"That the man who first ruined the Roman people twas he who first gave them treats and gratuities. But this mischief crept secretly and gradually in, and did not openly make it's appearance in Rome for a considerable time." Plutarch's Life of Coriolanus (c. 100 AD.)
"The people who had once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else now longs eagerly for just two things, bread and circus games." Juvenal a Roman poet. See legal charity.
What was happening in Rome and Herod's Judea at the time of Christ?
Has it happened again?
Symptoms
“Even amongst women there were symptoms of revolt against the older order, which showed itself in a growing freedom of manners and impatience of control, the marriage tie was relaxed…" Encyclopedia Britannica ‘57 Vol. 19 p 490.2
The “sanctity of marriage had ceased… Abortion, and the exposure and murder of newly-born children, were common and tolerated; unnatural vices, which even the greatest philosophers practiced, if not advocated, attained proportions which defy description.” Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, By Alfred Edersheim, Chapter XI.
Nothing is more conducive to the destruction of marriage than the welfare state. Women are so willing to abandon the patriarchy of the family for the Patriarchy of the State that has no love of her nor her children except to consume and devour as human resources.
The people who were in the early Church congregational network of families.
"The early church was characterized by a sense of solidarity (cf. Acts 4:32); Christian unity provided a source of strength against the hostile forces of the world. Only later did “sects” mar the scene. Second, the historian noted that the disciples were cautious “to detect the errors of heresy” as such evolved within the movement. The devout were willing “to expel” from the society of the faithful those, who by teaching or practice, threatened the safety of the religious community [6]. Gibbon also notes that one of the factors that preserved the integrity of the church in those early days was that every congregation was “separate and independent,” and as yet not “connected by any supreme authority or legislative assembly.” [7]
"Thus the divine organization of the church, along with its willingness to discipline the unruly, facilitated growth. The historian surmised that by the end of the 3rd century A.D., there were approximately 1 million Christians in Rome. Modern estimates go much higher and suggest that one out of every five persons was a devotee of Christ. The reasons Gibbon cited for the rapid expansion of the faith certainly do not exhaust the story, but surely they reflect some valuable truths from which the serious student can profit."[8]
Historians seem to think so.
"The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire. " This is the fifth cause of the growth of Christianity according to Edward Gibbon.[9]
This is also verified in Historians Will and Ariel Durant, "Among these secondary factors he listed “the pure and austere morals of the Christians” in the first century, but he added, as another cause, “the inflexible (and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant) zeal of the Christians.” And while he praised “the union and discipline of the Christian republic,” he noted that “it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.” In general he reduced the early progress of Christianity from a miracle to a natural process; he removed the phenomenon from theology to history.”"[10]
The following This version of "Structure of His Church" is an AI short production based on a transcript and an original video that was made for group of Attorneys to explain what the early Church was doing and how to do that today and why.
Many more questions may arise and should if we are going to understand and pursue the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
This version of "Structure of His Church" is an AI shortened production based on a transcript and a video that was originally made for group of Attorneys to explain what the early Church was doing and how to do that today and why. ~36:55 min
It has been almost 2,000 years since Jesus was here on earth.
So, it is worth asking the plainest possible question about him and then refusing to accept the answer we have been handed. Did he come to establish a religion?
Did he come to establish the church of God?
He came preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand and he told the men around him to go and do the same. He did not start a church so that we would have something to do on Sunday morning.
That is not what the church is about.
It is not a social club.
It is not a place to go and sing in and talk with friends.
It had a particular function.
It had a particular purpose.
It had a particular end in sight.
And if we cannot say what that function was, then whatever we are attending on Sunday, we should stop assuming it is the thing he founded.
Churches today come in every shape and size. Different doctrines, different practices, different policies, priests and rabbis and ministers.
And they cannot all be right because there are simply too many different ideas about what Christ meant for all of them to be describing the same thing.
So go to the dictionary the lawyers use.
Black's law defines a church as a society, a government established by Jesus Christ for his purposes. A society, a government, not a building, not a denomination, not a Sunday timetable, a government with purposes that belong to Christ rather than to us.
