Moses, Moses
Part
4
Servant
Priests of a Nation
The Levites had replaced the firstborn
of the nation as public servants to keep the people from the sin of
the golden calf, the common purse of national banking. They were to
serve the tents of the congregation, strengthening them as
individuals while unifying them as one nation. In this process, they
were required, as an alternative to Babylonian, Egyptian, or Roman
systems, to help them be fruitful and prosperous.
Keeping each family strong and
prosperous was the practical duty for the ministers of the people,
who would share in their prosperity. Taking care of the poor in a way that strengthened them was an essential duty of the
kingdom’s ministers. How did this priestly office function to
make the people stronger?
Christ had preached a kingdom under
the perfect law of liberty. It was a kingdom under God where every
man was king in his own home. Such systems cannot hold together and
be prepared for sudden invasion or disaster if they are not also
bound together in time of peace and prosperity.
The ministers who were called out to
serve the kingdom and appointed by Jesus were called the ekklesia in Greek, meaning the “called
out”, but became known as the “Church” in
the English language. It was designed to maintain an entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth where every man might be returned
to his possession and restored to his family.
These “called
out” men were not the right hand of government but the
left. The State was in the hands of the people, as it was in
the days of Moses. Through the captains of tens, the people chose who
they would follow in battling the trials of life in the world. That
choice was based on personal knowledge and mutual consent. That
voluntary network of men choosing ministers and ministers choosing
ministers formed a nation of freemen.
The Levites were also “called
out” by Moses, just as Jesus called out the Church. They
were the ministers of the common welfare of the people of the Kingdom
of God, not the strong arm of justice. They taught the ways of God’s
kingdom and kept the people together and strong by their system of
charity and hope.
These separate but complimentary
activities kept the kingdom a working brotherhood in time of peace
and war. They could bring men together in the face of personal
robbery, disaster, and sickness or national famine, disaster, or
invasion. As long as men lovingly remembered the character and
precepts of God the Father first and secondly loved their neighbor as
themselves, the kingdom would flourish and be fruitful under God’s
precepts.
… thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I [am] the LORD.
Leviticus 19:18
There is no difference in the canons
of Christ’s kingdom at-hand and the Kingdom of God that Moses
tried to teach the people. The Levites were servants of the
congregations of men. They belonged to God as his bondservants with
no inheritance. Each one served ten families, who chose them as
ministers, and to whom were tithed in accordance to their
service.
The Church called out by Christ did
the same as that earlier Church in the wilderness called out
by Moses. They taught a kingdom of God organized by congregation of
tens.
And
in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said,
(the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,) Acts
1:15
Here 12 apostles and 120 families were
the beginning foundation of the Christian Church. The apostles were
bondservants appointed by Christ to minister to the congregation of
the people. In order to discern exactly how all this worked together
for good, we must explore even deeper into those ancient times.
Even as late as the 9th and 10th
century, among the Lombard kings there was something called Deans
connected to ten families. The word originated from the Latin
“decanus”, which was a military term of the
Romans. Decurius was also used by early writers. This included
the Greek deka and dekate, meaning ten or tithe.
The term was used to described those
men performing functions of the secular clergy. This term was used by
what we might call ministers of the early ecclesiastical Church. That
clergy was much different in their position to authority and function
than those now held in what we have come to believe is the Church.
They held that office which included a position in their judicial
system chosen from the bottom up. Some have tried to assert that
a Dean was in authority over those ten families, but the terms used
to describe the office clearly establish it as a subordinate position
with respect and service to the people. It was a part of their system
of governance, but its leaders were titular.
Terms like decurions signified
those who served ten deans, again, in a subjective or servant
manner. As the network of tens, fifties, and hundreds grew, there was
a need for assistance like the heralds of the kings and the singers and Nethinims of the Levites who performed important functions of keeping the
people and ministers informed. The chore pisco pus was an
assistant to the overseer or Bishop to keep the communion between the
congregation effectual. Over the centuries, this special
communications officer for the government of the people was
degenerated into the director of the choir.
The communion of the first-century
Church was substantive to fill the true physical and spiritual needs
of the people. Christians depended upon the freewill charity of each
other, not the entitlements of Rome or the synagogue of Satan.
Ye
cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be
partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils. 1
Corinthians 10:21
The Christian community was
well-disciplined and organized from the bottom up with a system of
charity rather than forced taxes. While the Roman system of political
control and its usurious economy was breaking down, those who
followed Christ were excluded from the dainties of those civic
tables. In about AD 150, Justin Martyr, hoping to clear the
misconceptions and prejudices surrounding Christianity, wrote the
Emperor Antoninus Pius in defense of the Christian faith and
allegiance to Christ:
“And
the wealthy among us help the needy ... and willing, give what each
thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president,
who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness
or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the
strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who
are in need.” (Ch. 65-67)
As we saw with ministers like Stephen,
we also see the Didache stating:
“Therefore,
elect for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who
are meek and not lovers of money, true and approved, for they also
perform for you the ministry of the prophets and teachers.”
15:1
The nature of these appointments would
remain the same for centuries. In the 10th century, drastic reforms
were enforced to “unify the liturgy” of the Church. This
authoritarian call for unity under a centralized Church had been
creeping into some Church thinking from the beginning and now became
a rebellion against the gospels.
Liturgy is defined as “a
prescribed form or set of forms for public religious worship.” It is from the Greek word leitourgi and leitourgos,
meaning “public service” and “public servant” respectively. Liturgy was not about singing and vestments and the
smoke and mirrors of modern Christendom. It was about the public
servants of the kingdom of God operating under the perfect law of
liberty in true worship of God by service to the people. Liturgy was the common procedures of the
public servants of God’s kingdom in congregations composed of,
by, and for the people. These “reforms” were forced upon
the innocent and faithful by usurping kings, who were crowned by a
fornicating church, in hopes of securing their own positions of
wealth and power, turning the world upside-down again.
The free systems of tens, hundreds,
and thousands, bound together only by brotherhood and love, had been
the predominant form of successful voluntary government throughout
man’s history. Similar cell patterns were evident in the
persecuted Church.
The crucial ingredient to their
success is the implementation of the Ten Codes of God’s Law
summarized in the virtuous application of Christ’s two
commandments. Love God and His ways with all that you think and do
and actively love your neighbor's rights to his property and family,
his life and liberty as much, if not more, than you love your own.
The Church that comes together according to these ancient patterns
and righteousness can overcome all tyrants, despots, and enemies of
freedom and liberty. They can weather the greatest storms and
cataclysms of history, both past or future. They can and will inherit
the earth.
Order the book
Thy Kingdom Comes
http://www.hisholychurch.org/order/ordertkc.php
