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We
Are Here to Help!
I am sure that many of you are wondering,
first of all, just who WE are! In this
article, I will not only tell you who we are, but what we hope to do in the
future, as well as what we are doing today, to make our fantastic vision of
The Christian Family – which is also God’s vision, by the way – come to
fruition.
I am hoping that all of you have
read my book, The Restoration of
Truth, because that book outlines the basics of what we are doing, and
gives you the spiritual and historical background so that you can understand
this article better, and, thereby, understand what our mission and goal is.
If you haven’t read this book in
its entirety, I suggest you do so right away.
However, the most important two chapters of this book form the
foundation from which this article will be developed, so please at least read
those two chapters before continuing here [the chapter previous gives you an
excellent discussion on education, which is also an important topic, so you
may wish to read the final 3 chapters]. Here is where you can find my book.
Continuing, let me recap some of
what I say in the book’s final chapters, to refresh your memory if it has
been some time since you have read it.
The world that existed at the
time of Christ was pretty much the same type of world that had existed for
thousands of years prior to that time, but which ended sometime
thereafter.
The Family was the building
block of society, and by family I am not referring to the modern nuclear
family, which is an artificial creation, and is not sustainable. Back then, everyone pretty much belonged to
a very large EXTENDED family. The
family Patriarch was at the center, and what we refer to as the “extended
family” today formed the basic social building block.
The family worked together,
played together, lived close to each other, many times
on the same property, and the family worshipped together.
When a woman came of age, her
parents arranged a suitable marriage for her.
This marriage was based many times
more on the needs of the family than on her own private considerations.
The same can be said of a
man. His parents also arranged a
marriage to a suitable woman from another family, in
such a way that the two families could now start working together because of
the marriage, or, perhaps, the families already had been working together for
perhaps centuries.
Almost no one was without a
family unless their family threw them out for some reason.
And, if a man divorced his wife,
she was supposed to return to her father’s family. If her father refused to accept her back,
she was a cast out, and her chances of survival on her own were not very
good.
But, I would also say that if a
man’s family threw him out for some reason, that man would also find himself
in a very bad position. Most likely he
would be homeless, landless, and jobless, and would have to scramble real
fast to get himself set up somewhere else.
We have lost a lot of this
meaning in our modern so called “culture,” which is almost totally divorced
from its roots.
Against this backdrop, we can
understand how radical some of Christ’s sayings really
were! Some of the things He said would
have sounded really CRAZY to His listeners back then, because they struck
at the root of life and society itself.
And that root and bedrock of society was the family.
Christ proposed something
totally new and totally radical, even by todays watered down standards. He proposed, in a nutshell, that a person should leave mother, father,
sister, brother – and if needed, their spouse – and come into the new family
that He was creating in them – the Christian family!
I am now going to quote a few of
these passages so that you can understand just how revolutionary Christ was
in these matters when the consequences are thought through.
Mat 10:37
He who loves father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than
me isn't worthy of me.
Mat 19:29 Everyone who has left houses, or brothers,
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my
name's sake, will receive one hundred times,
and will inherit eternal life.
Mar 10:28 Peter began to tell him,
"Behold, we have left all, and have followed you."
Mar 10:29 Jesus said, "Most certainly I tell
you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father,
or mother, or wife, or children, or land, for my sake, and for the sake of
the Good News,
Mar 10:30 but he will receive one hundred times
more now in this time, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and
land, with persecutions; and in the age to come eternal life.
This is a difficult scripture
for many to understand. How can one
leave one’s physical extended family and end up with MORE family afterwards?
The answer is that Christ was
building a new SPIRITUAL FAMILY, His CHURCH, and that this new family in many
cases would take the place of the physical family that some new Christians
would literally be kicked out of.
Notice what Christ said on this:
Joh 12:25
He who loves his life will
lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.
Mat 10:34
"Don't think that I came
to send peace on the earth. I didn't come to send peace, but a sword.
Mat 10:35
For I came to set a man at
odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Mat 10:36
A man's foes will be those of
his own household.
Mat 10:37
He who loves father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than
me isn't worthy of me.
Mat 10:38
He who doesn't take his cross
and follow after me, isn't worthy of me.
Mat 10:39
He who seeks his life will
lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
Mat 10:40
He who receives you receives
me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.
Luk 14:25
Now great multitudes were
going with him. He turned and said to them,
Luk 14:26 "If
anyone comes to me, and doesn't hate his own father, mother, wife, children,
brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can't be my disciple.