Which forces the question this whole study turns on.
What are those purposes?
What are his doctrines?
What is it we are supposed to be propagating?
Because after 2,000 years, other messages have crept into our thinking.
The church has become more like the Pharisees, full of practices that mean very little to God.
And Christ warned us about exactly this.
Many shall come in His name. And in those days he will say, "Get ye from me. I know you not."
There will be a great many people who are certain they are doing what Christ said to do. He was blunt about the test. Not those who say Lord, Lord, but those who do the will of the father.
The Pharisees were busy
They were doing all kinds of things. And Jesus told them he was taking the kingdom away from them and giving it to someone else who would bear fruit.
Go back to those early days, the first century church, fresh from the instructions of Christ, handpicked by him, and look at what they were actually doing.
Do we know what they were doing at all?
Do we know the environment they were doing it in?
Or has that history come down to us filtered through men with a different agenda and a different doctrine?
That is what this is.
Not my opinion of what the church is, but what the Bible says and what the history says laid out so you can check it yourself.
Two
Why almost nobody sees it. Before the structure, there is a problem and it is not an intellectual one.
There was a man named Dave. He knew something was wrong in the world and he asked questions everywhere he went and none of the answers satisfied him. He could not figure it out. So he got down on his knees and he prayed. That is the hinge of everything that follows. You do not reason your way into the gospel of the kingdom. Flesh and blood does not reveal it. And after he prayed, everything Dave heard began to fit together. Not because he had learned anything new, but because he finally had somewhere to put it.
Then he found he could not tell anybody.
It was as if he were speaking Greek. Not because the argument was difficult, but because they could not imagine they had it wrong to begin with.
That is the real barrier and it has not changed. He found two men who could hear it, Steve and then Harry, who had been walking the same road. And what the three of them worked out together is that they had been under a strong delusion, fooled by men who had themselves been fooled.
It did not matter who started the lie. It only mattered that people believed it now. Which left them one option and it is the reason there is anything to describe today.
We have to build it and hope they will come. So they set everything aside and came together like dry bones into one accord.
Three What they saw
What had they seen that nobody around them could see?
That is not a comment about tone(sp). It is a description of an arrangement and the arrangement is forbidden.
Second
That the altars were never piles of rock. We are told the ancient altars were made of living stone.
The burnt offering simply meant that what was given was given up entirely and those contributions were there to care for the needy of the society because the altars were councils of men.
The Pharisees read those same ancient texts as though God wanted men to pile up dead stone, kill sheep, and burn them.
Large groups of people at the time of Christ knew that was an incorrect translation and said so.
Almost nobody knows it today.
Third
That God hates a system where the people are not given a free willchoice daily.
They were not to pray to benefactors who exercised authority.
And they saw that you are not living by faith, hope, and charity if you are applying to a system that forces contributions out of your neighbor.
That is the whole indictment.
And it is worth being precise about why such systems are contrary to the ways of God, Antichrist, because they do not base their existence on freewill choice. They base it on coveting the neighbors goods. They want your neighbors goods in order to pay for your benefits. And the end of that road is not abstract. You become merchandise.
You become a human resource. You become shity(sp) for debt. And you go back into bondage.
And you come under tribute. The slothful shall be under tribute. There is a name for people in that condition, and it is sitting in the book of Revelation where nobody looks for it.
But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
The conquered people, not the conquerors, the conquered.
And what defines them is not that they were beaten in a battle. It is that they are the people who no longer have the free will choice to contribute.
That is the whole definition.
Take away a man's ability to say no to what is asked of him. And whatever he is called on paper, he is a conquered man. And the offering he makes is not an offering. Which is why Christ says he hates the deeds of them.
Not the people, the deeds, the arrangement that did that to them. And there is one place that shows you where that bondage ends up.
Which is why it belongs here rather than in a separate discussion. Abraham and Moses and the early church established by Jesus were doing far more than the modern churches are doing today. And the people today are in bondage the way they were in the days of Egypt where they were casting out their children. That is what the Greek text says. Brephos is the word.
