No Ordinary Thaw

I was shown this full page ad today that someone recently took out in a New Zealand newspaper:

Dear Christians: I am a Christian, and I am going to be real with you.

Brothers and sisters, “Christianity,” as our experience and history show, is a lie. [He simply means that what we commonly call "Christianity" today... isn't. Not that the Truth of Christianity itself is a lie, but simply how it's being expressed and represented as God's Heart and Mind... is a lie.] Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, and He prayed that all His followers would be One. God answered Jesus’ prayer… but since Acts something’s gone seriously amiss. Jesus said a divided kingdom would fall. Christianity’s history proves its nature: competing for members, money, power and prestige using worldly methods and systems and measuring success against worldly standards. This is not Jesus’ Kingdom any more than its 10,000 schisms equal One Faith. This is not “one love, one mind, one heart, one accord.” This kingdom is Babylon and her daughters. King Jesus isn’t schizophrenic.

The Old Testament foreshadowed our times. God raised up many saviours to Israel: Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah, and Zerubbabel; but upon each of their deaths the people fell away. The apostles of Jesus guided their generation, but upon their deaths the people fell away. For those with ears that hear, the last eighteen centuries correspond to Israel’s Babylonian captivity, at the end which God called His people back home to Jerusalem. He is calling His people home again today. That stirring energy deep inside — if you feel it — what is it?
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From a recent email encouragement and book excerpt:

What was the “church life” like in AD 30-70? It was identical, really, to the “disciples’ life” during the last three years of Jesus’ physical existence. That experience of intimate fellowship had simply been transplanted geographically to the cities and villages of the Roman Empire.

According to Luke, the gospel that he wrote described what Jesus “began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1). The book of Acts, then, was what Jesus continued to do and teach, after His ascension. This time He was “doing and teaching” through His people, the ekklesia.

First century believers, then, saw themselves as continuing the life that the earliest followers had enjoyed with Jesus on the hills and highways of Galilee and Judea. They were still His spiritual family, “seated in a circle around Him” (Mark 3:34). They still hung on His every word. They still built their lives on the foundation of putting those words into practice. Acts 2:42-49 is really only a description of several thousand people putting Matthew 5-7 into practice together.

The “religion” of Christianity is in truth only meant to be the “religion” of Jesus. It is nothing more — and certainly nothing less.
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