2008--what Constantine did (revised)

                        This is a longer redo of something I wrote earlier—again. 

2008—what Constantine did

            My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  History tells us that Constantine, the Roman Emperor, claimed to have a conversion experience and, afterward, legalized the Christian faith early in the 4^th century A.D.  Did he actually come to faith in Jesus?  Any of us who are believers know that only God knows one’s heart, and that we all have failed to follow Him as we know we should have, but we are also well aware that, when we are not living in a dire persecution circumstance, there will be some people that will attempt to imitate being a believer for some purpose, and there are some who are just self deceived.  History does give us some insight into this question, because, being possibly the most politically powerful person in the world at that time, we have a supply of information recorded about his life. 

            First, we know that, after his conversion, he ordered two members of his family put to death.  Yes, it is possible that he actually had a justifiable reason for that, but, on the other hand, having someone meet death is an easier thing to do when you are a dictator.  Second, he ordered that the Christian faith become legal in the Roman Empire, but, he did not make the paganism that was the national belief illegal.  Instead, he gave the church things it did not have, such as buildings, special tax exempt status for the churches and the clergy—except that the church, unlike paganism and most other beliefs—didn’t have clergy.  Also, the churches and buildings were named after apostles, similar to the Roman pagan temples being named after the gods of Roman mythology.  That caused a run on orators quote converting unquote and taking the church organization leadership positions, which in a fairly short period of time saw the now official church take a look similar to the religions of the world.  For me, none of that has a look or feel of a person who truly came to faith in Jesus and sought out mature believers to help guide one’s spiritual growth.  It does have every look of dictator of a declining empire grasping at whatever it took to prevent the dictatorship from declining further.  Third, when Constantine died, his burial spot was made in the form of the sun.  One needs to think of Mithras, the Roman sun god—with the sun having twelve rays, with, at the end of each ray, a statue to represent one of the twelve disciples, with him buried in the middle, representing himself as the chief apostle.  Does that sound like a person with a good grasp of the teaching of Jesus, the apostles, and the early church and its leaders? 

            What does that have to do with us today?  Well, almost all traditional churches in the western world own or rent buildings, and the organizations have names.  One should notice that, in the New Testament, Paul and the other writers wrote to all the believers in a city, and also never wrote directly any leaders, but, as I mentioned, to everyone.  When we look at scripture, we see that 1 Corinthians 6 verses 19 and 20 tell us that we believers are the temple of the Holy Spirit, not any building. 

            When you have a building, you need someone to take care of it.  I am not referring to the janitor; I am referring to the person in charge of who is the janitor and everything else.  That person originally was called the bishop, then later elder, and then later, priest.  The Reformation recognized that the name priest was about 180 degrees theologically off track, and used the word pastor.  All those words appear in the Bible, but the meanings they have taken since Constantine are nothing like what they meant to the apostles and the persons they taught about following Jesus.  We, on the opposite side, have been insulated by centuries and what we have experienced from the proper definition of the words’ meanings.  Most of these problems have been impossible to see by those of us without graduate theological training because, if anyone can force any idea through two lifetimes of people, by the third generation people think that’s the way it’s always been. One can always believe that maybe a thing they don’t understand was explained one day when they weren’t around.  As we should know from politics—no, it was never explained.

            We could say that what has gone on must be still ok with God, because we see the Holy Spirit working through it.  One can say that God is gracious and works in spite of our imperfections.  We can also say quite clearly today that God is working powerfully in the underground church of cultures where the government or societal groups oppose the church, as was the case of the church in the New Testament days, and, as part of living under intense opposition, have not been able to do anything other than follow the forms that the apostles taught the early church, not as a matter of theological study, but according to what is practical for an underground group without financial or normal social resources.  This should indicate to us that the church must literally be a group of people who meet wherever, build up and care for each other, and become God’s supernatural family, and that the Holy Spirit is blessing those groups of believers in spite of any persecution in the form of seeing people coming to living faith.

          You can communicate with me by email at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or by phone at 757-xxx-xxxx.  You can read what I just said, along with references behind what I said, at my blog, tevyebird.blogspot.com, on the entry dated September 21, 2011.  You can find out more about simple church in this area at www.hrscn.org.

            See George Barna and Frank Viola, Pagan Christianity, chapters 2 and 5, which, in turn, have dozens of historical footnotes to back up the statements that make, which I have referred to.

2005--Sunday (a total revision)

            I was getting around on Labor Day weekend to record some of these commentaries.  After reading aloud the commentary on how we treat Sunday, decided upon a total rewrite. 

            As a note, this blog contains an email that will be connected to these airings.  I have hesitated to put one in, as I reserved a name on the email program where I had my personal email, and, at least for me and my computer, having two email accounts from the same brand makes both more difficult to use.

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2005--Sunday

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute.  Today, I wish to speak about the way we who are believers treat Sunday, as opposed to what the Bible teaches us about Sunday.  In Genesis 1, we are told that God rested on the seventh day.  We know that days, months, and years have an astronomical basis; weeks do not.  When God established the Old Covenant Law, there was a Sabbath day.  While it is now celebrated among the modern Jews from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, back then, the festival days were not counted among the days of the week, so relative to our calendar, the Sabbath floated through the week. 

