Resistance Movements
Resistance Movements
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard…It is like the dew of Hermon…there the Lord commanded the blessing." (Psalm 133)
During the 1960’s in New Zealand there was a significant surge of desire for "community" which expressed itself in all kinds of communal experiments…both secular and sacred! To some extent I think that it was probably a bit of a reaction against the 50’s phenomenon of the "nuclear family"…mum and dad and one and a half kids. Many of my father’s generation who had fought in and survived WW2 had had a complete gutsful of the enforced community of the armed forces. They came home determined to close the front door of their quarter-acre, pavlova-paradise bungalows on the world and try to forget about "out there".
Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure that the hippie and "Jesus freak" revolutions of the 60’s and their (for the most part doomed) experiments of living in community were indeed prophetic. They represented genuinely God-motivated attempts to recover something which is going to prove absolutely essential as we plunge more into these Last Days.
Biblical and Church history is full of a fascinating variety of God-ordained communities. For example, during Elijah and Elisha’s prophetic ministries we get fleeting glimpses of prophets and their families living in community…or "schools" as some versions of the Bible call them. (1 Kings 18:4, 2 Kings 2:3, 5, 7 and 4.1) I suspect that at that difficult time of tension and hostility between Israel’s kings and her prophets, it was necessary for the Lord’s seers to stick together in order to survive.
In the Church’s first generation we are told that the Believers "began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need…and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart." (Acts 2:44-46) Again this holy communism occurs against the backdrop of dramatic and dangerous conflict between Jesus’ disciples and the political and religious establishments of that day.
A similar socialistic surge took place in the 300’s as Christianity increasingly was absorbed (seduced?) by the Roman Empire and many men and women fled to the deserts of the Holy Land and Egypt to live in community. They recognised that assimilation (compromise?) was infinitely more dangerous than persecution. So, they formed themselves into communities to resist seduction, guard the purity of the Gospel, and to impact society creatively through works of mercy and night-and-day prayer.
Today there are an amazing variety of Christian communities in existence, most noticeably within the Roman Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran Communions. Many of them are quite ancient and respectable…others are very modern and out-there on the fringe of Christian teaching and experience where the lines can get a little blurred!
So, community has always been a big part of Christian history. But what of the future? Well, I’ve been around just long enough not to get too hard-and-fast about the nitty-gritty details of how exactly God may work things out. But in broad terms I’m reasonably sure different kinds of communities are going to be essential before too long so we can survive and thrive in an End Times’ world. The kinds of communities needed in different countries will vary greatly according to the physical and spiritual circumstances. For example, some will be very loose associations of households…retaining the independence of their own homes, but sharing some of their possessions, being more available to help each other, and spending more than the usual "church-time" fellowshipping, praying, and serving God in the community.
Others will be quite "monastic"…Believers living together 24/7 at close quarters and holding "all things in common". (Acts 2:44) Liberated from the rat-race of the competitive pursuit of material possessions and liberated to a lifestyle of radical obedience…even martyrdom!
I frankly admit my prejudice on this subject. My brief taste of monastic life in the early 70’s was tough but sweet in the extreme. What I recall most of all was an intense sense of freedom to practically major on the majors and minor on the minors when it came to pursuing the Lord. Today I occasionally dream of a House of Prayer being brought into existence on a couple of hundred acres with room for everyone, from hermits all the way across the spiritual spectrum (Pentecostal monks and nuns??) to extended families for mum and dad and the kids. We shall see!
Many sincere Christians in these Last Days cling to the belief and hope that the Church will be raptured to Heaven as life here on earth becomes more difficult and tumultuous. Why pursue this line when the Scriptural case for such an event is just so totally threadbare? I suspect it’s because many Western Believers are so firmly locked into our ferociously individualistic, consumer society that they are unable to conceive of surviving in an economy thoroughly under the thumb (scanner?) of the devil. But these Last Days will not be the first time that the Church has survived and thrived living in such a hostile environment. Community…the Body Christ experienced in action…is God’s secret weapon for such seasons in history. At the very least we all ought to be prayerfully pondering all the possibilities!
Footnote: Some sincere Believers expect Israel’s Temple to be rebuilt and the Old Covenant sacrifices reconstituted before Jesus can return to be this world’s King of kings and Lord of lords. I have no such expectation.
However I am most definitely looking for the construction of the New Covenant Temple in the city of Jerusalem. It will be a living structure (community) made up of Born-again Jews and Gentiles built together into a House for the coming King by the Holy Spirit. The sacrifices of this Temple will not be sheep and goats…but holy martyrs. During the last hours of the final and terrible siege of Jerusalem (Zechariah 12,13,14) the blood of these martyrs (greatly reinforced by living in community) will flow and mingle on the ancient city’s narrow streets. Such a mingling will at the very last makeup for one of the Church’s (our) grossest stains…"christian" anti-semitism!
"And coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected by men, but choice and precious in the sight of God, you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:4-5)
"The whole building…is growing into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19-22)