Luk 14:27
Whoever doesn't bear his own
cross, and come after me, can't be my disciple.
Of course, Christ is not telling
people to literally HATE their own families, but He is telling us that we
must put Him and His new family that He is forming in the church FIRST above
even our physical families, which were of much more life and death importance
then than they are now.
And He predicted that His
forming His new family would tear many people out of their old, physical
families. It would set family members
AGAINST one another in a way that had never before been possible, because
those who would follow HIM would have a whole NEW set of priorities, that overrides
the physical priorities of this world.
Just as the individual Christian
is a NEW CREATION IN CHRIST, so are His people, collectively, a NEW FAMILY,
and even a NEW NATION, as it says elsewhere.
That this would cause strife to existing families was inevitable, but
each person has their own cross to bear in this and other regards.
This has been the case in God’s
church down through history, ever since it was founded.
I have personally known people
whose family would no longer talk to them after they came into the Church. Some have said that “you have to make a
choice between that church and this family,” and, God’s people have chosen
the new family He is creating in and through us.
But this decision was much
harder in ancient times than it is today.
So, God made provision for His people, and He literally brought them
into His new family, and fulfilled Christ’s promise, almost from the very day
the church started!
Let me quote a few important
passages from my book. Please
reread the chapters to get the full impact of these statements. This will begin to make this matter more
plain to your mind:
===========================
The person who forsook his or
her physical family because of the Gospel, and thus became a member of
Christ’s Body or Church, would also be forsaking the only physical security
an individual had in the world. The world has not traditionally been a world
of individuals, but of large Families. This is another point that the
individualistic present day American society has hidden from view.
With no physical security, the
individual faced a hostile world alone, with little chance for survival. The
Church of God, as the Body and Family of God, thus took the place of the
extended family in a Christian’s life, providing not only spiritual needs but
also the physical. This fact makes the scripture in Acts plain that says that
“the disciples had all things in common.” Most have attempted to explain this
away saying that God does not advocate a communal system, offering very
little evidence from the Bible for their position. They forget that the
extended family IS basically A COMMUNAL SYSTEM BUILT AROUND FAMILIES. Instead
of taking the declaration of MEN concerning the Word of God, we should,
rather, take the Word of God as revealed in Scripture, as it is given for our
instruction, reproof, and correction. Only the Bible shows how we Christians
are to live in this dark and decadent age.
Isn’t it conceivable that a new
Christian extended family created out of individually called out Christians
would seem somewhat like a communal society to the individualistic modern
American mind once correctly understood and applied?
And also remember that our lives
today are ruled by gigantic multi-national corporations. Such a system does
not fit into their plans, and therefore does not fit into the plans of this
world’s ever more tyrannical and dictatorial governments.
Individuals can be easy to
control. Large extended families with their accumulated wealth and creating
jobs for their own members is a decentralization of power to the family
group, which nation states and oligarchic corporations perceive as a threat.
Thus, I feel it is no
coincidence that government storm troopers were sent into Christian
communities like Waco and Jonestown, with cover stories that these people
committed suicide. The facts have come out about Waco, showing it was really
a government hatchet job against innocent, law abiding people. We will
probably never know about Jonestown, but I have a feeling it was the same
type of thing.
Yes, anyone who dares go against
the agenda of the New World Order and their ilk stands a very good chance of
possible death by foul play. However, someday these arrogant Nazis will realize
that there is a God in Heaven and that He is much stronger than they are!
[I am now skipping down a bit to
the truth you should now be able to see revealed in the Book of Acts, which
makes all of the statements of Christ above make sense:]
With this background, then, let
us really read and STUDY what the Word of God PLAINLY SHOWS the
environment of the early church to be. “Now all who believed were together,
and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and
divided them among all, as anyone had need” [Acts 2:44-5, New King James throughout, unless otherwise noted].
It has been objected by some
that this is an isolated scripture, and so can’t be an example of how we as
Christians should conduct our lives.
If this were so, then there
would be no further mention of this subject in the Bible, because, when
something is important, God repeats it. Well, unfortunately for those who
would ridicule the ideas presented here, the Bible DOES REPEAT THIS EXAMPLE!
Let’s continue, then, into this study that no one has dared touch on before.
