For the past year, I have been posting thoughts here about the church in Acts and later in the First Century. I have been considering what things we today can learn from those early believers. Recently I was reminded of this book that I read a few years ago. Anyone who reads it might actually find hope that even today we can have an experience in fellowship that is as rich and real as those who lived in those early days of Christianity.
Category: Book Reviews (Page 1 of 2)
An excerpt from Charles Colson’s “The Body, Being Light In Darkness.”
Chapter 16:
In some ways, the story began in the town of Nowa Huta, Poland soon after World War II…..
“We need a church,” the workers said, “A place of worship.”…..
The Communists bought time, however, by nodding agreeably, “Fine, they said, “No problem.”
So several young Christians and a Polish priest nailed together two rugged beams and pounded the rough timber cross straight and solid into Polish soil to mark the site where their chapel would be built.
Soon, however, the authorities returned with a different verdict. “We are sorry,” they told the workers. “This space is needed for something else. You cannot build a church here.”
But the people wanted their church. Night after night they gathered around the cross. Priests offered mass, and the people sang and celebrated communion with one another and their Lord.
The authorities retaliated with water cannons, but this forceful baptism didn’t faze the faithful. Then the Communists tore down the cross, as if sundering its heavy beams would somehow cleave the people. But the citizens of Nowa Huta were determined, and in the morning the cross was once again stretching toward heaven for all to see.
This went on for years—the authorities tearing down the cross and the people restoring it. And in the midst of the struggle the people came to a realization that would steel their faith in a way that Communism could never steal their souls.
“The church is not a building,” they said to one another. “The church is us, celebrating the presence of our Lord among us! Praise be to God!”
From the preface of J.B. Phillips translation of Acts, “The Young Church In Action:”
“It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book, conventionally known as the Acts of the Apostles, without being profoundly stirred and to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in any ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ. The young Church, like all young creatures, is appealing in its simplicity and its singleheartedness. Here we are seeing the Church in its first youth, valiant and unspoiled — a body of ordinary men and women joined in an unconquerable fellowship never before seen on this earth.
“Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this is surely the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it . . . . became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle bound by over organization. These men did not make ‘acts of faith’ they believed. They did not ‘say their prayers,’ they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.”
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