7.1 A Rapid Decline
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Our purpose is first to understand this raging battle inside of Christian between a mental image of an “above-you” Christ that he holds in his mind versus the Jesus of his heart whom he knows and loves. Then, from that understanding, we want to know how we fulfill our calling to cast the accuser down out of the minds of our brothers and sisters so that they might rejoice in all salvation now (Revelation 12:10-11).
Philip Schaff, in his History of the Christian Church, made this critical observation, that no one in the early church ever really knew Paul’s gospel. Instead they believed that Jesus had done something wonderful for us, but that He was now GONE, and that death remained.
Another Gospel. None of the other apostles, including John, understood Paul’s gospel of we and Jesus sharing the same form as the revelation of Father, up until all of the apostles except John had been killed. It was only after spending more than two decades with Paul’s closest disciples in the province of Asia that John would fully grasp the essence of Paul’s gospel and thus remember all the things Jesus said regarding His life in us, things none of the others remembered because they did not understand them.
When Paul referred to those preaching “a different ‘good message,’ which is not another ‘gospel,’” he was speaking partly of that message being preached by all the other apostles, including James, Peter, and John at that time, as Paul so clearly states.
Unfolding Forever. And the incredible thing is that even Paul himself did not grasp the full meanings to be found in his over-the-top explanations of his gospel.
That’s not hard to understand when we know that the meanings to be found inside of every Word God speaks will increase in our lives daily forever. A million years from now we will see in Romans 8:29 things we had never seen before, such that we will exclaim, “Wow! I’ve never understood symmorphy with Christ before, not really.” It is not the Word that changes, but it is our understanding of the knowledge of an infinite and unending God revealed now through us that must grow out from that Word into our experience forever.
The Intrusion of Death. Jesus had promised unending life. Paul had stated clearly that Jesus has come to abolish death and to reveal to us life and immortality. Everyone in the early church was convinced that the kingdom had now come.
For that reason, from the moment that Stephen was stoned to death until that terrible year when Paul’s head was chopped off by a Roman sword and Peter was crucified upside down, the death of Christians stunned and overwhelmed the church. By that time, death had begun to insert itself into the minds of Christians as the only way they could ever really know a far-away Jesus. And nothing of John’s gospel was known for another thirty years, after almost all of the early Christians were gone.
Falling Short. Why? Why is God not known? Why was it 4000 years of human arrogance, abuse, and misery before Jesus came to show us the Father? And why has it been 2000 years of Christian unbelief before God now makes Himself known?
These are questions whose answers I cannot know.
Except this – man is the master, by man death, by man life. And it has never entered God’s mind to remove that authority from us. And we also know that God’s desire to reveal Himself through humans loving one another must be the costliest enterprise found inside of God and the most difficult. When Jesus said in Gethsemane, “I will drink Your cup,” He agreed to become you and me, His Church, planted in the earth through two thousand years of falling short.
Our Task. We cannot blame the Christian church for 2000 years of refusing to live inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of them. God is not known. And nothing anyone could do would have made Him known. Yet God will be known through His glorious Church, right here on this earth, right now in this age, as the Bible so clearly says.
It is our calling and task now to turn our way before God into the right direction, that God might be known through us. Neither do we blame our fellow believers in Jesus for exalting the image in their intellects as if that image of a far away and far superior “Christ” is the real Jesus. Our task is to cast all accusation down by showing each one the real Jesus alive inside their hearts, now their only life.
Light Against Darkness. Our purpose in this text is to understand our enemy in order to effectively cast him down out of the heavens, out of the religious thinking of our brethren. And we can understand our enemy only inside of a far greater knowing of the Christ and Salvation in which we already live.
You are out from God, little children, and have overcome and defeated them [the false spirits] {those who speak contrary to Christ, who speak “I, not Christ.”}, because greater is He who is inside of you than he who is in the cosmos {the present false arrangement} (1 John 4:4). It is God who has set light against darkness, the knowledge of God against the ignorance of God, not that we would know darkness, but that we would know light.
Savage Wolves. During his last visit in Ephesus, on his journey back to Jerusalem and imprisonment, Paul said this to the elders of the churches there. – For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears (Acts 20:29-31).
We know now that “savage wolves” did enter into the church of Christ, although Ephesus enjoyed a relief until the passing of John. We call those “savage wolves,” “the Church Fathers.”
Nicene Christianity. Paul also said this – But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons {the words of the serpent in the garden}, speaking lies in fakery, having been seared in their own consciousness (1 Timothy 4:1).