“Now the multitude of those who
believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did
anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had all
things in common. And with great power the apostles gave witness to the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all [could this
be God’s reward for becoming ONE FAMILY as He commands us to become, and
could this be a reason for the current LACK OF POWER displayed in the Church
of God today, as well as our LACK OF LOVE AND CONCERN FOR EACH OTHER, as
brethren should have, one for another?]. Nor was there anyone among them
who lacked [the Biblical record shows that there were some who took
advantage of this attitude of brotherly love, sharing and caring, because
Paul had to say at a later time in history that “he who will not work will
not eat” ]; for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and
brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid them at the
apostle’s feet; and they distributed to each as anyone had need.”
I would like you to imagine that
you were one of these early Christians. Because the Church was new, and
because the Church was pleasing God greatly at this time by proclaiming the
Gospel boldly and knitting together as one family as His purpose was, massive
numbers of people were being added to the church “daily.”
Remember, people of this time
came from a different culture than our American culture. They understood the
value of the extended family. It was their security and livelihood. It
provided the social frame of reference, as well as the source of income, or
employment, in most cases. People were not used to acting as individuals, but
as families. And the patriarch of the family made the final decisions for the
family.
In this kind of culture, making
a break along religious lines to follow a new faith was running the risk of
not only becoming a social outcast, but also of becoming destitute, or, worse
yet, dying of starvation through loss of livelihood or occupation, since it
was derived through the family farm, business or trade.
As a new Christian, then, you
would be asked to turn your back on your old world, life, and livelihood. But
Christ had promised much better for the new Christian in HIS FAMILY!
Thus, the early Christians had
great motivation, upon entering this new, divinely ordained family, to
embrace that family wholeheartedly as God wanted. While there was no explicit
command to do so, you would want to cut your ties to your old life (which
included extend family and possessions), and embrace the NEW LIFE AND NEW
FAMILY IN HE CHURCH.
The early Christians thus sold
what they had owned before, the reminder of the worldly past, and contributed
the proceeds unselfishly towards building their NEW FAMILY. No command of
God was necessary to motivate the first Christians to voluntarily follow
Christ’s instructions to share what they had with their new family, the
Church, and thus to help it achieve its goals and purposes for being!
And so, while it can be argued
that there is no explicit command in the Bible telling these people to do
what they did, the teachings of Christ along with the background of the
people in their natural families left no other alternative but to contribute
to their new family’s success as they had contributed to their old family’s.
When this spirit of trust,
sharing, and giving was violated by Ananias and Sapphira in chapter 5, God executed the death penalty for
their selfish, lying attitude. They wanted to pose as giving members of the family
like the rest, but still keep back part for themselves. They were thus guilty
of lying to God’s ministers and people, and of breaking the sacred trust
their new family members vested in them.
It is clear from what Peter
said, that while they had what they had, it was in their own power, and there
was no command to sell it and give it to the church. But, they tried to fake what others were
doing all around them. They were
punished for the lie, rather than the act.
This showed the beginning of corruption creeping into the early
Church, and God had to put a stop to it then, or it would have ruined the
early church’s zeal and strength.
Later on, He did not intervene in this way, but allowed the rot to
grow and take its own course, no doubt as a test of faith, which most
ultimately failed in those later years.
This is why God thought this
offense was bad enough to make an example of them in the most profound way --
otherwise, the unit of the new family would have been undermined from t he
beginning.
Because of the American mindset,
and a paranoia about anything that smacked of hated communism, the plain
facts as stated in scripture have been ignored by the Church and society,
much to our detriment. Trying to superimpose a faulty model of the family generated
by industrial society onto our understanding of God’s Family has hidden the
facts from us, and denied us the blessings God would have us derive EVEN IN
THIS LIFE through living as His “peculiar people” now. [Read Luke 14:26-33 in
this connection, then read Mtt. 19:29]
The way of living that God would
have Christians experience has been ignored, and has been replaced by a
meaningless slogan Of “We are family” in one branch of God’s Church [this was
written in 1992, so I don’t know what the current catch phrase with them is
today]. This slogan has been mouthed endlessly without understanding its true
and deep meaning.
Wherever the Church is spoken of
in the New Testament the idea of this great new family to replace the
physical family of Christians is mentioned.
If we took these examples and
brought them to our modern society, we would indeed have a Philadelphia Church of brotherly love. If all of the Church members in each
city sold their individual homes and relocated to a planned community all built
at the same time, then Christian fellowship would be enhanced.
The community could afford to
hire teachers for its own schools to educate the children in a Christian way.
