In order to take control of an army, one needs to establish marching orders. The gathering of people into the collection that forms the church of Christ is no different from an army; in fact, they are referred to as being in an army: this is not a new concept for a New Age. This is the same concept that the LORD taught us in the birth of the nation of Israel. Israel was not born to proselytize the world; Israel was born to teach us how to properly fight the spiritual war that the world forces us to enter and wage.
And the LORD spake unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying,
Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; From twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies.
(Numbers 1:1-3)
To stress the point that Israel was to be ready to promote the way of the Spirit, by the exercise of physical force; the LORD placed them in an environment that gave them no choice but to do so.
Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof; Namely, five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath.
And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
(Judges 3:1-4)
The nation of Israel is an excellent example, and image, of the necessity for full commitment of our total life to the LORD; however, the election of the congregation of Israel as a peculiar treasure of the LORD was only the first step in commitment. Beyond the gathering of Treasure, the instillation of the law of Moses was the next step in the Making of Man into the spiritual powerhouse that we need to be. By this Law of God, the LORD presented the need to start fighting spiritual battles, as being both precedent, and superlative, to physical ones. The stakes are very high in this endeavor.
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