Where are we going?

Stumbling is natural for those who walk in darkness. It, however, is odd when a person/s of sight and light, born again faithful and our assemblies, not only are continuously stumbling but we, sometimes, are also stumbling to the level which is shocking to the blind world. Sometimes it is not only odd that we are not right, what is odd is that our failures are shocking even to the sinful world. Imagine a man of sight stumbling in front of a blind man who walks with a cane and the blind can have the confidence to call him “a blind”. Sometimes this is us stumbling in front of the blind world. We are the salt and light of this world, yet, sometimes, the lost world is surprised by our darkness. Sometimes, the light in us is nothing but darkness. The good question is: why? A related question is why some giants of the lord, in the last few centuries, end up with giant disgrace.

 

Imagine you are born again faithful, on the lordship of Jesus Christ, and God is circumcising your heart, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and through a spiritual growth process toward Jesus. You are straight out of Egypt and the lord to show you that a man does not live by bread only but by all that comes out the mouth of God is starving you and guiding you in a desolate desert where there is no water. Let me repeat it here, God not the devil is starving you and God, not the devil is leading you in the desert where there is no water. The good question at this point is: where is your heart? Where are you going? Is your heart, full of disobedience, looking toward Egypt, or are you following the lord with uncompressing faith to wherever desolate desert that the lord guides you? Running to Egypt with disobedience will make your light nothing but darkness, obedience will make you light and salt of the world.       

 

So, if we are going around and around a mountain for 38 years, without progress to the Promised Land, what is the cause? The causes are that, first, we are disobedient to the will of the Holy Spirit and, second, we are not able to take Egypt out of our mind. Our mind being set on Egypt, than the Promised Land, is also what makes obedience hard to attain. Lord being kind and patient will fight hard to win us back and to get us right. Yet, at a point when we start worshiping the calves, when we fight hard against the holy spirit to keep Egypt inside us, when we keep complaining about God, when we disobey the lord due to lack of faith, and when we never change at all when lord keep fighting for us, there is a point where lord stop guiding us to promise land and we end up going in endless circles around a useless mountain of the desert. This is why our salt and light become nothing but thick darkness to the astonishment of even the sinful world. At this point, we are not marching to the Promised Land but going around a mountain for 38 years, until each disobedience is paid back with equal punishment. This is the story of many giants of the lord, the story of many of us and most of our assembles. All those who are promised the Promised Land did not make it to the Promised Land due to disobedience, and many of those who were made giants by the lord, in the last few centuries, did end up being giant disgrace because of disobedience. Disobedience also became the norm because many faithful don’t know the Promised Land and where it is found.

 

The two problems, to restate them more clearly, are: first, disobedience to the will of the lord, and second, not knowing what the Promised Land is and where the Promised Land is. Obedience is necessary because nobody can ride a wild horse. Yet obedience is easy when you are marching on the lord’s road. If a horse is marching in the right direction, it will not be very hard to ride it with its full obedience. If the horse is running wild to the jungle, however, having its obedience is nothing but a nightmare. This is why marching in the same direction on the road of the lord is necessary, and without it, obedience to the will of the lord is highly questionable. If our heart is in Egypt and the lord is riding us to the Promised Land, the road is bumpy and neither we nor the lord is going to be happy at last. This is the story of those who exit from Egypt. This is why, we need to have a clear idea of where we are going because if we know where we are going, we can easily be obedient to the will of the lord then after.  

 

From this angle, our core problem as faithful and as assembly is we don’t know where we are going. Giants of the lord end up in disgrace because they don’t know where they are going. Since they don’t know where they are going, different roads end up taking them everywhere. This is why as faithful and as an assembly of the lord we need to have a clear vision of where we are going. As faithful, there is no doubt about our goal, because Jesus is the measure of our perfection. Jesus being the measure of our perfection, growing toward the lord in knowledge, in behavior, in thinking, and in the general way of life through a spiritual growth process guided by the Holy Spirit is the way and the ultimate end of all faithful. If you know this is your road as faithful, your mind will be focused on trying to imitate the way and life of Jesus to different degrees of success. Nobody can be Jesus but we all should strive toward that. This is useful because it gives us direction in life. Anything that grows us toward the life of the lord and knowledge of the lord is good, and anything that diverts us from the way of the lord is bad. Our faith is as simple as that.

 

As faithful first you have to be born again in spirit and then you have to be circumcised to be like Jesus, in knowledge and behavior. Then after, Jesus shining through your life is the salt and light of the word. This will attract lost souls to the kingdom of heaven to enjoy the freedom that you enjoy as a slave of the lord. And, the Lord will keep you in a high place as long as you are shining the light of the lord. At this point, your mind should be set on imitating Jesus because this is the horse that is leading the cart that shines on you. If you focus on the cart, Jesus will leave you alone and you will go around the mountain in endless cycles. You will not be the first giant of the lord to end in disgrace and will not be the last either.  

 

The problem is as an assembly of the lord, we don’t know where we are going. What is the perfect assembly of the lord is a question that needs a clear answer. We need an assembly of the lord, which can serve as a measure of perfection or something close to it. We cannot answer this easily by defining institutions and organizational structures, which will take us toward endless debate of this age. Yet, we can identify assemblies of the lord that are relatively close to the perfection from the history of the faith. Those assemblies do not have to be perfect, but close enough. How do we know they are close enough? By their fruit; an assembly that sustainably produces colons of Jesus is the right assembly. You know them by their fruit is written, after all.

