While reflecting on this concept, The Lord took me on a revealing 5-scene tour of His perspective on this topic. Part 1 describes the initial 4 scenes. Let’s continue…
The 5th scene shifted to a few decades before the Roman invasion of Jerusalem in Judah in AD 70, when Jesus (The Lord in human form) personally launched His 4th ‘church-type, called Christianity. The broad concept for what I called, ‘church’, somewhat mirrored His plan for ancient Israel. But it would be targeted at ALL peoples who would, by faith, embrace His pending crucifixion as being His just payment for their sins. Thus, the mission of the church today, is:
1. To be a unique ‘called-out’ people who would reflect and glorify The Lord by their lifestyles;
2. To exercise His ‘demonstration effects’ that would speak loudly and clearly to critical, on-lookers; and
3. To activate and spread His faith-based Gospel of Peace with God through the forgiveness of sins.
In return, as in His plans for earlier church-types, this church would benefit from His boundless GOODNESS, based on and according to our ‘learned, practiced faith’. The Lord knew satanic forces were the seeds, roots and fruits of rebellions in His earlier church-types. He knew this 4th church-type would encounter the same resistance. Thus, in Matthew 16:18, He emphatically declared ‘…the gates of hell will not prevail against [My church].’
During the ensuing decades of the 1st century, some church members began to reimagine The Lord’s glorious church plan, to fit their own sinful desires and ambitions.
Perhaps in an effort to redress this issue, The Lord, in a vision to John before the close of the first century AD, dictated letters to each of 7 churches in Asia. (See: Revelation 2 & 3) He encouraged their progress, rebuked their shortcomings, and warned of His judgments for straying from His original ‘church plan’.
Since then, history has witnessed numerous ‘church reimaginations’ across the world. The most significant ones were establishment of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church; the subsequent Protestant Reformation to return that church to The Lord’s original plan; and the subsequent, incredible number of sub-divisions of the protestant church. Since then, many church reimaginations have been much less substantive, and more performative, stylistic, and simply personality cults.
I intuit The Lord’s Matthew 16:18 declaration broadly applies, not just to His Christian church, but also to ALL His ‘church-types’ as well. Though satan’s earthly kingdom has had MAJOR progress in corrupting and prevailing over substantial proportions of each of The Lord’s ‘church types’, the pre-intended elements of each type will indeed prevail! In His pre-eminence and fore-knowledge, The Lord fore-knew each angel, each Hebrew/Jew, and Gentile person who would abuse His gracious gift of a free will, and would yield to temptations to rebel. So, effectively and essentially, there will be no loss at all in His fore-known, eternal kingdom! (Hallelujah!!!) From a strategic perspective, gifting all angels and humans with free will, was/is far better than creating us as robot-like drones who, lovelessly, could only do as we were programmed.
From a much broader perspective, we see such reimaginations of The Lord’s original, righteous plans, have not been limited to His 4 ‘church-types’. Indeed, such reimaginations have extended to:
a. Families, the building blocks of communities and societies;
b. Societies, the building blocks of nations;
c. Nations, the building blocks of global communities;
d. Companies/corporations, the building blocks of our ‘needs meeting’ systems.
Literally, NO facet of human life has escaped this well-honed reimagination plot, seeded by satan, against every righteous intent of The Lord God!
Each story has its unique ‘twists and turns’, but the core of the plots is, undoubtedly, the same. And I suspect you may well have been on both ends of such plots, as the instigator and the victim of …re-imagined, original, righteous plans. Recall how the leaders of Germany, Italy and Japan reimagined their countries and the world could be after World War II. Today, many strongmen and wanna-be strongmen, are currently reimagining how their nations and the world could be, if only…
In response to this persistent, sequential deterioration, Jesus, The Lord God, gave to us His ‘reimagination of our corrupt reimaginations!’ He will ‘flip-the-switch’ on our reimaginations of righteousness during His pending, global Millennial Reign, the 5th age of human history. Every aspect of life on Earth will revert to His original, righteous plans!!! (See: The Millennial Reign (Series), and also Human History Ages (Series).)
Going forward, may we ALL learn to be more keenly attuned to, and aware of plots to ‘reimagine righteousness’.
