I can understand why some people might feel hostility or contempt for organized religion. There was a time, when in my twenties, that I believed in no organized religion. It was because of my personal research into the study of religious history. Starting with the Roman Catholic leaders, I expanding my search into the distant B.C. pagan past, and forward through the Protestant revolution into more current times. My conclusion? "If these religious leaders represent God and the Bible, who needs it!" And, for a while, at least, I threw out the baby with the dirty bath water. I became, more or less, an agnostic. If I had a "church" it was in the awesome wonders such as the redwood forest, or places like the Grand Canyon.
But later, I had reason to take up a topical study of the Bible, itself. Jesus' words in such places as Matthew 24:14, Matt. 24:45-46, and Matthew 28:19-20 lead me to believe that there needed to be organization, and cooperation with that organization, if the body of believers were to accomplish what they were instructed to do by Jesus. After all, the designation, "Christian" carries with it the idea of obedience to the Christ's instructions and commands, subject to his discipline. Can a true Christian disciple do less and still claim for himself the designation, "Christian?"
Not only must there be an organized leadership, that leadership must be a body of integrity keepers, organized after the model of the the first century Christian Body of disciples. They must meet the qualifications such as were enumerated by the first enemy writer against Christianity, Celsus. As it says in the second volume of a reference work I have here on my computer:
*** it-2 p. 672 Preacher, Preaching ***
These early Christian preachers were not highly educated men by worldly standards. The Sanhedrin perceived the apostles Peter and John to be “men unlettered and ordinary.” (Ac 4:13) Concerning Jesus himself, “the Jews fell to wondering, saying: ‘How does this man have a knowledge of letters, when he has not studied at the schools?’” (Joh 7:15) Secular historians noted the same points. “Celsus, the first writer against Christianity, makes it a matter of mockery, that labourers, shoemakers, farmers, the most uninformed and clownish of men, should be zealous preachers of the Gospel.” (The History of the Christian Religion and Church, During the Three First Centuries, by Augustus Neander; translated from the German by Henry John Rose, 1848, p. 41)
Paul explained it in this way: “For you behold his calling of you, brothers, that not many wise in a fleshly way were called, not many powerful, not many of noble birth; but God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put the wise men to shame.”—1Co 1:26, 27.
In Matt. 24:45-47, and Luke 12:42-44, the Son of God poses a rhetorical question for us to ponder. He essentially says: “Who really is the faithful steward, the discreet one, whom his master will appoint over his body of attendants to keep giving them their measure of food supplies at the proper time? 43 Happy is that slave, if his master on arriving finds him doing so! 44 I tell you truthfully, He will appoint him over all his belongings."
This carries with it the idea that the "faithful, wise slave" is not one single person, but a composite of many spiritually qualified men who are, over the centuries, delivering spiritual food from the scriptures to Christ's domestics when the time is due for the light of spiritual understanding to become brighter. And all the more so, during the critical times of the last hundred years or so.
I do not think that Jesus Christ was just kidding us along, with that question. I think he was quite serious. And by asking it as he did, he was laying at our feet the duty and responsibility to answer it for our selves by searching out that group of men who meet the spiritual qualifications as listed in Scripture, to represent that faithful and discrete slave. Those who are progressively moving foreword with the increasing light of spiritual understanding, and feeding us that understanding as we draw ever nearer to the destruction of the world's civilization, as we know it. (Matt. 6:9-10 and Dan. 2:44)
When we find them, we need to seriously listen to what they have to say to us.
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