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Are Message Believers Christians?: Difference between revisions

Are Message Believers Christians? (view source)

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But many Christians have veered from Jesus' command to love and become more focused on a set of beliefs, more concerned about themselves and their standing with God than about other people.   
But many Christians have veered from Jesus' command to love and become more focused on a set of beliefs, more concerned about themselves and their standing with God than about other people.   


The church that Jesus founded was to be a movement love would replace law-keeping.








==So what about message followers==


This temple model has been prevalent throughout Christian history, he noted. Stanley, who hopes to get the Church back to what Jesus called it to be through his new series, quickly went through a millennium of Christian history to show how Jesus and His command to love became lost amid creeds, politics and gatekeeping.
Message believers generally feel more guilty about missing church than about how they treated someone at work. They are more concerned about what God would do to you because of a moral failure than about what they did to the person they wronged.


Religion, he said, is powerful and can be dangerous. It is evidenced from the time of Constantine the Great — who elevated Christianity, empowered a few men with the Scriptures and exiled those who went against their laws — to the hundreds of Protestant denominations today that each interpret the Bible differently.
The problem with the Nicene Council was not the issue identified by William Branham.  Rather, it was in the fact that Christianity went from being behavioral to creedal.  What became important was not how you behaved but what you believed.


"And the tragedy of all this … [is that] love lost," Stanley told his congregation.
"And the tragedy of all this … [is that] love lost," Stanley told his congregation.
 
Christians have largely reverted back to the ways of the Old Testament, blending the old "temple model" with Jesus' teachings.
While Jesus started a new movement where "love would replace law keeping," Stanley explained, Christians have largely reverted back to the ways of the Old Testament, blending the old "temple model" with Jesus' teachings.
 
The "temple model," as defined by Stanley, "grants extraordinary power to sacred men in sacred places who determine the meaning of sacred texts."
 
During the reign of Constantine in the 4th century, Christianity went from being a persecuted minority to an empowered majority. The problem, however, was that "Christianity became inseparable from the Roman Empire, the pastor noted.
 
"Church leaders created their own version of temple model with a little bit of Christianity sprinkled in," Stanley said. "Now there would be new sacred places, there would be a whole new group of sacred people that began to intentionally collect all the Christian texts, bind them together, chain them to the altar, and now they would determine what was taught what wasn't taught and how the text would be interpreted."
 
Sacred men, such as the pope, priests and archbishops, became the gatekeepers of heaven and hell through withholding communion or baptism and with the threat of excommunication.
 
When there was division over the nature of the Son of God (Arian controversy), Constantine put out an edict to have all of Arius' works destroyed and to execute those who possessed them.


"Suddenly, believing the wrong thing was a crime," Stanley said. "Suddenly in Christianity, what you believed trumped how you behaved."
"Suddenly, believing the wrong thing was a crime," Stanley said. "Suddenly in Christianity, what you believed trumped how you behaved."
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"I got them all together right at the end and I washed their stinking feet," Stanley imagines Jesus saying. "I told them this is an example, this is what you are to do to one another — as I have loved you, so you must love one another."
"I got them all together right at the end and I washed their stinking feet," Stanley imagines Jesus saying. "I told them this is an example, this is what you are to do to one another — as I have loved you, so you must love one another."


"How could the new movement of Jesus with a new command and a new ethic of love that was to serve as the filter for all of their decisions, how could something so pure, so grassroots, so one another oriented become so temple?
"How could the new movement of Jesus with a new command and a new ethic of love that was to serve as the filter for all of their decisions, how could something so pure, so grassroots, so one another oriented become so temple?
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<ref>Stanley, Andy -  from the sermon series "Brand:New"</ref>
<ref>Stanley, Andy -  from the sermon series "Brand:New"</ref>
==So what about message followers==
Message believers generally feel more guilty about missing church than about how they treated someone at work.  They are more concerned about what God would do to you because of a moral failure than about what they did to the person they wronged.




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