The Crash
The worst airline crash in history happened when a 747
failed to get off the ground. Instead, it hit another jumbo
jet and exploded in a cataclysm of ruin. The full tanks
of jet fuel were the final, lethal touch for most of those
who survived the impact. The runway became a nightmare
landscape of death and fire. The Canary Islands are still
remembered for this tremendous crash of the planes that
never made it off the runway. [1]
There was an even more consequential crash long ago. Like
this one, it spread death, fire, and ruin wherever it touched.
Unlike this one it was the crash of a once mighty movement
of individuals, not of gigantic airplanes. The ruin of
the jumbo jets was very public, irretrievable, and final.
They couldn't be repaired and put back into service. They
were so much scrap when the fires were out, and so many
painful memories of lives suddenly, senselessly ended.
The crash of the original movement begun by Yahshua, the
Messiah, and His apostles was no less cataclysmic, and
for those who witnessed it, the tragedy was no less final.
The engines of self-denying, sacrificial love had flamed
out. That "airplane" would not fly again in their lifetime.
Someday, somehow, it would have to be restored to the spiritual
greatness it had attained before the crash.
It would have been much better then if the survivors had
gone home and left the scene of the wreckage behind. But
they didn't, and something different and strange happened
to the twisted and charred pieces of the movement. It was
as if the various pieces of the wreckage, disconnected
from one another as they were, mysteriously took on a life
of their own. But it was a life alien to the life of the
movement that had once begun to soar.
Gone were the days when each person's voice mattered.
No more could God speak through the least, but only the
greatest. Or perhaps these eloquent, learned men had another
motive than that of the first passengers. The new "faith" delivered
to the new "saints" was doctrine and ritual. [2]
If anyone could have seen their true condition - seen
into the spiritual realm - they would have seen the flaming
wreckage strewn over the historical landscape. They would
have discerned that persuasive speakers were preaching
a new and deadly message. Lots of the old words were kept,
but it didn't produce a radical life of caring and sharing.
It was a mysticism that separated the material from the "spiritual" realm -- what
mattered was not the external expression, but only the "inner
man." Faith was divorced from the works of love it had
once produced.
It was a much more popular message, although its implications
soon became clear: everyone had to accept their
lot in life, not expecting anyone to sacrifice his riches
to lift his brother out of poverty. Their physical circumstances
didn't really matter. If many people's needs went unmet
while others had an abundance, why, that was evidently "the
will of God." Didn't it say somewhere that "the poor were
rich in faith"?
The startling contrast between the way of the believers
and the way of the world around them faded. The church
opened her doors to rich and poor, moral and immoral, but
unlike the first days, they remained rich and poor, moral
and immoral. [3] The
only startling contrast left was the contrast to the way
the church had begun. [4] Being
different from the world brought suspicion upon you, which
was becoming a more and more dangerous thing to do.
The one they had first called "Master" had said amazing
words about laying down the sword and not fighting the
kingdoms of this world with the weapons of this world.
By the fourth century, love was defined as taking up the
sword. In no time they filled the ranks of the military
and the halls of government. They spread fire and death
wherever "love" called them to go. They even spread their "faith" in
this way. [5] Dying in
such causes became a way to eternal happiness. [6] So
powerful was their new persuasion that those who still
read what the Master actually said and wanted to be true
to Him were persecuted for "disobeying" Him. Those who didn't live
by the sword would now die by the sword.
[1] A KLM airlines 747
crashed into a Pan American 747 on the runway in Santa
Cruz de Tenerife on March 27, 1977, killing 583 people.
[2] Earle E. Cairns
writes in Christianity Through the Centuries ,
p. 83, that as early as the middle of the second century
[around AD 150], worship consisted of several readings
from epistles and the prophets, a homily [sermon] by the "president," responsorial
prayer by the people, the Lord's supper, and collection
of the offering, which was followed by dismissal of the
people to their homes. The people were silenced, conquered,
as it is to this very day. (Zondervan Publishing House,
Grand Rapids, Michigan)
[3] [Speaking of the
church after the first century...] "The Church can no longer
consider herself the receptacle of pure souls only. The
danger of that notion has become all too clear. She grows
into a Church that accepts being a mixture." (G. Guitton, Great
Heresies and Church Councils , Harper and Row, Publishers,
p. 71, 72)
[4] "Between the years
AD 100 and AD 500, the Christian Church changed almost
beyond recognition... [At first] the organization of the
church was still fluid... there were no creeds to be recited,
no set forms of worship... [By AD 500] the worship of the
church was entirely liturgical with fixed, set forms of
prayer..." (Tony Lane, The Lion Book of Christian Thought ,
Lion Publishing Company, Batavia, Illinois, 1984, p. 8)
[5] Some say such things
are still happening today, while others say it was just
in the bad old days. They were pretty bad, too. Charlemagne,
for instance, killed one quarter of the Saxon population
of northern Europe. All the rest were persuaded they should
believe as he did. Others took note of this message's effectiveness: "baptism
or death" was short and "to the point." No fine points
of doctrine to confuse people. Anybody could understand
it, even if they spoke another language! Whole nations
and continents became Christian as this message spread
from Europe to Central and South America.
[6] "The Dark Age church
merely developed Augustine's teaching [of the just war].
Leo IV said that anyone dying in battle for the defense
of the Church would receive a heavenly reward; John VIII
thought that such a person would even rank as a martyr." (Paul
Johnson, History o f Christianity , Atheneum,
New York, 1976, p. 242)
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