They were committing abortions and casting out these children before they were born. Before they were rightly generated. Moses was rightly generated.
He was timely born. He went full term.
So ask the plain question, why do people commit abortions? Economic pressure. The breakdown of the family. And underneath both of those, the one that actually does the work, no need for the family.
You do not need a family. You have got something else that will take care of you in your old age.
Four, set the captive free
So much for the diagnosis.
These men also worked out what the church is for, and it is not what any of us were taught.
The church is composed of men who are called out to become public servants of the people, so that the people might be free souls under God.
The Levites were called out. The apostles were called out. Abraham himself came out of Haron and started those living altars, those councils of men, which is the answer to a question nobody had thought to ask. The reason the early church looks strange to us is not that they were more spiritual.
It is that they were doing a job we have handed to somebody else.
And underneath the commission sits a legal fact that almost nobody reads as a legal fact at all. Jesus was king. He was accepted as king by the Roman authority of that day.
He was king because he was king. But if there were ever to be any argument about it, that argument was closed and sealed n his blood when the proclamation of the Roman authority was nailed to the cross of an innocent man.
Isus Nazarinus Rex Udorum,
the king of the citizens of Judah.
Pilate wrote that and Pilate did not condemn him. He said the exact opposite and washed his hands of the business. What he actually did was make an official proclamation as to a fact. And Rome could not go back on its own proclamation. So the freedom was not merely spiritual and it was not merely claimed. It was on the record in the hand of the government that would have had to deny it. Which is why their mission was never vague. They knew that the mission of the church was to set the captive free, to return every man to his family and every man to his possessions, saying, "The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel." That is the job.
Everything that follows is simply how it was actually done.
Five. Two is not enough
So how do you actually start one? Wherever two or more are gathered in his name, there also is he. That is how you start a church. But two people is not enough to establish it. This is the first genuinely structural thing in the whole talk. And it is easy to miss because it sounds like a technicality.
Two men gathering in his name is enough to come together. It is not enough to constitute the thing because two people have to come together and agree that a third person is the minister of Christ.
That is why the ancient histories talk about orders of three. Two men came into agreement, but they still needed someone to carry out the functions that the apostles carried out. And the men like Moses who became Barnabas, men with particular duties to perform, to maintain that freedom and to maintain that entrance to the kingdom of heaven that Peter talks about. Three, not because three is mystical, but because agreement needs a subject and the subject is a man, they have both chosen to serve them.
So they agreed to form a religious order. And they formed it on a pattern that already existed three times over.
like Abraham's altars of living stones, like Moses's Levites who gathered together in groups of 10 to serve the tents and homes, the homes of the people of God's kingdom, and like the Esenes in the days of John the Baptist, who also gathered in groups of 10, usually with a leader and a secondary overseer, who did not exercise authority, but watched over things and tried to keep everything running correctly. The Sins are worth a moment because they are the closest working example we have. They were one of the largest political parties of their day. They took no part in the blood sacrifice of the Pharisees because they said it was all wrong. An incorrect translation, not what God wanted. And they sacrificed constantly. Their sacrifice was to help the needy of their society. Dave and Steve chose Harry to be the leader. And the reason they chose him is the whole doctrine in one line.
He was always the first one to serve.
They called it his order of the white rock. And the his is not Harry's. They called it his because they now belong to Jesus. They were his in mind, body, and spirit. The way the Levites belong to God. The way the early apostles who were setting men free called themselves bondervants. Silver and gold have I none. All things in common. There is something serious underneath that phrase and it is usually mistranslated. You cannot be one of my disciples unless you give up all you have. The word rendered have is the word for property. He is not telling everyone to become a popper. He is describing the same thing the Levites had to do. The same thing Abraham did when he left Haron with many souls and gave up his standing in that government and that kingdom as the son of Terara and became a wandering Hebrew who owned nothing. The only property Abraham ever ended up owning was a cemetery. There is a pattern here and these men are recognizing it and implementing it for the purpose of setting other men free.
