” (Rev. 18:4 BSB)

Throughout the years I’ve asked many questions about things I noticed in man’s institutional church that left me disconcerted. I can’t recall any of them being answered to my satisfaction, rather I was encouraged to focus my attention on all the “good things” churches claim to do. It’s an experience not unlike The Truman Show, when after witnessing an on-set blunder, Truman obediently accepted the frantic explanation and remained trapped in a role he didn’t know he was playing while hemmed in by a cast of handlers and pretenders.

In the real world, how often did I pretend not to see on-set blunders in order to get along in a sick church with serious problems? Where being lumped was my reward for pointing them out? In Truman’s case, it wasn’t until he met the lover of his soul who dared crash the scene that He wanted to escape his prison to find her. As unwitting players in man’s institutional church theater, can we imagine that the Holy Spirit might crash the scene of our phony idyllic Christian production and upend everything we think we know?

In the church I attended when the Lord first called me to Himself, the Sunday School offerings that term included the class “Asking the Hard Questions”. I remember chuckling to myself that it’s one thing to “ask the hard questions” but quite another to get them answered in a way that doesn’t feel like gaslighting. Though the class appealed to me for the potential of meeting others with questions, I chose instead to attend the membership class with my new wife. I don’t imagine I missed anything in a class of questions without answers. Elsewise the class would have been called “Answering the Hard Questions”.

Since that time I’ve come to understand a believer can do no better than to walk in the truth Christ reveals (John 3:27) over time. After all, we’re born sleepers (Ephesians 5:14) and we can only possess what God gives after waking us from among the spiritually dead. Thereafter the truth is a treasure that we have to dig for. Upon receiving new revelation from Him – spiritual treasure – we’re expected to possess it – own it and walk in it (1 John 2:27). That’s called obedience which sometimes requires us to “break camp” (Hebrews 13:13) and follow Him wherever the Spirit leads.

Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! (Isa. 48:20 BSB)

It was on the day that Jesus baptized me with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4) that I first heard Him instruct me to “Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans!” (Isaiah 48:20). As the Spirit led me that morning, I took notes and wrote “Who or what is Babylon?”

Having no idea what I was supposed to leave, the Spirit began to take my wife and I through a number of experiences that opened our eyes to falsehoods we had embraced where with each such experience, Jesus illuminated the error by showing us His Truth in the matter. It’s shocking the number of things Christians have come to accept that are nowhere found in scripture. Though unsettling, none were so offensive as to persuade me to leave the church which in itself is shocking for the way I so easily justified all the errors with worldly wisdom and gaslighting techniques I’d learned along the way.

It was a few weeks after my baptism that the Holy Spirit called on me to prayer walk around the church I attended, every day from Easter to Pentecost. “If you do what I’ve asked, I’ll take the weight off of you” said the Spirit. This I took to be a literal promise because I have health issues that make weight loss difficult. So I did as the Spirit requested, often walking 3-4 laps around the church property – about ¾ to 1 mile per day. In the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost, I lost nearly 30 pounds. Still I was disappointed because with God’s promise, I expected to lose all my extra weight.

When Pentecost Sunday arrived, I hoped to see an out pouring of the Holy Spirit like the original Pentecost. Karen and I stayed for both services just to be there when the Spirit came down. Instead, the pastor continued his preaching series and sports anecdotes he loves to share. But there was no mention of Pentecost. When nothing happened and the service ended, I resumed walking around the church property, praying with even more determination.

It was difficult to manage the disappointment and grief I felt. Jesus had baptized me with the Holy Spirit months before where naturally I wanted the same for everyone. In a word, I hoped for revival, the way the Holy Spirit had revived me. Sadly, nothing changed. Not until the Sunday I took a break from playing in the worship band and noticed the bulletin listed the name of a guitar player I hadn’t met before. “Who is that” I asked myself? The Holy Spirit replied “that’s your replacement”. Stunned, I said “where am I going?” He answered “you’re moving”.

