Foundation

Many are familiar with the above statement but likely have not heard the quote,  “Bible is for the government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The famous quote was part of the speech given by President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, a speech that barely lasted for two minutes at the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It went “…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” It inspired many democratic endeavors from high politicians to small local leaders worldwide. The part many don’t consider politically correct today is the ‘nation under God.’ President Lincoln knew like many others that this great freedom shall only last as long as it adheres to God and the Bible.

What many don’t realize is that President Lincoln borrowed those quotes from John Wycliffe-the early reformer that gave the first complete translation of the Bible into English. In the prologue of John Wycliffe’s early Bible it goes “This Bible is for the government of the people, for the people and by the people.” John Wycliffe in 1384 opposed the selling of indulgences and transubstantiation and emphasized salvation by faith, one of the earliest reformers to fight against the ritualistic degradation of Christianity. Wycliffe, who believed in the centrality of the Bible, undertook the daring endeavor to translate the Bible from Latin to English, which was not available to common masses. He taught that people should read the scriptures for themselves and not rely on the interpretation of priests and prelates. Both those great men knew it well that it is a nation under God and Bible that can give people a new birth of freedom.

Perhaps the globalists and the political establishment have been operating for so long with a godless agenda that they still haven’t awakened to the fact that there is a new Sheriff in town. He is more than any president or government. The government shall be upon His shoulder (Isa 9:6). He is the tester of all hearts. In this season God is shaking every system in its current form. “For thus says Yahweh of hosts: “Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and dry land.” Hag 2:6.  He is stirring every human structure. It also includes all the incumbent government administrations around the globe. The exposure of “deep state” is eventually opening the eyes of the people  and ultimately it comes to a choice on an individual level. When one willingly sides with the views afar from God after being exposed to the reality on a daily basis, there is no option left rather bearing one’s own responsibility.

To bring a nation back to people it takes more than a president or policy. First of all it takes a people willing to come back to God with a heart of repentance. It is a nation under God that shall bring freedom.

Nineveh as wicked as it was before God’s eyes, made the right chose to repent before God and thus was spared from judgment.

Kingdom of God is a community movement

The kingdom of God is essentially a people movement. It started with three thousand who came forward accepting the first sermon of Peter on the day of Pentecost. They did not think building structures the next day. They met in public places, synagogues or town halls, but mostly in homes. The real learning and growth for the three thousands of them happened in small settings at homes. Today for a size of three thousand in a gospel movement, the first thing pastors and leaders think about maybe is building infrastructure etc. It is not necessarily a bad thing.

 The gospel movement today rather than looking far back to Acts of the Apostles pick from the prevalent religious systems and modern research. The church system and culture of today largely came out of Europe or can be traced back to the Christianization of Rome from the third century.

The original gospel movement grew from home groups and people-organized communities.

Almost all Roman emperors persecuted the group of followers of Yashua until Constantine I.  Despite heavy persecutions and martyrdoms that happened until the third century C.E the church was growing in this model.  Later when Roman Emperor Constantine I or Constantine the Great was converted to Christianity there was great relief for the church from the persecution. Christianity became legal within the Roman Empire; After this change, Christianity was hijacked to a different model. Unfortunately then the community setting and the people’s movement of the first church gradually eroded. It gave place to the hierarchic style of governance and transitioned to a sovereign political entity like the Papal State which continue until today.

The Kingdom of God as Yashua introduced was always meant to be a people’s movement with Holy Spirit as the chief executive officer. The church still is more effective when it functions as a grassroots movement, touching one life at a time.

The real conversion takes place when a person has a real encounter with the Holy Spirit. The common Christian culture of today has degraded to an intellectual consent to a set of beliefs about God.

What is missing in today’s church culture?

There are several ways churches or religious institutions are run today. It is still fascinating how a small group of fishermen that was transformed after the fiftieth day of Jesus’ death changed the world around them. There was nothing remarkable about these people as far a human influence is concerned. They lived in a time of great opposition-heavy oppression from the governments and religious groups of that time. They hardly had any mass communication means of today such as radio, TV or internet. They also lacked the mass transportation to get to one place to another compared to today. Despite all these limitations this group of unknown- mostly uneducated and poor people accomplished something spectacular. The Bible states what they accomplished in very short period of time. Within the first thirty years of the church movement “all who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord.” (Acts 19:10). Of course, the Bible there refers to Asia Minor and not the Asian continent including China and India. Asia Minor was still the largest populated areas on the planet then. It is astonishing that a newly converted group of Christian within thirty years into a movement could reach every person in Asia Minor with the gospel, a densely populated province during New Testament times of about 5 Million. It is a phenomenon that shocks any church statistician and any church growth charts today. This explosive church growth continued to the first three hundred years of the church. How did the first church and early disciples hardly with any support from friendly governments or supportive neighbors do this? Isn’t it ironic that with much better infrastructure the organized church bodies nearly as effective today? Compared to those folks, the modern church growth is an embarrassment by any scale. With all the great communication and mass media available today and not having to go through a persecution as the early church how come they were effective far greater than us?

Have we missed the biblical growth model?

Did the church leaders and church strategists today miss something from the church movement of the Acts of the Apostles? Today we have accumulated lot of innovation and scientific knowledge compared to the past two millenniums. But we missed out on the simple organic method that Jesus introduced to advance the gospel. Today we adopted humanly-induced methods and do not rely as much as the first church did on the builder of the church.

On the contrary, the early church was not offered much human help rather was heavily persecuted. Jesus highly recommended the promised helper and His role to teach and guide them in all things. In fact Jesus before he was taken from the earth asked them to hold back and even mentioned not to attempt to do anything unless they received the power from on high through the promised Holy Spirit. It was not something the disciples have experienced in their Jewish religious upbringing. The combination of the ability of the Holy Spirit and a few uneducated fishermen was amazing.

What did happen ever since?

Is it true that this helper is no longer available and the modern disciples are on their own to somehow make things happen? Neither the Bible nor the Holy Spirit has ever changed since the beginning. The Holy Spirit still holds the same role to build the church. He is still active with Jesus’s presence on earth and helps fulfill the Great Commission. Have we become much smarter and become more confident to manage things without much help of the Holy Spirit?

The early church had an unbelievable growth. They accomplished more than the corporate Christianity of today. Acts 19:10 is just a small peek into the amazing results of the early church and much better than today’s corporate church strategies. The disciples of Asia Minor were for sure less human-educated but more Holy Spirit educated. We need to come back to the pre-hijacked state of Constantine and corporate Christianity. If church is a Jesus’s project it is better to the original leader’s idea of growth rather than the strategies of ‘holy fathers’ and ‘senior pastors.’