Six. Inside the order
What is it actually like inside one of these?
It runs on forgiveness and that is not a devotional flourish.
13:52m
If you cannot forgive the little trespasses, even the accidental ones, your community will start breaking apart. People get short-tempered. They get angry. They get upset. They say something. They get neglectful. They get lazy. They forget to do something. You have to be instantaneously ready to forgive no matter what. Because someday you will need forgiving. Forgive so that ye may be forgiven. That is kingdom advice. And a network with no coercion in it has no other way to absorb friction. They were all equal members. They did not exercise authority one over the other. But each one had a certain job to make sure that things got done.
the president.
In the early church, less than a hundred years after Christ, they were writing down what they were doing. And the word they used for the leader of such an order translates as president.
14:40m
He is the president of that little group. It might be just 10 families. He is the executive of the group. But he is not an executive who exercises authority. He does not issue edicts. He does not have that power. What he does is write directives. If a man is going out to work outside the order, he carries something in writing that says, "I am doing this at the direction of the order. Not on my own, not as a lone sheep wandering around. I belong to this order and I am out on a mission to do its will." The president does not make up the mission and he cannot command it.
15:15m
But he does have a choice about what he will put his name to. If a man announces that he intends to go and open a brothel, the president can decline to write the directive. Go and do it if you like, but you do it on your own because you have no agreement. You are not in one accord. That is the mechanism the whole structure turns on. Agreement evidenced in writing that can be refused or withdrawn but never imposed. And it is not only internal. A man carrying a directive is not a freelancer with a note from a friend. The world's own law has long recognized that service a man is directed to perform by his own religious order is a different thing from employment. The chapter and verse of that is in the article where you can read it slowly. What matters here is the shape. He is working and he is not working for anybody. The curator, the president always had an assistant. They had a different word for it. The Aramaic is available, but we can use a common one. He does not write directives. He could if the president had two broken arms or was unconscious or died. He is the first successor immediately. And the president can be replaced at any time.
16:22m
The order can simply come in and say, "We do not want this president. We want a different one." In fact, the further up these systems you went, the more often the leadership rotated. Every member in turn a different leader each month with a record kept of what the others had done. That way, everybody was a trained leader. And of course, the leaders were men who served. Leader does not necessarily mean ruler. It just means the one who is leading. and you may take turns doing it. The bersar receives the funds and makes sure they are redistributed according to everybody's needs. He is not doing it out on a whim. He is closer to a bookkeeper. And this only works because the numbers stay small. There are not 500 men to check with. There are 10. 10 men can come to consensus. And because they are practiced at forgiving and giving, they work it out. And if they are not good at that, they will either get better or the thing will fall apart.
You only need three people to form the order, and each minister may wear several hats. One hat one day, another the next. You can be an overseer and a curator. You can be a president without a curator, in which case you are your own. Novices may do all the work the ministers do. What they cannot do is ordain new ministers, and they would not normally hold president, curator, or bersar. They may assist so that they learn the ways without wearing the hat.
Licensed ministers.
And this is the controversial term in the whole diagram. A licensed minister is not in an order. He is not under the same vows. He is not immune to employment. He is licensed by an ordained minister. So the trust stays clean. And he acts exoficio by that minister's authority. But he can keep none of the money in the trust for his personal use. A licensed minister is someone who has not made the commitments Christ asks of his ministers, but who wants to serve and start learning the process. There is nothing dishonorable in it. It is simply a different status.
And pretending otherwise is what opens the door to every kind of trouble.
Elders.
We hear the word constantly and we have it backwards. The Bible says they appointed elders, but they did not appoint elders. They took men who were already elders and appointed them to certain jobs. You are an elder because you are the eldest head of a family.
That is what the word means. Somehow we turned it into an office. And it is an office. Being a father is an office.
18:49m
Being a mother is an office. You can hold several at once. You can be a father and a brother and a son. An office is just the position you hold in
relation to other people.