Previously the Spirit led me to resign my job as an aerospace analyst where I’d worked for 21 years. Now He tells me I’m moving? My children, parents and siblings all lived in the area and I was not keen on that. Karen believed God wanted us in Illinois where she was from but that prompted a hard “NO!” from me. But with every door closing in the Seattle area, it became clear God wanted us in “Cornville” so we diligently sought Him for direction. I reasoned there was NO need for Karen to apply for more than one teaching position if God had a specific place in mind. But try as I might, I could not hear His answer. In hind sight, perhaps I couldn’t hear him over my screaming flesh which wanted to remain right where I was.

Jesus said: Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. (Mat 10:37-38 BSB)

I can’t tell you how overwrought I was. The prospect of being uprooted, leaving everyone and everything behind and moving to the land of Foghorn Leghorn? A former aerospace analyst? I’d be like a fish out of water there. It was a mixed bag of torment and delight, yielding everything to Jesus. But having committed ourselves, there was no turning back. We had just one question: where did He want us?

Continuing to prayer walk every day because I didn’t know what else to do, I came upon several goslings who were separated from their parents whose nest was built on the dam that divided the containment pond. The Geese were frantically honking at the goslings who escaped through a small rut under the chain link fence. On successive laps, I tried to shoo them back under the fence but each time they walked right past the opening, eyes glued to me like I was Big Bird’s bald brother. While they continued wandering, I found a stick to dig out the rut and prop up the chain link fence. When the opening was ready, I walked wide around the goslings, turned quickly and shooed them back to the opening. When they reached the top of the rut, I lunged at them and yelled “BOO”. They scurried under the fence and directly to their parents while I busied myself filling in the rut and chuckled at all the honking. When I resumed walking, God’s message in the experience hit me like a shot: “You told me where to go, didn’t You – and I missed it”. “Yes” He replied. I demanded “WHERE?!?” His answer was instant and I drove home to tell Karen where we’d be moving.

Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. (Heb. 13:13 ESV)

Karen applied for a teaching position at the High School who after a few miracles from the Father to clear the way, offered Karen the position. It was the only time in his career the principal hired a teacher without a face to face interview. With God having arranged employment for Karen, we began packing for the move to our new home, sight unseen. We did fly out from Seattle to find a house and bought one next to the school. After unpacking, God told me to prayer walk around the church at the center of town and to begin attending services there. Curiously, it was the same denomination as the one we’d left in Washington.

I was hopeful the revival I wanted so badly would come to the church He sent us to, but it proved an even bigger disappointment than the church we’d just left. Our peace there was short lived for when the Lord prompted me to testify about the Holy Spirit, the pastor and congregation rose up in hostile opposition revealing themselves to be anti-charismatic and thereby anti-Christ. God had led us to a modern-day Laodicean church (Rev. 3:20). We remained there in spite of the persecution, because we believed the Lord sent us to them for a purpose.

How strange it was that the Spirit called us to “leave Babylon” and then led us to an even worse church before confronting us with a series of questions that finally woke us from our slumber. Going in we thought God led us to that church for them, when in fact, God led us to that church for us.

Wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. (Eph. 5:14 BSB)

It was about 20 minutes into the contemporary service that the Lord asked me “my son, what do you see?” Rattled by His question, I replied “I see a pipe organ, Lord”. He answered “that’s right, this church worships a pipe organ”. In a state of shock, I struggled to regain my composure – which in hind-sight, was the slumber of religious complacency. Twice more during the service, He had a question for me that when I answered Him, His reply shook me to the core. In a single hour long church service, He woke me from my slumber and ruined me for ever sitting through a church service again. The podcast episode “Surprise! You’ve been worshiping a pipe organ (LINK)” has more about that story.

Oh I desperately tried to reconcile the Spirit’s teaching with that of the church He led us to attend, believing that the assembly spoken of in Hebrews 10:25 was the Sunday morning church service and scripture obligated us to go. But services became increasingly uncomfortable as the Spirit continued to point out false teachings, manipulation, oppression and heart-breaking situations we’d been blind to.

