Rebels or Rulers

The Public Square
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Is it most appropriate to conceptualize the church as a community of rebels/insurrectionists, rising up against the current ruling world system—Christ’s resurrection viewed as the start of an uprising (anastasis)/takeover? Or more appropriate to view Satan and the world system as the rebels, who will eventually be entirely stamped down as God reinstates his perfect rule? Is Christ’s “making his enemies his footstool” a matter of quashing a rebellion, or of mounting a coup? Perhaps it can be legitimately viewed as both, just from different perspectives?

I see the practical appeal in both images… I’m just trying to think through it theologically.

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I’d say the more consistent one acripturally is that Satan and the forces of darkness are the rebels that are being crushed. Of course, when rebels and revolutionaries rule for a while, there is a certain human element of ‘legitimacy’ that we recognize simply by the way things are.

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All rebellion flows from and is of a fabric with that first rebellion: turning away from the authority of God the Father Almighty.

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