The question which cannot be ducked. Christendom has ruined the new covenant ecclesia. I have made no bones about saying so. I have gone further. I have maintained that this past 50 years evangelicals, by flirting with paganism, have seriously increased this Christendom adulteration of the ecclesia. The vast majority of believers, of course, never come across my work, and my guess is that most of the tiny minority which have read or heard something of mine on this subject have dismissed it, dismissed it perhaps, as the mere babbling of some old curmudgeon, that geriatric, moaning, hard-of-hearing, dishevelled embarrassment sitting in the corner, the one who always spoils the family fun. who long ago ought to him put out to grass, treated kindly perhaps, but not for a minute taken seriously. Nevertheless, a few, and now we really are getting into the region of the minuscule, have felt the force of what I have said, but the default position proves too strong for them. Very much like the converted Jews, the writer of the Hebrews addressed in his letter, those who felt the reclaiming magnetism power of the old covenant, I realize that the default Christendom grip on most believers is almost unassailable. I feel it myself. Can we be free of it? How safe Christendom appears. What a lovely face it wears, as long as you overlook its appalling record of hatred against the gospel and those who are determined to live by it and proclaim it. Dissent not allowed. And I'm not putting Roman Christendom alone in the dark. Look how Reformed Christendom linked arms with the Roman to destroy the Anabaptists. Even so, Christendom has the history, the tradition, all the big names, all the major confessions, and all the rest of it on its side. After nearly 1800 years, how Christendom has stood the test of time. It has flourished, proving that it's here to stay. Many simply like it that way. much as Judah liked their alternative to the Mosaic covenant, Jeremiah 5, 30-31. Christendom is, like a pair of old slippers, just too comfortable. I know my own heart. The scriptural path is risky. It demands thought, it asks too many questions. The traditional is all mapped out, cut and dried, all the questions answered, answered by experts, no less. Rome would not allow the hoi polloi to read scripture for themselves. Just accept what Mother Church says. Protestant Christendom can hardly be said to encourage inquiry. Absorb what you are told. Ritualism rules okay. Stick with what you know. Stick to what you are told. So many people can't be wrong, can they? For all that, however, I know that I am not alone in issuing my alarms about the loss of Ecclesia life. And some, in a tentative hope of a move towards the recovery of the original, want to obey the biblical call for believers to flee from the Christendom Babylon, 2 Corinthians 6, 14 to 7, 1 and Revelation 18, verse 4. But I also know But they are puzzled. They have a question. How can we throw off Christendom and recover the Ecclesia? It becomes personal. What can I, me personally, what can I do about promoting this recovery? I am not inventing this dilemma. It's real. Altogether too real, I'm afraid. Such questions have been put to me. Indeed, I have them myself. I think the short answer must be that there is nothing that we can do to throw off Christendom and get back to the Ecclesia, at least not on any scale. Frankly, I cannot conceive that the Christendom juggernaut is even aware of anything that I can throw of it, let alone be disturbed by any word of mine. The recovery of the Ecclesia, the believer's liberation from the toils of Christendom, is beyond the power and wit of man. God's word through Zechariah to Zerubbabel applies, not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Zechariah 4, verse 6. See also Hosea 1, verse 7. In any case, in a sense, it's impossible for any individual to return to the Ecclesia. Ecclesia life needs the two or three, Matthew 18, 15 to 20. Please do not misunderstand me. Prayer is open to us, prayer trusting in God's sovereignty. We need look no further than Daniel 9, 1 to 19 for that. Moreover, since Christ loved and died for the Ecclesia, Ephesians 5, 25-32, who can care for the Ecclesia more than He? But that answer, in my view, is still ducking the question. I am sure that although the unravelling of Christendom and the recovery of the Ecclesia is beyond us, In whatever way we can, however feeble our efforts may be, we must go on keeping the issue before our fellow believers. At times the prophets must have felt they were flogging a dead horse. Isaiah certainly did. Isaiah 49 verse 4 and 53 verse 1. But they kept on and on. If I may speak personally, Although I am no prophet, in my discourses and in my articles and books, I try to keep the issue in the public square. I ask you, listener, what can you do? Whatever it is, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. In the morning sow your seed, in the evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. Ecclesiastes 9, verse 10, and 11, verse 6. God is sovereign, but he usually works through instruments. Weak instruments at that. Widows can cast their mites into the treasury. A lad can give his picnic lunch. A David with a pebble can defeat a Goliath. Let us go on, even against impossible odds. I draw comfort from and find a challenge in 1 Peter 1 10-12. The prophets knew they were prophesying about things they would not live to experience, but even so they labored on and were deeply curious and concerned about what God was showing them even though he told them it was not for their day. But even in this there is a dilemma. To help others to see what we have lost by Christendom, I need to approach Christendom, get involved with it, use it in some way or another. This is a paradox I labor with. Yet, even in admitting that much, I am still evading the real problem, the real issue. It's not the Christendom out there. is the Christendom in here, that is, in me. As I have hinted in passing, that's the hardest nut of the lot to crack, me, self. I know it's true that God works by contraries, I preach it and write about it. I know that in God's terms, small is great, weak is strong, humble is powerful, the despised flourishes. 