For too many years the church in America, following sociological trends, has been engaging in scripture dipping. For so long they have searched the Bible, looking only for sweet promises, the easy believism substantiations that they have unhooked doctrinal instructions of major importance from the train so far ago back down the tracks, that hardly anybody even takes notice anymore that the all-important Biblical instructions regarding doctrine are long gone. Yes, it is true that the train is now going faster! However, the obvious reasons for this increase in speed is that it is now much lighter. Since there are a lot more laughs and so many less tears, nobody really cares. It is true that there are those major names in Christendom who one by one keep falling away morally; another scandal, another mainstream headline about another impropriety, but ho-hum, it’s ok. It’s off to sleep we go, trusting God for another day.
Isn’t it interesting that Luke records, at the end of chapter nine, that Jesus says, in verse 62, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God!” WAIT A MINUTE! HOLD THE MUSTARD! WHAT DID JESUS SAY? Did He say such a one is not fit for the ministry? I mean we get that. Almost every single restart attempt by any of the mega-church moral and or financial failures ends up with at best a few faithful followers from the good old days, however, Jesus did not say that! He said, if we don’t get the metaphor, that those who start in ministry, “putting their hand to the plow” but end up looking back, ARE NOT FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD!” OOPS! That does not quite fit the “once saved always saved” favored doctrine of countless millions around the world….
However, then Luke goes on to say, as we see it recorded in chapter 10, verse one. “After these things, the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and every place where He was about to go!” In this op-ed, I would like to explain why two by two has, in many many cases in both the Old and most in the New Testaments, been God’s wisest plan for ministry.
I will never forget here in the city of Elmira NY a large church I was attending that had a huge bus ministry, in comparison with the actual size of the church. With an approximate weekly attendance of between 4-500 people, they ran, I believe, it was on average 16 full-size school buses out each week to pick up city children and adults who wanted to come for Sunday morning services. Every Saturday teams of two would visit every home on their particular bus route to check in on the families, remind them of church the next day, and offer to pray for any needs those families might have. This was a church that didn’t just talk about evangelism, they modeled it. As one of the bus captains on my bus route, including my children’s mother and two teen volunteers, we encountered many needs as we visited many homes each week. For some reason, right in the middle of that ministry, God allowed me to get wind of the fact that in the mid to late 80’s teen suicide rates were becoming an epidemic. When I heard that one teen was committing suicide every 90 minutes and 1 to 2 thousand unsuccessful attempts were happening each day, my prayer intercession life went into overdrive. My heart was broken by the Holy Spirit, and I felt led to hit the city streets every Saturday night to share the love of God with the approximately 2-300 teens who were pouring out of a dance at 10:30 being held every Saturday night in an old high school gymnasium. During several weeks of prayer in preparation for this calling, I felt the Lord clearly speak to my heart, telling me to gather a team of others who would rotate weeks and go out with me and join this outreach. He did remind me at that time of the above-mentioned scripture about going out two by two!
In sharing my burden with the Senior Pastor, he delightedly agreed to let me announce this new initiative in church the following Sunday.
I suppose I took about 5 minutes to pour out my heart, which I felt was the Lord’s heart, to start sharing with this large group of teens the eternal Love of the Lord Jesus Christ. I simply stated that I would be standing in the back of the church waiting for all who wanted to join me.
To my dismay, the 4-500 people walked out of the church that Sunday, and no one even stopped to shake my hand. God had a plan that would eventually unfold but you have to know me well to know that I would not let that stop me. I started going out by myself, foolishly doing so directly against what the Lord had clearly shown me. I guess I justified my disobedience by thinking first I would have to win a few to Christ to ignite a spark in others. One thing I did insist is that anyone who was to join us would join me for an hour of prayer in the church’s prayer room, there called Prayer Mountain, or they would not be allowed to go with us that week. My thoughts were that if we were going to go into the devil’s back yard and try to steal his sheep, we had better be prayed up. It may surprise you when I say that the first week was quite benign, even after I prayed my heart out in the Spirit for over an hour prior to hitting the street.
The second week, I made a point to really pour my heart out for souls and for the teens of our city and the teenagers of America. I remembered that a famous evangelist once said “If you feel you are doing everything you can to win souls, even though you are praying with all of your heart that God use you, but you keep coming up empty, try tears!”
