Spiritual Land
6/25/13
Throughout history, one can gather that mankind has always looked at itself accordingly to the amount of wealth that it has and then, in turn, classified itself within the global markets by using this status. It is interesting to read about all of the countries that have jockeyed back and forth over these wealth terms and on the other hand, it is sad to which length these countries have taken in order to acquire such possessions. The Church cannot be excluded in these practices and when one reads these stories about history they will find that the Church is somehow represented. How wrong have we been to think that this is a function of the church; which in truth the Church’s true power lies in the spiritual and not the physical.
When one asks a person to name an event in German History one of the quicker and easier responses would be concerning the timeline of Hitler and World War II. This is a general knowledge subject in whom his examples of leadership, reasoning and political negotiating are still used in both the public and private sectors of the world. The majority of information that one will hear about this time period would be considered of a bad nature and rightly so. This period of German History is not a pleasant one to study nor does it represent a positive aspect of human history either.
I am going to take you back further into time in German History for examples of this article, all the way back to the 10th Century. Of course, modern warfare and technology were not even close to being produced and the weaponry that was popular at that time was barbaric, to say the least. But the weapons of that time served their purpose for the type of warfare that the imperial worlds against their enemies.
Land was a major factor in the wealth of a king, prince, lord, count or any other type of leader who represented a form of government. This commodity was so important to the lifestyle of a government that a king or ruler would wage war against a fellow ally in order to secure their borders for another and more complicated conflict in the near future.
Land itself was used as a weapon against other kingdoms and landholders in the area. Competitions and threats were commonplace throughout these regions and it was not unusual at all to hear about peasants fighting over what little bit of land they had to work. It seemed like every level of the secular world was engrossed into the concept of land and power in order to secure their place in history.
I watched a program recently that dealt with a son who had been accused of treason against his country during WWII. He came from a family whose lineage in this country was very long and in fact it was one of the original names of the country itself. Yet, he was on trial for treason and had been found guilty and was sentenced to hang for his crimes. The family estate was enormous and his father would occasionally stand and look out over the vast amount of acreage which the modern movie cameras could not accurately represent. But even though the family had all of this land, money and power it could not stop the actions of the human for which this story was based upon. So in the end what good did it do to the family to have this land? Not much when the root of the problem had not ever been addressed properly to begin in the first place. This is true as well when one reads about the times in the past centuries when rulers, dictators and other leaders of nations or regions have fought over land without just cause where it concerns the sanctity of life.
Jesus understood the politics of land and the value of its holdings on the governmental level. He had to know about this since He lived during one of the stronger periods of the Roman Empire. Yet, He was not concerned with what was going on within the political community and only addressed these types of issues when the religious leaders cornered Him on them. His goal was not to advance the newly formed Christian faith concerning land but on a personal and interior level which included everyone.
This concept of inclusion for everyone has the secular governments and their philosophies in disarray. These political organizations cannot function unless they have rivals throughout the land and even if they did not have any rivals they would still bicker amongst themselves since no two human minds can agree completely on every issue. This aspect is the key difference in what Jesus represented as the Church versus what the Church and secular governments have dictated throughout history. This is why it is vital for the survival and the life of the Church to separate itself from the ways of the world and not to embrace any secular policies that would hinder the spiritual aspects and foundational fundamentals of the Church.
However, when we look into Church history we see that the Church has taken a totally different policy towards what Jesus established. I am still going to stick with the 10th Century as my example for this portion of the article and one will see how the Church has differed from Jesus’ intentions for His church. If Jesus was interested in physical land He would have taken up Satan’s offer to Him on the mountain when He was being tempted. It is not physical land but spiritual land that God is interested in.
Jesus instilled a holy fire within the Church after His resurrection by allowing God to send the Holy Spirit down to earth in order to establish the connection with God once again. It is this fire that Jesus commanded us to instill into other people that do not know about His life, death and resurrection and what these acts mean to our lives. It is these principles in which discipleship is to be manifested by our lives through the blood of Jesus onto those who choose to receive this relational communication with God. This is the purpose and ministry of the Church and this is what Jesus established while He was living on earth.
The people that have been in control of the physical church have taken the spiritual authority of the Church and have prostituted it for the physical power and glory of the Church. The physical power of the Church should have never been used in order for people to become spiritual, it is the reverse that is true. It is the spiritual authority that Jesus established through His life that enables the spirit to influence the physical realm.
This is the only manner in which the Church can spiritually function and legally lay claim to the lives of this world. If this order is not in place as such then everything that Jesus did to establish the direct communication with God for mankind is voided and His life, death and resurrection basically becomes a spiritual joke to our enemy. The New Testament Church was not designed to have lands large enough to have physical armies ransack villages, towns, and cities. It was created to have spiritual armies to combat the battles that were now being waged upon humans because of the acts that Jesus accomplished for us.
We can read about hundreds of church wars in the 10th Century alone. Thousands of people were killed in the name of God and millions of acres destroyed and captured from other people in the name of God. I am not saying that every war is unnecessary for there are times that one needs to defense oneself. But to deliberately kill in the name of God in order to advance a physical cause so that the Church can stay within the protection of the physical king? That is not what Jesus died for and surely not what He proclaimed while He was on earth; however, He did witness it as the Romans pursued their enemies in this manner.
The Church was used for and used by the ruling governmental bodies in order to advance and to manipulate people to capitulate their lands, means, and loyalties in order to remain a part of the Church. If the Church or its believers complied with the government then they would be excommunicated from the overall Church governing body and then either banned from the lands anyway or killed in the name of God as heretics. Is this what Jesus set apart from the world as the entity that is supposed to preach the gospel? The fire of the Church was burning people and not their spirits which is totally off of the path that Jesus commanded.
It is time once again that the Church separates itself from the governmental bodies and begin to reignite the spiritual fire that was set into motion when Jesus established it. If the spiritual fire is present then the Church will be a forward and progressive church, one that sheds all human activities and displays the Spirit of God so much that it cannot be hidden even from the physical eyes. We have allowed our spiritual fire to dwindle or to even be squelched which in turn makes our mission dead on arrival. We need to restore our spiritual hearts back to God and to allow Him to start our flame once again and to take back the spiritual land that we have given to our enemy. This war is a spiritual one but as we begin to take back the spiritual land we lost, the physical will be active as well, so we must be prepared for battle.
A Church set apart from the world both in spirit and in the physical; this is the meaning of the word Church. Because of the structure of the Church and how it was established there cannot be any cooperation with the world, not even one tiny speck, it is impossible. This is the true Church and one that needs to be written about in current history for our children and grandchildren to read about one day. It is this type of Church that the world needs to know and to see on a daily basis, and it all begins with your repentance, restoration back to God.
DLB
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