Believing the Lord wanted me to speak up about what He showed me, I hoped for repentance. But the more I testified about the Spirit and Truth, the more members sought to silence and drive us out. When I wrote a devotional for the church newsletter, members confronted me and demanded to know “by what authority do you write for the newsletter – we have our pastor for that!” The Lord did encourage me through one dear sister who thanked me saying it was the first time in years something spiritual had appeared in the newsletter. The devotional that caused such a ruckus? It’s called “Who Bakes Your Bread? (LINK)”

When the junior pastor asked me to help with the youth group on a field trip to a church he read about in Youth Specialties magazine, the senior pastor interrogated him when we returned. Dissatisfied with his answers, he summoned me to his office for the same. Not satisfied with my statement that the youth-led worship service was very much like our own contemporary service, he demanded to know whether our youth had been “subjected to tongues”. My simple reply “no” did not satisfy him and he asked again, aggressively. Triggered by his tone, I said “Listen pastor. If God ever wants the kids to hear tongues, all He has to do is direct me to use my gift in front of them.” The color drained from his face as realization swept over him and he demanded “do you speak in tongues?” “Yes” I said, “and so does my wife. We listed our gifts on the membership form you had us complete before we joined the church.” He thanked me and abruptly dismissed me from our meeting. Weeks later, things turned ugly for us in that church.

He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives the One who sent Me.
(Mat 10:40 BSB)

Godly revelation came about one warm summer evening while we were window-shopping and an elderly member stopped and scolded me while jabbing his bony finger into my chest saying “you need to leave that Holy Spirit stuff at home”. God used the experience to teach me that it’s not an assembly without the Holy Spirit. The fact is, we are living stones, Jesus is the stone-mason, and the Holy Spirit is the mortar that binds us together (1 Pet. 2:4-9). Without the Holy Spirit, the most any man can do is to stack bricks.

Still we continued to attend services there. Wanting to be certain of God’s leading, we waited for His call to “come out from among them” (2 Cor. 6:17 BSB). Once more it was during the 8am contemporary service that Karen and I experienced a shared vision involving the worship band, readers, and pastor. Each of them had a grayish pallor as they moved about the platform like lifeless automatons doing what they were programmed to do without the slightest hint of joy. Turning to Karen I asked “is it Ash Wednesday or something?” Karen replied “No” and said the congregation appeared to her in the same way, as if made-up for burial. When the service ended, Karen said the words I’d been waiting to hear since the “worshiping a pipe organ” revelation: “Let’s get out of here”. We left, and never returned.

The most heart-breaking lesson for me, was in recognizing the church He sent us to were not doers of the word. In fact, they were doers of tradition. Oh how they loved their harvest festival, the Santa Lucia festival, potlucks and daring each other to sniff the lutefisk. The cross of Christ? Hidden away in a prop closet. The Holy Spirit? Not welcome. Ambassadors of Christ? Abused and cast out. It was in embracing my freedom as a spirit-born son of God and obeying His leading to testify about Him that we were run out. It wasn’t a public ouster, rather, it was a number of self-proclaimed gate-keepers of the status quo, including the pastor, who opposed the Spirit and made our remaining there untenable.

Jesus said: If anyone will not welcome you or heed your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave. (Mat 10:14 BSB)

People we love, remain there; friends and relatives. The one who most aches my heart saw clearly the decrepit condition of that church. He once said he would leave in a heartbeat but for his parents (Mat 8:21-22), who would be crushed if he ever did. Thus “I will go for the rest of my life” he said. His situation is reminiscent of The Chosen series when Nicodemus denied his heart’s desire to follow Jesus in deference to his wife who loved the life of a synagogue ruler in Jerusalem (Luke 14:20). Indeed it is for love of friends and relatives that Karen and I were nearly persuaded to remain.

