A quiet revolution has been going on for the last several decades. Old Christian and Messianic theological paradigms have been challenged with new scriptural insights and revelation which has met with stubborn resistance and often downright hostility.
For the last 25 years we have virtually stood alone in preaching our message to the world. We have been villified, hounded and persecuted. Brothers and sisters have come and gone and one or two have come back. They wonder what on earth we are doing and why we are doing it. After all, we're not making any money and we're certainly not in it for the popularity stakes. Why haven't we just closed up shop and joined in somewhere else?
I will explain that to you using a true story as narrated by Dr. Lyall Watson:
"The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, ...had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years.
"In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant.
"An 18-month-old female named Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers too.
"This cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys before the eyes of the scientists. Between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learned to wash the sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learned this social improvement. Other adults kept eating the dirty sweet potatoes.
"Then something startling took place. In the autumn of 1958, a certain number of Koshima monkeys were washing sweet potatoes -- the exact number is not known. Let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on Koshima Island who had learned to wash their sweet potatoes. Let's further suppose that later that morning, the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes.
THEN IT HAPPENED!
By that evening almost all the monkeys in the tribe were washing sweet potatoes before eating them. The added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created an ideological breakthrough!"
Twenty-five years ago, when we first started in the ministry, even suggesting that the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) might be female would have quickly provoked the cry of 'heresy! from Trinitarians' Today, though, as people study this question carefully, they are slowly coming to the same conclusion.
The same is true with dozens of other theological questions which were taboo back in the 1980's but which today are slowly becoming more and more mainstream as people challenge the crusty traditions of their fathers and let the Bible do its own talking.
People ask why we continue. And the answer is that at some point a 'critical mass' will be reached - a threshhold, if you like - which will then propel this new revelation for the remnant to the place it has been designated by the Hand of Yahweh. Our part has simply been to persist in sharing the truth until that threshhold is one day reached and a 'theological breakthrough' reached.
It's like the monkeys of Koshima Island. As believers we must learn to receive the new or deeper truths of Yahweh and to wash off all the false traditions. Maybe people continue to consume both, however distasteful, until common sense prevails and what is right is fully embraced. Lots of individuals learn to do this my imitation. Then, one day, enough do it to create, as Watson calls it, his idelogical breakthough.
The limiting factor here is not truth but people. People are slow and stubborn. People don't like change. People like constancy and familiarity. But in the Gospel of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) nothing stands still. We certainly aren't. And so it is that when people leave us and come back a few years later they can't understand how changed we are, even if certain things do remain constant.
The old Church and Messianic Synagogue system with fossilised customs and theological anachronisms can't function in the last days of the Remnant. The world as we know it is irrevocably changing so that the old systems simply won't be able to survive the fire that's coming. Only the truth will provide safety and strength. We're in major transition as new chapters are starting in our lives.
Yah'shua (Jesus) said He was "the Way" (Jn.14:6) or a Road. And followers of Yah'shua are said to be "of the Way" (Ac.9:6). Now I have never been on a road where vehicles were't, for the most part, moving. Roads were made for traffic. We, too, are spiritual traffic, constantly on the move. The vehicles that stand still just rust away.
Do you have a "more accurate knowledge of the Way" (Acts 24:22, NKJV)?. If you do, we invite you to join in the journey, pick up those spiritual potatoes, wash the dirt off them, and EAT them! We're feasting on them here. Won't you join us?