There would also be many occasions for people to participate in fellowship
with one another, so that primary fellowship would not have to be with the
world. The atmosphere extant in the Book of Acts would be replicated right
here and now.
I also believe that the power
and the blessings (as well as the persecutions) experienced by the early
church would happen again. God would be greatly pleased that some people in
the last days understand again what He intends for us to do with our lives
both now and for eternity. True values would once again come sharply into
focus.
The community could engage in
business activities depending on the skills and talents of the community.
Thus, by being self employed, the members of the community would not have the
problems and persecution present in the outside world, and the profits from
the business could support the community and enhance the income of the entire
Church.
All of this could thus be
accomplished without the individuals having to take pay cuts in any way, and
the Gospel message could be proclaimed to the world once more in power. Finally,
those individuals whose skills were too specialized to be used by the
businesses of the community could be still employed on the outside.
In this way a true Christian
community could be developed with all of the benefits and attributes of a
gigantic extended family. Schools and colleges could sprout up across the
entire world without being a burden on monies used to preach the Gospel, and
we would indeed then be the Church
of Brotherly Love.
I will end the quotation from my
book there. This gives you a general idea
of the entire concept.
We obviously cannot get this all
going at once. But, such a thing is
sorely needed today, as this world sinks ever deeper into the mire of its
evil ways.
God’s people are commanded to
come out of this world’s Babylon, and that includes this world’s systems of commerce and
industry. While times
were easy, most people were content to have one foot in this world and the
other in the church.
Soon, that will no longer be
possible. Someday, the ultimate evil
will happen, and the Mark of the Beast will be imposed. But God promises His people protection from
this in a “place prepared for them.”
The Bible does not get into specifics, but, just maybe, we will be
guided in this preparation.
This will not happen in a
vacuum. As we see the last rays of
light disappear from this present evil world, those who walk in the light
will both need and want to come together to support and help each other. And, the sooner this break is made, the
easier it will be. Those who wait
until the last moment will be the worst off, and may even pay with their
lives.
If you knew the full extent of
the filth they are teaching your children in the schools today, you would
want to yank them out of there right away.
But what would you do? Is home
schooling an alternative for you in your present circumstances?
And what about the Sabbath and
God’s Holy Days? Will God’s people be
able to continue to hold down their jobs in the months and years ahead, when
big business demands that you do things its way or else?
We do not have to do this all at
once. It does not have to be attached
to any one church organization.
Rather, I view this effort as a grass roots movement where God’s
people, no matter what corporate church they may or may not attend, will want
to fellowship with and help each other out in the way that the Bible tells
us.
This is one reason we started
Destiny Worldwide Associates as part of this ministry. Destiny Worldwide is designed to be the
educational and enabling arm of this ministry, to help people start their own
businesses, and give them the tools to succeed in life.
There are thus two aspects to
Restoration Ministries. Restoration
Ministries is a spiritual organization to help God’s people come to God’s
truth and a deeper understanding of what He is doing.
Further, it is designed to help
the local church in its ministry to its community. We attempt to provide the depth of
spiritual services the local churches need to grow, learn, sustain themselves, and also to help them fulfill their
responsibility to preach the gospel to the world.
The second aspect to this
ministry is the secular part of this work, Destiny Worldwide. Destiny Worldwide is open to all, no matter
what their faith, as long as they agree to conduct their affairs according to
God’s strict moral code of ethics.
As we grow and expand, we plan
to add educational institutions, media outlets, and even private credit
unions and other services to God’s people around the world.
Through this ministry, we are
attempting to do through the Internet now some of what we hope to do in
communities around the world later on.
And right now we are planning to
begin our Central Community right here in Costa Rica. This will start
informally at first, by encouraging people to relocate here, rent homes,
start a business, and help us with this work here at Headquarters.
We believe that this country is
an ideal place to start. This country
is not under terrorist threats because this country has abolished its army,
and has embraced peace as its primary principal, just as the whole world will
someday do in the Millennium.
We don’t have to fear terrorism,
because we leave others alone. The
climate is one of the best in the entire world. Life can be very good here, as you will
soon discover after arrival. That is
why I believe God inspired us to move here years ago, and we most certainly
do not regret that decision.
The door is now open to
you. Start right where you are in your
own living room, come here, or let God guide your steps.
I believe the time to come out
of this evil world is now, if there ever was a time. Together, we can make a difference!
If you are interested in
pursuing this further, please click
here to go to our Costa Rica Page site, where we describe our efforts and
forming a community much like what we describe above!
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