The confusion about the Great Commission

Before your outrage overcomes you, I am not saying that the Great Commission is not important. What I am saying is that it has been misrepresented. First, the Great Commission is found in Mathew 28:

I added the emphasis. This commission is more powerful and inclusive than the commission at the end of Mark:

Evangelicals made the Mark version their reason for existence.

This took a severe problem and made it a disaster

The problem is the one talked about by Sergio in He did it Himself. It is clear that the new covenant was started with major statements and actions making it clear that the old priesthood is now anathema. God sovereignly showed this to us by taking the veil in hand and ripping it from top to bottom. Showing by this action that access to the Father is now directly available to anyone who believes and gives his or her sorry life to Him to be reborn of God.

In doing this, the Father stated in strong terms that the old system of the Levites, the inherited priesthood, was done away with. There were to be no mediators placed between the believer and the Lord. This started a major battle within believers that ended up with the institutional Church.

But the basic reality was that empire co-opted the Ekklesia. To do that they had to get rid of the Jews, and just as important, they had to push the Holy Spirit out of the church. This new church was absorbed by the empire. It was led increasingly by overly educated elites—who gradually did an even worse thing and ruled the church with man-made doctrine instead of God-breathed scripture.

It resulted in the modern spectator event called church

I’ve written about this extensively. But as you saw in the title of this piece—it seems good to the Spirit and me to write an article about go and make disciples. Here are some of the basic ways to make disciples:

A short list

• Disciples are made within relationships

• The main tool to produce a disciple is your personal witness

• We are all called to be good witnesses

• A witness shares what he or she has seen, heard, or done

• We cannot talk anyone into salvation or being a disciple—only the Holy Spirit can do it

• It’s all about loving one another

• Only the Lord, by His Spirit, can make it work

Where do you see these things in the modern church?

Discipleship is rarely talked about and even more rarely experienced

This is one of the main reasons that the self-proclaimed Church is 98% unsaved. Scripture is clear that there are two things which must take place

1: We must be born again, born of God

2: We must develop a close relationship where we come to know our Messiah personally

Being born again begins with a complete repentance. Ask the Lord to show you all your sins. When you can’t stand it anymore, ask Him what to do about that huge load of garbage. He’ll tell you to ask for forgiveness. When you ask what to do next, He will usually say something like, “If you believe that I am your Lord and King, ask me into your life to live within you.”

The relationship begins when you ask the Lord to teach you how to hear His voice so that you can start talking with Him throughout the day—every day. Everyone has a unique personal relationship with Him—all of Him, Father, Messiah, and Ruach.

This is the Great Commission!

I know. It’s a shock. My wife and I used to call it friendship evangelism—but it goes much deeper than that. But discipleship produces solid disciples who can overcome. Bible thumping has no place here. A seminary education makes it almost impossible.

It’s a return to the beginning—meeting in homes, sharing lives, loving each other. There were no dedicated public buildings during Acts. The temple was a place to witness—as were the synagogues. Constantine was the one to formally begin the co-option of the believers. He brought the Ekklesia under his control. The church as we know it has little to do with Biblical Reality.