Seven. His church at Salt Flats
The order is not the church. The order is the body of servants.
Now watch the church itself come into being. They formed their first congregation and the people called it his church at salt flats because it was at salt flats and because it was the church belonging to Christ. Note the distinction because it decides everything downstream. The congregation does not necessarily belong to Christ.
They may be free men. They may be bond.
They may be all kinds of things. The church belongs to Christ. Anything you give into the church is a gift to Christ. So when you pick a minister, he has to be your epitome of a man doing the will of Christ, not the will of some other man and not of some other philosophy.
20m
Which means going back and checking what Christ was actually doing and what his trainees were doing and looking for the same thing. And then you need somebody to oversee it or another government will decide that is their job. This is the sharpest practical passage in the talk and it deserves to be delivered flat without heat. If you file a letter of determination, you are literally asking the IRS to be the overseer of your church. If you incorporate, you are literally asking the attorney general to be the overseer of your church. That is not a metaphor and it is not an accusation. It is a description of who ends up holding the office. And none of it is required of you in the first place. So choose one and choose carefully because the office is real.
Look for men who are like Christ, not unbelievers and not merely men who say they are Christians because plenty do who may not believe the details of the gospel at all. If you pick the IRS, you do not even know who you have picked.
They have employees coming and going and people making rules all the time who may have no ideas like Christs whatsoever.
And your overseers need to be foreign to those other governments. They cannot be of them. They have to be in the world, yes, but not of it. So they should not
be taking benefits from those governments and not applying to them as though they were members of them. They might be Americans, but they are not seeking to be a member and a part of some other government instead of the church. So a man named James was chosen to be the overseer of his church at Salt Flats. And the people picked Ron, a newcomer to the order, but an ordained minister of it, because he had made an agreement with them, come into one accord, done the same things, and learned the same things.
He was still Ron, but he was now a minister who was part of that order.
His church at Salt Flat started with two families. Brother Ron was like a trustee for Christ. He would use the contributions as he saw fit, but it was a sacred purpose trust. James kept an eye on things to make sure no mistakes were made, and it was equally the job of the heads of each family in the congregation to make sure Ron was doing his job. Everyone had to be responsible in order to maintain a free church.
Everyone had a part to play. They did not just sing and say prayers at meetings. They began doing what the early church did and they got better and better at it. The contributions were never just to support Ron. They were to support the needs of the congregation and to evangelize and to help others.
Like the good Samaritan helping the man in the ditch who was not part of his congregation or his church at all. He went out and helped anyway to show people that faith, hope, and charity actually work. Then it grew. And here is the rule almost nobody expects. The congregation got too big. It was 15 or 16 families which by early church tradition and policy meant they needed to make another congregation.
23
So some of the families started his church at Mil Park because they lived closer together and would function better than traveling all the way to Salt Flats. They still wanted James as overseer. And they found a good minister who had been a novice shortly before and was now ordained. Then his church at Rock Ridge. Then his church at Green Farms, which actually was a farm with several families working it. And their minister worked on the farm alongside everybody else. Stayed at their homes for dinner. Shared things with them. And that was not employment because he held a directive from Harry from the order to help them get their farm going. then his church at food co-op. Three families with a farmers market between them. Each of those ministries was unique and each maintained the essentials. That is the point of showing five of them rather than one. There is great flexibility inside the basic precepts of the kingdom. But the essentials do not move.
Eight The altar of earth.
Now the part that makes it a church rather than a club. What changes hands and how? Thou shalt not build it of hune stone. For if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. The stones are men. The Hebrew word for these stones means friend. So a gathering of stones is a council of friends, a council of men.
And hewn means shaped by somebody's tool. A hun stone is a man cut to fit a structure somebody else designed. The instruction is that you may not build the altar out of men who have been shaped that way. And the altars of earth are the same figure from the other side.
24:30m
The word is adamah, the sons of Adam.
It is not dirt.
Every family is an altar of earth bound together by blood and by love and not even chiefly by blood because love matters more.
