Dear Christian:
I have spent the better part of a year measuring other people’s walls. Seven denominations, plumb line in hand, laying the Word of God against what men built and reporting how far each had leaned. If you have followed Measured and Found Wanting to its end, you have watched seven houses that once stood, sag, and give way.
But I did not write those seven studies so you could shake your head at other people’s churches. I wrote them so that, at the last, I could turn the line around — and hand it to you.
So set the seven aside for a moment. This final word is not about them. It is about you, and it is about the person sitting next to you on Sunday.
One Hand, Seven Doors
Look at how they fell, all seven at once, and you will see one hand at seven doors.
The Methodists deleted the words. The Lutherans divided the conscience. The United Church of Christ said God was still speaking something new. The Disciples moved the Spirit out of the Book and into the room. The American Baptists kept the teaching and simply refused to enforce it.
Five different keys. One locked door. And behind every one of them, the oldest question ever asked of a human being, hissed in a garden while the fruit still hung on the branch: Did God actually say?
That is the whole of it. Every task force, every study commission, every carefully worded resolution was Eden held again in committee. Not one of those bodies stood up and declared that God was a liar. They only wondered, politely and at length, whether He had really said what He plainly said. And wondering was enough.
They Did Not Storm the Doors
Here is what I need you to see, because it is the thing that should make every one of us afraid for our own soul.
Those denominations were not captured by wicked men who hated God and stormed the sanctuary with torches. They were led, vote by gentle vote, by people who believed they were being kind. They voted for welcome. They voted for unity. They voted to stop the arguing and love one another. And they called it faithfulness, right up until the lampstand was gone.
The drift did not announce itself. That is its nature. A ship does not feel the current that carries it off course; it feels only the pleasant motion of the water. A sheep does not decide to be lost. It simply keeps its head down, cropping one more sweet tuft of grass and then the next, until it lifts its eyes and the flock is nowhere in sight and the light is failing.
Most of the people who carried those churches over the edge never knew they were voting against the Word of God. They thought they were voting for love. And that, dear reader, is exactly why this is a word for you, and not merely a report about them.
Where Are You?
Because you vote too.
Not in an assembly. No minutes are kept. But every day you cast a secret ballot with your attention, your money, your silence, the things you laugh at and the things you refuse to say. We each walk a private path, and most of the time we could not tell you exactly where we stand or how we came to be standing there. We are working our own devices, and we do not feel the current.
So the watchman’s question, the one God gave Ezekiel to cry from the wall, comes now to you by name. Where are you? Not where is your denomination. Not where is the culture. Where are you — tonight, in the quiet, with no one keeping score?
Are you tethered to the Rock, or have you been grazing your way, one sweet tuft at a time, toward a fence line you never meant to cross?
The Word Was Made Flesh — and You Cannot Edit a Person
Understand what every one of those seven mechanisms was finally trying to do. They were all, in the end, ways of editing the Word.
But the Word is not only ink. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory (John 1:1, 14). The Word you are asked to bend or soften or set aside for the sake of kindness is not a clause. He is a Person. He is Christ — our Savior, our King, the Lamb who was slain and the Lion who is coming. You cannot amend Him in committee. You cannot vote Him into a variety of understandings. You can only bow, or turn away.
Do not compromise on Him. Not one inch. Everything the enemy has ever offered the church, in every generation, has been the same trade: a little less of Christ in exchange for a little more peace. It is always a lie, and the peace never comes.
The Door Is Open, but the Lamps Are Drying
Now hear the mercy, because there is always mercy while there is still time.
Every one of those seven houses can still repent. The door is not shut. Christ told the deadest church in Revelation — the one with a name that it was alive — to wake up and strengthen what remained. He did not write to bury them. He wrote to raise them. And He says the same to you tonight: whatever has drifted can be brought home.
But do not mistake an open door for endless time. Ten virgins waited for the Bridegroom, and five let their lamps burn low, and when the cry came at midnight there was no oil left to buy and no time left to buy it (Matthew 25:1–13). The door was open — and then it was not. Oil is not borrowed at the last moment. It is kept in the vessel, day by unremarkable day, by the one who stays awake.
Come to the Mercy Seat
But hear the mercy inside the warning, for this is the whole difference between the five who were shut out and the five who went in. The oil was never sold at any market, and it cannot be bought at midnight for any price — but it has never once run dry at the Mercy Seat. There, above the ark, between the cherubim, is where God met His people and forgave them, and there the oil is not rationed. It is poured out in abundance on everyone who comes seeking Him and His kingdom. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16). Come to the Mercy Seat and let Him fill the vessel. He has more than enough, and He has never turned away one soul that came for it.
Is there oil in your lamp? Or have you been running on the memory of a fire you have not tended in years?
Go Get the One
And now the commission, which is the reason I turned the plumb line toward you at all.
If you are right with God tonight — if your lamp is trimmed and burning — then this warning was never meant to frighten you. It was meant to send you. Because somewhere in your own congregation, in the pew ahead of you or across the aisle, sits someone who has strayed and does not know it. She is working her own devices. He is untethered and cannot feel it. They are not villains. They are the one sheep that slipped the fold while everyone was singing.
The Lord left the ninety-nine and went out into the dark after the one (Matthew 18:12–14). That is the heart of the Shepherd, and He has made it the mission of the sheep who are found. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1). Not with a pointing finger. Not from across a room. You go and you pull alongside, one soul to one soul, and you admonish and correct and exhort, gently, until you have brought them back.
And be watchful, because I will tell you plainly what the seven denominations learned too late: there are wolves in every congregation, and they do not come snarling. Fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock (Acts 20:29). They wear wool. They sing the hymns. They serve on the committee. The watchman does not stay awake because danger is far off on the horizon; he stays awake because it is already inside, and it looks exactly like a sheep.
None of Us Stands Alone
There is one last thing, and it is the thing the whole series was quietly built to say.
You cannot do any of this by yourself. The Christian who believes he can hold the line alone — just me and my Bible and my private conviction — is the Christian most certain to drift, because there is no one beside him to say, brother, you have wandered. Every one of those seven denominations began as a gathering of believers who meant to stand together, and every one of them fell when standing together came to matter more than standing on the Rock. But the answer to a bad togetherness is not no togetherness. It is the right one.
Though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Let us not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Hebrews 10:25). We are not built to stand as scattered individuals, each guarding his own patch of ground. We are built to gather on one foundation — and there is only one that holds. The house on the rock stood when the rain fell and the floods came and the winds beat against it, because it was founded on the rock (Matthew 7:24–25). Every other foundation, however sincere, however kind, however lovingly voted in, is sand.
Find the Rock, and Hold One Another There
So here is my word to you, watchman to reader, at the end of a long year of measuring walls. Find the Rock. Stand on it. Gather with others who stand on it, and hold one another there. And then look to your left and your right in your own sanctuary, find the one who is quietly grazing toward the fence, and go — gently, humbly, and quickly — and bring them home before the light is gone.
I cannot make you do it. No argument can. The Holy Spirit alone moves a soul from hearing to obeying, and it is to Him I commend you now. He is faithful. He who began a good work in you will complete it. And the same God who is grieved over seven fallen houses is more than able to keep you standing, and to use you to keep another standing too.
Stay awake. Keep your lamp full. Go get the one.
— A watchman on the wall