As I walked down the street after the dance let out, it was obvious to me that the dozens and dozens of teenagers did not consider their Saturday night was over just because the dance shut down. As they continued to hang out on that block, it did seem to me that the teens were listening attentively to my testimony. I remembered that myself had gotten radically saved after having been a bouncer and a bartender in a nightclub. I had moved to Florida and met the sister of my favorite rock star in a bar one night. She had just started going back to church and was recently filled with the Holy Spirit. Based on my experience, I would challenge the teens, telling them that if they would let me pray for them, they could feel the presence of God or His “peace” as many Christians know it. However, right in the middle of what seemed like a real God connection, one girl yelled out to the crowd gathered around me. “This man just told this girl that because she got pregnant by her boyfriend, and they were not married she was going to Hell!” The fact was we did have a heart-to-heart conversation, however, her claim could not have been further from the truth. I had assured her God loved her and had a plan for her baby, but her friend who was listening to the conversation had been drinking, and the enemy used her that night to try to cause trouble. In that moment the Lord spoke to my heart and reminded me of His instruction to me that I was to get at least one person to go with me. So then I waited weekly, praying as before, but this time praying for the Lord to speak to willing hearts. Thankfully the Lord was gracious, and that accusation was soon cleared, as some other teens spoke out on my behalf, but that was just one of many reasons why the Lord says go out “two by two.”
I remember soon after that being called by the Lord into the full-time ministry as an evangelist. Like the Lord’s expression to the Laodicean church in the Book of Revelation, I cannot say how strongly I am angered by the fact that the ministry of the evangelist as God intended has almost passed away in America. In 1979, when I first rededicated my life to the Lord, the church in Jacksonville Florida, as well as hundreds if not thousands of other churches in America were still holding to the biblical pattern of the church, holding at least two extended evangelistic meetings a year and using someone called to be an evangelist to conduct them. They were a church that was still unashamedly Spirit-filled and understood that God did not list the ministry of an evangelist in Ephesians 4:11 just to take up space on the page! I not only have been called to that ministry myself, but I know well the special training and anointing that the evangelist from the inside out. I have personally observed what has taken place over the past 30 years in the churches in America. It can best be described in something that my very godly Aunt Cleora once told me as I was sharing with her what I knew my calling to be. She said, “Nolan, we used to have revival meetings. Now we have seminars.” Yes, what she said is true, and in my opinion the lack of zeal for soul-winning in that denomination reflects what that type of mindset does over decades to any denomination or fellowship that gradually moves away from the Holy Spirit’s anointed specific callings for ministry.
In about 1990 I first attended the National Evangelist Conference of denomination that I was credentialed. Though I do not remember the specific year, it was announced that week that we had over 600 full-time evangelists who were keeping their calendars full enough to keep their bills paid. Over two thousand others were listed as evangelists within the organization but had to rely on other sources of incomes to support themselves. I was one of the two thousand, running a construction company part time. To further support myself, I was a substitute teacher at a regional special education high school. While doing this, I was usually also the youth pastor at whatever church I happened to be a member at the time, without remuneration of any kind.
At my peak, I was preaching on average somewhere Sunday through Wednesday or the opposite and a few places each year had me do Sunday through Sunday meetings. However, I have always felt that my main ministry is that of a prayer intercessor. I never in my entire life preached a message that I fabricated in my mind or heart I did not learn how to preach. Nobody tried to teach me how to teach or preach. Most often, there would be a single passage of scripture that would jump off the pages of my Bible to me. Springboarding off of that scripture, the rest of the sermon would flow from the Holy Spirit, by knowing vast portions of scripture by heart. Before each sermon, I would pray and pray for the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I would pray hours for His anointing, knowing that I was nothing and that He was everything.
Many many times after I was done preaching, altars would be full, most generally of church folk who needed some fresh fire of the Holy Ghost, which was exactly why churches used to have revival meetings, to obtain a recharge of the Spirit. Lukewarm hearts were confronted with the Word of God as their pet sins were exposed. Tears flowed as they admitted their need for more of God. What has happened since then? Where did it all go? As of now that same denomination does not even have 600 evangelists among their thousands of ministers. As one former Spirit-filled evangelist tried to tell me once, “Nolan, the age of the evangelist is over!” I lovingly but firmly told him, “Brother, you better let God know, because He is still stirring my heart with the same message He stirred my heart with over 44 years ago! The day, my friends, of the evangelist is not over. It’s that the church has become so stinking worldly it no longer wants a spiritual backbone of steel but gladly settles for rubber and in many cases, Styrofoam, to bend to every sin-sick idealism that comes down the pike.
