By Elias Munshya wa Munshya
The Holy Week is a powerful moment in the life of the Christian church. Each year this week becomes a reminder of the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beginning on Palm Sunday, the Church all over the world reenacts the pain of Jesus’ Holy Passion leading up to his death on Good Friday and his subsequent resurrection on Easter Sunday. Indeed Easter is a powerful event that we should use to commemorate and remind ourselves of the supreme sacrifice of our Lord who died for our sins.
There are many things that the Lord Jesus said and did during the Holy Week. It is during this Holy Week that he taught about the ten virgins; taught about the ten talents; and commended the poor widow. It was also during the Holy Week that he spoke about the signs of the End of the Age and his Second Coming. Additionally, it was still during the Holy Week that he taught the disciples about the Holy Spirit that he was going to send to them after he has gone back to the Father. Love as a symbol of the believers’ unity was also taught during this Holy Week. He told his disciples to love one another, since it is only through their love for one another that the world would know that they are Christians. That message of love still rings true for the world and the Church today. It was on Holy Thursday that he, taking the usual ceremonial symbolisms of the Passover Meal, instituted the Lord’s Supper—the Eucharist.
On Good Friday, Jesus having been arrested earlier was now facing a criminal trial. The first trial was held by the High Priests—Annas and Caiaphas. After that trial with the High Priests Jesus was then taken to Pontius Pilate the Governor of the Roman Province of Palestine at that time. As a Roman Governor, all judicial power lay with Pilate, and the case of Christ (which had to do with a death sentence) could only be presided over by him. It is to Pilate that Jesus said one of the most profound statements about the relationship between Christianity and politics. When Pilate asked him whether he was a King, Jesus replies, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place” (John 8:36). I wish to critically evaluate this statement in the context of current Church-State relationship in Zambia which has ironically declared itself to be a Christian Nation.
First, Jesus clearly recognizes the reality of at least two kingdoms. The first kingdom is the kingdom of this world, while the second one is the one he says to be “from another place.” From his answer we could infer that while Pilate’s question was about whether Jesus was a king of the Jews—a kingdom of this world—Jesus was quick to mention that yes he was a king, but not a king of this world.
Secondly, Jesus shows the difference between these two kingdoms. The kingdom of the world is preserved and created by fights and war. But the kingdom “from another place” does not operate like that. Its way is not a way of violence. Indeed if Jesus’ kingdom had been of the world, his supporters from all over Jerusalem, and Galilee, and Samaria could have fought for him. They could have mobilized their spears and swords. But he being a radically different king did not need to have his supporters to fight since his kingdom was radically different.
Thirdly, Jesus’ statement seems to be more descriptive than it is disparaging. As such, he is not saying that the kingdom of the world is fundamentally evil or bad. He is simply mentioning that the kingdom of this world is not the only kingdom there is. Consequently, he is equally not forbidding people or believers’ participation in politics, but rather pointing out clearly that our participation in politics is done with an awareness of the existence of a kingdom “from another place.”
What then does all this mean to Zambia a Christian nation? It means that the Church should clearly distinguish between the Kingdom of God, and national politics. This is not to mean that the church leaders or indeed Christians should not participate in politics, but rather that Zambian Christians’ participation in politics should be predicated by the reality of the kingdom from “another place.” Therefore, Christians do not participate in politics the way the world does. But rather they participate in politics with an awareness of faithfulness to God’s Kingdom that should make Christians serve people better. To the Zambian Christian, therefore, they do not need to use violence for personal political ends—that is what the world does. The Christian in Zambia should use kingdom strategies for political participation. If the church participated in national politics without recourse to Jesus’ “other kingdom”, she may lose her prophetic edge in leading people to Jesus Christ—which is the primary goal and raison d’etre of the Church.
Powerful message, God bless Zambia**==**==^:)^
1. Is easter and the passover the same?
2. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.(matt 12 : 40)
Question : Is possible to count three days and three nights from friday to sunday?
Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.
For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, [and] there a little: (Iaiah 28 : 9 – 10)
1984 no it is not the passover is the last meal Jesus with the disciples while Easter is the day Jesus rose from the dead
Thank you Elias for the message. God bless you & may God’s blessing be upon the land of Zambia.
