Our plans under the covenant of Radix Fidem have nothing to do with growth in numbers. If that’s going to happen, it must come as a miracle of God. Our mission is to build an identity, even if we are the only ones bearing it.
We are the heart-led people of faith who cling to Biblical Law. If it comes to naught, and the truth dies with us, that’s no shame on our efforts. If we are faithful to what God has called us to do, there is nothing more required of us. The point is not to think too much about the mechanism by which people join us and keep it alive, but to be faithful in sharing it boldly.
It’s not a question of whether this works, but whether it is faithful to our calling. We don’t study how to manipulate people into accepting our message; they have to be driven to it by faith.
Our part is to build a consistent body of understanding about how religion works as a valid expression of that faith. It has to be consistent in the heart, not the particulars of how each of us chooses to express it. This is the key to breaking out of failed Western religion. We must build an understanding that sees through particulars and keeps a coherent spiritual covenant. We have to restore the lost legacy of scholarship that didn’t take the intellect too seriously.
In that legacy, we can build an understanding of how things work. We can afford to build on that foundation a body of experiential lore, and seek to express that lore in ways people can absorb from a different background. We have to be aware that a certain amount of what we do is always contextual and subject to the drift of culture and civilization. Our teaching has to account for that, and our expectations should be flexible enough to see it coming. We must distinguish between fashions of people versus fundamental moral truth.
By keeping those two separate, we are able to hold fast to unchanging truth and directly confront culture when it fails. Aren’t you tired of churches that merely follow the current trends of culture, maybe a few years behind, but always following? We need to lead the way in creating a culture based on divine revelation and ultimate reality.
I am utterly convinced that if we take this mission seriously, there will be growth in numbers and succeeding generations to carry it forward. I’m quite certain God works that way, that He wants to sponsor a New Israel in this world. I assure you that I do not see how it will happen, nor have I any idea what it will look like, but I am driven to start it with my own life here and now.
Some of you have joined me, and I’m really glad to see I’m not alone. I haven’t forgotten how easy it is for this to drift off track, particularly when people make too much of me and what I write. I hate being alone, but adulation makes me feel dirty. The best way you can thank me is to share your own testimony about the truth.
Right now, it’s almost entirely online. Whatever our mission program will be, I’m convinced it will begin this calendar year. Some of you already know you are called to prepare for this. When the world system around us begins to come apart, we need to be ready to jump into the gaps that open up and share this covenant, this heart-led truth we live.
