Ecclesiastical Diaspora

By Thomas DuBose

This book looks closely and critically at the post-modern Church. It attempts to fill the historic gaps of why the church has produced so many disaffected and passionate persons, many who have sought truth in various directions but all bearing the marks of their encounters within faith-based organizations. The timing of current and future events makes it impossible for anyone to exclude themselves from the core narrative of this book.

Many readers will find the texture of the book both challenging and confronting as it spirals toward an unavoidable conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Oct 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514464168

Thomas DuBose

Thomas DuBose is a second-generation pastor who has spent over twenty years in active ministry, founding and cofounding churches in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, where he currently resides. He finished his theological studies at the University of Oxford and soon embarked upon what he describes as his life’s mission: to write what the Holy Spirit has been showing him over the course of those twenty years and to reach out and to reach within the church and call all of the scattered parts of the body of Christ together through an understanding of what has separated brother from brother! This book makes the gigantic step and dares to speak candidly about the elephant in the room, the diaspora occurring at this very moment. His passion is that humanity faces the most disturbing truths that lay hidden in plain sight in the pure hope that the heart of God will touch the heart in every person who reads this book and that it might be a wake-up call and realign them with Jesus Christ’s intended purpose!

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Thomas DuBose.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/20/2015

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

703056

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Who Are the Ecclesiastical Diaspora?

Write, Therefore, the Things You See

Consider the Source

Why Hast Thou Fallen?

The Christ of Rome

The Roman Replacement

Trading Places

From Zion to Zionist

Silence Is Not Golden

Denominational Descent

Wolves in Sheepskin Clothing

The Mind That Controls

Signs to Make You Wonder or Wander

The Nature of Evil

Between Two Thieves

Neat Trick

Eschatological Relevance

Organised Chaos

MIC, the Voice of God!

A New World Order

Awaken from Slumber

Unity without Diversity

The Return of the King of Kings

PREFACE

Over 2,000 ago, the only begotten Son of God resurrected from the grave after shedding His blood for the remission of all humankind’s sins. He stated that He would build His church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (act to withstand or hold back its God-directed advancement). It is my firm conviction that the church that Christ instituted has become, in large parts, an institution, a commercial by-product of human control and laced with demonic manipulation. This book is intended to address directly what has happened and to outline the direction that the structure is listing. If Christ prayed to the Father that all in the family of God might be united as one, what has happened to cause the current permanent state of denominational division, where the same Bible has been divided into sectarian platforms? Given the clear description provided by the Holy Spirit regarding the end times, we cannot afford to ignore our path and plight.

Globally, thousands of persons have become dispersed from the agenda that denominations and religions as a whole have constructed. The further aims and intentions of this work are to assess and analyse the degree to which the ecclesiastic diasporas, as we will henceforth call those who have departed from and within the institution, have diverged into a social, economical, and eschatological confluence. We are reaching our prophetic tipping point. The term diaspora has seldom, if ever, been applied to Christians in this context; nonetheless, the developed state of migration and separation is identical to that which has been experienced by other groups assigned the moniker. The main difference remains, as asserted, that their status can and does often occur while they are continuing within their traditional organisms and family groups.

Exploring their collusion and influence on one another, I shall draw upon and refer to the quantitative, qualitative, historical, and primary resource of every blood-washed believer, the Holy Bible, to construe how these dynamics have far-reaching implications on all that is held sacred within Christianity.

I will endeavour to cite writers and scholars who disagree with one another on the subject and definition of what makes up the institutional church to show both the broadness of the spectrum under discussion and attempt to point at a more balanced centre over the breadth of this work. This writing is not intended to be an exhaustive examination but a probing and foretelling look at where the institutional church is going given its current projection. It is not intended to be a fatal critique but an unmasking of many problematic issues with the hope towards biblical rather than institutional correction.

Additionally, the rationale for writing what many will consider a provocative book is to demonstrate how this fragmentation has direct effect on those settled outside of autonomous orthodoxy or what I will refer to as the institutional mainstream church.

Current estimations show approximately 38,000 Christian denominations worldwide. This statistic does include cultural distinctions of those denominations and the different countries that they exist in. You can easily reference the World Christian Encyclopaedia for these figures. Yet the figures for church attendance are lower than any time in its history across all denominations. How can we understand this trend in light of the aforementioned?

We will, as a reference, speak of the church as an institute rather than attempting to single out one so-named denomination for scrutiny. This will allow us to view what has happened as a group event rather than a raw data point aimed at a specific assembly denomination while overlooking others. It is intended to demonstrate that, just like the biblical fall of humankind, all have been effected and affected by this present darkness.

