Second, to achieve success where even Mosaic Judaism failed, Jesus:
A spectacular difference existed between the two. Where human failure to live and defend truth in Law led
The personalization of faith in Christ began with:
Of that disparate group, none had spiritual qualifications to be disciples, let alone apostles:
The Twelve:
Thus…whatever church-growth gurus say, Jesus appealed:
All of them united by faith in HIM, disregarding their differences. Shaming many Christians and churches who have often fractured their unity by stressing their differences with each other while forgetting their common faith in our Lord. Fini
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To assure success in his Spiritual Crusade, Jesus made two necessary changes in the religious life.
First, he re-defined the conquest of Satan in spiritual terms:
For humanity has always considered:
It considers technology, psychology, philosophy, government and politics as the answers to these problems. BUT NEVER EVANGELISM OF THE UNSAVED! The disciples, POST-RESURRECTION, up to the very Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, continued to think in terms of Davidic solution to Israel’s future: a great king ruling in righteousness over the nations. Which Jesus ignored since he knew that would be one more mistake in trying to resolve all the problems SIN caused. To emphasize the change coming to them and, through them, to all who heard their message, Jesus promised the Holy Spirit’s Presence and Power to direct their eye-witness account of him throughout history. And of what would they be witnesses?
All of these references being true, why don’t God’s preachers have the:
When God prepared the world for Christ’s Advent, he intentionally left:
In Corinth, which gave birth to the verb:
In Crete, which gave birth to:
In Ephesus, where might Diana ruled:
All of the former to prove that:
Then, having personally manacled Satan, Jesus ordered his apostles into the same incorrigibly aggressive pagan world:
To achieve success in his Spiritual Crusade, Jesus made two seminal changes. End Part II R.S. Bray’s book Armies of Pestilence records the displacement effect of disease on world populations. See I Samuel 31:7 and I Chronicles 4:41-43 for examples of war as the Great Population Displacement, repeated throughout history.
The Bubonic/Black Plague being the worst of all examples of that Displacement. In less than 20 years in the 14th century it carried off three-quarters of the population in Europe and Asia. In WWI one million soldiers died in four years. In 1918, alone, the Swine Flu killed 20 million in Europe and America. And a contemporary COVID-19 has killed nearly seven million world-wide. And its still hanging around! Bray noted that the first evidence of a European epidemic in America occurred between 1616-1619; perhaps the Plague or Smallpox—the latter killer of multiplied tribes of Indians. The effect in what is now Massachusetts Bay left the region depopulated. Which made Puritan colonization easier. God, however, had another destiny for Christianity in the Roman world. End Part I Paul Revere not only made bells that rang in many colonial churches and public buildings. He not only rode his famous, if disrupted by British cavalry, ride to warn colonists of the enemy's approach. He not only served as an emissary of a powerful patriot cause, working closely with committees of correspondence.
Paul Revere embodied the Christian faith. A young woman had been abandoned by her minister-boyfriend. Paul and his wife immediately brought her into their house and kept her till the baby's birth and housed her afterward. Hollywood has never considered such people as examples of the Christ. (Unless it's a Catholic priest. They never get bad press.) At least publicizing efforts of Bible Christians to actively live their faith would reveal the excellence of Christian Faith while admitting the failure of some Christians to live their faith. But...have critics of the Christian Faith ever been objective? And have they even partially embodied the human creed they promote? Christians, expect no change in societal rejection of Christ and, consequently, of those of us who resiliently endeavor to publicly and privately live for him. Only when the great Trouble falls on America will a change occur. May it be soon. Fini The Foundling, a TV Land Gunsmoke show, had Marshall Matt Dillon find a young woman in a cave. She had recently given birth to a child begotten by rape. Not wanting the child, but equally fearful of returning to her very "religious" parents, she resisted when Dillon wanted directions there. He consoled and counseled her, but insisted on returning her.
Their arrival delighted the mother but enraged the father. Only when hearing that his wife would leave him if he didn't accept his daughter did he relent. Nevertheless, neither parent would accept the baby, considering him a cursed "bad seed". When the secular Marshall urged mercy, the religious wife explained: they had too long lived by the book—Bible—to change. Then...here's Satan speaking through Hollywood..."and we're the poorer for it." Satan's fiendish, jaundiced, distorted view of God! While Hollywood would never make such disparaging remarks about Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism, it feels free to lie about Biblical Faith. God will not forget their attacks. End Part I To recap. The term Lost Cause can never be applied to Christianity. It always triumphs, as Jesus made clear in John’s Revelation. Even as the Hidden, Personalized, Evangelistic, Camouflaged, Reformed, Restored and Ongoing Cause.
In this Finale, Christianity as the Triumphant Cause. Belonging to all those from history, the “great multitude that no one could count” Revelation 7:9. Those who are among the “blessed dead” of Revelation 14:13-14, whose rest encourages those still living to be faithful to Jesus. Those who, invited to God’s banquet, made themselves worthy by washing their lives by obedience and who wear “Fine linen, bright and clean” Revelation 7:14, 19:8. Those who, passing Judgment’s test by having their names written in the Book of Life, enter the New Jerusalem Revelation 21:1-22:5. Those who have come, as Hebrews 12:22ff says, to the “heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Living God”...to “thousands upon thousands of angels...to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven...to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant....” All of whom had previously in life prepared themselves by obedience to live with God in his world, as Hebrews 12:1-17 encourages. Heaven...a new city, new heavens and earth, new relationships, new body for believers, new minds for believers...glory, glory.... No other Cause has an Origin in God the Father’s Mind, God the Son as its Essence, God the Spirit as its inspiration, God the Father and God the Son as its eternal ruler. No divisions, arguments, differences of opinion, but redeemed human beings reveling in the newness of body and brain that creates multiple expressions of devotion to the Trinity not now possible in our human limitations, however varied! All this...only for those prepared to receive its benefits! Fini. Consider Christianity as an Ongoing Cause. The fractured body of Christ following the Reformation, and the fracture in the Restoration Movement, left a plethora of denominations representing Christ to the world. They replaced the monopolistic authority of the Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Russian Orthodox Catholic churches. (Which allowed various movements within their churches so long as their leaders subscribed to the “Mother Church’s” doctrine.)
