The Lord spoke to me the other day as I was walking and praying, and the word that came to me was ownership. The Holy Spirit brought to my mind the parable of the tenants from Mark 12. Now the Master had planted a vineyard, He planted a hedge about it and He dug a great pit that would receive the juice from the crushed grapes and He built a tower. Everything that was needed to produce new wine was handed over to the tenants to look after while He was gone. Tenants mind you, He did not sell it to them, they were to look after it and at some point the Master would require most of the fruit that the vine produced. Now, because the Master tarried for a great time, as was His prerogative, the tenants, having possession of that vineyard, at some point began to believe that they had ownership over the vineyard. They were no longer simply workers of the Master, they had become, in their own eyes, the masters of the vineyard.

Now the audience to whom this parable was spoken to is an important part of the story. The audience was the chief priest and the scribes and the Pharisees. He was clearly talking to them and they knew it. He was peeling open their hearts for all the world to see. While on the outside they still pretended to be serving God in their capacity as priests and scribes, serving the Temple and the system, The Lord was clearly showing that in the deepest parts of their hearts, they had assumed ownership over the worship of God and His temple. They were no longer servants of the most high God, tenants merely looking after something that did not belong to them, they had arrogantly assumed ownership of it all. And they would not be accountable to the Master, in fact they would destroy anyone He sent in order to hold on to what they now believed to be theirs.

Ownership. How would this concept infect Christendom? In the early days pf the Church, as most know, brothers and sisters met in houses. Consider these following Scriptures and note the pattern.

Philemon 1:2 – And to [our] beloved Apphia, and Archippus our fellowsoldier, and to the church in thy house:
1 Corinthians 16:19 – The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.
Colossians 4:15 – Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.
Romans 16:5 – Likewise [greet] the church that is in their house. Salute my wellbeloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia unto Christ.

Can you see the recurring phrase? It is “the church that is in their house.” You see clearly here that the Church is the people and the house is simply the place that they met. We have to jump forward almost three hundred years to the time of Constantine to see where it all changed. Keep in mind that the Church is the people and the Church met in people’s houses. The notion that the house was the Church is a totally foreign concept. How could the Church meet in the Church? And so, because the Church met in people’s houses, no one could have ownership of it. Yet, when Constantine decided that Christianity would be the State religion, great temples were built to rival and surpass all the pagan temples of the day. This is where the Church would now worship, this is where we see the building become the Church in the eyes of men. Now people “went to Church.” And this building that had usurped the title of the Body of Christ now had owners. They were not simply tenants or shepherds or elders, watching over the Masters flock, they were owners. And just like the scribes and the priests and Pharisees before them, the owners pretended to serve God but they in fact were merely serving themselves. Anyone who threatened their livelihoods were abused, imprisoned, tortured and killed. They were in fact worse than the Pharisees and scribes who went before them for they went out and actively hunted down and killed all who opposed them, searching high and low, near and far to find anyone who challenged their ownership of “Christendom.”

So we see a collision of two great errors that was to shape Christendom for the next 1800 years and we are still living with the consequences of error built upon error. The first error was that the Church, rather than being the people, became the building, and the second error is the building itself, for a building has intrinsic value and men fight over things of value and desire to have ownership over it. In practical terms, those who owned the building owned the activities that took place within the building. Rather than have a Royal priesthood of believers, we now saw a clergy/laity split. The clergy were the owners and the laity were the ones who served the clergy. Now because they had assumed ownership, they also assumed authority. This is the third great error that forms the foundation of religion rather than relationship. This authority was exercised with such brutality it is hard to even describe. God sent hundreds of thousand of saints over the last 2000 years to challenge these men and these men responded with a brutality that would make hell blush.

And now in our time we have the impotent aftermath of a thousand years of error. A thousand years of ownership, a thousand years of the royal priesthood being forcibly divided into clergy and laity. A rotten dying system of men. A system that denies the authority of the one they proclaim. There can only be one Master and it is He who must have the preeminence. Yet if that preeminence was actually acknowledged and bowed down to, the “owners,” would lose their possessions. What will the Lord of the vineyard do when He returns with those who usurped His authority and in practical terms exercised ownership and authority over that which did not belong to them? There will indeed be weeping and gnashing of teeth as they cry out “Lord, Lord, we did all these things in your name.”

Brothers and sisters let me encourage you. This rotten system is crumbling around us. The Tares are becoming self evident as the days of the harvest approach, as the hour draws near. The Master shall return and His return is imminent. Let Him find faith on the earth when He returns. Let us follow hard after our Lord and His Word. Read His Word and follow it with all of your heart. Let it be the great North star that guides you through the stormy seas of countless centuries of the traditions of men. Let these traditions fall away like the garments of death that were removed from Lazarus as he arose from the dead and emerged from his tomb as he heard the cry of the Lord Himself “come forth.” Brothers and sisters come forth out of the darkness of tradition into the light of the Word of God and His call. He is calling. The stone is being rolled away by the power of God. And into the dark and gloomy cave where the dead lie, the light of Christ shines forth and beckons you to “come out of her.”