You can adopt somebody into your family and they are part of that altar. Families that come together are larger altars of earth and they mingle because your family may marry into that one.
So the initiation of his church begins with the elders. Those autonomous families who choose to have this church and who choose the minister from the ground up not from the top down.
Here is how the choosing is actually done. Each family through the voice of its elder agrees that they believe brother Ron is a minister of Christ's appointed church. Does their agreeing make him one? They may be wrong. But when two or three of them bear witness to it, the thing is established in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. And they equally agree that James and the order will be the overseer. Then each family gives something into the minister's control, like the living stone altars of Abraham and Moses.
25:42
You can give a sheep. You can give an ox. You can give a box of chocolates. You can give Federal Reserve notes if you want. Though something of more substantive value would be better. It does not have to be much. It can be a penny. To someone who is really following the ways of Christ, the amount does not matter. What matters is that you give something, a token of your faith in this individual as being of Christ, like a gold ring to your wife.
Something that consummates the agreement that you believe this man is a minister of Christ and that by giving to him you intend to give to Christ and you give it up entirely. That is what a burnt offering is entirely given up. What they are creating is a non-grant sacred purpose trust and non-grant is the whole point. The gift is given up completely.
There is no obligation for it to come back to you. It may go to your neighbor.
26:38m
It may go to the man beaten up in the ditch. You give it because you believe this minister will make a good choice about how to use a gift to Christ.
And Christ said, "Feed my sheep." All of it happens at once and is evidenced by one form, the church election, acceptance, recognition, and assignment, one page, and the elder fills in very little of it because the minister has to write in that he accepts what was offered. And the overseer has to write in that he agrees it was offered and accepted and that this is a minister of Christ. So two separate groups agree. The elders on one side who may be free or bond in the world and an ordained minister on the other fulfilling the requirements of Christ.
And then you watch.
You gave that offering up entirely. But you watch how he handles it. If he does not do a good job, you pick another minister. You do not give to that one again. If you see him out in front of the bar, you have control again. Not of what you already gave, but of everything you have not yet given. You are casting your bread upon the waters to see whether it comes back to your community, which is exactly the freedom the other arrangement does not give you. Your alternative is the benefactors who exercise authority. And when you sign up with them, you are the one on the altar because they will extract your offering and tell you how much it shall be. That offering came to you by sweat and toil.
It is your life poured out. The only question is whether you hand it over or give it.
Nine. No service, no tithing
There are many jobs, positions, and titles in what we have just built. The titles simply identify the parts of the network and what each man is expected to do or not do. There are no titles of nobility, nothing that exercises authority one over another. And this was expressly forbidden by Jesus in Matthew 20:25, Mark 10:42, and Luke 22:25.
"The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors, but it shall not be so among you. But whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
Read that carefully because the usual reading misses the target.
He is not complaining about the church being a benefactor. He is complaining about a benefactor who exercises authority.
In other words, one that compels the contributions of the people. And if we were doing our job as a church, the people would not have to go to the authoritarian benefactors at all and eat their deceitful dainties.
This is no different from the way Moses set up the government of God with the Levites. They could not go up to the altar by steps lest their nakedness be revealed. That has nothing to do with looking up their robes and nothing to do with sewing undergarments. Nakedness meant having no authority. The Levites had no authority over the people at all.
They had authority only over what the people chose to give them. It is a different kind of government and it takes a particular kind of virtuous man to make it work. And it does not depend only on the ministers. It depends just as much on the people because the ministers were tied to them only according to their service.
Which brings us to money and to the sentence that ends the modern ministry as a career.
They were supported not by 10% but by a share of whatever 10 members of a congregation might choose to give. The idea of tithing to them according to their service is right there in the Bible. You tithe to them according to their service. No service, no tithing.
It is not automatic.
And here is the reason which is the most quietly devastating line in the talk.
You cannot teach men to live by faith on a guaranteed salary. If everything were as it should be, what a minister received might come to something like 10%. If he were really good, it might come to more.
It depends entirely on choices. The choices of the congregation and the choices of the minister. That is what these men's duties actually are. And the diligent performance of them has a name.