            When Jesus came to earth and ministered to the people and taught his disciples, there was a continual clash between Him and the religious leaders over various aspects of the Law, including how to honor the Sabbath, to keep it holy.  The Roman Empire, which controlled Israel at the time, had the worship of the sun god, Mithras, on Sunday.  That’s where the word Sunday comes from.  When Jesus died on the cross, He fulfilled the Old Covenant and the Law.  Now, God knew that, and the few hundred people who came to believe on Jesus while he was on earth knew that, but the Jewish religious leaders didn’t know it, and Jesus’ death wasn’t even a blip on the news to the Romans, just one more person put to death on a disorderly edge of the Empire.

            When the Holy Spirit was sent on the 120 persons in the upper room in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts chapter 2, the God’s New and better Covenant began.  By the power of the Holy Spirit the people came from that room and spoke about Jesus in the street.  The church grew rapidly, and we are told that they met daily.  They didn’t all meet together daily*.  It tells us they met from house to house.  They may have met a little by the side of the Jewish temple, but that went away after a while.  Almost all of them were poor.  Some foreigners who heard about Jesus and believed dropped what they were doing and attached themselves to the believers.  Because they were poor, most of the believers assuredly worked long and odd hours.   They had no building, no ritual, but were connected by having seen Jesus in their spirits, and from that, desiring to live to honor Him.  Because of Roman Mithras worship, Sunday probably became a convenient time to meet, especially outside of Israel where Jews and Jewish worship was a minority belief. 

The Jews were unhappy under Roman rule, and between attacks in 70 and 130 A.D., the people of Jerusalem were dispersed, which would have made the Sabbath as a holy day of even less effect on surrounding society.

            After the legalization of Christianity in the 4^th century, many pagan ways got forced into the now legal, no longer underground church, and Sunday became entrenched as the day of worship.  The Reformation came, formal, ritualized worship changed, but the use of Sunday as the day of the services was not affected. 

            This is not the case everywhere.  I know of a man who is a leader of a small group of believers in a Buddhist dominated country.  The tradition in that land is that most of the people meet at sunup on Thursday mornings to give a ceremonial bowl of rice to the Buddhist monks.  In that area, it is only reasonable for the small group of Christians to meet at that same time, as the social tradition of the area will make it easiest for everyone to meet then.  This will be the case wherever a religion or dominant social organization has ruled that a certain regular time is an off time, whether for religious ritual, political indoctrination, or whatever.

            Why is this important?  Because, even though scripture doesn’t command a special off day, tradition can make it feel that way.  A couple of years ago, I had a job where I worked all day Saturday and Sunday, and I mean all day as in 16 hours on Saturday followed by 10 on Sunday,  what little I had to do the rest of the week was easily scheduled to my convenience.  It was impossible to “plug in” to what we in this culture see as a traditional church, as almost all are set up to revolve around a Sunday morning meeting.  In 1 Corinthians 11 verses 20 to 22, when Paul is warning persons in this city about their behavior about food during a shared meal among the believers, the underlying situation is that some believers got to the assembly at different times due to their work.  Is it because most of the believers there were poor and some were slaves that this church was expected by Paul to be flexible to lives of the various persons among the saved, but today, because churches are big business, with real estate, well paid officials, and neighborhood marketing plans, that they don’t have to be flexible to real needs in their midst?  Jesus told us that the poor we would always have with us, but never commanded buildings, salaries, or marketing plans.

            Every day is the Lord’s Day.  Church is where one gets spiritually fed, but that doesn’t have to be, and oftentimes isn’t, an intellectual thing, when the Holy Spirit is directing us.  He has commanded us to build up each other in faith, and serve those around us.  Almost all of what, in this society, looks like Christian ritual really doesn’t have a basis upon what Jesus taught the disciples, who taught the early believers. 

             I can be reached at simplechurchminute@yahoo.com or 757-735-xxxx.  To see what I just said written down, where you can read it at your own pace, visit my blog tevyebird.blogspot.com, where this is the entry for September 16, 2011. For more information about simple church, visit www.hrscn.org.

*I mean, as in, all of the now thousands of believers in Jerusalem

Simple Church Minute 49--Sunday morning

49—Sunday morning

My name is Tom; this is Simple Church Minute

            Why do we worship on Sunday morning?  Some of us have been told it was because it was the day of Jesus’ resurrection, but why one leads to the other isn’t at all clear.  Some churches do have Saturday evening worship, and other days more rarely, which indicates that some believers and leaders don’t see a scriptural connection, either. I know a church in Bangkok, Thailand.  This area is 95% Buddhist.  A huge majority attend a ritual sacrifice at sunup Thursday morning.  What is the most reasonable time for the small Christian church to worship?  Sunrise Thursday, of course.
            Now the real reason for Sunday.  In the early church, Israel was part of the Roman Empire.  In 321 AD, Constantine, the emperor of Rome, decreed Sunday to be a day of rest, in honor of the sun god Mithras.  Take note—he claimed conversion to Christianity in 313 AD, and began giving privilege equal to paganism that year.  He kept the title Pontifex Maximus, which means “chief of the pagan priests,” from which we get the word “pontiff.”  He and his mother introduced relic keeping to the church, which spread widely in the Middle Ages, and he had churches built over the tombs of Peter, Paul, and Jesus.  In this social situation, Sunday became the natural day of worship, with the connection to the resurrection coming later.

            You can email me at simplechurchminute@gmail.com.  For more info on organic church*, visit http://www.simplechurch.com/ or locally at (local website).

On the recording, at this time, it says, “house churches.”  While that phrasing is OK, to say “organic church” is better.  I comment on that in blip 94.