Recently I have been writing strongly for the return of the Church to the ideals of the Early Church that was written about in Acts and taught about in the New Testament, by our Lord, Paul, Peter, John, James and others. But what truly is this Church: is it alive today and how do we find it? It is this very strong desire leading me to look at other groups both currently and through history that have pursued the same.
What I have found is that, almost universally, mankind is extremely capable of producing collective results on a grand and impressive scale, especially in the name of religion. Yet very seldom do they mirror the Early Church.
One of the very first examples we have of a collectivistic community is the people who were building the Tower of Babel. Let's look at how soon this took place after the flood.
Mirage: a misleading appearance, usually in the desert or at sea, resulting from a reflection of some distant scene in such a way as to give the impression that it is near. Often the subjects reflected are inverted.
Brothers and sisters in the Lord, it is of utmost importance for us to abandon the pursuit of the mirage of modern Christianity.
It is nothing more than another noble human religion pursued by those who deem themselves righteous, whether they admit it or not. There are many good things talked about, taught, and encouraged in this religion based on the gentle aspects of Christ teachings but they ignore or twist the commands of our Lord. They spend enormous time satisfying the masses with their selfish desire for salvation and then lead them into a spiritual desert filled with mirages of the truth allowing them to wander towards varying degrees of their natural understanding.
We witness the beginnings of the cultural influences on the early Christian Church when the Roman government under Constantine in the early fourth century recognized the Christians as a legitimate religion. Many pagan practices by other religions throughout the Roman empire were adopted into the church for the purposes of appeal and general acceptance by the masses.
Of course these pagan practices were not adopted without them being altered to fit into the Christian faith, never the less, the practices of the early church were not adopted by the masses but rather the practices of the early church were adapted to fit the cultural of the day.
Understanding why we should be content is just as important as being content. Contentment for the Christian believer produces something that has eternal value. Biblically based contentment also prepares the believer to deal with spiritual choices that we make all the time whether we realize it or not.
Contentment is one of the most important character traits that the fruits of the Spirit develope in us, cf. Gal. 5:22-23.
When we find contentment generously displayed through our Christian walk we begin to experience the deep mystery of the gift of Faith, Hope, & Love planting our feet on solid ground allowing us to say the same as Paul did in Romans 8:37-39.
Over the past few years I have heard it mentioned several times by others that God has led them through many churches and experiences, refining the truths of God through this process. I even struggled through this same process, I must admit, but never quite came to the conclusion that God had purposely led me through these various levels of spirituality. (...)
God does not lead us into partial truth, for he is completely incapable of it. God does not lead us to travel through the "bowels" of mixed truth and partial, or complete deception, in order to build us up in the faith gradually.
We are living during a time in history when the deeply held beliefs of Christians are being challenged by the secular anti-christian world around us. The convicting message of Christ and his teachings are increasingly being scorned in every area of our society and has even invaded the churches that profess to hold to the teachings of Christ.
Many of these churches no longer focus on, or even teach, the repentant nature of our faith but rather choose to focus on the goodwill and glad tidings portion of the historical record of his birth and other pleasantries of his life. Even though this non-confrontational style of preaching is heard in most churches today, we find an even more aggressive agenda of the secular world to purge any affect of the person of Jesus from our lives especially around Christmas.
Written by Robert Cole | 
