Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED blog post, the only blog that always responds this way when its computer says, “Autosaved your file.” The response: “Aww, thanks. Now where is the file?”
In last week’s article (The Message That Sparked a Revolution), I promised to give you an update.
So here it is.
We are finally close to birthing the new literary beast The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded into the world. On Monday, I’ll be sending the finished manuscript into my editor’s inbox like a desperate parent eagerly dropping off their kid at summer camp. (Yea, I had to take the manuscript for yet another spin.)
Let me tell you, after reading it roughly 723 times (slight exaggeration, but my eyeballs feel otherwise), I’d rather eat a cactus than look at it again. But fear not, eager readers! This new book with its spectacular cover is set to grace your bookshelves sometime in 2025. So make some room, eh?
Now for today’s article.
Thirty years ago, one of the most profound Christian writers passed from this earth. His name was Elton Trueblood. The following words by Trueblood were published in 1958.
I’m calling these excerpts, “The Astonishing Legacy Jesus Left Behind.”
“He [Jesus] did not leave an army; He did not leave an organization, in the ordinary sense. What He left, instead, was a little redemptive fellowship made up of extremely common people whose total impact was miraculous . . . . It is hard for us to visualize what early Christianity was like. Certainly it was very different from the Christianity known to us today.
There were no fine buildings . . . . There was no hierarchy; there were no theological seminaries; there were no Christian colleges; there were no Sunday Schools; there were no choirs. Only small groups of believers – small fellowships.
In the beginning there wasn’t even a New Testament. The New Testament itself was not so much a cause of these fellowships as a result of them. Thus the first books of the New Testament were the letters written to the little fellowships partly because of their difficulties, dangers and temptations. All that they had was the fellowship; nothing else; no standing; no prestige; no honor . . . .
The early Christians were not a people of standing, but they had a secret power among them, and the secret power resulted from the way in which they were members one of another . . . . What occurred in. the ancient civilization was the organic development of the fellowship, but never a merely individual Christianity.
That would not have been able to survive. The fellowship was the only thing that could win. The early Christians came together to strengthen one another and to encourage one another in their humble gatherings such as are described in 1 Cor. 14, and then they went out into their ministry in the Greco-Roman world . . . .
All of these parts [of the empire] were touched because the fellowship itself had such intensity, such vitality, and such power . . . . If all the salt is washed out of [the fellowship], if all that is left is just the worldly emphasis of respectability and fine buildings, an ecclesiastical structure and conventional religion with the redemptive power gone, it isn’t partly good; it isn’t any good.
Christ is saying that mild religion, far from being of partial value, is of utterly no value . . . . It is easy to go on with the motions; it is easy to continue a structure; it is easy to go on with a system. But Christ says it isn’t worth a thing.”
From Elton Trueblood, The Yoke of Christ and Other Sermons (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1958). HT to my friend Jon Zens for sending me the quote.
Until next Thursday,
fv
The Message That Sparked a Revolution