INTRODUCTION

With the introduction of a single idea, much of the stated premise can be comprehended on its merits and should be brought into view at this point. When considering the divine, the belief that a creative plan is brought into fruition by a morally perfect, all-knowing, infinitely powerful, self-existent being called God is the anchor concept. It is His plan for all humankind that we are seeking to identify and juxtapose to the destructive plan of Satan for all humankind. If we can conceptualise the Creator’s purpose and plan, examining how and why it went astray should follow.

Does this sound too simplistic to be true? It is in the unveiling and the consideration of outcomes of each plan that the deep complexity can be seen at work from time’s inception. The basic and fundamental reactions of every culture and the impetus and plot materials for countless movies, novels, and plays all centre on the theme of good versus evil. Why?

Humanity’s deepest and most primordial instinct tells us that there is more to the universe than humans ourselves. We are immersed in a sense of not being alone as we sit in one galaxy surrounded by countless galaxies. This internal state of awareness has been recorded through the customs, artistic depictions, and oral traditions of peoples in every continent. These global pathologies, combined with a continuous search of the skies, seas, and earth for some unrevealed meaning and context for our existence, expose the reality that we all search for something beyond ourselves. It is this inner spontaneous and unprovoked desire to reach out to the unknown which forces us to face the inevitable conclusion that there is more to reach for even if it means departing from the traditions of our set culture and even if it may mean that we will return to the truth by way of a different route. The diaspora travels both without and within, provoked and agitated by the answers provided to their questions and unanswered questions that have been poised over time.

Finally, a conclusion will be offered that will point to the unalterable divine ending, the ending brought about by examination, recognition, and reorientation of God’s Creation. Those who dare move forward and do not disconnect due to entrenched doctrinal loyalties may find that the pain of facing down institutional deception is not greater than the mind-numbing pain of the unexamined and fractured institution we currently call church.

WHO ARE THE ECCLESIASTICAL DIASPORA?

But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood. Ezekiel 33:6

A diaspora is a scattering of a people from their original homeland or is the new community formed by such a people. Diaspora can also refer geographically to those areas of the world where Christians live but are outside the canonically defined territories agreed upon as belonging to an autocephalous or autonomous mainstream church. This scattering of people extends far beyond the historical application of the term diaspora; it includes those dispersed ‘within’ the institutional church, those who bear the burden of displaced love, loyalty, and affection.

To highlight the case for this growing semi-nomadic number of persons is very complex and difficult, just as complex and difficult as the circumstances that led to their individual and collective dispersions. These persons do not readily appear in terms of demography for several reasons, such as the way in which the separations from the institutional church communion occur. Individuals or groups may peel away, fragment, or shatter suddenly from their moorings, disembowelling entire churches in one event or over the course of several deconstructive meetings. In other cases, some claim to have had a heavenly visitation, vision, or epiphany moment which rendered their continuing with the parent group impossible. Every continent bears witness to the voices of those separated intentionally and unintentionally.

The term ecclesiastic comes from the late fifteenth century, from the Latin word ecclesiasticus, which is taken from Greek ekklēsiastikos from the ancient Athenian term ekklesia meaning ‘assembly’ and then later meaning ‘of the church’. Those identified as ekklēsiastēs (speakers or preachers) in an assembly or church are the ones that render ekkalein, ‘to call out the assembly’. This then becomes the format of the speakers or preachers, the ones who address the assembly, standing in the place of declaring significant truth.

Now we see even the clergy are included among those cast adrift from the religious and commercial vessel the church has become in many accounts. They are even more exposed to disparity and divergence from God’s intentions, as we will see. To understand the entire process of separating from within while simultaneously separating from without, it requires one to grapple this issue on a Herculean scale to comprehend both why it has happened and where it is leading.

The combination of the state of dispersion while continuing within the institutional church, as it is referred to, has an effect and will affect every person on the face of the earth. Therefore, the diaspora is made up of thousands of persons from various so-named denominations or religious communities. They, in general, are disillusioned, dissatisfied, and desirous of more than the status quo or any of these elements represented in single or combined measures. Some do not call or identify themselves as being dispersed; many only say that they are spiritual but not religious.

As strange as this may sound to some, the reality of the overshadowing of a divine presence interacting within Creation is the root cause of the inescapable consequences that are fast approaching humankind.

WRITE, THEREFORE, THE THINGS YOU SEE

While appearing to John, who was on Patmos, a small Greek island located in the Aegean Sea which served as a Graeco-Roman penal colony circa AD 95, Jesus revealed to him that he should write the mystery of the revelation of Christ (Revelation 1:19). He was to chronicle both the current (at that