SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. How would you like to recapture the glory, the presence of God that was on the first Jewish believers in Messiah? How would you like to recapture the power that was on those first Jewish believers? Peter would walk by in his shadow and people would be healed. Well my guest, John Fenn, has had three visitations from the Messiah of Israel in which the Messiah has instructed him carefully of what the first Jewish believers in the Messiah had that we do not have today. I want to find out. John, tell me about that first visitation.
JOHN: Well the first one actually was a bit of a history lesson. I was kind of minding my own business praying and worshiping one night in my living room. My wife had already gone to bed. And suddenly the Lord was there. And He came over and actually sat down in the Spirit. Suddenly I could see both in the spirit world and in the natural. And He said this, He said, “I want to teach you a little bit.” And of course I was born again in the charismatic renewal of the 1970s, late ‘60s, early ‘70s. So He said this: “You are a product of what you call the charismatic renewal.” He said, “At that time many of My people came out of the denominational churches because their needs weren’t being met.” And He said, “And thus, what you would call para church organizations started.” And you heard of prayer groups and Bible studies of people meeting on their own. He said, “Out of that sprang up a whole new breed of churches, a whole new generation of churches.” And He said, “You’re a product of that.” And that was exactly the case. And then He said this, He said, “But many of those churches have become as rigid and structured, and set on their own agenda as the denominational churches that preceded them. And once again, you’re going to hear My people leaving them because their needs aren’t being met, because they want more of Me.” That was a little bit scary because I was a pastor of a traditional church. But He said–
SID: So He’s saying there’s going to be within your mind a whole new paradigm different than what we’ve known previously.
JOHN: And, you know, when He said many of that generation, the churches that were birthed in the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, etc. have become as rigid, inflexible and set on their own agenda as the generation that preceded them, that I had to plead guilty. I was as guilty as anyone else as a pastor. You know, four songs, announcements, worship, get to the buffet line before the next church down the street. And it began birthing in me a desire to just let go and let God. That why did we have to cut off the worship if the worship was going strong and the presence of God was so strong? And so that was the summation of that, that first visitation was a real time of checking and double checking, and comparing the way church was done in the first century and the way that church is done today all over the world. There’s a big difference.
SID: Well briefly, what did you find?
JOHN: Well so many different things. One of the first things that I noted was that every single book in the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation was written to people in living rooms. There were no big buildings at the time or anything like that. Secondly, not a single letter in the New Testament was written to leaders. In other words, it didn’t start out to say, “To the elders” and everything. The word “pastor”, the idea of the pastor being the head came about, you know, 300 and some years later. It was jointly governed by the people. I discovered that when I was reading some of the problems, for instance, in the first Corinthians letter, there is a situation with incest. And Paul said, “You should have handled it.” He didn’t say, “Get the pastor. Get the elder.” He said, “You should have handled it.” In the very next chapter, two brothers are suing one another and he says the same thing. Instead of “get the leaders” or anything, he says, “You should have handled it. Why don’t you guys pick two of the least in the church and let them decide the issue.”
SID: As a matter of fact, you talk about the whole paradigm of church was changed with Constantine.
JOHN: That’s right. In 313 A.D., I believe it was, he issued what’s called the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity, which brought Christians out of the homes that they had been in for, you know, more than two centuries, and actually gave them a bunch of money took over Pagan temples and set up the auditorium style church that we have today. Now I’m not against the church by any means. God will fill whatever structure, you know, that man gives Him.
SID: Of course.
JOHN: But the very first structure that God gave him was the family.
SID: Okay. So if we want to get back with that first group of Jewish believers had we have to do what they did according to the Bible. You had a second visitation.
JOHN: In February of 2001, I was about to minister in the Toronto area. And during the worship, suddenly the Lord was there right up by the worship team, about six or seven steps away. And He came walking over to me. And one of the things He said was this: “See what I see, people running to and fro from this meeting and that looking for the spectacular thinking that’s supernatural, but they miss the supernatural work in the midst and in their heart. For the process of discipleship is supernatural.” And He said some other things, and He said this: “As it was in the beginning so it must be now, I’m moving in relationships.” Well that launched about a nine- or ten-month study of the Word to look at the relationships, to look more deeply at how the New Testament was actually practiced. And I found, again, that when I was reading Corinthians and Colossians, and Thessalonians, that these were actually people who were named in the Book of Acts who hosted these churches: Lydia in Philippi, Jason in Thessalonica You can go down through the names. And I was realizing I was reading real letters to real people sitting in living rooms who were in relationship, deep relationships.
SID: Deep relationship is important to God. Is that what you’re saying?
JOHN: And relationship accountability comes through relationship. And that’s exactly right. You know, I like to say that Christianity started as a relationship in Israel when God came to man. He went to Greece to become a philosophy, to Rome to become a religion, to Europe to become a tradition and part of the culture, and then to America to become an enterprise.
SID: That’s quite bold. We’ll be back in just a moment. He had a third visitation. Don’t go away. Be right back.
