Ideas about the Kingdom of the Heavens around us and the unity of believers in Christ within it
Introduction to the historic process by which the Early Church, a collection of outcasts bound together by a personal relationship with Jesus, within a few centuries became the chief bastion of worldly power and order held together by legally enforced adherence to a creed.
This page contains a top-level outline of a long series of posts that will show how errors and divisions that crept into Christianity before Muhammad influenced Muhammad either positively–leading to the his adoption of exaggerated forms of these errors–or negatively– leading to exaggerated reactions against them. Islamic versions of these errors or reactive teachings then influenced Medieval Christianity. The combination of the original errors and Islamic influences then combined with European politics to lead to the Crusades, the Reformation and its wars, and the modern West and Western Church as we know them.
This post is the first in a series of six outlining a broad view of how things in the Church and the world got to be as they are now, including contributions early Christianity and Islam made to each other. This post attempts to outline the basic positions of early Christianity. Comments are invited!
A God who Speaks, Adoption, Background Information, Church purpose versus church growth, Complex unity, Conversation with God, Desire to have our own way, Emotions, Eternity Present, Free will, God Acts by Speaking, God Never Stopped Speaking, God Speaks to Us, God was never our enemy, God's Existence and Nature, God's purpose for us, God's rationality, God's sovereignty, God's Voice, His Children, His Friends, Historical Background, Human Rationality, Is forgiveness of sins the focus of salvation?, Jesus the Son, Knowing good and evil, Language and Speech, Logical thinking, Male and female, Other Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Prophecy, Reconciliation, Regeneration, Rejecting God, Restoration of God's Image, Salvation, Sin, Sins versus sin, Son of Man, The Bible, The Invisible God's Self-Existence, Through the church, To be his ambassadors, To be in his image, To live in unity, Trinity, Unity, What is God's Word, What is sin?
Christianity lost its true influence in the world when it pursued the power it could gain as a mass movement, stopped loving, and started fighting. One of the overlooked consequences of this was the rise of Islam.
Church purpose versus church growth, Divisions in the Church, Heresy, Islam and Christianity, Islam as a Consequence, Leaving Our First Love, Our Oneness in Christ book revision, Peril of Seeking Numbers, Peril of Seeking Power, Religious violence and persecution, Wars as consequences, What Islam borrowed from Christianity