guy sajer wrote:Yes, God has this great plan of salvation/exaltation for his children. At the center of it is his true "gospel," the knowledge and acceptance of which is necessary for his children to achieve their eternal reward.
So, what does he do?
For the first tens of thousands or so of years of earth's history, the gospel is nowhere to be found, if it exists, it is limited to a narrow strip of land around 100 miles long and 40 miles wide in an obscure part of the world. (Meanwhile, the people living on this narrow strip of land proceed to piss God off by not being slavishly obedient enough, so in a fit of rage, he kills not only all of them, save a handful, but every other living sole on the planet in a global flood.)
After tens of thousands of years, he finally gets around to sending his son to establish his gospel, and the administrative structure for it on the earth. After 30 some odd years, his son is murdered (part of the plan), but he leaves behind apostles to run the church that he has presumably established.
This church, as it were, operates for a few decades but is reasonably quickly snuffed out of existence in its place of origin. But, luckily, one of its leaders is a good missionary who takes the gospel to foreign lands, one which happens to be Rome--the dominant political and military power in the world.
In the meantime, unfortunately, the entire Church falls into an apostasy after only a few decades of existence. God waited tens of thousands of years to establish his true gospel/church (that which is necessary for salvation/exaltation) only to yank it away after a few short decades in a "great apostasy." This too is part of the wonderful plan.
Meanwhile, the remnant of God's Church in Rome grows in power and strength and is co-opted by a pagan dictator for political purposes that make it the official state church. This launches over 1,000 years of the "dark ages" in which the Church is in open apostasy, is co-opted by corrupt, greedy, murderous thugs, and is made a state instrument of oppression that crushes literally tens of millions of lives in its maw for well over 1,000 years. This too is part of the great plan.
After 1,800 years of apostasy, God finally gets around to restoring his gospel/church on the earth again. He does it through a man of dubious character. This man goes on to establish the church as well as lost eternal doctrines, one of which compels him, at flaming sword point, to seduce and have conjugal relationships with multiple women behind his wife's back, including adolescent girls and women already married to his close confederates. This man finds and translate ancient records of a massive lost civilization for which absolutely no evidence whatsoever exists in a book that coincidentally reflects the theological debates of the day, incorporates themes from contemporary writers, and describes a civilization possessing technologies, planets, animals, languages, religious customs, as to fore, and still, unknown in the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere.
This man later translates an ancient papyrus which he claims to have been written by a mythological figure named Abraham. Nobody at the time can translate the language in which the ancient texts are written. Sadly, the ancient texts are lost. Happily the ancient texts are found, and more happily still, people have developed the ability to read and translate the language in which the tests are written. When translated by known experts, it is found that they have nothing to do with Abraham but are ordinary funerary texts of known Egyptian funeral rituals.
This man is later killed because he destroyed a printing press that published a paper chronicling his extra-marital sexual escapades. His mantel is assumed by a domineering man who, among his other accomplishments, manages to enshrine as the single most important doctrine for exaltation the requirement that man take on multiple wives. This too is part of God's plan.
This Church grows and grows and grows to reach an enormous size to encompas .01% of the world’s population. Today only around 1 in 1,000 people on the planet even know of this church and its saving gospel, far less care. Of those who belong to this church, around 75% never bother attending, and around 50% of them don’t even consider themselves members of this church. This too is, apparently, part of God’s wonderful plan.
This church today remains totally obscure and irrelevant in the grand scope of human affairs. Its current leaders refrain from speaking out on the great moral debates of the time, save for those that have something to do with human sexuality, jewelry, and personal adornment. And where the leaders do take “moral” stands, they inevitably find themselves behind the moral curve of human society. Nobody, aside from the faithful, listen to or care what they have to say. This too is, apparently, part of God’s plan.
Isn’t it marvelous?
Okay, I'm setting myself up to be called an arrogant git. So be it. Yes, the Church of Christ has been small throughout history.......have you considered maybe God planned it that way? Most people are probably going to the Terrestrial or Telestial anyways. If they really want eternal glory they can always do the whole after death thing.