The statue in Daniel is one of the great stories in the Bible. The prophet Daniel interprets a dream for the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, who has a dream of a statue of many types of metal: gold, silver, bronze, iron, and iron/ clay. I was ruminating on this statue as I thought about the Church and how it has evolved and here is what I came up with.
Gold -Christ and The Apostles
This was the golden age of the Church when our Lord Jesus walked the earth and his teachings had not be sullied by the ambitions of men. This period was the time of the purity of the Gospel, when all knew faith alone in Jesus saves (Acts 15:11, John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9).
Silver -The Apostolic Era
The period that followed after the last apostle died, when Christians were severely persecuted, even fed to lions and made to be human torches. In this time the Gospel was tarnished, like silver not cleaned, with the false addition of martyrdom being required for salvation.
Bronze -The Heretics
This was the long era of heretical Christianities from Arianism to Pelganism, and was when the purity of the Gospel was fighting for its life in a sea of false christs.
Iron -The Imperial Church
This was the period of Christian Empire, starting with Theodosius and Constantine The Great, the Church became iron, with a standing army. This church had all the purity of the gospel replaced with works and pomp. It reigned from 314 to 1517 A.D. when the Reformation finally broke its long stranglehold over the saints.
Iron and Clay -End Times Church
A period of two churches, iron which is legalistic and seeks to fight heresies and immorality with rules and loses all love, and clay churches which mold into the popular culture, compromising doctrine,and mutilate the teachings of Christ.
The Apostle Paul once said the head is Christ, “Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body. He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead. So he is first in everything” (Colossians 1:18). Indeed, the pure gospel and Church back then was full of the love of God, gifts of the Spirit, and moral excellence. Many have tried to return to the age of the Gold, the Moravians tried, and The Jesus Movement of the 1970’s almost did. But many have settled into either being iron or clay churches, either embracing anti biblical maxims to please the culture of the times or digging in with dogma and becoming iron castles with no effect on the culture at large. The trap is two fold, become iron (church) which has no love, when Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” (John 13:34-35) or be clay which when wet with the world’s ever changing morals and ideals becomes not a body of Christ but of whatever whims of the prevailing ideology is, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes,” (Ephesians 4:14) and “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3)
How do we return to the Golden era of the Church? To the Gold Standard of Christianity?
Clues are in Scriptures:
“Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—, Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” (Philippians 3:8-9, 15),
“What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge what is said. If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets,” (1 Corinthians 14:26-32).
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:18)
We have in our history as God’s people moved from metal to metal, down the statue until now the very fabric of our faith is in danger of legalism and conformism. We must take great care, seeking the Holy Spirit who “teaches us all things,” (John 14:26), knowing the Scriptures well, and continuing to love well, and at the same time keep Biblical standards. It will not be easy, but this is our mantel, as the end times church, to still be here when Christ Returns (Revelation 7:9-14). The pollution of our family, the church, has been over the two thousand years. We must take heed and be the gold still glittering in a sea of iron and clay, sharing God’s love and Grace. Amen.
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