Peter, Paul, and James Come Back for an Interview
Peter, Paul, and James Come Back for an Interview,
“to see whether or not the people will carefully walk in the path marked out by the LORD,
as their ancestors were careful to do” (Judges 2:22).
“When Saul saw the camp of the Philistines, he was absolutely terrified. So Saul inquired of the LORD, but the LORD did not answer him—not by dreams nor by Urim nor by the prophets. So Saul instructed his servants, ‘Find me a woman who is a medium, so that I may go to her and inquire of her.’ His servants replied to him, ‘There is a woman who is a medium in Endor’… Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ And he said, ‘Bring up Samuel for me’” (1 Samuel 28:5-7, 10-12).
I am going to imagine God allowing His apostles Peter, Paul, and James being allowed to be “brought up” for an interview by the political and Christian leaders of America.
POLITICIANS: “You existed in a time when you were surrounded by the hostility and persecution of a Roman government that hated your religion. Your religious literature was therefore quite negative about the world around it. What would you have done differently if you had been surrounded by our democratic culture?”
APOSTLE PAUL: “Of course we would have written differently. When you are surrounded by an autocratic culture that is full of people who are aggressively attacking you, it does not take much to convince you that that culture is under the control of the same spirit that separated us from God in the Garden. Your influence on our people is far more subtle then that of pagan Rome! But when our Creator actually came to the earth humbly disguised as one of us, He convinced the three of us and countless others that ALL human beings that do not honor His sovereignty are in rebellion against their own Creator and Master. So, ANY governmental system and leaders who do not follow both the letter and the spirit of ALL that He teaches, promises and commands, are still in rebellion against their Creator and still in captivity to the one that He labeled as their substitute ‘god’ and ‘ruler.’ There are no exceptions! God has called upon ALL mankind to repent and enter into the deliverance from captivity that He has provided in His Creator Son! And until you yield to the specific claims, commands, and promises of JESUS, then you are declaring yourself to be in disbelief and rebellion against Him, no matter what political principles you live under or whatever other form of ‘God’ you may believe in.”
LEADERS: “But in our American democracy we allow EVERYONE to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience! Does that not that difference make us pleasing to God?”
APOSTLE JAMES: “That might be theoretically acceptable if all that God expects from us is worship. But what I warned you about ‘faith” could have been written about ‘worship’: ‘worship by itself, if it does not have works, is dead’. As my brother Paul warned the tolerant men of Athens, He also calls upon YOU to reject your current default ‘god’ and ‘ruler’ – even though you do not think of yourselves as being in his bondage – unless you do that and return to the one who Created you. The fact that you are providing a haven for those who HAVE done so does not deal with YOUR rebellion against Him! Rather, the fact that you have been a refuge for such people is the very reason why YOU have been blessed by God in the past.”
RELIGIOUS LEADERS: “That is not really fair! Our democratic leaders have treated us very kindly ever since we became free from British tyranny – far more kindly than their king did. We get to have a say in who leads us, and we are free to organize our own churches free from governmental controls or approval.”
APOSTLE PETER: “You have perfectly expressed YOUR subtle bondage in the comfortable way that you used that word “us” and “our” when referring to those who call themselves ‘Americans.’ Because you have accepted their invitation to take part in THEIR form of democracy you have become careless in building GOD’S form of a society that we apostles and our Master created for you to live in with each other.”
RELIGIOUS LEADERS: “But we already are doing that in our churches!”
APOSTLE PETER: “And making such a claim IS one of our problems with you all. I had packed a great deal of meaning in what I had written for you: ‘But YOU are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You once were not a people, but now you are God’s people’” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
“To us Jewish disciples, those terms ‘race’, ‘nation’ and ‘people’ are terms loaded with specific historical detail, because those terms had been used for centuries to identify the race, nation, and people of ISRAEL, a people who lived and survive together daily as one national family. Your version of fulfilling those descriptions was to be an “Israel in the wilderness” with no national boundaries to call your own. You are required by God to be a fully functioning ‘nation’ with your own distinct culture and commitments to bind you together, no matter WHOSE nation you live in! You were to be a living advertisement to those living within America’s culture about how ALL humans could live IF their functioning ruler is the Son of God who created them: a people among whom there were no poor in their midst, no class consciousness, no racism, solid discipline, and no degradation of anyone’s dignity.” But instead of giving them a working model of such a kingdom in which His ‘Sermon on the Mount’ is being FUNCTIONALLY lived out together you corporately have largely given them a series of abstract “Sermon on the Mount ideals” which, while having “improved” them, do not awaken within them their need to be SAVED from themselves by Him! Words on paper do not accomplish what a functional working model DID and still can!
