When Christianity seems to falter and the numbers and profits diminish, there goes out a corporate claim that the followers are being enticed to be more accepting of the secular world, but this is far from new. Eve and then Adam did that in the first fall. There have been may falls since, up to and including a supreme one when the Christian churches themselves did the same when they rejected the Kingdom of God (Jesus' Gospel) to amalgamate and align themselves with the Roman Empire, adopting the opposite form of governance comprised of man's will, rather than God's. Jesus' movement became yet another human institution, an institution that has altered Christianity until today. Man can spin that all they want to justify it, but in this case truth is truth. Ironic how this happened, considering Jesus said God was coming to replace man as government and His will would be done, not ours. The switch should have been blatantly obvious.
Most of what passes for religion today is based on tradition. When something is broken it is wiser to stop slapping on bandages but rather, go back to when things broke and remove the cause of the damage. A seeker must first set aside what the world of man has taught as truth and go to the beginnings, to a time before the system built Christianity in man's image rather than God's and made it a tradition. It is an eye opener to see how what was meant to be good news about God's return to take governance of man away from man and return it to Himself has become a religion of what is in it for us, self interest once again rearing it's head as it did with Eve in the Garden. Of course living in a world built upon 'self' that is bound to happen, but the whole story in the Bible from front to back tells us to reject self in favour of others. That is God's will. Would business, economics, politics, media and the like promote such an idea, or would they see it as a threat to the world we have made in our own image rather than God's? What did these same do to Jesus for promoting His Gospel, a gospel that even Christianity has set aside?
There are many definitions of said church but that particular church that joined the world of man refers to the Constantinian church that grew not out of Rome, but the Roman Empire, now headed in the East, that gave birth to all others including a Rome based sect that later broke away and declared dominance complete with a built in emperor of it's own. Constantine brought together the original sects from all over the Empire and they were more than happy to scramble and join the power of the secular world and leave the Kingdom behind. Many offshoots just reverse engineered and backpedaled to give themselves status later on but all were born of this rebellion against the Kingdom including later Protestantism. An institutional far cry from the original movement that as a 'church' was a way of life built upon a rock, the will and truth of God rather than as a governing body of man.
© ...timothyu
Most of what passes for religion today is based on tradition. When something is broken it is wiser to stop slapping on bandages but rather, go back to when things broke and remove the cause of the damage. A seeker must first set aside what the world of man has taught as truth and go to the beginnings, to a time before the system built Christianity in man's image rather than God's and made it a tradition. It is an eye opener to see how what was meant to be good news about God's return to take governance of man away from man and return it to Himself has become a religion of what is in it for us, self interest once again rearing it's head as it did with Eve in the Garden. Of course living in a world built upon 'self' that is bound to happen, but the whole story in the Bible from front to back tells us to reject self in favour of others. That is God's will. Would business, economics, politics, media and the like promote such an idea, or would they see it as a threat to the world we have made in our own image rather than God's? What did these same do to Jesus for promoting His Gospel, a gospel that even Christianity has set aside?
There are many definitions of said church but that particular church that joined the world of man refers to the Constantinian church that grew not out of Rome, but the Roman Empire, now headed in the East, that gave birth to all others including a Rome based sect that later broke away and declared dominance complete with a built in emperor of it's own. Constantine brought together the original sects from all over the Empire and they were more than happy to scramble and join the power of the secular world and leave the Kingdom behind. Many offshoots just reverse engineered and backpedaled to give themselves status later on but all were born of this rebellion against the Kingdom including later Protestantism. An institutional far cry from the original movement that as a 'church' was a way of life built upon a rock, the will and truth of God rather than as a governing body of man.
© ...timothyu