Paul was speaking of what we call “the fall into Roman darkness.” By AD 311, another gospel and another Jesus had taken full control inside the minds of almost all Christians and through the darkest of centuries, a “Christian theology” was woven out of the words of the serpent in the garden, a “theology” that rules to this day, that is, Nicene Christianity. It is not possible in this short chapter to give a full account of this great departure in Christian thinking, but we will do our best to provide a clear and specific overview.
A Mental “Christ.” Ignatius, bishop of Antioch was the first of these so-called “Church Fathers,” and helps us understand the others. Ignatius was a good and godly man who loved the Lord; nonetheless, two primary elements from the serpent’s words and from Adam’s rebellion showed themselves early on, things that only continued to grow among Christian leaders from then on.
The first was this. When you read the writings of these men, you find them saying many good things ABOUT Christ and the Christian faith, but none of them write out from a personal knowledge of living inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of them. Rather, Jesus is far away, that is, separate, leaving the “Christ” of whom they speak nothing more than an image in the mind.
Human Leaders. The second problem was “heresy.” Ignatius believed that it was his responsibility to “protect” the congregation of Antioch from “the wolves,” and thus he was the first to make himself the sole human leader over the entire church in that city, the “Bishop.” Believers in Jesus who wanted to be in good standing with the church, must acknowledge Ignatius as their overseer.
Do you see what is happening, as Jesus alive inside of us and we inside of Him vanishes into the distance, no longer known, two things take His place in the life of His body. The first is an image of “Christ,” an image that takes on “super” qualities, and a strong human leader standing in the place of Jesus in directing the lives of everyone.
Power Corrupts. Now certainly, as we walk together as the Body of Christ, we submit to one another in honor and in the fear of the Lord, because we see Jesus Himself filling one another. But no victory is ever gained by telling people what to do; the victory of Christ is laying down our lives for one another.
And anytime one individual takes the position of solitary “protector” over many, the fact that Jesus IS doing all things well as head of every little one who belongs to Him disappears from knowledge, and the strongest of humans, no matter how “good,” now take His place. As Lord Acton said, “Power corrupts.” That’s why God will never give power to us, only authority; all power is reserved only to God’s Holy Spirit.
The Capable “Lead.” Here is the dilemma through the history of the Church. – Consider your calling brothers and sisters, that not many wise according to the flesh were called, not many powerful… But the foolish things of the world, God has chosen, that He might shame the wise; and the weak things of the world, God has chosen… so that no flesh might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:26-29).
Not many of those who are capable in their human persons, able to present a front of “certainty” that they are able to “lead” and to convince many to “follow,” are called into the Church. But some are – and those some immediately feel “called of God” to be the leaders and ministry in the Church, willing to “stand-in” for an absent “Christ.”
Let It Not Be So. It’s not that these men cannot be good and decent Christians; it’s that they, being blind, imagine themselves capable of being “above” the congregation, in-between these weak and foolish Christians and a faraway and someday “Christ.” As Paul said, “Fakery.” They pretend to know something that the average Christian does not know; they pretend that they know “what it’s all about and where they are going.”
Here is what Jesus said on this same dilemma in the Church. – You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant (Matthew 20:25-26).
– Let it not be so among you. –
The Rise of “the Flesh.” The moment any individual sees himself “above” the congregation, the exact same reasoning will take place in his mind that took place in Adam. – “Why don’t these fleshy people do what they are supposed to do and why don’t they stop doing what they are not supposed to do?”
And in their rising contempt for the weak and the lowly, every single “leader” in Church history has reached for the exact same thing Adam reached for, and that is an external word of the human mind, word that is NOT Jesus Himself in Person, word to command and to control.
Do you see what comes next? The life of Jesus, Himself in Person, made visible in our mortal flesh, flesh of His flesh, has long vanished, and another “FLESH” rises to fill the void.
Another “Enemy.” Here is the reasoning that came swiftly into the Church. – Jesus is far away and someday. The ministry and God’s instructions have now taken His place. Death is now the only way through which we will ever really be with Jesus. Right now, these flesh people just are not under control. They are always doing the wrong thing.
Conclusion: “The flesh is our enemy. So long as we are in these bodies of flesh, God cannot do what He says in our lives.”
In this way “the flesh” became the primary force in the lives of all Christians; the Jesus of their hearts they could hardly know. Yet here is the goodness of God. No unbelief can remove the fact that Jesus Himself fills His own ones and carries them through a way they cannot go themselves.