A part of the festivities of this last day in October is recognizing the bounty of a good harvest.
The lesson of Babylon is that human organizations are not where God’s glory shines. The silly notion that a church or similar faith-based organization is somehow not a human organization, that it could be rightly called a “divine institution” in that sense, is a rejection of that lesson. Further, a major element in what Jesus did was to end the idea that it is even possible to have a human organization that would remain faithful to a divine purpose. No matter what God did for His appointed nation, it simply was not possible to stay on track.
So this whole “Kingdom of Hearts” business means that whatever Christ is doing today does not require any kind of political unity on the human level. It does require tiny bodies of people who live like extended families under a feudal covenant, but nothing bigger than what would be feasible with blood kinfolk living together in a community.
So we can conclude that the various organized bodies of Christian religion today will never, ever fulfill the gospel mandate. We don’t need any more reformations to change the organizations; we need to stop assuming that such organizations matter. They can surely serve a good purpose, but we should never take seriously the idea that they fulfill the gospel until they live by the gospel. That gospel message of Christ includes the underlying message of the Law Covenants. Jesus clearly supported the Covenant of Moses, and demanded that His people return to it.
That they refused to do so was the death of their blessings under that covenant. Look at Luke 22:35-38. Jesus refers His disciples to their experience as preachers spreading the message of repentance and restoration of the pure message of Moses to the people of the Covenant of Moses. Under that covenant, they could make some claims on the provisions of the people to whom they preached. And that system worked well enough, as they lacked for nothing essential on that mission.
So what changed that Jesus would say they now needed to keep their survival gear handy? It was the end of that ancient covenant. The blessings of that covenant would no longer rest on that nation. They could no longer trust in the power of that covenant identity to support their gospel mission. The hedge of God’s protection was about to be removed, and people would begin to act accordingly. Walking among the Hebrew people would become difficult because that people would be under harsh tribulation and wrath. Jesus said literally, “We shall be counted as those without law” (verse 37).
His disciples missed the point, indicating to Him that two of them were armed contrary to Roman Law, but that wasn’t what Jesus meant. He was referring to the end of the Covenant of Moses as a viable treaty between God and Israel. It’s not that the provisions of the Law had failed, but that the people rejected the terms. They no longer loved their Lord from the heart. The Jewish leadership taught the people that such love was of no consequence, but that only their particular brand of legalistic observance was what really mattered. This was a rejection of the very foundation of everything on which the entire Old Testament stood.
Oddly, the Jews today remain a byword for refusing to assimilate. Everywhere you can go in this world, you will find that the Jewish identity rests on that same legalism that Jesus taught was contrary to the Covenant of Moses. They make a virtue of continuing to reject the terms of the Covenant. Whatever it is that holds them together, it has no claim on the Covenant protections and blessings.
To live Christ does not require the kind of organizations we see claiming His name today. It does require something, but churches have avoided those requirements. The very foundation on which churches are built is a rejection of what Christ taught about organizing. John saw it coming, as noted in his Revelation; the next generation behind him wasted no time denuding the gospel message of its ancient covering, and turned the church into a brash harlot, seeking compromise with the ways of the world.
Right now, the only game in town is either infiltrating the harlot church or operating in some kind of social isolation outside of it. It’s between you and God which path you will tread at any given time, but the current system his wholly unlikely to accept the message of Radix Fidem. Our covenant assumes that the only thing that really holds us together in Christ is the shared heart-led commitment, AKA faith. Any organizations we form mean nothing; they are mere tools to be used or put away as the mission requires. It’s that shared bond of love for our Savior that binds us together.
We have been granted this calling in hope and in preparation for the changes even now falling upon our world today. God’s wrath will destroy the works of the flesh; we should be eager to call that wrath down upon our own. We rightly long to be purged and purified of things that can’t follow us on that same path that Jesus pointed out to the Twelve. We want only the tools that will allow us to fulfill the mission. We need His wrath to clarify our understanding of what those tools are.
Pray for His wrath to fall, to shake loose the useless baggage of the flesh. Pray for His wrath to fall on the works of those who reject His Word, so that people are forced to confront their sins. We have no idea who will turn, but we need to be ready to harvest souls that come out of the collapsing matrix of lies.
