While most Christians who read church history have a basic idea of the Moravian Brethren with Count Zinzendorf in Germany, very few have any idea of their forerunners, the Bohemian Brethren.

While not 100% like the later Anabaptists, their practice and doctrine was similar enough that some of the Bohemian Brethren seem to have joined up with (their own movement was drifting by this time) the Anabaptists when the latter finally showed up in Moravia a century after the Bohemian Brethren had starting tracing their course.  They were definitely a “kingdom church”.

Anyways, you can read about the birth, life, and death of the Bohemian Brethren revival by clicking the link.

Or if you write me at mike at primitivechristianiy dot org, I now have some hard copies available.

How do we tell if we are drifting?

I like the analogy given by a preacher once of a bunch of boats on a bay.  As long as the boats keep looking at each and monitoring their position by each other, no one will give heed to the fact that every last one of them is being carried along with an unseen undercurrent.  They are still the same distance from each other as 12 hours ago…  Never mind that they all have drifted 2 and a half miles along the coast.

So it is with Christians who have lost their inertia and “have settled on their lees”.  They look around at each other in the congregation and breathe a sigh of relief: “Whew!  We are still all united!”

Or, “Whew!  We are still as far away from the liberal Baptists as we ever were!  We must still be going in the right direction.”

The only problem is that the liberal Baptists have drifted further into carnality, and folks are comparing the difference between them and the liberal Baptists, not them and Christ.

The ships on a bay can only determine if they are drifting if they watch the shoreline (not counting modern GPS systems   ) .  You can only determine if you are drifting if you compare yourself to Christ and His teachings, not by comparing yourself with the liberal Baptists, or with the Conservative Amish.

And you cannot tell if you are drifting by your feelings.  You may feel you are closer to Christ, but unless you compare your life to His life you may well fool yourself.  And, for the record, His life is outlined in the written Word of God.  Compare yourself with it, at face value; just like you look in a mirror that is only inches from your face.  Put Jesus’ teaching right smack in front of your daily activities.

He went about living selflessly.  He sold his goods and gave them to the poor.  He did not waste his time in entertainments; He did not waste His money on vain adornments; He spent all His excess energies—every energy not needed for necessary bodily maintenance—in preaching the gospel of the kingdom; all His excess energies.  ALL of them.  ALL of them.  ALL…

Been drifting?