[Affirmations series: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Conclusion.]

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~ Affirmations ~

6. End-Time Remnant Restoration

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I affirm that God’s program at the end of the age, in accordance with His eternal purpose, is to purify an overcoming remnant of His people who will return to Him with all their heart, and restore, in and through their collective expressions, a testimony to His eternal purpose and original pattern for the Church.

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I affirm that the most essential factor in the restoration of this end-time testimony is the reestablishment of the Lord Jesus Christ as central, supreme, and all-sufficient in all aspects of the returning remnant’s corporate calling, life, function, ministry, and governance, according to the principles of God’s eternal purpose.

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I affirm that the restoration of this end-time testimony will be radical in nature, beginning at the root level and working upward and outward to the full extent of the remnant’s collective expressions so that the reality and substance of Christ will be formed, developed and manifested naturally, from root to fruit, and from center to circumference.

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I affirm that the root level of this corporate restoration is found in the four aspects of the “formative core” that constitute any established group: 1. “attractional center”, 2. “unifying identity”, 3. “foundational base”, and 4. “governance principle”, and that Christ Himself must, in this regard, become the unrivaled Center, unifying Identity, sole Foundation, and uncontested Head of the remnant’s corporate expressions as a matter of first and foremost priority.

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I affirm that when Christ is restored to His central, supreme and all-sufficient place in those four aspects of the remnant’s “formative core”, that the entire “conformative matrix” (i.e. all other inter-related aspects) that develops around and according to it will, likewise, bear the testimony of Christ throughout, in keeping with God’s eternal purpose and original pattern for the Church.

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I affirm that it is because the Church at large, from early post-apostolic days onward, did not zealously maintain Christ as her unrivaled Center, unifying Identity, sole Foundation, and uncontested Head, but substituted lesser things in His place in one or more of these “formative core” aspects, that the Church grew and developed with “spiritual eccentricity” at its core, and systemically bore the fruit of “spiritual eccentricity”: disunity, diminishment, impurity, and imbalance throughout its many divergent expressions.

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I affirm that the eccentricities of the established religious systems that have developed over the centuries and millenia have become so sociologically enmeshed and psychologically ingrained that they have all but “locked in” the eccentric “formative cores” of those systems, making the entire constructs, from root to fruit, center to circumference, incorrigibly resistant to reform and restoration.

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I affirm that because of the incorrigibly resistant nature of these sociological/psychological dynamics, the remnant that is called to God’s end-time restoration will encounter great resistance within the existing “eccentric religious systems” and will in most cases, of necessity, be forced to move outside of them in order to restore a collective testimony according to Christ and Christ alone, as it was in the beginning.

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I affirm that due to the overall lack of revelation, conviction, and consecration as to God’s eternal purpose and original pattern for His Church, and also to the costliness of not conforming to the prevailing “eccentric religious systems”, those who do respond to this call will be relatively few in number, even as it was in the days when a small remnant of the Jewish people (about 2%) returned from Babylon to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and the city, as recorded in the “restoration books” of the Old Testament.

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I affirm that the call to be a part of this returning remnant is a very costly one often involving increased levels of misunderstanding, criticism, false accusation, ostracism, isolation, persecution, spiritual warfare, buffeting, conflict, disillusionment and discouragement, and should not be undertaken without soberly counting the cost.

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I affirm that no one should endeavor to answer this call who does not have a deep, personal relationship with the Lord, and who is not willing to endure even a prolonged season in the “wilderness”, if need be, in following the Lord in the outworking of His end-time purpose.

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I affirm, that those who are faithful to this call have the assurance that God is with them, will sustain them, and that they can claim as their own the encouragement of the promise God spoke to the Jewish remnant: “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the LORD Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the LORD Almighty.” (Haggai 2:9)

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These truths I affirm!

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Continued…

Related:

Rebels, Refugees, and a Returning Remnant Series

Tradition, Scripture and the Church – Pt. 5: “Tradition and Restoration”

The Process of the Purpose (“Christ the Center” series revisited – Part 6)