“We have given you abundant explicit descriptions and clues about how our Master’s Pentecostal Spirit drew us together, how all of us “who believed were of one heart and one soul; neither did anyone say that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had ALL things in common.” And our brother Paul described for you the principle and instinct that is created among those who actually know Him from the inside: “For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance my supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack–that there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack” (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). Even sensitive pagan fathers have been willing to live in an “equality” with their own families, an equality that you no longer incarnate with your own “Christian brethren”!
APOSTLE PAUL: “We even supplied you with what all people who are to survive together require, your own Spirit-led COURT system: “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world will be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life? If then you have judgments concerning things pertaining to this life, do you appoint those who are least esteemed by the church to judge? I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you, not even one, who will be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers!” (1 Corinthians 6:1-6).
“A church whose members are as tightly bound together as ours were will inevitably sometimes have issues among some that need wise judgment. The reason that YOU do not have that need is something for which you should be ashamed, not content! Did Israel appoint EGYPTIAN judges to settle their problems? But you have been seduced by your friendly democracy into becoming what MEN call a “religion.” It is a mistake– as you have sadly done – to identify yourselves as being what THEY mean by the word “religion.” For them AND you now, a “religion” is organized to accomplish activities that deal with an invisible God and other “otherworldly” realities, things like prayer, worship, study of sacred literature, and angels. While our Master has indeed incorporated all of these otherworldly realities and activities into our foundation, HIS version of “MY Church” caused all of these realities to exist within the context of an actually visible and organized society, people, and nation – a new and very well organized, but “wandering in the wilderness” version of a nation that was carefully structured and led by God Himself through His aggressively active Holy Spirit!” There is no other conclusion that you would be drawing IF you bothered to examine our writings seriously.
APOSTLE JAMES: “And strangely enough, you are now living in one of the few nations on earth where you could have the maximum liberty to fully live that reality out – but it is that same very accommodating and friendly democracy that has lulled you into letting them provide your social structure, and lulling you to descending into being a mere MAN’S version of ‘religion’!
“By not incarnating GOD’s Kingdom of God Spirit-organized and distinct and separated nation as we had done, YOU have helped their political theories about democracy to have become elevated to divine status, helping them believe that even God wants the entire world to be organized as democratically as possible. But our God did not bless and aid the establishment of America because He favored democratic theories. He did it to provide a refuge for His humble followers in supposedly ‘Christian Europe’ who were being burned, drowned, and having their tongues cut out by those ‘Christians.’ The ‘God of this world’ will turn out to use your alliance with Democratic America to corrupt your version of Christianity in the same way that he was able to succeed with the Old Worlds “Christian” alliance with Constantine and the subsequence “Christian Nations” of Europe!”
“Through the direction and inspiration of His Spirit, we spelled out very usefully and accurately in our writings what He was able to create within our generation of trusting and joyfully obedient followers. The God who does not change is willing to work with you in order to bring you back to the same supernatural connection with Him and His heavenly glory that we enjoyed – along with the opposition that we also gladly ‘enjoyed.’”
“But ARE you willing to let Him be Paul’s ‘potter’ and YOU be His ‘clay’? Or are you going to turn out to respond to OUR presence in the way that His own people responded to HIS presence: ‘He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him’.”
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I will not speculate on how the Politicians and Religious Leaders treated Peter, Paul, and James – or TRIED to treat them, since they who had shared in His suffering now shared in his “puncture-proof” glory !
