Tribulation Church: Isolation Is Our Lot

I joined a House Church forum this week: Radical Christian Cafe. Not a lot of traffic; not too many members and they don’t do too much airhead chatter.

Granted, even here I will be an oddball. I don’t have to worry about rabid Zionists, but my lack of enthusiasm for Western Civilization makes me one of a kind there. Even with the very low level of organization natural to house church folks, they still tend to think in terms of human talent as an indicator of God’s calling. That is, if you are good at something as a sinner, the Christian equivalent is surely what God called you to do. I oversimplify, but that’s the flavor of it.

I can’t fault them for that tendency, because that’s just about the whole of Christendom for at least the past thousand years. And as always, I’m not going to cram my viewpoint down their throats. I’ll lurk and see what counts as sensitive topics, and what they tend to emphasize, so I can avoid being too alien and useless. I’m not the Truth Police.

So far as I know, we have maybe four to six locally who are comfortable with our teaching. So far as I can estimate, there are about twice that many online. Because I’m not playing the numbers game, I’m not bothered by the slow uptake. It’s not to say only a couple dozen people on Planet Earth really understand the Bible, but our portion is early in the mission. And from time to time I read bits and pieces indicating there is probably a much wider group of kindred spirits, but we are all thinly scattered and isolated.

Given what we believe about such things, it would be totally unacceptable to go into heavy advertising. My stuff has been published at an ezine with a fairly good readership, and only one person has responded positively, and anonymously. It’s not for everyone, and we simply do not mimic much of the mainstream behavior.

We few are the Tribulation Church, Christian Mystics, eagerly anticipating the coming trials, totally at peace with the promises of God.