Flyer3
His Holy Church
“In its most general sense, the religious society founded and established by Jesus Christ, to receive, preserve, and propagate his doctrines and ordinances.”
“A body or community of Christians, united under one form of government by the profession of one faith, and the observance of the same rituals and ceremonies.”1
Abraham led many souls out of Ur and Haran, Moses freed a nation from bondage and set up a government where there was no king. In Egypt, the people had to pay one-fifth of everything they earned to that government and they called it bondage. How can we call a similar or worse situation freedom?
If God did not send Moses to bring the people out of that bondage, ordering them to never to return, He did not send His Son to appoint a church to deliver the people back into bondage? The Bible says the slothful shall be under tribute and if you sit at a table with a ruler, 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”?
King David said, “Let their table become a snare before them: and that which should have been for their welfare, let it become a trap”? While Paul repeats this warning “...Let their table be made a snare, and a trap...”
Jesus appointed a kingdom to His little flock saying, “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...”
Christ told us to pray (apply) to our Father in Heaven, and to “call no man father upon the earth.” The governments of men offer gifts, gratuities, and benefits provided at the expense of our neighbors. Peter warned us that through such covetous desires the people would become merchandise.
“Freedom is the right to choose; the right to create for yourself the alternative of choice. Without the responsibility and exercise of choice, a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.”2
Rome, Egypt, and Babylon made the people merchandise, a thing, human resources through social contracts, but God desires that every man should be a free soul under Him. What the early church taught was the perfect law of liberty, a system based on faith, hope and charity, which Christ called the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. The early Church through the teachings of Christ turned the world upside down and set men free returning every man to his possessions and everyman to his family. Through sophistry and traditions the modern Church the people have returned to bondage?
Historian, Edward Gibbon, in writing about the Church, praised "the union and discipline of the Christian republic" saying it "gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire."
The love and brotherhood of the early Church sustained the people as the Roman Empire decayed and collapsed. Can we conform to Christ and His Church according to that divine plan today?
“Are men the property of the state?
Or are they free souls under God?
This same battle continues
throughout the world.”3
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...”4
“My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” Proverbs 1:10
In the beginning, God endowed man with certain inalienable rights. Men often create and endow governments with power by their consent. They often do this by going out of the presence of God to build civil societies that do contrary to the will of God. Cain, Nimrod, the Pharaohs of Egypt, and even the election of Saul and the adoration of Caesar were seen as rejections of God.
All free societies are dependent upon people who are willing to come together in love of God and their their neighbor's rights as much as their own. We should seek to be ruled by God in love and charity.