[TruthTalk] WorldNetDaily: How and why we're going to win

[Judy Taylor]

FYI - I'd be interested in David/Christine Miller & Terry's take on this article since they are involved in the home-church movement.  jt   This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows. To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44629   Tuesday, June 7, 2005   How and why we're going to win   Posted: June 7, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Jim Rutz   © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Far below the rusty radar of the portside press, the tide of history has turned against tyranny and in favor of the common man.  The whole world, in fact, is changing hands for the first and last time.  Tyrants and generals have swept across the Earth for centuries, crushing and raising empires. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome and the dynasties of the East have all been driven by pharaohs, emperors and kings. For one brief blip of time, a nexus of freedom did blaze in the Near East, as early Christianity poured power into the hearts and hands of ordinary believers. But this fledgling participatory church, with plain folks meeting from house to house and urging each member to freely teach or sing or pray in turn, was soon subverted by its own leaders. Facing widespread heresy and persecution, the young church decided to copy the enemy (Rome). Reaching back into their past, they resurrected the Levitical priesthood and regrouped as a top-down hierarchy, starting about A.D. 90. Then, under Constantine in the 320s, Christianity totally collapsed into an institution, putting bishops over bishops over bishops and squashing the common man. The fire went out, and Western Civilization collapsed into the Dark Ages in A.D. 476.   A millennium later, the reformers restored basic Christian doctrine, and the Great Awakening stirred hope in individual hearts. But all the oppressive structures remained intact. The West then floundered desperately through a series of mindsets: Enlightenment philosophy, French-style revolution, Lockean limited government, Fabian socialism, and now a market-managing political bureaucracy from Roosevelt and Keynes (which has just suffered a whopping setback). Last week's rejection of a United States of Europe by independent-minded voters in Holland and France dovetails with the Bush effort to bring freedom and independence to the Middle East. And both events are subsets of a wider phenomenon: the transfer of power from the top of the pyramid to the bottom.   Democracy is not the Kingdom of God, but in a free atmosphere, people more often choose to follow Him.  This change is broader than government. In industry, the guys on the shop floor now just punch a computer to get the information that once had to be parsed out by middle management (R.I.P.). In the media, 8 million bloggers – and websites like WorldNetDaily – are starting to supplant the giant TV networks and newspapers. In education, homeschools have broken the National Education Association monopoly. In entertainment, G-rated films have mushroomed. But perhaps the most foundational changes are happening in the church, the traditional guardian of society's key values. If you've always been a Sunday-go-to-meetin' kind of Christian, you now have an exciting alternative. Without changing one iota of your beliefs, you can upgrade yourself from a pew potato to a world-changing pioneer. This has to be the biggest megashift in the history of mankind. Not only has it transformed the lives of over 100 million people worldwide during the past 50 years, it has also been attested by millions of miracles. This is not a rumor, it's a spiritual tsunami.   In "Megashift," I've documented many such miracles (including true resurrections in 52 countries recently) with names and addresses. Joseph Farah, in his brilliant May 25 column and his book, "Taking America Back," states that turn-back-the-clock conservatives cannot win the battle for America because their strategy is purely defensive. He says we need a radically positive vision.  Bingo. And here are the two main ways that vision is going to win. One, we're going to overwhelm the secular liberals by sheer numbers (see my first column), thus enabling us to pass a sweeping series of truly progressive reforms based on a radical vision like Mr. Farah's. And two, we're going to cooperate with God in re-creating the church, turning the people from a professionally led audience into proactive disciples who get their directions straight from the Spirit. (We can't change diehard spectators, but we can change many believers and bring in a billion more in the next 11 to 12 years.) Most of that bottom-to-top change is going to come through what you call house churches – informal, but life-changing open fellowships in homes, offices, schools, Starbucks, wherever. They are free from programs, sermons, buildings and the heretically deadly split between clergy and laity. Why are people leaving their warm, comfortable pews for this new adventure in faith? What do they gain? Could this be something you should be involved with? See you next Tuesday.       James Rutz is chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries. His recent book, "MEGASHIFT: Igniting Spiritual Power," announces major upgrades in human life and a coming transformation of society.