The Coercive Church
After 2000 years of confusion and misrepresentation by religious leaders, the answer to the question of Pilate “What is truth?” is as difficult to settle among the modern church denominations as it was amongst the Pharisees, Sadducees and Zealots of that day. Pilate found no fault in the statement of Jesus, “Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”1
In this day of modern religious extremism it has become necessary to explain what the phrase “Coercive Church" means. The truth is Christ was a king of a government and though His kingdom was not a part of the “world” of Pontius Pilate and Rome, it was here at hand. Jesus did not preach some Sunday go to meeting Church.2 He preached and appointed a kingdom. The early Church provided the entire social welfare for a society that not only believed in Christ but also in doing and living His way of love and mutual service.
The Church was a government. It was one form of government but it was not coercive in the performance of its responsibilities of caring and providing the charitable social welfare needs of the people. Rome, Herod, and the Pharisees, including many of the other governments surrounding the Mediterranean, had extensive social welfare systems. Roman free bread and circuses spread to Judea, and Augustus was loved for his benefaction by many of its citizens.
“In Jesus’ day an impressive system of welfare tended the poor ... The tithe of grain and fruit could first be exchanged for silver ... silver for grain, wine, oil, and whatever would promote the joy of the people in the presence of their God ... The tithe also functioned as a kind of a tax to support the temple and its personnel… An administration was in charge of the storehouse for the continued welfare of the personnel… The presentation of any offering required careful adherence to the prescribed regulations...”3
About 78 BC, the Pharisees, which were a political party, thought they had a better idea. Their Sanhedrin decided to create a socialist state that could exercise authority over the people by compelling contributions and enacted a law upon the people to enforce the collection of temple tribute.4 This was gradual at first but under Herod the contribution of members was no longer the freewill offering as prescribed in the Old Testament. The government instituted for Judea by the Pharisees no longer operated like the one that was instituted by the revolutionary ideas of Moses.
The temples were government buildings which administered systems of social security with a contribution called Corban. In the early days of Israel Corban was provided by “free will offerings”5, but the Corban of these Pharisees demanded the contributions of its members by statutory enforced decree.6 This filled the treasury of the temples of Herod through his employed government ministers.
Herod wanted to make his “Temple the largest… in the world… a quarter of a mile long by a fifth of a mile wide… Twenty thousand functionaries were employed in its servicing....” 7 This socialist system offered many benefits to the people, but would alter the character of society. This entrusted mammon8 was spoken of by Christ. It would eventually fail, but not before it corrupted the hearts and minds of the people as in the days of Sodom.9
“But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him.” Luke 7:30
Surprisingly enough the Pharisees and lawyers were baptized - but not by John. “Herod’s scheme of initiation into a new form of Judaism was immensely successful. Jews everywhere were willing to join the worldwide society ... Entry was for members only; they had to show at the door an admission token in the form of a white stone from the river Jordan which the missionaries gave them at baptism. On the stone was written their new Jewish name.”10
John the Baptist's system of social welfare was true charity through the voluntary sacrifice of people.11 The Pharisees, in the vanity of their religion, were forcing contribution of their members under the threat of punitive persecution.12 Their system of social welfare was supported through the sacrifices and contributions of the people, called Corban. Their form of Corban was condemned by Christ because it made the “word of God to none effect”13.
God's government had always depended on the freewill offerings which both God and a free society require. The governments of the world often require full faith and allegiance to their leaders who call themselves benefactors but who exercise authority one over the other.14 In this one precept we may see a fundamental difference both then and now between the Kingdom of God as preached by John, Jesus and the apostles and the kingdoms or governments of the “world”.
The Christian system of welfare operated by faith, hope and charity only. Israel was a government and not a “religion” alone. The word “religion” seldom appears in the Bible. Few people understand the difference between the "pure religion"15 spoken of in the New Testament and the impure religion of the Pharisees which made the word of God to none effect.16 Nor do they understand how religion gets spotted by the “world”17 or what that meant in the Biblical context of James. Religion was the way people maintained their social welfare system. This was the central focus in many of the other temples of other governments at that time.