America, the land of free and individual thought, has particularly spread denominationalism to new dimensions. The church growth movement added a new wrinkle of confusion by hiding theology behind the vanilla name Community. In the old days (of this writer’s youth), you knew the doctrine of a church by the name: Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, etc. Today, where Community churches proliferate, you don’t know what the doctrine is. This writer had seen for years the name Wesleyan on a church building. Then, suddenly, the same church had Christian on the sign. He stopped in and asked if it was now a Christian Church? In name only, he was told. The doctrine was still Wesleyan. Then why not call it what it IS? Give the public the right to know what you ARE religiously. The Christian Church, of which this writer is a member of some 67 years, has never had to explain that we were Christian only by name, not doctrine. No, for we still preach baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sin—with solid scriptural reasons that he will discuss with anyone. And we still observe the Lord’s Supper each Sunday. And we still preach Biblically based and inspired messages each Sunday. However, all that aside, the very existence of numerous church associations today help keep God’s people honest. In Europe, England and Scandinavia—and in Roman Catholic countries as well—the organized state church has the buildings—mostly empty on Sunday, while independent congregations flourish in store fronts and schools with crowded services. Praise God that he made the church dependent on the lives of his people, not on government support. Thomas Jefferson at least had that right when he urged the state of Virginia to stop paying ministers from state coffers! Therefore, for all the criticism of fracturing the body of Christ into permanent fragments, God’s people are not silent, not intimidated, not politicized, not fearful, not despairing, not negotiating and not compromising the Gospel. End Part IX The Restored Cause followed The Reform Cause. With the fracture of fellowship between Luther and Zwingli, denominations began to proliferate, usually named after the founders, usually despite their appeal NOT to use their name.
Articles of Faith, whatever their final form, denominated Christians. The Creeds and Disciplines and Confessions codified what each group believed. While adhering to Christ’s Deity they carefully distinguished themselves from other Christians. In the early 19th century God called what history has labelled the Campbell-Stone Movement, A.K.A. The Restoration Movement. They wanted no Creed but the Bible, no Doctrine but New Testament teaching and...a new wrinkle in church life, sought Freedom in opinions. A remarkable event occurred when Alexander Campbell had to decide whether to sprinkle his baby. Knowing what his Presbyterian Church taught, but wanting to see if it agreed with Scripture, he made a detailed study of Baptism to determine its Form and Purpose. To his dismay he discovered Immersion for Forgiveness of sin only for believers the Baptism taught by the Apostles. When he discussed it with his father Thomas, he encountered powerful resistance. What Thomas had known as a Presbyterian had brought him comfort and he wouldn’t change. Nevertheless, when Alexander and his wife presented themselves for Immersion, Thomas and his wife, having studied the issue, presented themselves also. The Restoration Movement swept the country in the latter part of the 19th and into the early part of the 20th century. Then, second and third generation leaders divided: over the Deity of Jesus and the use of the Instrument in worship. The result was the Disciples of Christ—an increasingly liberal denomination denying the Deity of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament; the Bible-believing Church of Christ non-instrumental; and the Independent Christian Church, solidly Biblical and using the instrument in worship. Since both of the latter two groups hold sacred the Deity of Christ, with all that entails, great stride in re-fellowshipping have been made. End Part VIII God’s sovereignty preserved a strong remnant of Bible believers even with the Cause Camouflaged. ALL the while the Kingdom awaited the Reformed Cause.
Following a period of significant personal spiritual development, Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, felt compelled to attack the abuse of indulgences in the Catholic Church. To debate the issues involved he posted 95 Theses—Points related to indulgences to be debated—on the church door at Wittenberg, Germany, October 31, 1519. Written in Latin, he wanted a debate with clerics. By God’s grace, an unknown German (God bless him) found the theses, had them translated into German and widely distributed. The Protestant Reformation had begun. (This writer wrote his Master of Arts thesis in History on Luther’s three Great Reformation Treatises. His Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520) encouraged German nationalism.) Luther made two seminal contributions to the freedom of God’s people. First, he created an awareness of Grace alone as the means of salvation. That replaced the works-ethic dominant in Christendom at the time. Second, in a six-week period, he translated the New Testament into the German language. That put Christ’s Gospels and Epistles in the hands of common people for the first time. That also energized nationalism in the heretofore competing German states. Many changes occurred in Europe as a result of Luther’s work. His break with Roman Catholicism, profiled in The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, led other religious leaders to openly declare for a free church. That led, much against Luther’s desire, but often of his own making, to competing theologies. Roman Catholics decried the multiplication of personal beliefs while Protestants considered it the price paid for abolishing the tyrannical stranglehold the Roman Catholic Curia held over God’s people. End Part VII. |
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