(tm) Samson: a type of the Church today
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The Old Testament story of Judge Samson gives us a picture of the Church of Christ in the last days. Samson’s hair represented his consecration. His enormous strength was related directly to its uncut length.
Samson enjoyed the pleasures of the world until the world uncovered the secret of his strength. We may marvel at the willingness of Samson to cast away his gift from God, but are we doing the same thing? Are we throwing away our spiritual strength by partaking of the lusts of the present world system?
The Church of Christ possessed spiritual strength in the first century. Because of the willingness of subsequent leaders to socialize with the world and to adopt human solutions for the problems of the Church, the separation of the Church from the world was impaired. The inevitable occurred. The Church lost much of its spiritual strength.
The world destroyed the ability of the Church to "see" Christ. The world bound the Christian Church with the chains of Satan and put it to work "building treasure cities for Pharaoh." For two thousand years the Christian organizations have been "grinding away in prison," attempting to exalt themselves and to impress a world system that always rejects the Lordship of Christ (Judges 16:21).
Whenever a Christian loses his consecration, his separation to the Person and will of Christ, his strength leaves him. He loses his vision of God and of Heaven. He becomes bound in affliction and trouble. He is "thrown into prison," becoming the slave of the world spirit.
Since the time of the Protestant Reformers the "hair" of the Church has been growing back. The separation to God is returning, for a remnant of believers. The world does not perceive what is occurring in the godly remnant just as the Philistines were unable to perceive the danger of Samson’s hair growing back.
The day will come when the flood of filth will fill the earth and the demons of Hell will make the Christians come out from their prison of shame and weakness and "make sport" for them. We are entering the days when the peoples of the earth will deride and despise the Christian churches.
The blind Samson was led out by a lad and he played the clown for the entertainment of the Philistines. Often today the churches are so pathetically eager for a wink of approval from the local community leaders that they will "play the clown" for the applause of the world, hoping to ingratiate themselves and win the approval of worldly people. This is done in the hope those people will be "won for Christ."
The Philistines in their ignorance placed the longhaired Hebrew between the two supporting pillars of the temple of Dagon. Evil spirits and evil people always bring to pass the will of God and heap destruction on themselves.
Samson called out to God and asked to be avenged for the loss of his two eyes. In the last days before Jesus appears, the consecration of the Church will be renewed and the Christians will cry out to God because of the darkness and oppression that has come upon them and the earth through the rulership of the forces of Hell.
At that time the two hands of the Church will be guided by a "lad" to the supporting pillars of the kingdom of darkness.
In the day in which we are living the Lord is bringing forth a generation of young people who will "cross Jordan," so to speak. They will "take the Kingdom." There is no time left to dawdle with the present generation of believers. The characters of today’s Christians, in numerous instances, have been so ruined by the doctrines of grace and of the "pre-tribulation rapture" that they never will be able to enter the travail that is to bring forth Christ. They are so occupied with their own psychological problems that they are unable to enter the grueling race that the true disciples of the Lord must endure.
The new generation, having been given sound doctrine, will press through to the fullness of victory that now is available. Guided by these young warriors the Church will place its right hand of the blood of the Lamb on one pillar and its left hand of the testimony of the Holy Spirit on the other pillar.
Then the Church will bow itself before God’s throne will all its might in the fullness of the death of consecration to God’s will. The result will be that the kingdom of darkness will come crashing down to destruction. Satan will be crushed under the feet of the Church. The Seed of the Woman (Christ in the saints) will crush Satan’s head under foot.
The Church, through its death to self-will and self-seeking, will bring greater liberation to the people of the world in the last days than it has been able to do through its own efforts during the two thousand years of its history.
At the time of greatest darkness on the earth the saints will attain a level of consecration deeper than has ever been true before, deeper than that of the believers of the first-century churches (with the exception of the Apostles and other notable men and women of God). The result will be a move of God through the Body of Christ that will destroy the kingdom of Satan.
"So the dead that he slew at his death were more than they that he slew in his life" (Judges 16:30).
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