Yes, the Kingdom of God was a system of faith which required hope and charity in love, not force.18 In early Israel, as it was in the early Church, your tithing and free will offerings were given as a voluntary choice by individuals of every congregation. That contribution was given according to the service of their personal minister by choice not by dictates of statutes or the imposed penalties of men.19
“Some scholars regard the ancient confederation of Hebrew tribes that endured in Palestine from the 15th century BC until a monarchy was established about 1020 BC as an embryonic republic.”20 Likewise, “The churches in New England were so many nurseries of freemen, training them in the principles of self-government and accustoming them to the feeling of independence. In these petty organizations were developed, in practice, the principles of individual and national freedom. Each church was a republic in embryo. The fiction became a fact, the abstraction a reality...”21 In Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he praised “the union and discipline of the Christian republic.” He also pointed out that “it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.”22
Both Israel and the early Church were called Republics by historians because of the titular nature of its leaders who served the people and the needs of society without exercising authority one over the other. The people retained their God given right of choice,23 their original God given liberty,24 because they exercised their responsibility to provide the service of government through faith, hope and community charity. Any government whose leaders are no longer titular is no longer a Republic.25
While the modern churches say “all you have to do is believe”, in reality it appears that Christ actually talked about doers of the word not hearers only.26 He talked about striving and about those who were told to depart, because they were workers of iniquity.27 Jesus did not come to license the members of His Church to covet28 their neighbors' goods through the agency of governments they make for themselves.
"The civil law is what a people establishes for itself."29
The sins of the Pharisees were many, but one of them was their statutory socialism which made the word of God to none effect, which was a rejection of God. Christ came to save them and the world from sin if they would repent. There should be no doubt that preconceived and false notions accepted with blind faith is nothing more than a continuation of the blind leading the blind.
From Cain and those first city-states to Nimrod and his world-ruling tower of Babel, or from the statutory corvee bondage in Egypt to Herod, the Sanhedrin of the Pharisees and the commercial and military control of Judea by Rome, the Bible is either about man and his relationship with the God of Heaven or with the governments of men, and the gods30 of those governments.
Jesus said in Matthew 20:25 “But Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister.”
The early ministers of the church said “there is another king, [one] Jesus”31 and that “We ought to obey God rather than men”.32 But we were also told in Exodus 23:32 “Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.”33
The Church was composed of benefactors who did not exercise authority but provided all the social welfare of the people through the perfect law of liberty by faith, hope and charity. That took real faith and doing, forgiveness and giving, sacrifice and love. Being a Christian was not as easy as modern Christians would like to believe.
Instead the modern church sends people to eat at the tables of those socialist benefactors who exercise authority one over the other which makes the word of God to none effect. They were warned that those tables served deceitful meats34, that they were a snare35 and a trap.36
The religion practiced today is done at the government temples which provide for the needy of modern society. Those administrators are the priests of the people's true religion and their government is the new Pharisees of the Coercive Church established by men. Their schemes of social security are formed like those of Herod and the Pharisees and again make the word of God to none effect. What they do on Sunday is just to ease their own conscience or tickle their ears with false hopes so they may give heed to fables, and commandments of men, that turn from the truth.37
Christ meant His Church to set the table of the Lord through faith, hope and charity. To depend on the welfare of rulers was to again become entangled in the bondage of their world.38 Christ came to open our eyes to the sin common in the history of men and to set us free if we will repent.39
As we see the unrighteous mammon failing,40 it is time for the people and the ministers of their church to repent and seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness by coming together in a network of love so that they will be suitable for more righteous habitations.
The Coercive Church, BlogTalkRadio, 29:10 min
The Coercive Church, Far radio, 49min
The Coercive Church, TalkShoe QandA, 48:43 min
40Luke 16:9 “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”