Amen.
Thank you Elias. The trouble is that there is a so called church that wants to set itself up as an earthly kingdom and while impoverishing its followers by saying they are blessed if they are poor, holy if they are celibate and sanctified if they ‘work hard for their salvation’ it wages war against legitimate evangelically aligned governments through proxies. We see this in South America, Northern Ireland, the USA etc. in order to bring back that ‘kingdom’ which was first introduced publicly through Charles the Great. Now, it controls a powerful nespaper in Zambia after failure through the National Mirror. Zambians oyght to beware. Jesus’ Kingdom is not eating and drinking, but power through the Holy Spirit who transforms lives, making them better citizens.
Elias, you seem to confuse me, you mention that Jesus was not part of the earthly Kingdoms, because if he was, his supporters would have fought to save him, meaning he didnt take part in the earthly politics of that time, but if we are to be christians, (meaning christ like) do you think its wise for us to be taking part in earthly politics, while recognising the heavenly kingdom? The same bible you are quoting talks about how its imposibble to slave for two masters, so which master (King in this case) are we to slave for? You cannot be in the US army and still be a Zambian soldier. Jesus made a choice when he was about to be made king of the jews, he decided to be king of the heavens, and thats why he retreated into the mountains, refusing to be an earthly king. So help me understand this
Amen Brother! and we we pray “Thy kingdom come…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”
What does “heavenly Kingdom” and “earthly Kingdom” mean? Mistake is to think of “heaven” like as physical place like earth. When we understand what Jesus (according to the Gospels) means by “heavenly Kingdom” and “earthly”, we would be in a better position to correctly distinguish between the two.
Hello it is easy Jesus is in heaven, the holy Ghost is on earth how hard is it people. Through him only can we make it to heaven. Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus.
Well, we have been praying hard to this Jesus of your for who knows how many damn donkey years but we are still stuck in serious economic and political doldrums. Even when rains rail, we pray to him so hard and sometimes not even a single drop descends from heaven leaving all farms purgatorized. I honest think Zambians should stop being silly and lazy, take some of the time you are wasting on praying to a bloke who dies 2,000 years ago into hard work and things will get better. Start believing in the lord in you, the one who helps those who help themselves because the one who rained manna from heaven is no more.
Happy Easter to all christian brothers and sisters.
…This christian nation business is just an abuse of the faith . The leaders who announced this to the people don’t even practice what they preach. For example , we have street kids with not much hope in a christian nation . …..It doesn’t make sense……..:o
Praise be to God our creator. Thank you and may God bless all who blog on this site despite out differences.
Amen!…………………… |-)
#6 kaponya thats a good question.The time when Jesus came,the Jews were under roman rule.Most Jews thought if Jesus was the messiah he would surely free them from the Romans.They were quite disappointed to learn he had come instead to free them sin,to save their souls.He was not involved with the politics of the time because that was not his purpose.He would have his followers on earth today to represent His kingdom like ambassadors. Ambassadors are always stationed in foreign lands. So this article is saying if you are a christian politician.Represent Gods kingdom in your capacity as a politician well.Don’t lie,don’t be corrupt,don’t slander instead be a servant to the people who put you in office.Serve them.Jesus the great master once washed his disciples feet.
Marvellous Marvin Hagler Your error lies in the fact that you have a wrong view of what Christianity is all about. Christianity has never claimed that it will elliminate war, poverty or earthly sorrows. On the contrary, what uou see around you today is what Christ and the prophets predicted would happen. It is because of exactly what you say in your last line “Start believing in the lord in you…” that the world is what it is. Jesus taught that man NEEDS God FIRST, and when that relationship is restored, “ALL these things will be added to you.” From Eden to today, those who want to ‘be like God, knowing what is right and wrong fromtheir ownself’ are what causes all the troubles you mention. God is not a pantry, He is a person.
