THE BIG PICTURE: IT IS TIME FOR CHANGE (Dr. Victor Choudhrie)

 GOD’S VISION

(Author: Dr. Victor Choudhrie)

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord and all tongues and tribes will stand before His throne and worship Him (Rev. 7:9-10). Yeshua changed His heavenly lifestyle to fulfill His Father’s vision. He trained disciples and commissioned them to make disciples of all nations. And He commanded them to be His witnesses (Greek=martyrs) to the ends of the earth (Matt. 28:19,20; Acts 1:8).

YESHUA IS THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM 

In the Kingdom of God, He is the King and the believers are His subject who obey his constitution, the Bible. Yeshua announced the Kingdom; that entrance is through repentance, being born again and doing the will of the Father (Matt. 4:17; 4:21; John 3:3-5). He bought us with his blood and made us priests and gave us a kingdom to reign on earth (Rev. 1:8; 5:9,10). He gave power and authority to His disciples to preach the Kingdom and gave them a mandate to make disciples of all nations (Luke 9:1-3; Matt. 28:19). He taught Kingdom prayers, “Thy Kingdom come on earth” (Matt. 6:10). Like God who taught Torah to Moses for 40 days, He taught His disciples about the Kingdom for 40 days (Acts 1:3). He prioritized the Kingdom, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33). He defined the Kingdom “the kingdom of God is among you.” (Matt. 18:18-20; Luke 17:21). He prophesied the outcome, “And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world as a witness to all nations and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). He unfolded the ultimate purpose, “The kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and his Christ.”(Rev, 11:15)

The expression “Kingdom of God” comes 162 times in the NT, while Yeshua used the word “Church” only three times. A Kingdom has a King and His people, who obey His constitution (John 14:15). Yeshua and His disciples demonstrated the Kingdom in their daily road shows through healing, deliverance, and demolishing the devil’s strongholds (Matt.12:28-29). He ordained the Households of God as the platform for advancing his Kingdom (Eph.2:19-20). The sole agenda of the Ekklesia is to proclaim Yeshua as the King, establishing his Kingdom wherever his constitution (Word) based on love, liberty, justice, dignity, equality, and peace, is obeyed.

SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES

It was never the Lord’s idea to have a Christianity that is primarily defined by well-polished sermons from the pulpit on Sundays to well-dressed spectators in the pews below. A special building, a special day, especially trained worship leaders, financial structures (tithing) to grease the system, and finally a church government to administer, none of these are found in the New Testament!

MANAGING CHANGE

If the real purpose of the Ekklesia is to worship God by fulfilling the Great Commission, the mandate of the Ekklesia, to go and make disciples of all nations, then specific systems, structures, and protocol, must be set up to accomplish that task. For this to happen, we need large numbers of mentors, skilled in disciple making, Ekklesia planting, team building, networking, and empowering common people, to make the strategy actionable. Success depends on the quality and the quantity of the disciple multipliers. We must develop different financial (sharing material blessings with the needy) and administrative structures (bivocational elders) and constant evaluation to monitor the advance of the Kingdom on earth. This requires radical restructuring of the church.

CHANGE OR PERISH

The traditional church might be too old to tango with the NT Bride, to change from the conventional to the covenant Ekklesia, and from playing church to planting Ekklesias. The existing system cannot be put through the scanner by insiders. This would be like appointing a drug addict to be in charge of the pharmacy. Outsiders can identify strengths, weaknesses, train talent and induct crisis management teams. Change is resisted because of the threat of losing ego, status and power to control but change is inevitable. The wise must identify the engines of change, or risk the modern church heading for the back seat of the bus. The Ekklesia should be exploding outside into the world but if it does not change, the church will implode from within.

CHANGE HAS A PRICE TAG

When a Jew became a Christian, he gave up the temple, the Sabbath, the circumcision, and the sacrifices. He fellowshipped in homes, saturated the city with the gospel and suffered persecution. When a person of another faith becomes a Christian, he not only gives up his religion and culture, but often loses his family, friends, community, and sometimes even his life (Gal. 2:20).

THE MEGASHIFT

Despite many weaknesses and inadequacies, an awesome global spiritual mega shift is quietly taking place from the visible institutional church to the largely invisible but vigorously performing newly emerging house groups. There are three sets of major game players in this metamorphosis. Firstly, the Intercessors are fasting, praying, and marching on their knees. Secondly, the Prayer Walkers are bulldozing the bastions of the Devil. Thirdly, the Apostles, who believe that with Christ, saturating the planet earth with disciple multipliers is doable. They are reaching unheard of peoples and places. Many are illiterate, faceless, nobodies, but with amazing flexibility and creativity. The rest of us, involved in this process are mere appendages. (1 Cor. 1:26-29)

THE CHURCH NEEDS REBOOTING

God told Moses to build the Tabernacle exactly according to the pattern shown to him. Later the Jewish religious leaders corrupted the Mosaic pattern with traditions of men and withered. Yeshua showed the exact pattern of the Ekklesia to His disciples, which has been corrupted by man-made traditions. The church has only one option – repent and reboot or stay corrupted and perish. 

