The Kingdom Opportunity Coronavirus Brings
Cold Turkey for Christians—Coronavirus: an opportunity for real change and for putting the Kingdom first!
All the churches in the borough where I live are shutting down their Sunday services, and I suspect this will be the case nationally, possibly even globally. It has been said that there is a silver lining in every cloud, and so it may possibly turn out to be with the corona virus in relation to the Christian faith. Why? Because without the distraction of “church” Christians may have to start rethinking what it means to be a Christian and this may lead to a broadening of their understanding of the practice of the faith beyond a group of activities that taken place primarily within the four walls of the institutional church or at least that are strictly tied to the institutional church and its constricting and controlling leadership culture.
The vast majority of churches are mystery cults of various kinds: pietistic mystery cults, liturgical mystery cults, music cults, celebrity preacher cults etc. And almost all are leadership cults. The Sunday service and the organisation run by the “leaders,”—and the role and importance of the leaders—are at the heart of the life of the churches. These churches exist for these things. It is often said that the church is the only organisation that exists for the benefit of its non-members. But this is simply not true, and I find it mind boggling that anyone should really come to such a counterintuitive conclusion. The vast majority exist primarily for themselves and for the benefit of the leadership cults that they serve and around which they live and move and have their being.
The problem is that these churches on the whole are a hindrance to the kingdom of God, not a help to it. Jesus told us to put the kingdom of God first and his righteousness (which means justice not piety), not the church, and he told us to make all the nations his disciples, not to pursue church planting programmes. He told us that he will build his church. But the church has reversed all this. The church has made the church the priority, its rituals, services and forms of government and leadership. Christians are obsessed with these things, and they spend their greatest efforts on them, not on seeking the kingdom of God, and certainly not on converting the nations, which most Christians today no longer believe is their duty or calling because they have been incorrectly taught that the Great Commission is a command to win souls rather than make Christian nations.
So what is going to happen now that all these churches are closing their doors? What is going to happen once practising the Christian faith can no longer mean attending a ritual and massaging the leaders’ egos every week? Hopefully it will mean that Christians will start learning what it means to be in real fellowship as a community of believers, rather than merely attending a weekly mystery cult. Hopefully it will mean Christians in local areas will start getting to know each other without the confines and restrictions of the denominational bureaucracy and its demands of loyalty to the local denominational tin pot pope and his curia. If Christians can start forming real local communities, they can start living as a beacon on a hill to the world around them by modelling to the world what true society should be and by helping their neighbours by providing Christian solutions for their problems.
The social order of the world is breaking down. It was before this virus—this is not something the virus has done, but the shut down gives us an opportunity because it frees Christians from the idolatry of their local denominational cult. The body of Christ should be demonstrating to the world that the kingdom of God is the true social order and that only this social order can provide them with real answers to their situation. This means not only that Christians should be helping each other but that they should be serving their communities by providing Christian answers to the problems that society faces, which will turn people to look to God for their salvation, not to the delinquent Messianic State.
What will happen now with education, welfare, healing, arbitration of disputes etc? This is an opportunity for Christians to start building real alternatives to the failing social order of the world, thereby demonstrating how the kingdom of God works. The world has demonstrated that it has no answer for these things, but Christians in the past have provided Christian answers for these problems that have worked. Our education and health systems, for example, came out of the practice of the Christian faith. Once the State hijacked these institutions it set about slowly stripping them of all their Christian values and content, with end result we see around us today. The world’s rebellion against God has failed, as it always will, and when it does Christians need to be ready with real alternatives to secular humanism’s culture of death. The problem is that Christians are usually so obsessed with their denominational cults, their services, rituals and leadership squabbles, which take up so much of their time, money and efforts, that there is little left for the business of building the kingdom of God and converting the nation by modelling to the world what true social order should be.
We must see this as an opportunity to make headway beyond the restricting and constricting confines of the local cult, the church, which John Owen so aptly described as the greatest idol that ever was in the world. We are here to build the kingdom of God and convert the nations, not to build local cults that exist for their own sakes and the sakes of the inflated egos of their leaders. If we pursue the kingdom and the Great Commission the Lord Jesus Christ will build his church. If we reverse this biblical order the church will fail, as is presently the case.
This is an opportunity for Christians to throw off their obsession with and be rid of their bondage to the local institutional church leadership cult and its phoney idea of what is really important in the Christian life. The leaders of these cults want you to believe that unless you are regularly attending their services and performing all the rituals in the correct way, which really amounts not to serving God but rather doting continually on their own leadership cult, and giving them money to keep you in this state of cultic bondage, you are not living the Christian life properly. But they cannot hold their meetings any more. You are not going to get your fix this week, or next week and probably not for some time to come. You may think these things are vital and necessary, but the fact is they are no longer available and you will now have to go cold turkey. Take the opportunity, therefore, to break the habit once and for all, and start planning to make the change for good with other Christians in your local community. In the place of these false and useless denominational leadership cults we should be aiming to build real local Christian communities that can serve God by modelling to the world the true social order that is God’s kingdom, thereby transforming the world around us.
Our first priority is to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness,—i.e. to establish a Christian social order based on God’s righteousness. Our task with regard to the world around is the Great Commission. But the Great Commission is not a command to plant churches; it is a command to disciple nations, i.e. to make Christian nations.
The world is struggling to cope with the mess its idolatry has made of things. The time is ripe for Christians to step into the breach with Christian alternatives. Christians must lead the way in providing real help and lasting answers for the world’s problems. This is an opportunity for Christians to start providing real Christian answers to the problems that face our societies, biblical answers that serve God not man. This is how we are serve God and our neighbour, and therefore how we are to truly worship our God, seek his kingdom and fulfil the Great Commission.