State / City-Wide Churches (Chap 17)

How and who should organize and manage this huge link-up? Should it be left entirely to the Christian business communities worldwide? There is no doubt that by then Christian businessmen should be fully recognized Christian leaders in every sense of the word, establishing the kingdom of GOD within the perimeters of their own jurisdictions like their own companies and industries.

But should not the local church be critically involved in all these? What should be its role? Should the local churches be central or peripheral to the Christian Economies? While Christian businesses may do their own business link-ups they needed the local churches to be linked up with their markets i.e. the Christian communities. Local churches should also not deliver up the markets represented by their congregations to Christian businessmen without requiring reciprocity in terms of job creation for the congregations and the practice of covenant principles in their businesses.

How do we link-up? Get organized! Start State / City-Wide Churches! To link-up for businesses and markets, identify and register your business as a Covenant Business with a local church that should be an integral part of a much larger set-up. The whole Christian community even if just within the locale of one city would be too large for any particular local church to handle single-handedly. The local churches should come together to set up and run registration systems to register land and company ownerships, persons and businesses.

While large churches and large businesses are the ones who may kick start this process, we should ensure that smaller local churches or smaller business owners and individuals are not left out of the Economies. It is important to include everyone in the system for his or her own economic survival. And everyone that is a Christian must be plugged in and be part of this system for the preservation of lives in the end-times. While major industrial players lined up their business partners, State / City-Wide Churches as a conglomeration of local churches need to help smaller boys get connected.

State / City-Wide Churches can also help ensure fair competition in certain industries to prevent exploitation of Christian communities through effectual monopolies. The State / City-Wide Churches will help pull and organize resources and plug urgent gaps in the business community quickly. Planning may be needed in the location of shops like clinics, and so forth. Certain resources may need to be pooled and controlled centrally for e.g. doctors or medicine, if these resources are temporarily in short supply. The businesses that the Christian communities cannot develop adequately may be those services and goods that needed to be managed somewhat differently or the Christian communities may have to totally do without them.

There will be issues for State / City-Wide Churches to decide, together with the business leaders, like whether non-Christian businesses should be allowed in the Christian Economies? Should we allow these or some to straddle both the economies and banking systems? And we know that the Babylonian City is coming down in one hour (Rev 18:10-19). If we allow these, how should the fall of Babylon then affect the Christian Economies involved?

We need State / City-Wide Churches to come together to provide the policing, the government and also the judicial system otherwise provided by the secular government. There will be irregularities and disputes to settle and disciplinary actions to be taken even within the Christian communities. The church should no longer depend on the world’s judicial system by then. It should appoint judges, lawyers and other office bearers to run a competent judicial system for the Christian communities. All these need to be City Church based and need not busy itself with the settling of secular issues for the larger population.

The church of Christ within any locale will need unity and solidarity in a time of persecution and tribulation like never before. The more people we can include and share will mean a larger platform for our co-operation and higher possibilities of survival. It is not the time to sub-divide and exclude but to include and share.

While a part of the local church will still have to dedicate itself to pastoral and spiritual work, it is clear the State / City-Wide Churches will have a calling and task beyond that of local churches to one more akin to providing governmental surveillances. Running a State / City-Wide Church is not like running a local congregation whose main task is just to shepherd and edify the body of believers. And there should be no ground for elected Christian leaders to plea financial illiteracy or administrative incompetence. The body of elders had always featured importantly in the governance of local churches and I believe the role they used to play must soon come back into greater prominence.

Local churches must rise up to organize their respective communities and protect the systems they help set up and put in place, against infiltration and sabotages and exploiters. Social vehicles to undertake various processes must be invented and sufficient checks and balances must be put in place to avoid likely betrayals and sabotages. Every effort should be made to prevent unscrupulous exploitation of the system and masses for personal gain of wealth and power even by Christian leaders and businessmen.

The church had been forewarned; the enemy had planted false Christians in churches (Matt 13:24-30). Betrayals from within the church and among brothers are prophesized. In the last days some who are not true believers will betray and leave us. False and non-believers may eventually straddle both economies whether they are allowed to or not, due to the temptations for gain. Do not be too alarmed by betrayals!