Jesus' 5 Major paradigm shifts from OT to NT

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1.   Buildings: Jesus shifted the holy temple from a stone building to human heart (1 Cor. 3:16). For 300 years the NT church functioned in the homes of the people without any specifically constructed sacred buildings and grew exponentially until Constantine built the first cathedral in Rome.  
Our Response: Build more buildings. Brick an mortar has done more harm to church growth and multiplication than anything else. Every dollar spent on building sends someone to hell. Every 4 seconds someone dies in India without hearing the gospel and goes to hell. 
Remember: God does not live in buildings made with human hands. (Acts 7:48,49)
2. Priesthood: The OT consisted of priesthood of hereditary Levites. Anyone could become a prophet but never a priest. Jesus changed all that so that in His church there is priesthood of all believers. Every believer is a royal priests. (Rev. 5:9,10; 1 Peter 2:9) 
Our response: Even though in the church of Jesus Christ there may be no clergy and layman, but in the modern church this sinful caste system exists. Professional priesthood was started again by Constantine in AD 322.
3. Sunday Worship: The Jews celebrated Sabbath on Saturdays. Jesus changed the system to any day, any time, anywhere (Rom. 14:5). Sunday worship was started by royal edict from Constantine (AD 321) and has no Biblical basis.
Our response: Try and give biblical muscle to this unbiblical concept. In fact most of the time the house churches met everyday. (Heb. 3:13; Acts 2:47)
4. Teaching method: Jews were the only people of the Book. Jewish madrasas produced brilliant intellectuals.
Jesus changed the system and taught profound truths through simple stories and parables from everyday life situations. (Math. 13:13,34,35)
Our response: Divide print communicators from oral communicators and denigrate them as illiterate. Train in seminaries and produce brainy intellectuals who think in concepts, principals and analysis which are difficult to retain and reproduce. Sermons are given to impress others which does not multiply believers.  Stories are easily retained and reproducible and touch both head and heart. They multiply more story tellers who can reach the ends of the earth. (1Cor. 1:26-31)
5. Jews and Gentiles: The Jews treated Gentiles as "goshe"  (untouchables) and despised. Jesus changed everything. In His church there are Jews and Gentiles, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, print communicators and oral communicators, all have equal status.
Our response: Caste based churches, clergy/laymen and gender divide. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
Dear Sir-
Would encourage you to rethink and to research #4 a little bit more.
Stories and parables were a way of teaching by the Jewish Rabbis of Jesus' day. There were other rabbis who taught in story and parable form.

Furthermore, Jewish Rabbis would teach in terms of block logic {statements can be understood in themselves when they are said) and not in terms of Aristotelian logic of Greece {all statements must be based on prior statements necessarily leading to a conclusion).

Something along the lines of what you said in your post---stories and parables are easy to remember... and thats why the Rabbi's taught them. The Rabbi's were teachers of a way of life, based on revelation and all its demands, rather than the humanistic philosophy of the Greeks.

For more on this, I encourage you to read Our Father Abraham by Marvin Wilson.

Thank you and God bless you.
March 19, 2007 at 9:26 AM
Anonymous said…
Well written article.
November 12, 2008 at 5:45 AM
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