Chapter 5 - The Apostles and Their Failure

No one who studies carefully the teachings of Jesus can doubt that by the phrases, “Kingdom of Heaven” and “Kingdom of God,” He meant such a righteous adjustment of social relations as would have revolutionized the society of His day; or which, if applied in our time, would revolutionize the society of this day.

You will get this idea pretty clearly if you study His use of the term “this world,” and His comparison of the “world” with the kingdom. When He speaks of the “world” He never means the earth; He always refers to the existing social and governmental order; the world of men; organized society. He speaks of this world as a living, sentient thing; as loving, hating, etc.; and it can hardly be that He refers to the senseless clods and stones composing the material planet on which we live.

Thus in John 17:14, He says: “The world hath hated them, because they are not of the world.”

In the same chapter He speaks of His disciples as being in the world, but not of the world; as being sent into the world; and He prays that the world may believe, and that the world may know. In the two preceding chapters He speaks of the world as being overcome. Follow this clue through all His teachings, and you must conclude that by the “world” He means the existing order of human relationships.

The World and the Kingdom

Having come to an understanding of this, we can appreciate the contrast He draws between the world and the Kingdom. His Kingdom, He says, is “not of this world”; that is, it is not on the same basis as the world’s kingdoms. “If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight” (John 18:36).

In the world’s kingdoms they fight; in His Kingdom they co-operate.

In the world’s kingdoms they sustain the relationship of master and servant; in His Kingdom, they are “friends” (John 15:15) (See also Matthew 23:10).

The world’s kingdoms are divided against themselves (Matthew 12:25), but in God’s Kingdom they do not try to conquer or master one another. That is the essential thought of the life of the Kingdom — that there shall be no seeking for power over other men; over against it He places the essential thought of the world-life, which is the strife for power, and for the uppermost place.

So, when they sought to make Him king by force (John 6:15), He refused, because that would have been placing His Kingdom on the world basis of strife and competition, and a kingdom over which Jesus ruled by force of arms would, after all, differ from the world kingdoms only in degree, and not in principle. The only kingdom in the establishment of which He could assist was the Father’s Kingdom; a co-operative commonwealth, in which all should have access on equal terms to God, and to the Great Supply.

So He sends His followers out, not to fight or conquer, but to go as lambs among wolves, and by teaching and living to transform the insane and struggling world into a vast brotherhood. He believed that He had overcome the world by His demonstration, and that it must soon come to its end.

The End of the World

This brings up another point for our consideration. When He speaks of the “end of the world” it is apparent that He is not referring to some tremendous cataclysm which shall destroy the planet, but to a social change; a world revolution. In the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, He does, indeed, give some symbolical pictures of the darkness of the sun and moon, etc., which He quotes from the prophecies; but as we shall see in a future chapter, the “coming of the son of man” meant to Him, not His own personal return to establish a spiritual force-kingdom, but the awakening of racial Man, and his entrance into his heritage. When Man awakes and enters into his own, the world will be ended and the Kingdom will begin; that is the Coming of Man, which the prophets foretold.

That is the way Jesus interpreted them, as you will see if you study Him carefully and without prejudice. He does not appear to have had any idea that the planet would “come to an end”; or that He would actually come in personal presence to do what He steadfastly refused to do while here — set up a kingdom based on force.

The apostles caught this concept of the Kingdom, and they set forth with joyous confidence to build a unified and harmonious world.

Read the second and fourth chapters of the Acts, and read the writings of the early Christian fathers, and you will see that their idea was not to build an institution for worship, in a bad world, but to build the world itself into a righteous, unified and orderly society.

Property was held in common, and there was no poverty among them which was not shared by all, and no riches which were not enjoyed by all.

The early Christian societies were little commonwealths, and the inspiring purpose to which they held with intense enthusiasm was the building of the world into one great commonwealth.

The apostles were communist organizers, and the purpose of Jesus as understood by them was the establishment of a communistic state which should grow up within the kingdoms of the World, and absorb them all, not by force, but by conquest of truth; by evangelizing the world, by educating it to the brotherhood ideals and methods.

Their dream was a world of Man, where the unified efforts of all should center in the development of the little child; it was this glorious vision which gave virility and power to their preaching, and it was the loss of this vision which cost the church its spiritual power. The church of today is alive in proportion as it receives this world-vision; as it sees the kingdom and helps reorganize society.

Why Communism Fails

We may here consider for a moment why the communistic experiment failed, and we shall find the reason easy to get at. Communism has always failed, and always will fail, because it interferes with the Great Purpose, which is the complete development of the individual soul. It extinguishes the individual in the mass, and takes all initiative from him. Seeking to prevent him from gaining power over other men, it robs him of power over himself. It destroys individuality, for man can develop only by the free proprietary use of everything he is individually capable of using.

Capitalism robs the majority of men of the opportunity to make proprietary use of the things necessary for their individual development; Communism would rob all men of this opportunity. In this, both are the opposites of Christian socialism.

Christian Socialism

Socialism would tremendously extend private property. Its cardinal doctrine is that the individual should own, absolutely and without question, everything which they need or can use individually; and that the right to hold private property should be limited only when we come to those things which a man cannot operate without exploiting other men. Man, under socialism, may acquire and hold all that he can use for his own development; but he may not own that which makes him master of another man.

As we approach socialism, the millions of families who are now propertyless will acquire and own beautiful homes, with the gardens and the land upon which to raise their food; they will own horses and carriages, automobiles and pleasure yachts; their houses will contain libraries, musical instruments, paintings and statuary, all that a person may need for the soul-growth of themselves and theirs, they shall own and use as they will.

But highways, railroads, natural resources, and the great machines will be owned and operated by organized society, so that all who will may purchase the product upon equal terms. Socialism, when properly understood, offers us the most complete individualism while communism would submerge the individual in the mass.

The apostles failed because communism is a failure in the nature of things, while the world, at that time, had not evolved far enough to make socialism possible. They tried to establish for all a life which was only possible to a few.