# 2 Passover is in the bible and easter isn’t. Passover is the true rememberance of the ressurection as recorded in LUKE 22. Easter is a pagan feast that christians adopted and claim that it’s related to the ressurection when nowhere in the bible is such an abomination mentioned. Easter actualy comes from a pagan goddess called eostre who the babylonians celebrted with rabbits and eggs. Passover was kept throughout the new testament plus it has a biblical date from nisan 14th to nisan 22nd which corresponds to 29th march to 6th april. So decide which to obey pagan easter or the biblical passover which the messiah and disciples kept in luke chapter 22
This article is a joke there was no eucharist at the passover meal. Eucharist is a catholic bread Passover was Matzot which is jewish unleavened bread.
“Marvellous Marvin Hagler Your error lies in the fact that you have a wrong view of what Christianity is all about.”
Koma saint naiwe! What makes you think your view is the correct one?
“Your error…” Says who? According to who, you?
When did you become a better person than MHH?
Yaaaa baaaa!
#16 How can you explain Acts 12:4 in King Jame Version (KJV) only?
#19 Acts 12:4 is a mistranlation which has now been subsequently corrected in the NKJV and all other bibles. The oldest new testament which the kJV used to translate has the PESACH which is really passover in greek. The church wanted so much to include their pagan feast into the bible that the replaced passover with EASTER, too bad there was an outcry and easters’s real roots were exposed.
easter is a feast of the devil , just like christmas and other christian holidays. I find it funny that someone like you that claims to be out to expose the NWO and illuminati was busy celebrating xmas. Christianity should just rename itself to churchianity because 90% of it’s practices are not even biblical
the Bible is strictly a man-made collection of mythology. The Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was it dictated to human stenographers by God. It has nothing to do with God. In actuality, the Bible was VOTED to be the word of God by a group of men during the 4th century.
According to Professor John Crossan of Biblical Studies at DePaul University the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered “holy” and thus “the word of God” and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God.
Emperor Constantine, who was Roman Emperor from 306 CE until his death in 337 CE, used what motivates many to action – MONEY! He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. The Church leaders gathered together at the Council of Nicaea and voted the “word of God” into existence. The Church leaders didn’t finish editing the “holy” scriptures until the Council of Trent when the Catholic Church pronounced the Canon closed. However, it seems the real approving editor of the Bible was not God but Constantine! “Therefore, one can easily argue that the first Christian Bible was commissioned, paid for, inspected and approved by a pagan emperor for church use.” Constantine ordered and financed 50 parchment…
copies of the new “holy scriptures.” It seems with the financial element added to the picture, the Church fathers were able to overcome their differences and finally agree which “holy” books would stay and which would go.
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Th bible is no more the word of god than the Mahomedans calling the Koran the Word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word…
of God. This was done by yeas and nays, as we now vote
It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That bloodthirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (I Sam. xv. 3) `Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’
You believe in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Moslems believe in the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other infidel. But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case, the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe in falsehood, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or…
Quite simply, the findings of Science from the fields of Astrophysics, Geology, Archaeology, Anthropology, and Literary Criticism have concluded that the Bible is _not_ the word of God, this precious hard-won scientific knowledge constitutes The Forbidden Knowledge on the Bible’s Pre-biblical Origins (please click here for a very fine article on what constitutes “forbidden knowledge” according to the Wikipedia). The “forensic evidence” (physical evidence) unequivocally _contradicts_ (refutes, denies and challenges) the witness’ (Bible’s) testimony regarding the age of the Universe and of the Earth, how life came into being, and when this occurred. For some conservative Catholic Scholars the earth and the universe was created 5199 B.C. while some conservative Protestant scholars…
understand this event was in 4004 B.C. _CONTRA_ these dates (being derived from the Bible’s internal chronology), Astrophysists understand from data compiled by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope that the earth is 4 billion years old and the universe is 14 billion years old. If the Bible has the age of the earth and universe wrong what else does it have wrong? Archaeology and Geology reveals there never was a Garden of Eden or Adam and Eve, nor was there ever in the earth’s geologic history a universal Noah’s Flood, and the Exodus -as portrayed in the Bible- is fiction according to the findings of Archaeology. The discipline of Literary Criticism has established that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, in the 16th or 15th century B.C. as claimed by…
Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions, the texts were composed in the 7th or 6th century B.C. The counterclaims of Christian Apologists are investigated and their “flawed methodologies” are noted (They claiming that Satan and his Demons have “misled” and “duped” the Scientists and that the Bible is a reliable witness).