I once stood up at a District Council of over 500 ministers and their wives from that state. I told them, as I had the opportunity to introduce myself to their district superintendent, that I was a first-generation Pentecostal. Some have justifiably called me a virgin in the Holy Spirit because I was baptized in God’s Holy Spirit without any lukewarm wishy-washy socialized Bible college professor trying to teach me how not to preach. Yes, and another Pentecost Sunday is about to pass, and this truly Pentecostal preacher of over 44 years will not have a pulpit to preach in because of fear on the part of church leadership; the fear of man, the fear of losing men and women from the Christian Country Club that they call a church, which in all reality, is the fear of losing the money that they think would otherwise come in their offering plates of those who might just be upset if this man full of the Holy Ghost were to preach something that would touch on one of their golden calves. They fear that I might preach, as I have been accused of being too intense, exposing their secret sins and causing them to have a sleepless night dreaming about the flames of Hell wrapping up around their ankles, as they realize you cannot be truly converted and continue to fantasize about having sex with another man or woman while being intimate with their spouse. Is it any wonder our altars are empty and our prisons, jails, and psychiatric centers are full?
Oh, it was not an instant shift away from the ministry of the evangelist. I watched it happen over time. The denomination that I was a part of at the time admitted that because of the rapid growth that they had over a certain period of time, they did not have enough truly Pentecostal professors with the right credentials to fill all of the teaching spots that they had. So they began to hire graduates of openly Calvinistic non-Pentecostal seminaries, who over time spoon-fed eternal security doctrine mixed with modern psychology to hundreds and eventually thousands of our young ministers. As an older generation of ministers were retiring from the scene, and pulpits and parsonages became empty, these new sociologically tainted ministers began to be hired in their place. Time and time again, as I would attempt to bring to a pastor here or a pastor there a bit about my God-called ministry, I was informed, “No thank you, Brother Harkness, I know our people have loved you when you have preached here in the past, but I am having my college roommate come and preach for me this year. He pastors in Tim Buck Too and only has a very small congregation and needs a break away from his work. I believe our people will love his ministry. God bless you though, Brother! Maybe we will have you back next year! Thus such trends and others very similar began to fly like a flock of butterflies over our nation’s churches and fliff and fluff came to take the place of sparks and fire. Then too, as my Aunt Cleora, said we too seldom had revival services anymore but had seminars!
From that, there is one more good point I would like us to look at. Our pastor is awesome at regularly reminding us all that God must receive all of the glory. He too was once a full-time evangelist. As a matter of fact, we both traveled at the same time in the New York District, holding evangelistic crusades everywhere doors were open. His father, a Pentecostal pastor, pastored five churches and raised four boys, all of whom ended up in full-time ministry. Pastor Joe often tells us of his father having to frequently work three different jobs just to pull back together some struggling church that the district knew that he could resurrect. For him, that was by the book, by prayer, and by blood, sweat, and tears. God knows that His sending out two by two when it comes to revival works because it ensures that there is not just one man getting all of the glory from any success. That is why He teamed up the ministries of the Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher, listed in Ephesians 4:11, each drawing off of another’s strengths, each lifting the load that falls off because of another’s weakness, each praying for the other, and probably most important of all each being accountable for the other’s potential due to being made of clay. Extra eyes, extra ears, extra hands, extra feet, extra brains, extra hearts, extra zeal, extra extra extra read all about it right. Because God knows two by two is the best. Then the more sincere God-seekers you have on your team, the more you all will agree and help each other accomplish the same thing!
Ever wonder why in most cases by far in the Bible stories, there are two people paired with other, although on occasion you see more? Sometimes even with the two you have a failure. But with the two you have the potential of one of them reminding the other of the ONE! Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and two sons, Shem and Ham. Abraham and Lot, or Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Aaron, David and Jonathan, and we could go on and on, into the New Testament. There we see even Jesus and John the Baptist, Paul and Barnabas, Peter and John the Beloved. We must come to understand that for God to truly get the glory He must accomplish His perfect work through imperfect people.
