THE ARENA is committed to presenting the authentic savor of early apostolic Christianity, as taught by Jesus Christ, preached by the Apostles and handed down to true disciples of Christ for 2,000 years.
ORGANIZATION AND MEMBERSHIP
Since we don’t yet have an organizational handbook completed, we offer the following information as a general guideline to Christian Brotherhood Organization and Membership. Please refer also to the article, “Starting A Christian Brotherhood Meeting,” in the previous (Number 1) issue of THE ARENA. This should be all that you need to get going on organizing a Christian Brotherhood chapter in your own area. The rest will depend upon your own initiative and, of course, the will of God.
A Movement. The Christian Brotherhood is a spiritual movement. We are ‘in the world but not of the world.’ The brotherhood headquarters serves as a spiritual center of unity and direction. Every member shares in the brotherhood’s work. Each has a part to play with something vital to contribute.
Local Groups. Local fellowships of the brotherhood are formed when two or more members meet. Like the early followers of Christ, we meet in informal gatherings in homes and small groups. We don’t need huge buildings or large congregations.
Meetings are simple, casual, and unstructured. New members should not be hesitant about joining or starting a brotherhood group. Great numbers are not necessary. Only two are needed.
“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20)
Brotherhood. We want to be a true brotherhood whose members are not just names on a mailing list. We welcome new members and strive to build an atmosphere that is warm, inviting, open and friendly. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, friends to each other and to God.
“Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you” (John 15:15)
“By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another” (John 13:35)
Support. The Christian Brotherhood has no financial backers or rich contributors but depends solely on the generosity of its Members.
We don’t want to be like so many churches and religious organizations that constantly badger people for money and donations. We ourselves have seen a great deal of false religion, whose aims are always money and power, and we want nothing of it.
“But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money” (Acts 8:20)
With your faithful support, there will be no need to send letters asking for money.
Personal Initiative. The Christian Brotherhood is a dynamic organization geared toward action and encouraging the personal initiative of its individual Members. All members must be active in some role and are expected to make a strong commitment of time and effort to further the Brotherhood’s mission.
The Christian Brotherhood encourages enthusiasm and ingenuity in its members. We are all too familiar with the pattern of new believers who are “on fire” for God only to have their spirits quenched by dead institutions and their rules. We need and welcome independence and genius in the movement. This will help us win the battle for the hearts and minds of the people and, ultimately, their souls for Christ.
If you believe in Jesus Christ with all your heart, you will be committed to His cause. It will be the most important thing in the world to you. You will do everything in your power to spread and build the movement.
Jesus said that the harvest is truly plentiful but the laborers are few (Matthew 9:37; Luke 10:2). The Brotherhood needs not just followers but also leaders, men and women of action and mighty deeds, not just words.
In the Christian Brotherhood, you are limited only by your highest aspirations to serve God and your fellow man. Will you step forward to be a true disciple of Christ and an apostle to these last times?
Make no mistake; you are a soldier for Christ.
“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of [this] life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:4)
CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION
Religion is man-made; Christianity is the revelation of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.
Being something made by man, all religions must necessarily be flawed. Though many possess some degree of truth, none possess the fullness of truth revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Jesus of Nazareth is the only man in the history of the world, outside of myth and legend, who claimed to be God incarnate and who proved it by the many miracles He worked, and has continued to work through His followers for 2,000 years.
Muhammad worked no miracles. In fact, he had grave doubts as to the source of his teachings and suspected that the “angel Gabriel” who revealed the Koran to him was a demon. Because Muhammad sought for truth, he probably would have become a Christian had it not been for the corruption of the church people around him who called themselves “Christians” but didn’t follow Christ in spirit and in truth.
Buddha worked no miracles. Neither did Lao Tze or a thousand other teachers and founders of religions.
Many were good men, had great thoughts and preached sound ideas but they were still just men, struggling to find God yet unable to know Him fully, which is only possible through a personal relationship with Him through His only-begotten Son, the Man-God Jesus Christ.
All religions were founded by men, based either upon philosophical speculation or their own personal interpretation of “God,” “spirituality,” etc.
The only exception would be the divinely-revealed faith of the children of Abraham, chosen by God to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah; a Messiah that they, too, must now either accept and come into the fullness, the flowering and the crown of their own faith, or reject and remain in their traditions.
“And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition” (Mark 7:9)
“Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye” (Mark 7:13)
In this Christmas season, which has become increasingly secularized and twisted into following the fashion of the world, it has become popular to wish people “Happy Holidays” thereby avoiding the stigma of incurring any offense against another person's religious sensibilities or lack thereof.
Yet Christ Himself laid bare the lies of men’s traditions, whether masquerading as “religions” or the self-delusional ramblings of atheists by doing what no man, including the founders of so-called “great” religions, has done before Him or since. He conquered death, not only for Himself but for all those who would believe in Him:
“That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:15)
In fulfillment of the scripture, Jesus Christ was betrayed, crucified unto death, a death that He Himself foretold. By His resurrection, Christ rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. And according to His promise, He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead, to separate His sheep from among the wolves, and to receive them into His kingdom.
“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:3)
No religion of the world has or can ever make the bold claims of Christianity. What religious leader has worked the miracles that Christ worked or that His followers continue to work today? What religious leader has made such daring claims or can give the assurance of life everlasting that Christ alone gives? What religion has so moved the hearts of people that they have willingly laid down their own lives for the sake of their faith as millions of Christians throughout the ages? In what religion can one experience the intimate and personal relationship with God the Creator that Jesus Christ alone can give?
And what “religion” has foretold so many things that have come to pass, even in our own times, and continues to unfold before our very eyes, just as Christ told us would happen.
Friends, the world is full of man-made religions, philosophies and other vain imaginings of men. To compare them with the glories of Christ is as great an injustice to Truth as to say that Christ was merely a man, or a “great teacher.”
No, Christianity is not a “religion”; it is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Real Christianity is the most radical belief in the world, that God became man and conquered death so that we could become like God and have eternal life.
If we Christians could only recognize this fact and live our lives after the example of Christ rather than as just another religion, we could convert the world.
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8)
