Re: The Early Christians: In Their Own Words

God’s new order can break in with all its splendor only after cataclysmic 
judgment. Death must come before the resurrection of the flesh. The
promise 
of a future millennium is linked to the prophecy of judgment, which will 
attack the root of the prevailing order. All this springs from the
original 
message passed on by the very first church. The tension is between future 
and present, God and demons, selfish, possessive will and the loving, 
giving will of God; between the present order of the State, which through 
economic pressures assumes absolute power, and God’s coming rule of love 
and justice. The tension is between two antagonistic forces sharply 
provoking each other. The present world-age is doomed; in fact, the
Messiah 
who is to come has already overpowered its leader! This is an accomplished

fact. The early church handed down this suprahistorical revolution to the 
next generation. Jesus rose from the dead: too late did the prince of
death 
realize his power was broken.2