 

If we identify a historical assembly of the lord as an intermediate target, we can aim there as a proxy to the goal. So the good question is: which assembly of the lord, from history, should we imitate? To rephrase the question in a different manner, which “church” age is the golden age of the church? 1st century, 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, “churches” of the Dark Age, or protestant churches of different locations and different times? Which ones are the right kinds in terms of producing the right fruit in quantity and quality in a sustainable manner?

 

Some of us are looking to the age of Constantine where the church dominates the world with strong political power. Where did that end concerning fruit? Is the age of Constantine the birth of the Church or the death of the truthful Church? Faithful become comfortable but the faith itself died. Which one is more important, your comfort or the growth of the faith? It starts with poor Peter saying “I have no gold and silver but I tell you stand up walk in the name of Jesus” and ends up with counterfeit Peter, with wealth and power, but without God. This counterfeit Peter cannot say “I have no gold and silver”, as it cannot say “Stand up and walk in the name of the lord”.

 

Some of us are focused on protestant reformation age churches of Europe, the USA, and Canada. We dream where churches control universities and every life of people, and we want to return to the time when the church was the center of people’s lives. That age is not the age of the Church leading science and the world, but it is the age of the church slowly losing to science and the world. The Church of the Dark Ages used to control everything and science and the world were slowly taking over until finally, faith became the first sin of science and the world. That age is not coming back. The reason why you look there is not that the fruit is beautiful, you just want dominance and power. It is Egypt inside you talking, please let the Jesus in you to talk. Ask yourself, which age made faithful who resemble Jesus? Which age generated faithful who are willing to die and suffer for the faith?

 

What about the reformation churches which protested against the Churches of Constantine? Those churches did produce improvement yet none of them are ideal for producing faithful which resembles Jesus. Those protesting churches are churches that are works in progress and not the ideal form. The fact that they are not the right kind of church is justified by the fact that they are losing the war. You tell me history, I tell you facts. You tell me about the revival of Canada in history. I tell you faith is dying in Canada now. You tell me about the revival of Europe or the USA in history, and what I see is a lost war. You may have some victories in a few battles but the war is lost. The good question is why do those who exit from Egypt end up dying in the desert? Why are the USA, Europe, Canada, and others dying in the desert? They don’t know where they are going and they are disobedient as a result. If you are marching on the wrong road, you will never become obedient to the will of the lord.

 

The golden age of the faith is the 1st century. This is the age where excellent faithful, who are made in the image of the lord, are produced by disciples of Jesus Christ. This is the age where the world was afraid of the existence of the faithful. This is the age where the faith was spreading like wildfire everywhere, as sin is spreading like wildfire to churches in this age. The old world was afraid of the peaceful spread of the faith now the faithful in the West are scared of the quiet storm of sinful ways spreading not only to the world but to the churches. Now sin is sanctified in churches, I guess they are progressing to their true Father. After all a kid will naturally look like his parents, a child of a devil has to look like a devil.

 

Why are some Churches and some giants of the lord decaying below the sinful world? This is because they are not growing in the right direction. When more is given more is expected but they are growing in the wrong direction and that is leading to their disobedience. With disobedience, they will not be planted on the lord and will not produce fruit, as a result. Lord, therefore, will remove them, because they are killing the faith of the faithful through their disobedience.   

 

You will be given less and less will be expected from you first. When you do well, more will be given to you and more will be expected from you. This process is put to make you progress, step by step, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit toward the way of Jesus. Yet most, at some point, do stumble and will keep stumbling then after, despite the lord’s endless effort to make them right. At a point, therefore, they will be left alone to lose it all, because they cannot produce the right kind of faithful. The evidence for this is in the fact that, first, the war is being lost in the West, and, second, many in churches are openly recognizing their true father, the devil, after pretending to be children of God for ages. They come from us but they were not with us. If they were with us, they would stayed with us, but so it can be clear that they don’t belong with us, as they are not Jesus’s own, they went from us. They are neither the first to do it nor the last. As Jesus has hidden children in the sinful world, the devil also has hidden children in the churches. 

 

The point is we are not going to the way of the West. What we need is Paul, Peter, John, and all the disciples of Jesus. What we need is the faith of the first century. That was the fruitful church that took over the world in holiness through the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit. If such a church is going to rise, it needs fertile soil to grow it. It needs a base that can sustain such idealism. This is why Ethiopian Churches need to look back to their foundation to find something close to perfection not to the West. When the West was losing the war, our forefathers were winning the war while being prosecuted to the end of the world. They produced excellent quality faithful, who imitated Jesus, at alarming quantity.

 

They are not necessarily right in everything but they are almost right in most things that are relevant. If Ethiopia is going to contribute to the faith, it is not teaching the world in bad English what the world teaches us in the first place. If we do that our contribution will be to preach with our bad English what they preach to us in their excellent English. This means our contribution to the faith is poor-quality English. If your kid is repeating your words, s/he is not teaching you, s/he is just being cute with her/his child's mouth. When you repeat what they teach you, with your bad English, your “spiritual fathers” will love it for sure, but s/he is not learning from you. Fortunately, though we can be less fluent in English, we can be fluent in knowledge of the lord because we have a historical foundation with adequate knowledge of the lord. That is thanks to those who preserve the pure kind of evangelical faith to us under severe prosecution. That is thanks to those who are known for their love of the lord, their fellow faithful, and even those who hunt them day in and day out. That is thanks to those who imitate the way of Jesus under the worst circumstances when the state and society are hunting them for their faith. In this fertile soil, the true faith can grow again easily because first the late rain of the lord will sustain it and second the soil is fertile enough to sustain a high yield variety of the lord.