That is where the word comes from. It has to do with duty, with fulfilling your duty. It has nothing to do with bowing your head and putting on sackcloth.
And the duty of the whole order has a name too. It is the liturgy of Christ.
Liturgy being simply the Greek word for public service. That is what the church was supposed to be doing. Even the eucharist is thanksgiving and giving. And in the early church, that did not mean a token wafer. They were handing out sacks of grain during famine. They were the government of the Christians. That is where Christians went to apply for their needs. And they went there because it was the only place where the contributions were freewill offerings.
And you know by now what that name means and what it costs to be counted among them.
Ten The alternate table.
Every society has to answer one question.
31:58m
Where does the treasure sit?
Israel tried to bind itself together with its wealth deposited in a central bank in the form of a golden calf. Moses said, "Do not be that way." And Jesus affirmed the same precept with his statements about the treasury of Judea. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. That is not a sentiment. It is a mechanism.
They are commanding your allegiance because they control your treasury. They control your banks, your money supply, your benefits.
And the answer is not to seize the treasury.
It is to invest in each other. Every new congregation, every new church, every new ministry expands the treasure of the kingdom of God.
And you begin to realize something that no fund can offer.
Your brothers in those other congregations are the underwriters for your brothers in your own. And that independence was never only spiritual. It was financial and this is the part of the history that has been thoroughly buried. The temple at Ephesus was the World Bank of its day. It had the largest vault in the Mediterranean.
It was built by 127 different countries. It issued money and the Christians were accused of robbing it. They were not breaking into the vault. They were offering an alternative to the whole commercial banking system of its day with its interest and it is usury which was also underwriting the social security systems of nearly every country in the region. The temple of Janus was underwriting the war financing companies the Halleberton of their day which tells you exactly what the ministers of the church actually were.
33:39m
Each minister connected to 10 families each overseer serving as many as 10 ministers. the whole thing a charitable network fulfilling the role of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and Social Security and FEMA and HUD and the Agricultural Agents and the EPA, except that they did it as true public servants on free will contributions.
The United States government has a program called FSS, family self-sufficiency.
The church established by Christ is family self-sufficiency. If the church were doing its job, there would be no need for such programs at all. And the warning against the other table is as old as the Psalms.
Let their table become a snare before them. And that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap. Psalm 69:22
Which Paul quotes in Romans 11:9. It is the same thing Proverbs 23 says,
"When thou sitest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee, and put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat, deceitful, because he does not supply them. He supplies them by taking from someone else, and if you covet them, you shall be made merchandise."
The church is the alternate table. Local control. Absolute control over what you give and what you do not and who you give it to and who you bind yourself to.
Eleven. The tens, hundreds, and thousands
There is talk in the Old Testament about where you put your tents, how they gathered around the tabernacle. That is not campsite administration. It is a metaphor of structure. And it is not a structure that rules over you. It is a structure of common sense.
You have a hand on the right side and a hand on the left, a right foot and a left foot, bones and joints, and they make sense the way they are put together and they let you function. That is what the kingdom of God is. A way in which you can function and develop leverage and assurance without infringing on anyone's god-given rights.
10 families in a congregation, though 10 is the middle of it rather than the rule. The diagram says 2 to 16, which is why salt flats could begin with two families and had to divide at 16. 10 is simply where it sits when it is working. 10 congregations, 10 overseers gathered together in an order and then those have an overseer gathered together with 10 more orders. And it can just go on and on because it is not a top- down rule thing.
It was the tens, hundreds, and thousands of England and Germany and France and Italy that were showing up all over as people followed the ways of Christ. 120 families in the upper room. 12 apostles. There is no coincidence in any of this. And ultimately, when you get to where there is nobody left to put together in an order, you have Christ. And you have thousands of people living by faith, hope, and charity the way God intended us to live.
Isaiah 42:16 "And I will bring the blind by a way [that] they knew not; I will lead them in paths [that] they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. 17 They shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed, that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, Ye [are] our gods. 18 Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see."
