Brother John,
Chapter 3 of the Montanus story feels like it is quite an undertaking. I can’t imagine authoring what we read tonight.
After tonight’s reading, I feel like I can recognize three clear points along the timeline:
- Folks who criticized Montanus were once aligned with the God of righteousness that Montanus was pursuing. Those men even spoke well of and defended Montanus.
- Those men eventually left that perfect (righteous) path and chose their own lawless way of serving God, forsaking the God of Montanus, and instead of going away quietly into sin, reinvented the history of Montanus to paint HIM as the bad guy.
- Those men (or men like them) eventually branded themselves and their ungodly way of serving the Lord as “Christianity,” because there was nothing left about them or their way of worship that resembled Christ. They had to call themselves Christ-like.
Something I considered tonight—
Men calling themselves after the name of Christ (calling themselves Christian) reminds me of what your father, Preacher Clark, said about the wonderous signs described by in Mark 16:17-18—”And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up…”
I recall that Preacher Clark had said, “Men put signs on the outside of their churches to identify who they are because they don’t have the signs within.”
I think the same could be said for men calling themselves “Christians.” Some men may call themselves Christian (Christ-like) because they haven’t the attributes of Christ within.
I believe Montanus would agree that if we have to call ourselves Christ-like for men to know it, then we aren’t like Christ at all.
Thank you for your hard work in revealing this godly man’s story.
Jerry