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Radical Church
The church has never been as numerically strong or as globally widespread as it is today. Christianity is presently the world's largest religion - with 1.6 billion adherents. Yet, as we prepare to enter the third millennium, the Church is wrestling within itself to identify both its moral base in a culture that has generally abandoned moral absolutes and its role in a world that tends to view the religious establishment as irrelevantly archaic, Internally riddled with dissension, the Church's testimony has become blunted by mediocrity and its voice muted by compromise. As a result, today's Church is in danger of simply meandering across the millennial line, having lost sight of God's original purpose. The crisis of the Church is serious, and it must be successfully confronted if the Church is to be in the next millennium what it was in the alight shining in the darkness of the moral maze and hand the hand of God reaching out to heal the sick, bless the underclass, lift the downtrodden, and give hope and life to the hurting masses.
147 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1999
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January 21, 2015
Bryn Jones issues a call to the evangelical Church to return to zealous faith.
Most of the work is deeply encouraging, providing a hope-filed view of a victorious Bride faithfully witnessing to the reality of Christ's atoning work. In my opinion, the major short-coming of the book is the unstated, but seemingly pervasive, belief that this is the final generation in history. This is noticed in the ideas of a great final harvest of souls (à la Bob Jones) of the end-times.
This is not an inference, but rather Jones' exact paradigm:
His undersanding of the end-times is not articulated, and seems contradictory. For example, on page 34:
At first, he lumps in the post-millennials as optimists, then directly on page 36, he folds in a post-millennial understanding of the victory of the Church with the end-time harvest vision:
That seems like a stark contradiction to me. And again, he advocates a victorious, post-millenial view of eschatology and understanding of how the gospel touches nations:
He says that our Christianity should touch all of society, which is good, but he sets up a false view of clergy:
One might ask Jones what the problem is with clergy who do not have another trade and also what it is about being a sports personality on the side that sanctifies the bad clergy.
Despite some glaringly bad problems regarding eschatology and ecclesiology, Jones' book is really quite helpful. He calls us to faith and to fidelity now, not waiting for some future generation to stand up, but to boldly enter into our calling of authentic zeal for the Lord.
Most of the work is deeply encouraging, providing a hope-filed view of a victorious Bride faithfully witnessing to the reality of Christ's atoning work. In my opinion, the major short-coming of the book is the unstated, but seemingly pervasive, belief that this is the final generation in history. This is noticed in the ideas of a great final harvest of souls (à la Bob Jones) of the end-times.
At the conclusion of the convention, people gathered in small, animated groups that were immersed in conversation. The general consensus was that the speaker had done an outstanding job of highlighting the main issues relevant to the times in the light of the impending return of Jesus Christ.
This is not an inference, but rather Jones' exact paradigm:
The apostle James prophesied of the end-time world harvest.
His undersanding of the end-times is not articulated, and seems contradictory. For example, on page 34:
...[M]any post-millennialists see a gradual Christianizing of the nations until the whole world and it structures become the Kingdom of God.
Neither the optimist nor the pessimist is right.
At first, he lumps in the post-millennials as optimists, then directly on page 36, he folds in a post-millennial understanding of the victory of the Church with the end-time harvest vision:
Christ is not coming to save a beleaguered Church from being overthrown, but for a triumphant Church that has overcome all its enemies, advanced His Kingdom, across the earth, and reaped the greatest worldwide harvest of lost souls that the world has ever seen.
That seems like a stark contradiction to me. And again, he advocates a victorious, post-millenial view of eschatology and understanding of how the gospel touches nations:
Although the revelation of the Kingdom of God, which we receive through Christ and the apostles, is of a spiritual rule and government rather than a political or a material one, this does not mean that the political and material sphere of our world is unaffected by it. [...]
As the Kingdom of God grows, so its influence enlarges. It is in this sense that Isaiah prophesied, "Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end" (Is. 9:7). This is also the principle behind the vision in the Book of Daniel of the stone coming down, striking the image of the world empires, and growing to fill the whole earth (see Dan. 2:31-35,44-45,7:13-14);
He says that our Christianity should touch all of society, which is good, but he sets up a false view of clergy:
When God commissioned the Church to "go into all the world" (Mk. 16:15), He meant for us to penetrate each sphere of it with a living expression of His mind and will. Restorers believe that God's intention is to have apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers who are politicians, business persons, sports personalities, actors, computer engineers, and so on rather than becoming a professional religious clergy trapped in a professional religious ghetto.
One might ask Jones what the problem is with clergy who do not have another trade and also what it is about being a sports personality on the side that sanctifies the bad clergy.
Despite some glaringly bad problems regarding eschatology and ecclesiology, Jones' book is really quite helpful. He calls us to faith and to fidelity now, not waiting for some future generation to stand up, but to boldly enter into our calling of authentic zeal for the Lord.
Displaying 1 of 1 review