Isaiah 30:20 "And [though] the Lord give you the bread of adversity, and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see thy teachers: 21 And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This [is] the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. 22 Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast them away as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence. 23 Then shall he give the rain of thy seed,..."
Matthew 13:13 "Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand."
Matthew 15:14 "Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord [is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recoveing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
John 9:39 ¶ "And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind."
Luke 6:39 "And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch? 40 The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master."
Acts 13:11 "And now, behold, the hand of the Lord [is] upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand."
“A democracy is always temporary in nature;" clarifying “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” ― Alexander Fraser Tytler, a.k.a. Lord Woodhouselee, (1747–1813) a judge, writer, and Professor at the University of Edinburgh.
“The particular aspect of history which both attracts and benefits its readers is the examination of causes and the capacity, which is the reward of this study, to decide in each case the best policy to follow. Now in all political situations we must understand that the principle factor which makes for success or failure is the form of a state's constitution: it is from this source, as if from a fountainhead, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfillment.”― Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire.
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” ― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams.
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." John Galt, Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics as if Freedom Mattered (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986)
Democracy without constraint against the worst impulses of the majority will lead to tyranny.Plato, Book VIII of “The Republic.”
"To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, — the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it." Jefferson's note on Destutt de Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy, [ca. May 18, 1816].
Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" was, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
“Democracy is the most vile form of government ... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” James Madison, 1787, stated in the Federalist Paper #10.
Matthew 20:27 "And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: 28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
Matthew 23:9 "And call no [man] your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, [even] Christ. 11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."
Luke 22:26 "But ye [shall] not [be] so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. 27 For whether [is] greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? [is] not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth."
Mark 9:35 "And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, [the same] shall be last of all, and servant of all."
Galatians 5:13 "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only [use] not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another."
Numbers 3:12 "And I, behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn that openeth the matrix among the children of Israel: therefore the Levites shall be mine;"
Numbers 3: 40 "And the LORD said unto Moses, Number all the firstborn of the males of the children of Israel from a month old and upward, and take the number of their names. 41 And thou shalt take the Levites for me (I [am] the LORD) instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel; and the cattle of the Levites instead of all the firstlings among the cattle of the children of Israel... 45 Take the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the children of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle; and the Levites shall be mine: I [am] the LORD."
Numbers 8:14 "Thus shalt thou separate the Levites from among the children of Israel: and the Levites shall be mine."
Numbers 18:6 "And I, behold, I have taken your brethren the Levites from among the children of Israel: to you [they are] given [as] a gift for the LORD, to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation."
Numbers 18:24 "But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer [as] an heave offering unto the LORD, I have given to the Levites to inherit: therefore I have said unto them, Among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance."
Exodus 32:26 "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who [is] on the LORD’S side? [let him come] unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him."
Deuteronomy 26:13 "Then thou shalt say before the LORD thy God, I have brought away the hallowed things out of mine house, and also have given them unto the Levite , and unto the stranger, to the fatherless, and to the widow, according to all thy commandments which thou hast commanded me: I have not transgressed thy commandments, neither have I forgotten them:"
John 15:19 "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."
John 17:14 "I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. 18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth."
2 Corinthians 6:14 "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in [them]; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate(873 aphorizo), saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean [thing]; and I will receive you,"
Matthew 20:25 "But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you:..."
Mark 10:42 "But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you:..."
Luke 22:25 "And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye [shall] not [be] so:..."
↑Gibbon, Edward. (n.d.). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. I. New York, NY: The Modern Library.
↑Gibbon, Edward. (n.d.). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. I. New York, NY: The Modern Library.
"Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth. To this inquiry an obvious but unsatisfactory answer may be returned; that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and to the ruling providence of its great Author. But as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose, we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church? It will, perhaps, appear that it was most effectually favoured and assisted by the five following causes: I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire." Chapter 15. Fall In The West — The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
↑— Rousseau and Revolution, Will et Ariel Durant p.801. fn 83 Heiseler, 85.