40,000 toothpicks or ONE mighty battering ram?

What can knock down the gate in the picture on this blog? 40,000 individual toothpicks or ONE mighty battering ram? Think about it.

40,000 toothpicks couldn't do much damage to this gate and definitely couldn't overcome it and knock it down. However, ONE might battering ram could flatten the gate.

Now think about the gates of Hell. Jesus said said that those gates will not prevail against His body, His people united around Him. (Most English translations use the word "church," however, the Greek New Testament uses the word "ekklesia" which can be more correctly translated as "assembly.")

Unfortunately, Jesus' body is not united around Him. Instead, we are divided into more than 40,000 denominations worldwide. (This doesn't include all the individual, independent churches that aren't affiliated with a denomination.) So we are like 40,000+ individual toothpicks, each one trying to knock down the gates of Hell. No wonder we don't see greater results in our fight against evil!

In John 17, Jesus prayed that all His people be one, even as He and the Father are one. ONE mighty battering ram, surrendered to the direction and control of the risen Jesus, could indeed prevail over the gates of Hell!

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let's be more than toothpicks. Let's be Christ's mighty battering ram. That's the theme of the book, ONE. The principles it teaches can help us come together, not as a mammoth organization, but as the family of God connected to the risen Jesus and to one another, heart-to-heart!