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Originally Posted by Ohio
Hence the cycle must be repeated.
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So we need to recover from The Recovery?
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Originally Posted by Ohio
Ok. Without the standards and teachings of the NT, the church would have drifted further and further off course, not ever knowing where we started from.
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Biblically speaking the church started at Pentecost ; Pentecost "invented" the church.
So the early church -- the earliest of the earliest church -- was Holy Spirit animated. Methinks we sometimes get distracted by staring into a book, and that perchance is what brings us astray. According to the record, the earliest church was true because of the Spirit ... or that "pesky" Wind.
Problem is that churchin' by the Spirit is like herding cats, cuz : "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."
My point being : if we ever hope to recover the early church we're gonna have ta repeat Pentecost.
But Paul writes to the Romans : "Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above
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How do we recover the early church if we can't catch the Wind? I hate to say it but, the early church, if exists today, is literally blowing in The Wind ... or it is not ... but something else ... the something else we see today.
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Originally Posted by Ohio
I see the true Church continually needing to unload itself of "extras" or traditions that we seem to always accumulate over time. Practices always tend to be codified into ordinances which, though they were once helpful, have become legalistic bondages to successive generations. Hence the need to "return" to the pure word, dumping these leavens.
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That's insightful. But I still think we need to "return" to pentecost.
Maybe we go astray because we can't ascend into heaven to bring "that" down, and can't control "that Wind."
Hey, didn't Jesus say, "I will build my church?"