In the year following our departure, we tried house church fellowship, for that’s how believers first met together. Sadly, the rural Midwest is dominated by religious professionals and their corporate churches where finding others who have come out unto Christ alone is a rare occurrence. Ultimately, we discovered that house church merely substitutes one man made building for another, while continuing in the same worship service mentality of man’s corporate church. No, our exodus was not about a building, but it had everything to do with discovering the real temple of God. This the Father taught us through yet another jaw-dropping mission of obedience, which over time showed us that WE are now the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17, 6:19-20). God’s temple is not a church building, nor a house, but His people. He abides in us and NOT in temples made by men (Acts 7:48, 17:24, Matthew 23:38). Where scripture clearly says God does NOT abide in temples made by men, why would men continue to go where God is not?

Therefore, COME OUT from among them and be separate, says the Lord; do not touch any unclean thing, and I will welcome you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty. (2 Cor 6:17-18  HCSB)

It was over the course of several more years that the Lord revealed His intent for us to simply stand up, put on Christ, and come home to the Father. Like the prodigal son who came home, the father stood him up, clothed him, gave him the family ring and presented him to his household as “my son”. In doing the same, the life we now live is reminiscent of Eden. That is simply walking with our Savior, listening and talking with Him in loving relationship and feasting from the Father’s banquet of spiritual abundance.

It’s a strange story to be sure, frightening even, and yet I am thankful for every last line of the epistle Christ has written in me (2 Cor. 3:3). And the questions I had when I first heard His call to come out of Babylon? All of them were answered in His time. It turns out that real God-ordained assembly is found through abiding in Jesus who is outside the camp of men (Hebrews 13:13, Revelation 3:20). To abide in Jesus simply requires that we submit to the teaching of the Holy Spirit – and obey Him. Abiding in Jesus by the Holy Spirit assembles us with all our brothers and sisters who also abide in Him. Like it says in 1 John 2:27b “For his Spirit teaches you about everything, and what he teaches is true, not false. Obey the Spirit’s teaching, then, and remain in union with Christ.” Simply put, obedience and union go hand in hand. Union in and with Christ through the Holy Spirit. That’s the genuine assembly of the saints.

Of course joining Jesus outside the camp of men means you’ll experience the same scorn and reproach that He did at the hands of the professionally religious and their minions. That’s what we experienced when the Spirit led us to Cornville. They accuse and they abuse, they scoff and they scold, but there’s no power in that. It’s just ignorance and fear expressed by the flesh in rejection of the Spirit. But such treatment was necessary to break us of our religious addictions and open our eyes to the fleshly ideas of Christian dominionism on earth. The Father’s kingdom is spiritual, not of this world, nor of any construct of men.

The few experiences I’ve shared are but a glimpse of the shocking treatment we endured at the hands of many anti-Christs whom we encountered in man’s institutional church. To them, we were the stench of death (2 Cor. 2:16) and they couldn’t be rid of us fast enough once the Spirit was revealed in and through us. Thankfully, there were a few angels along the way to encourage and refresh us for the completion of God’s work in us. Suffice to say, it’s infinitely better to know Jesus and be known by Him, than to have the useless approval of men who follow the wide path unto destruction (Matthew 7:13-14) and the anti-Christs who lead them.

Know this friends: to walk with Christ, is to walk alone among men. As for the weight the Father promised to take off of me? He did. He removed the weight of man’s religious system and replaced it with the easy yoke and light burden of His Son.

And the revival we hoped He would send? He did – a revival fit for two. Like the Lord once said to me “revival comes through death”. Such is the implication of Jesus who said: “take up your cross and follow Me.” Spirit life is found in Jesus through crucified flesh. To them who are perishing like the Laodicean church God sent us to? We stink (2 Cor. 2:14-16). That’s the reaction of uncrucified flesh to crucified flesh; repulsed by the stink. But to those who also are being saved through the cross like the few angels who loved on us there? We are the sweet fragrance of Christ and they were fragrant to us. They knew and embraced the precious Truth that death is the price of Spirit life.

As for the people and institutions who hide the cross in a prop closet? Who say “leave the Holy Spirit at home?” Unless they repent, they will never taste revival. Where scripture says “taste the Lord and see that He is good” (Ps 34:8), their love of lutefisk during the celebration of Christ is oddly prophetic.