The dysfunctional church is standing on the premises of the church property, instead of standing on the promises of God. It is on the verge of implosion from within because their seminaries taught them traditional garbage in fancy classrooms, unlike their Master who taught disciple-making skills and apologetics in the mud and slush of the harvest field. This requires practical coaching on how to convict and convert Saul a persecutor into Paul an apostle. The enemy is not afraid of worship leaders wielding guitars but is terrified of disciple-multipliers carrying sickles into the harvest fields. The church must give up egos, logos, titles and gizmos and change from event, celebrity, and dignitaries to humbly learning from the harvest field workers, who resonate a faith, character and commitment, necessary to transform their nations. (Mark 7:6-8)

THE CHALLENGE

The blueprint of the NT Ekklesia is radically different from the traditional model. It is not a matter of semantics but of a complete change in form and function. The early Christians were the only people in the world who had no temples and no professional priests, quietly meeting in homes and yet grew and multiplied exponentially. This book is especially written for Christians, obsessed with the temple, its rituals, liturgy, and dogmas which are all “movement killers.” Some will find it a gold mine of information, yet others will find it disturbing enough to change their religious thinking and practices.

This book is not written to criticize regular Christians or the clergy. There are many godly men, who genuinely love and “zealously serve the Lord, according to the traditions, but not according to the Scriptures” (Mark 7:6-7; Gal. 1:7-9). It is the “institutional church” and the “professional pastor” which are being put through the scanner. If they want to resonate with the NT model, they must shift into multiplication mode.

THE LEGACY CHURCHES ARE MOVEMENT KILLERS

The word “church” is badly mired in confusion and conjures up in the mind, a religious building, weekly service, reverends, traditions, music, tithes, pulpit, pews, programs etc. Individually and corporately, they are all “movement killers” because they divert resources and focus from the apostolic agenda of the church to disciple all nations and reach the ends of the earth. Worse still they act as honey traps that entrap you for the rest of your life and you are unable to go and fulfill your assigned role as Kingdom igniter and advancer. They are founded on the quicksand of human ingenuity and not on The Rock. They do not exist in the Scriptures. The legacy church is so consumed with idolatry that it cannot worship without these icons and gizmos. 

However, the Ekklesia of Yeshua is a simple HOUSEHOLD OF GOD, for eating, meeting, gossiping the gospel and reproducing disciples. All these are “movement accelerators.” There are many children of Issachar in the modern churches today, who understand the times and know that the church needs to claw her way back to the original NT architecture and values (1 Chron. 12:32). This book is written to encourage such people to catch the vision and run with it (Hab. 2:1-3).

THE TEMPLE AND THE SYNAGOGUE ABROGATED

During Yeshua’s time, three systems of worship existed. In the first one man worshipped God by offering animal sacrifices in the Temple. The second was the Synagogue, where Jews met Jews for fellowship. And the third one, which Yeshua started was the Ekklesia. It was not a new concept as the Ekklesia already existed as the command-and-control outpost of Roman empire. It had the authority and the power to impose Roman laws, culture, and language (Acts 19:37). 

However, Yeshua’s Ekklesia is a divine command and control outpost of heaven. It has power over all the power of the enemy to impose God’s laws. He said, “I will build my Ekklesia, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 16:18,19). 

The dynamics of this Ekklesia had some elements of both the Temple and the Synagogue which it replaced. Instead of worshipping by offering animal sacrifices, we now worship by offering lost souls as living sacrifice (2Chron. 7:5,12; Romans 12:1; 15:16; James 5:20).  Now it is the Jews and Gentiles fellowshipping, even breaking bread together. (Mark 11:17; Gal. 3:27). The hereditary priesthood was replaced by Royal priesthood of all believers. They are also anointed to reign on earth. (Rev.5:9,10). 

Finally, the Spirit of God left the Temple, leaving it desolate, and man became the Temple of the living God (1Cor. 3:16; 2Cor. 6:16). Every believer, like Paul, must realize that he has an Ekklesia anointing. While making tents with his hands in the marketplace, he also healed the sick, cast out demons and made disciple (Acts 19:8-12).   

GEMS: 

• The Great commission is like a Jigsaw puzzle. The Ekklesia must find the gaps and keep filling them with the right pieces until the big picture is complete. 
• A Great Commission Christian resonates with the will of the Father and obeys the commands of His Son, to love each other and to go and make disciples. He has wisely built his house upon The Rock (Yeshua) - with gold and silver and precious stones and not with wood, hay and straw. The fire descends but his house stands firm. (John 13: 34-35; 14: 21, 23; 1 Cor. 3:11-17)
• A regular Christian is a passive listener and not a passionate doer. Instead of standing in the gap for the lost nations, he is sitting in a pew. He has foolishly built his house upon the quicksand of rituals and traditions - then an invisible virus came and locked down his house. (John 14:24; Matt. 15:9)
• You shall know them by their fruits. Remember the fig tree that Yeshua cursed. Modern day churches also have lush green leaves but no fruit. (Matt. 7:16, 20; 21:19; 24-27)
• An Ekklesia is a transformed community of believers that transforms other communities. 

Copyright © 2023 Victor Choudhrie

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