The path of Biblical Law will isolate you from the fallen world. And the Book of Revelation makes it quite clear that humanity will gradually decline into a more fallen condition, falling farther and farther below the grace of God. We know very well from divine revelation just how to build a society based on God’s favor, but we aren’t likely to find too many people willing to join us. So instead of building a society in this world, we are given visions of building a society that partially withdraws from this world, and creates a parallel society that seeks various ways to become disentangled.
We seek to inhabit a moral sphere between the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm. We can’t escape every element of the fallen existence without dying, but we have a mission to reveal the grace of God by living with a foot in each realm. We live in this world, but we are not of it.
In the New Testament, we see that Christ came to breathe life into the revelation of Biblical Law, AKA Divine Justice. He came to give concrete shape to that parallel society, chiefly because the business of building a separate society among other nations of the world had run its course. It was impossible to have that withdrawn biblical society as a nation in the typical sense, with politics and borders and a national identity, so the mission has changed and now we build a society in human hearts. It’s a nation of people whose identity is on a different level.
This happened at precisely the time when the Greco-Roman Civilization was about to end. The chaos of such an event is the best time to strip away human pretensions so folks can realize they need something better, something that isn’t subject to all the vagaries of politics, borders and national identity. Of course, we know why such chaos comes every now and then on this earth, and it’s pretty much the same reason God decided to end that peculiar nation thing. His Son came to earth and closed out that nation because no nation on earth can ever observe His revelation. Even if you slap them upside the head with a plain and concrete revelation of how to live in this fallen world, and pour out miracles of blessings to go with it, people still can’t stick to the plan from that basis.
Some portion will stick with it, and sometimes those few can grab the leadership and make it work for everyone, but the tendency is toward moral entropy. So God closed up shop on the special nation business and it became a matter of something more difficult to corrupt. The national identity of His Kingdom is based on heart-led commitment to Him, and none of the trappings of normal human national identity matter any more. The flaw in normal national identity is that it has to be based on something from that higher level, and fallen humans simply cannot stop themselves from cutting off that higher level. Thus, that New Testament plan resulted in a lot of churches that kept cutting off the higher level and trying to become a political national entity again and again.
In our time, God has seen fit to restore at least the vision of a New Testament parallel society, a heart-led national identity on a different level. It’s not an easy calling. So far it’s been so difficult that there are very, very few people embracing it. Granted, this time around God is shining that light of revelation much closer to the point of failure of the prevailing civilization. We have a lot less time to get it organized, but also a lot less time for someone to grab it and take off in the wrong direction the way misguided Christians did after the First Century.
Pulling away from the prevailing civilization is clearly no small task, as evidenced from the failure of the early churches. All the things you were taught to love as a child are suspect, and it’s painful to reexamine it all and discard so very much of it. The whole mythology of who we were in Anglo-America is gone. But then, it’s almost gone anyway, since the whole thing has run its course and the mass invasion of folks from other cultures is running full blast. It won’t help to be resentful about it, but those invading hordes have cultures God hates, as well. We have to build a new one from scratch.
There’s no way we can simply forget all we’ve learned; we are still using English, for example. Our new parallel society and culture will be a mixture. And who can say what the mix will look like as this mission moves forward? If we can start this off properly, we’ll avoid the kind of lock-in that makes such a culture die too soon, where previous generations try too hard to control how their descendants think and act. We have to find that sweet spot of loving and living with succeeding generations, giving them enough, but not too much. We have to work harder to identify what is truly essential and let the rest hang loose.
At the same time, we have to make sure we establish a foundation that clearly points out what has failed. For once, we must lay down as firmly as possible that this thing must remain heart-led. We cannot let the prevailing intellectual assumptions stand. I’m sure we’ll screw up something, but let’s at least learn from past failures and not repeat that mistake. We don’t abolish cerebral mechanics, but we put them in their proper place as servants of the heart. If we can at least keep that in the center, the fringes won’t matter so much.