As I have been a fascinated student of more modern-day revivals for years, guess what I have learned? I have found that the same pattern emerges inn revivals. We discover John and Charles Wesley in the 18th Century, William Seymore, and Charles Parham, in the Azusa St Revivals 1906-1915, Billy Graham and Cliff Barrows his music and program director, Loren Cunningham and Darlene Cunningham, the founders of the massive Youth with a Mission. In more modern history, we see the revival at Pensacola Florida with Evangelist Steve Hill and Pastor John Kilpatrick. The research on team ministry closed out its list with the following statement that I felt was powerful. “The teamwork and spiritual synergy between Pastor John Kilpatrick and Evangelist Steve Hill exemplify how ministry partnerships can facilitate significant spiritual movements, impacting countless lives.’
Lastly, throw into the mix the movements of deconstructionism and what has been called progressive but should be rightly called degressive Christianity. I cut my teeth in the Holy Ghost amid tons of false doctrines in the early 80’s that by my prayerful observation were all pride-based. Almost every single so-called new revelation appealed strongly to the pride of life and to the individual power that they believed that the believer could have. It seemed like every other person was calling themselves by some self-proclaimed title and their way out of balanced perspectives on faith in general, but as it related to healing, prosperity and the control of man have led many, and some I know, to either leave what they believe to be true Christianity or jump way back into some form of orthodoxy. I have many published articles where I present solid biblical arguments against their claims, as well as intellectual evaluations of where they went off track. Simply Google Nolan Harkness, Author for over 200 op-eds over the last six years. I will just generalize by summing up what they did with the ministry of the evangelist. They dissolved it. It seems they made everyone with any kind of an exhortative message either an Apostle or a Prophet and hardly have any place for even that pastor or teacher anymore. Talking to them about sinful practices is useless because in most of their views that is discussing negatives and is a lack of faith, or they blow it off and say glibly, “Jesus took care of all of that on the cross, so we leave all that up to Him.” To me, they exemplify Proverbs 30:20 which declares. “Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eats, and wipes her mouth, and says I have done no evil.”
Even though this hyper-faith movement, which quickly grew into deconstructionism, claimed to be team players by professing that every church should have one of the fivefold members on their staff, many of them had become so polluted by their me-me-me ideology that quickly rolled over into aggressive passivism. (Wow does that sound like an oxymoron!) Or they say”I won’t tell on you so that you don’t tell on me!” theology, which is technically sociology.
Then to conclude this somewhat lengthy op-ed I would like to draw us to the great mystery of the two olive trees of Zechariah chapter 4 that feed the golden lampstand continually. I remember being positively floored by this vision while engrossed in prayer while reading this passage. To me, it seemed to be the total of everything the Holy Spirit had taught me over many years without ever having the complete answer to the question that every commentator familiar with the Greek and Hebrew of both the Zechariah and the Revelation reference seem to wrestle over. I do not believe we are intended to have a concrete answer, as I believe it is intended to be truthfully and intentionally ambiguous. Could it mean Christ and His Church are the two branches, or Christ and Moses covering Old and New Testament periods, or could it be Joshua and Zerubbabel? Yes, Yes, and Yes, and it’s so beautifully profound that I think that it’s that way! Most beautiful to me is that it could also be just as well any pastor and evangelist called to work together during an outpouring of the Holy Spirit during a unique revival such as John Kilpatrick and Steve Hill at the Pensacola revival or William Seymore and Charles Parham at Azusa St. I can only speculate, but I believe that God can and will use any two individuals who are biblically called, trained, and anointed individuals to pour out the beautiful golden oil of His Holy Spirit through them to accomplish a task of His choosing. In 44 years I believe I have come to know Him fairly well, so if there is one thing that I would lay down everything I own for it is that He will always pick, choose, prepare, and call someone who is the most unlikely, probably someone the builders have already rejected, to use to bring Himself all the glory He will chose them be the next two olive branches He chooses to flow from. Just whatever you do, reader, do not make the mistake of thinking that you are the one who will one day have your name up in lights, written down in history, or paraded among the hero hunters as the one who did all the right things to make this happen. He wants to make sure, as He wrote in both Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11 that there are two olive trees. You can only ever possibly be one of them. He is the ONE who will make sure He gets all the glory!
