Shawn said: Christian Activism=loving thy neighbor. I don't believe Christ ever got wrapped up in political nonsense, or picketed for a cause. If we truly focused on living our neighbor that would change the world.
- One additional thing. With each new movement by well intentioned, or maybe not so well intentioned people...someone ends up looking for headship...leadership. Then of course, they need finances to run said organization...and we all know money and power tend to corrupt. So, personally my activism will be very individual with Christ as the head. I don't need to join one more group of people pointing out what is wrong with the world.
* Jesus was replacing conventional beastly politics with the
politics of love. He was the king of Israel, who ran the thieves (money-changers) out of the treasury. What the apostles did after his resurrection was the kind of government he was re-instituting, one like that of the Judges in ancient Israel.
* I believe the
abomination and desolation took place at the time of Rome's invasion of Israel in 70 A.D. The second
temple was destroyed by them, which Jesus predicted at Mark 13: 1-4, but Jesus was the real temple, which was "destroyed", but which he rebuilt after three days, which he also predicted at John 2:19.
* Shawn, you seem to think I have bad intentions. That's a fine thing to think, just because I don't think the same way you do.
* There are always lots of reasons to be inactive, but Jesus and the
apostles are our examples to follow and they were not inactive. They set the foundation of the government that would ultimately
save mankind from the beast, i.e. from worldly beastly government. His followers continued his form of government in Russia and other parts of Europe (who became later Amish or Mennonites etc) and in Britain among the Saxons, who I believe were descendants of some of the ten lost tribes, to whom Paul had preached the gospel. It was the early Saxon form of government which served as a model for Thomas Jefferson as one of the founders of the U.S. government. This site,
http://metanoia.org, says "Wycliffe and his associates defied church tradition by translating the Latin Bible into English, declaring in the preface,
"The Bible is for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People." That was in the mid or late 1300s.
* The U.S. was founded by Christians who meant to follow Jesus' form of government, though they weren't perfect. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa started the
movement for righteous government in the 1400s shortly after Joan of Arc gave her life for better government in France. That led to commonwealths modeled on Jesus' commonwealth, such as briefly existed in England and France, but also became part of the movement for self-government in the U.S. Cusa understood the Bible as describing righteous government, which seeks to satisfy the needs of all of the people, not just rulers. That's what commonwealth meant, i.e. providing for the common good of the people. And the term "public servants" comes from the idea that the purpose of government is to serve the people. That's how they understood the command to Love thy Neighbor.
* The U.S. government was fairly righteous until after the Civil War, when it seems that corporatism began, which was the early stage of the presently mushrooming satanic greed and power-based fascism. Of course, slavery was one of the major faults of the U.S., which was meant to be ended by the early 1800s, but which it took till Lincoln's time to finally end, though other forms of slavery and abuse continue.
*
Our laws were initially based on the Bible. The main law is to love God and our neighbors. Just as the Pharisees had corrupted the Law, which Jesus came to correct, our laws have similarly become very corrupted, and Jesus will correct them too, possibly by inspiring us, just as he came to Paul and his disciples in the first century to inspire them.
*
Question. Do you inactivists oppose the idea of asking our public servants to serve the public, rather than just the upper class? Do you advise Christians not to run for or accept public office in order to be true public servants ourselves? Even at the local level?
