[Dave]

Watchman Nee writes, “Christ is the key to all truths….Without Him we would never understand the Scriptures” (The Mystery of Creation, Watchman Nee, 1981, CFP). What we came to believe was that without WN or WL we would never understand the scriptures. We believed that they were our insight to the “truth”. We gave our all---our time, our devotion, our efforts to carrying out what we thought was the “truth” as proposed by WN and WL. What we discovered was that they interpreted/twisted the scriptures to fit their own perspective of the “truth”. If only they were the only ones who took this approach. Unfortunately they were not alone in this perspective. It is rampant in Christianity today and throughout its history.

What I am writing is not a novel approach. What has troubled me is not only that there are so many divisions in Christian thought and practice but that it has been 2000 years and we don’t seem to be changing. We keep hearing the latest theory about Christ coming or the latest idea about some scriptures in the OT and NT telling us of some damnable catastrophe coming to the Earth. Will we ever get off this drumbeat and come to some kind of reality.

Reading the NT it is rather obvious that Jesus believed that he was going to be the leader of the Kingdom of God during his generation and the disciples would be under Him ruling this kingdom. The entire time Jesus was on the earth he was speaking only to Jews. Jesus never spoke to Gentiles.

Jesus’ message appealing to Gentiles was a Paul idea because the Jews rejected Paul’s message about Jesus. Paul went to synagogues every time he went to a city and tried to convert the Jews to accept his message about Jesus. The Jews rejected the message of Jesus because Jesus did NOT fulfill the OT’s message regarding the Messiah. Jesus being crucified on a cross is not in the OT. They were expecting a savior who would rule them and get them out from under the Roman domination. In any case, Paul also believed that Jesus’ coming was nigh in his generation. As time wore on Christians began to realize that it wasn’t happening and the gospels were written in this light—after Paul.

Jesus’ message was to the downtrodden, the poor, the sick, the weak etc. Why? Because he believed that the Kingdom of God was coming in his generation and would make those he was speaking to i.e. the poor, rich and the sick, well and everyone would be happy whereas the Kingdom of God would reject the haughty, rich and powerful. Read the sermon on the Mount in this light and you can see He was preaching to people telling them that the Kingdom is here, now and coming during their lifetime and it will change their fortunes. We can read this 2000 years later and believe He is talking to us but it is not a message to us although we can use it in our practice in life. However, it was a message to the people in His day. It was a message to His fellow Jews in Palestine. The Kingdom was coming and it will bring them out from under these horrible conditions and situations with the Romans ruling their lives.

I said that my approach to Jesus was not a novel idea. Albert Schweitzer in his “Quest of the Historical Jesus” showed that every generation of scholars that attempted to write a life of Jesus in fact portrayed Jesus in its own image as well as the scholar’s image. “He passes by our time and returns to His own”, page 399. Schweitzer did not think that the historical Jesus shared the problems or perspectives of the twentieth century. Instead, for Schweitzer, Jesus never expected that there would be a twentieth century. He thought the end of the world was coming in his own lifetime. Also, note that Schweitzer spent his life curing the sick in the jungle clinic far removed from the ivy towers of the European intellectual scene even though most of his writings were devoted to the NT.

I understand one day is as a thousand years. Well then, I guess we can keep waiting another 2000 years. However, our planet earth won’t keep waiting. We are plundering this earth and headed for making it uninhabitable. Of course, for the true believers this is God’s justice. I am troubled that most Christians are sitting back on their laurels and truly believe that how we treat this earth and its inhabitants and the way we live doesn’t matter because Jesus will return any minute now. So why should we care? What is the Bible’s message, really? I thought that this earth was God's creation as well as us and all the animals. Even during the days of Noah God wanted the animals he created to survive....