The Early Believers & Today's Believers

[Reformer]

The Early Believers vs. Today's
Believers

       

The early believers won the world without Theological Seminaries, Missionary Societies, clergy, elaborate and expensive edifices, or any of the other "artifacts" and baggage that burden us today. They changed lifestyles without throwing a rock, burning a building, drawing a sword, or parading down Main Street in Jerusalem with pedophiles, losers, and so-called "transgenders."

    Their resurrection message to the unregenerate was simple, "Repent, and turn to God!" The new reign welcomed everyone—yes, even homosexuals and prostitutes and drunkards and thieves and swindlers. In the congregation at Corinth, there were recovering homosexuals, prostitutes, thieves, drunkards, and swindlers [I Cor. 6:9-11]. They had been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.

    If we intend to influence the world with the message of salvation, we must struggle for reform within our sectarian establishments and partisan religions. For If we do not opt for reform, we will face defeat before we "fire the first shot."

   The Religious Establishment couldn't be any more warped if the Lord had commanded it. The world will not nor cannot be won to Messiah Jesus as long as she is the cause instead of the solution. Nor can the world be conquered for the Captain of our salvation by exerting most of our efforts parroting the party's clichés or adding more theological waste to our partisan rostrums. The slate must be cleaned, reformed, renewed, and reshaped before receiving our marching orders. Then and only then will we be able and ready to give the battle cry!

    If Apostles Peter and Paul had endeavored to spread the message of the risen Christ while agreeing with and furthering the sects of their day, their efforts to transform the world would not have survived. If we hope to achieve reformation, we must reach beyond the established order and ecclesiastical structures. The activities, movements, and efforts of the first believers were unskilled, ordinary, unsophisticated, and informal—although serious and edifying. Our contemporary arrangement is perplexing, rehearsed, organized to the brim, ritualistic, formalistic, and boring. It is, in truth, self-destructive.