A question not asked enough.
When faced with a new movement of Kingdomites which drew attention away from the traditional sinful self serving ways of man and focused on caring for each other and putting God's will before our own... what would the Adversary do?
Man, including those who first became the church, once lived a life of self interest, putting their will before the Father's, thus doing the things the 10 Commandments said no to. They then by following Jesus and the Gospel of the Kingdom, rejected/repented of this and put God's will ahead of their own thus loving all as self. This of course went contrary to what was expected of man in everyday life, the self serving ways of man including empire and institution builders, the same as today. Jesus told them not to rebel against the authority of man but to practice loving even their enemy. Loving their enemy meant doing good even to those who did bad towards them, not teaming up as partners and running a later new religion in the same ways as other governments and institutions of man did and had done. Be in the world, not of it. Counter-cultures do not mix. It is these latter who claimed to be Christian but had no concept of anything other than the traditional ways man had always behaved in. They had lost sight of the ways of the Kingdom and only knew how to use Christianity to seek their own power and gain, much like any entrepreneur today who takes a good idea and adapts it to suit self.
By this time the church was no longer the original true church, as the true church which we saw originally was not an institution or even a religion, but simply as Jesus intended it, a way of life as demonstrated by the Way, people living in the ways of the Kingdom rather than the traditions of man. Religion was a rabbit trail from what Jesus taught.
This is where the wisdom of God shines through. He took the most unlikely organization of gentile entrepreneurs and used them to forward to this day, scripture which contained God's truth (not man's), all while they merrily went about building their own religion, ceremonies, rituals, doctrines, governments and such. These words have nothing to do with admonishing any sect of Christianity, but more precisely false Christianity, a human religion/government where the Adversary could not alter scripture (except for perhaps a few words here and there along with some punctuation) nor the Gospel of the Kingdom (which was instead swapped out for another), but instead could twist the entire movement to serve self and self serving mankind in an attempt to draw attention away from the Kingdom and back to the world man has made in our and the Adversary's image.
In other words God used His enemy for his own purpose by forwarding scripture and the truth within, into the future by using the institutions of worldly man operating within their own climate, to safely do so. Better to have it forwarded in the hands of the enemy than rotting in some cave to be found partially intact millennia later because the Jewish Christians themselves had been scattered and eventually removed for the most part from mainstream Gentile Christianity itself. Fortunately, as in the beginning of Jesus' movement, there are those in Christianity who follow the Kingdom as found in scripture just as there are those who follow the world using Christianity to justify self. This is where discernment comes into play. The Adversary will distract us from God's will and back to our own. Does the world hate you as is said in scripture, or have you found a way to have it both ways, defeating the purpose of putting God's will first?
© ...timothyu
When faced with a new movement of Kingdomites which drew attention away from the traditional sinful self serving ways of man and focused on caring for each other and putting God's will before our own... what would the Adversary do?
Man, including those who first became the church, once lived a life of self interest, putting their will before the Father's, thus doing the things the 10 Commandments said no to. They then by following Jesus and the Gospel of the Kingdom, rejected/repented of this and put God's will ahead of their own thus loving all as self. This of course went contrary to what was expected of man in everyday life, the self serving ways of man including empire and institution builders, the same as today. Jesus told them not to rebel against the authority of man but to practice loving even their enemy. Loving their enemy meant doing good even to those who did bad towards them, not teaming up as partners and running a later new religion in the same ways as other governments and institutions of man did and had done. Be in the world, not of it. Counter-cultures do not mix. It is these latter who claimed to be Christian but had no concept of anything other than the traditional ways man had always behaved in. They had lost sight of the ways of the Kingdom and only knew how to use Christianity to seek their own power and gain, much like any entrepreneur today who takes a good idea and adapts it to suit self.
By this time the church was no longer the original true church, as the true church which we saw originally was not an institution or even a religion, but simply as Jesus intended it, a way of life as demonstrated by the Way, people living in the ways of the Kingdom rather than the traditions of man. Religion was a rabbit trail from what Jesus taught.
This is where the wisdom of God shines through. He took the most unlikely organization of gentile entrepreneurs and used them to forward to this day, scripture which contained God's truth (not man's), all while they merrily went about building their own religion, ceremonies, rituals, doctrines, governments and such. These words have nothing to do with admonishing any sect of Christianity, but more precisely false Christianity, a human religion/government where the Adversary could not alter scripture (except for perhaps a few words here and there along with some punctuation) nor the Gospel of the Kingdom (which was instead swapped out for another), but instead could twist the entire movement to serve self and self serving mankind in an attempt to draw attention away from the Kingdom and back to the world man has made in our and the Adversary's image.
In other words God used His enemy for his own purpose by forwarding scripture and the truth within, into the future by using the institutions of worldly man operating within their own climate, to safely do so. Better to have it forwarded in the hands of the enemy than rotting in some cave to be found partially intact millennia later because the Jewish Christians themselves had been scattered and eventually removed for the most part from mainstream Gentile Christianity itself. Fortunately, as in the beginning of Jesus' movement, there are those in Christianity who follow the Kingdom as found in scripture just as there are those who follow the world using Christianity to justify self. This is where discernment comes into play. The Adversary will distract us from God's will and back to our own. Does the world hate you as is said in scripture, or have you found a way to have it both ways, defeating the purpose of putting God's will first?
© ...timothyu