1 Corinthians 1.18-2.16 I protest against preaching centers, the galaxy of star preachers, watching the ratings, the love of the big pact auditorium, and all the rest of modern evangelical razzmatazz. But then here's the real battle. These criticisms of Christendom my head may hold, and my tongue and my pen may proclaim, but Christendom being ingrained within me is too powerful for me to throw off. Its pernicious and insidious influence is too strong for me. I preach and write about walking in the Spirit in the New Covenant, but do I really want to be rid of Christendom's goodies? That's the real issue for me. It's not them. It's me. Despite all this, I have not lost hope. Not quite. Why not? Because, if I'm right in saying that in the past 50 years, evangelical opinion formers, with their dependence on paganized Christendom, have been in the van of corrupting the Ecclesia even more devastatingly than it was, then I draw an odd, even perverse encouragement from the history of Israel. Israel did something similar in the days of the Old Covenant. They corrupted their covenant by consorting with pagans and paganism. Well, that in itself is no comfort. No, it's not. But it's what God did about it. God made sure that if Israel would not learn the lesson through the words of the prophets, then Israel would learn the lesson when paganism came back to bite Israel and bite Israel hard as it did. One example out of many must suffice. Israel disobeyed God and went to Egypt for help, pretty much like modern evangelicals have gone to pagans to help them run the church to make it and its message acceptable to the carnal. God publicly addressed Egypt through the prophet, publicly, so that Israel could hear it. You have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they grasped you with the hand, you broke and tore all their shoulders. And when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their loins to shake." Ezekiel 29, 67. Although Israel would not listen, God made sure that the chickens came home to roost. It would take time. But Israel and Judah, because of their departure from the covenant, were on the road to captivity. I know that after 70 years, Judah returned from Babylon. But it was never the same. Ezra 3, verse 12. Zechariah 4, verse 10. Haggai 2, verse 3. And what a wretched 70 years. Psalm 137. I am no prophet, as I have said, but it would not surprise me if we are heading for something similar. Indeed, even as I write, straws are blowing in the wind. Paul told the Corinthians that Israel's sin and God's judgment were meant to warn them as believers and make them reform. 1 Corinthians 10, 1 to 22. If ever there was a day when believers needed to take this passage seriously, that day is now. All I'm saying is this, having been formed on by the church, having proved so, inverted commas, helpful in the church's drive to make itself and the gospel attractive to pagans, state Christendom will demand its pound of flesh. Take, for instance, tax relief. I speak of what I know in the UK, but I think something similar applies across the Atlantic. The Christendom state is willing to grant churches tax relief, among other benefits, yes, but it expects, it demands, a quid pro quo. If the state grants the churches money, or whatever, The churches must conform to the state's diktat over church governance, church discipline, gender issues, safeguarding, sexual behavior, the content of sermons, guidance and rulings given to members. In all such matters, churches will have to comply with whatever pagans demand. He who pays the piper. As I write, These Things Are Happening, the state is beginning to tell the churches what they can and what they can't do, what they must do. The only hope that if we believers will not wake up to our disobedience to scripture, stop our headlong descent into disaster, then maybe the state, Christendom, will do it for us. How? by exacting too high a price for what it is offering, demanding far more from the Church than the benefit it offers. Thus, at long last, stirring believers to dig their heels in and pin their ears back and say, enough is enough, whereupon Christendom will turn quickly from being a Father Christmas to being a Nero, the present whimsy will be replaced by a terrifying, bleak grimness. And the result? Persecution. This too has happened, time and again. And herein lies my hope for the Ecclesia. Persecution. Persecution, not popularity, was always meant to be the norm for the Ecclesia. The Ecclesia thrives under persecution. Under persecution, the church goes underground. It becomes secret, hidden, separate, despised, and all the rest. Believers really do become strangers and aliens in the world. Hebrews 11.13, 1 Peter 1, 1 and 17, and 2.11. Yes, but this means that the church really does become the ecclesia. Christ made it plain. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 15, 19. Shortly after saying this, in his great prayer, he declared, I have manifested your name, speaking to the Father, to the people whom you gave me out of the world. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." John 17, verse 6 to 18. The trash of Christendom trimmings will drop away from the Church when persecution is unleashed upon it, and the Church will once again come closer to being what it should be, separate from the world. I realise persecution will be painful, to put it mildly, and to state the glaringly obvious, but this I am convinced is the only hope. Knowing my weakness, I dread it. But it may well be God's way. Consequently, while I understand their concern, I find myself somewhat out of step with believers who endlessly moan about persecution and pray for its removal. Even more resolutely, do I disagree with their petitioning the state to lift it. It might well be that by persecution God is answering his people's prayer for a recovery of the new covenant. Think of that! While I reject the deliberate courting of persecution, we must stop the present madness, not to say sinfulness, of soliciting popularity from the world and coveting the world's help and applause. God doesn't need the world's praise or support. I am bold to say that if believers start to be different to the world, live separated from the world, and churches show a willingness to return to the New Covenant, this will in itself lead to persecution and this will in turn advance the further return to the New Covenant. a truly virtuous circle. That is my answer to the question. What can we do about throwing off Christendom? I've realised that this too will probably be dismissed as mere hogwash or alarmist. But to warn of persecution, is not to want it or invite it. There is no need for it. The Ecclesia at Corinth had seriously defected from the New Covenant, but, we may hope, for a time at least it responded to Paul's letters of rebuke, warning and calls for reform. Alas, as for the various Ecclesias of Revelation 2 and 3, they, I am afraid, had their candlesticks removed. The lesson from Israel and the Ecclesiastes of the New Testament is patent. If any listeners remain unconvinced, may I close by leaving them with a thought which may cause them to lose some sleep. What if, and in the UK this is not such a laughable suggestion as it would have been a few years back, what if Islam should get its hands on the levers of power in the state? What if the Sharia merchants should replace the present liberal insipid Christendom hawkers? We in the UK Have too long, inverted commas, enjoyed the, inverted commas, protection of a benign Christendom? What if that summer should give way to winter? I do not publish or read this article to close debate. Rather, I want to provoke it. Reader, Listener, what is your answer to the question, how can we believers get free of the Christendom Church and find something at least approximating to the Ecclesia? Can we? Will we?