Conversation in Heaven

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Followers of Christ were cast out of the theocracy of Judea when they got the Baptism of Jesus the Messiah.

Pentecost was the opting out of one form of Government and entering another.

“The term ‘citizen’ is distinguishable from ‘resident’ or ‘inhabitant.’ One may be a citizen of a state without being an inhabitant, or an inhabitant without being a citizen.”

The Church is a Religious Society founded and established by Jesus Christ for the purpose of receiving, preserving, and propagating His doctrines and ordinances." Church legally defined

The ministers of the early Church worked a daily inistration in the government temple of Judea, and provided international relief throughout the Roman empire for those who would not apply to the Roman imperial cult.

A society is also defined as "the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community often so that they are not destroyed by other societies or acts of nature."

"Bishops, presbyters(Elder) and deacons occupy in the church the same positions as those which were occupied by Aaron, his sons, and the Levites in the temple." Jerome, Ep. 146

The question is how a society and community orders itself. Does it do it from the bottom up by the service of trustworthy leaders in a charitable society or top down through rulers who exercise authority through compacts?

Is the communion of society through charity or force? Jesus was "another king" of a Society and community that made it possible for the people to survive and thrive during the decline and fall of Rome.

Questions

* What is a citizen?

Would a different form of government have a different form of citizenship?

* What do you give up to be a citizen of the world?

* What do you give up to be a citizen of Heaven?

** What is your obligation as citizens?

** How is that obligation enforced in those governments respectively?

* What share of liberty do we give up to enter into society or even the kingdom? |*

** What kind of society and Community do you seek to enter?

What does it mean to b of the world?

* Are we employed by God or employed by the gods of the world?

* Was Paul a Roman Citizen?

**

*

Conversation in Heaven

In Philippians 3:20 Paul talks about our conversation being in heaven. But the word “conversation” here in the Greek is “politeuma” which actually meant “the administration of civil affairs... [a] form of government and the laws by which it is administered... of citizens.”¹

The word is from “politeuomai” which means “to be a citizen.”

Much of what was commonly considered part of the “administration of civil affairs” in Judea, Rome, and most of the governments of the world in the first millennium after Christ was handled by church and congregation rather than the benefactors of governments who exercised authority over the contributions of the people. The Christians had been cast out of the religion of the Pharisees administered through the government temples. The sacrifices, or Corban, of those temples had made the word of God to none effect through a system of compelled contributions enforced by law.

The activities of the early Church government in 150 AD are described in Justin’s First Apology:

“And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need.”

The early Church, even after the divergence of Constantine, still took care of the people through intimate congregations who came together in the thanksgiving or the Eucharist of Christ through faith, hope and charity, under the perfect law of liberty. They would not eat of that which was sacrificed on the altars of benefactors who exercise authority one over the other. The true Church remained a “pure religion”.

Citizenship in America was originally based on the ownership of land and the welfare of the community was provided through the hands and hearts of the people. This brought the people together so that they could stand as one body against threats and tyrants. They had developed the bonds of trust that grow in the practice of faith in virtue, as opposed to the covetous systems which make merchandise and human resources of men. The true revolution of America was a return to the ways of love and hope.

The return of the people to God-given rights was the result of their prior return to their God-given responsibilities. Like in the days of Egypt, the people exerted an extreme effort to care for one another which led not only to their freedom, but restored the virtue so necessary in society to maintain that liberty.

Because of that long struggle and mutual sacrifice in a new world and a bloody stand against an unwarranted usurpation, the “People of a state [were] entitled to all rights which formerly belonged to the king by his prerogative.”² “In one sense, the term ‘sovereign’ has for its correlative ‘subject.’ In this sense, the term can receive no application; for it has no object in the [Original] Constitution of the United States. Under that Constitution there are citizens, but no subjects.”³

This early 1793 Chishom v. Georgia case and other American jurisprudence cases speaks of a free and natural non-subject citizenship, but by 1842 there was already talk of surrendering rights and becoming subject to the will of authoritarian benefactors.

“For when the [so called American] revolution took place, the people of each state became themselves sovereign; and in that character hold the absolute right to all their navigable waters, and the soils under them, for their own common use, subject only to the rights since surrendered by the constitution to the general government.”⁴

The inalienable rights of men are still here, but access and exercise of those God-given rights may be barred by contracts, as well as by their agreements and the obligations of those agreements. This is clearly a substantiation and confirmation of the prohibition by God of making no covenants or contracts with the inhabitants where you go.

Modern citizenship “in the United States ‘is a political obligation’ depending not on ownership of land, but on the enjoyment of the protection of government; and it ‘binds the citizen to the observance of all laws’ of his sovereign.”⁵ “A citizen of the United States is a member of the large society which we call the United States of America.”⁶

As a member of a corporate government a citizen may incur obligations of debt as a surety. Through voluntary application and participation he may be subjecting himself and his descendants to authority that may seem foreign and even the antitheses of the ways of Christ and the kingdom that we were to preach which is at hand. They are certainly contradictions to the perfect law of liberty and faith, hope and charity. They were in Egypt where God sent Moses to lead the people out, and they were in Israel when God stated that the people’s desire for an authoritarian benefactor was a rejection of Him. It is certainly in opposition to Christ’s command to not be like the governments of the world who have benefactors which exercise authority one over the other.

Footnotes

1politeuma 1) the administration of civil affairs or of a commonwealth 2) the constitution of a commonwealth, form of government and the laws by which it is administered 3) a state, commonwealth 3a) the commonwealth of citizens.

From politeuomai “1) to be a citizen 2) to administer civil affairs, manage the state 3) to make or create a citizen.”

2Lansing vs Smith 21 D. 89...4 Wendell 9, 20 (1829)

3Chishom v.Georgia, 2 Dall. (U.S.) 419,455, 1L Ed 440 (1793).

4Martin vs Waddell, 41 US (16 Pet) 367, 410 (1842)

5Wallace v. Harmstad, 44 Pa. 492; etc. Black’s 3rd Ed. p. 95.

6Quincy v. Duncan. 4Har.(Del.) 383; etc. (see Black’s 3rd.)

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The Free Church Report

The Free Church Report presents a unique path for the modern Church according to the nature of the first century Church by explaining the duty and purposes of that institution appointed by Christ. While Rome declined under runaway inflation, corrupt government, martial law, and endless threats of war, the Christians found an alternative to the men who “called themselves benefactors but exercised authority one over the other.”
The early Christian knew rights and responsibilities were indivisible. They sought the right to be ruled by God by taking back their responsibility, through the service of “called out” ministers who lived in the world, but were not of it. Their government benefits came through a divine network instituted in their hearts and minds by faith, hope, and charity under the perfect law of liberty as their Qorban of the unrighteous mammon failed the Roman society. Order

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