Equal to the Apostles

How does it feel to be on the verge of a great action of God? Probably like this.

It was one of those airish, fog-crowded mornings ghosts adore: The trees dripped, and the shadows walked, and on a plateau above the tumultuous North Sea a certain black-bearded bishop was faced with a problem. 

Nine problems, in fact.

They were tall, frowning warriors, and though they were but lately exorcized, they looked down at the saint with eyes that spoke of sadness and death. 

“Tell me, friend,” said the saint, “What name do you bear?” 

One big man leaned down. He had a low, rumbling voice, and when he spoke, the lichens that hung in his beard rustled. “I am Cailte,” he said, “son of Crundchú, the son of Rónán.” He stopped. Again, there flashed in his eyes an almost immortal sadness. “I fought with Finn mac Cumaill.” 

At his words the assembly hissed. Of all the warriors preserved in the tales, there was no equal to Finn—except, perhaps, for that bishop, for he showed no surprise. He made the sign of the cross and looked at the old soldier with understanding. “Was he a good man?” he asked. 

The warrior frowned. He sang: “Were the dark leaves gold, that the trees discard, and the white wave silver, Finn would give all away.” 

“I am sorry, my friend,” the bishop replied. There followed a moment of silence. Suddenly he straightened as though remembering. “Tell me,” he said, indicating the crowd, “we need water for baptism. Is there a pool nearby?”

Cailte stood. He towered over the bishop. “Yes,” he growled. “It is not far.” He pointed at the fog-sacked, leering trees. “Come.” 

The exorcism of Cailte and the discovery of the waters of Tráig Dá Ban is the first story in the Acallam Na Senorach, which is the Tales of the Elders of Ireland. It is somewhat surprising that in the first pages of a legendarium like that a Christian bishop would appear, but it is relevant that he does. To explain why, a little background is necessary. 

In Ireland in the Iron Age two problems threatened to obliterate the already unstable social order. The first was intertribal violence; the second was the chaotic energy young people possess. 

(Note: That second part is not a joke. Young people are notorious chaos-mongers. They are endowed by God with an extraordinary energy that, if not given structure and direction, geysers out in pathological displays. The Viking ships of the Middle Ages were crewed by young men, and it was young men who flocked to fight for ISIS. In a more hopeful case—though still threatening to the social order—when a lay monastic movement called the Beguines swept Europe in the Middle Ages, it was young women who filled the order. One need only to survey the student protests of the last half century to see the same youthful energy on display.)

To address those problems the Irish created one of the most ingenious social institutions, ever. 

They were called the fíana. 

The fíana were, essentially, war bands—some were male, others female—only they were endowed with extraordinary privileges. According to one scholar, the fíana were connected to both the aire échta, the “lord of slaughter,” and the fer-gniae, the “king’s champion,” which means they could extract vengeance without incurring legal repercussions, settle matters in single combat, retrieve a bride price, and even undertake dangerous quests.  

By all accounts membership in a fían was a highly prized position, and so like biker gangs and some church denominations the fíana were all but impregnable. They represented the warrior ethos of a people living on the extreme edge of survival. No one would have guessed that the fíana—or the Iron Age Irish, for that matter—would have been open to new ideas, much less new gods. 

But then no one would have guessed that, in the fifth century, a black-bearded scholar and mystic would sail up the river Inver-dea. 

To describe that man is to capture lightning in a jar. He was keen and educated; he was impossible to intimidate; he prayed like a Biblical prophet and his prayers produced regular results. Also, he was famously cheerful—one time, when he was asked to resolve a family dispute involving multiple contradictory stories, he did not storm at the sin the way they expected. Instead, he tugged his beard and said, with a light in his eyes, “This is a complicated tale!”

His effect on the Irish was extraordinary. He stopped wars, accommodated miracles, and all but invented a missionary strategy that converted the pagan fastness of Ireland. In the end, he dominated their national literature the way King Arthur ruled the British record.

You know who I’m talking about: Saint Patrick, missionary, mystic, and Enlightener of Ireland. 

Given Patrick’s unflagging confidence it is perhaps unsurprising that he and his followers took the fíana head-on, but that is exactly what they did. They established a contrast between the  “maicc báis ('sons of death')” and the “maicc bethad ('sons of life'),” creating their own fíana of miracle-working mystics. According to the scholars Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, “In a number of Irish saints' lives this antagonism between the saint and the brigand becomes the occasion of an impressive display of the saint's superior power and the resulting conversion of the fían members.”

Put another way, Patrick and his companions spoke directly to the institutions at the heart of Irish civilization. They did not dismantle the culture. Instead, they activated its hidden potentials, using its art and its history and its culture to display the glory of Jesus. The result was a culturally-illustrated expression of Chrisitianity so especially vibrant and idiosyncratic that scholars today talk not about “Christianity among the Celts” but “Celtic Christianity.” 

For that reason, and others, Patrick was given a special title: isapostalos. It means “Equal-to-the-Apostles,” and Patrick is not the only saint so recognized. 

Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the twelve, is called isapostalos. Photine, the Samaritan woman at the well and apostle to the Samaritans, is called isapostalos. Helena, the mother of Constantine, is called isapostalos, as is the incomparable translator Methodius and the great Viking Saint Olga. Though the Ethiopian Church broke off before those titles were distributed, Frumentius, the regent of Aksum, tutor of the crown prince Ezana, and first Bishop of that magnificent East African kingdom, definitely fits the bill. 

At certain times God has moved in history in a way that can only be compared to the wonders of the Apostolic Age. The result is usually the conversion of a people, or an empire, or a continent, and the reverberations in history never fully fade away. 

He may be doing that now. 

I: Rumblings

In the future your friends will ask you when you realized something was happening. 

Was it when serious public figures started streaming from secularism? Was it when the preternatural worked its way back into the mainstream? Was it when the Holy Spirit started directly converting Muslims, blowing, as one scholar put it, as a wind through the House of Islam? Was it when you saw the astonishing growth of the Church in Africa, or Asbury ignite? Was it smaller: that morning you woke and realized, with a bit of a start, that you were done with the world’s vain promises? 

To define the arrival of a move of God is like trying to define the precise moment at which a wildfire arrived: You can tell when a forest is not burning, and you can tell when it is, but unless you’re paying careful attention the time in between is rather mysterious. 

And so for a long time leaders have been hedging their bets. 

“What if the Christian story is poised to come rushing back into public consciousness in our day?” wrote N.T. Wright in his introduction to Justin Brierley’s The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. “Could it once again nourish the hearts and minds of people who have been starved of meaning and purpose for so long?” Like Justin, I hope so. Perhaps we are indeed seeing the early signs of such a returning tide.”

That is a good question and in it Wright’s professional scruples are on display; you only have to read the subtitle to discover a similar thesis from Mark Sayers in A Non-Anxious Presence: “How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders.” 

Again, there is hope in that thesis, but a remnant of leaders is at best a modest expectation—I can’t imagine a situation that wouldn’t leave a remnant of leaders.  

I understand their professional reservations: Far too many would-be revivalist have learned—at the expense of their reputation—that you cannot make God move by believing He will. You cannot make God do anything. 

On the other hand, there is good reason to hope for something more than a remnant of reliable leaders (and every reason to pray for more).

Consider some interesting data:

“Every day in the West, roughly 7,500 people in effect stop being Christians every day,” observed a report in New Blackfriars in 1984. But hang on: “In Africa,” the paper continues, “roughly double that number become Christians.” 

“The number of African Christians is growing at around 2.36 percent annually,” confirms Philip Jenkins, “which would lead us to project a doubling of the continent's Christian population in less than thirty years.”

That’s big, folks, and as leaders on the ground affirm, it’s a work of the Spirit. In a document titled Speaking for Ourselves, a group of South African church leaders declared “...there is one enormous omission throughout the whole history that has been written by outsiders. The work of the Holy Spirit throughout our history has simply been left out. The events of our history have been recorded as if everything could be accounted for simply by sociology and anthropology... We would like to write our own history from the point of view of the Holy Spirit.”

Amen! God is moving.  

What about Central Asia? “...in Islam's first 12 centuries we found no voluntary, and only a handful of coerced, conversions to the Christian religion,” writes David Garrison. “It is this long history of frustration, a history that has seen tens of millions of Christians absorbed into the Muslim world that makes the current events all the more striking. In only the first 12 years of the 21st century, an additional 69 movements to Christ of at least 1,000 baptized Muslim-background believers or 100 new worshiping fellowships have appeared. 

“These 21st century movements are not isolated to one or two corners of the world. They are taking place throughout the House of Islam: in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Persian world, in the Arab world, in Turkestan, in South Asia and in Southeast Asia. Something is happening: something historic, something unprecedented.”

Unprecedented indeed. I spoke with missionaries from Lebanon and they were more direct: “The long-awaited move of God is here,” is what they said. 

I’ll tell you the interesting thing: Most scholars never thought Christianity would disappear from the world. They thought it would disappear from the developed world.

“By 2050 only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites,” opines The Next Christendom. “Soon, the phrase ‘a white Christian’ may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as ‘a Swedish Buddhist.’ Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied.” Yikes. 

You can find the same thesis in a hundred places, but it’s hard to put it more directly than American sociologist C. Wright Mills, who declared, “The sacred shall disappear altogether.” 

According to secularism's tired myth of progress, humans would gradually evolve out of their religious impulse. That is the opinion of the increasingly preposterous Yuval Harari and Elon Musk’s “atheists in space.” 

Mercifully, they’re wrong.

The action of God upon the earth is coming here: to the West. 

I say that with confidence because in many places it has already arrived. At present there is every indication it will spread. 

But it will not spread everywhere. 

II. Spot fires

Wildfires make their own weather. 

They can cause tornadoes and thunderstorms and fire whirls; they almost always create their own wind. When they do, they throw firebrands hundreds and sometimes even thousands of feet in front of the main conflagration. The resulting fires are called spot fires, and they are especially respected by wildland firefighters. The acclaimed writer Norman Maclean put it memorably in this recollection from Young Men and Fire: 

“Above, it was little spot fires started by a sky of burning branches. The spot fires turned me in my course by leaping into each other and forming an avalanche of flame that went both down and up the mountain. I kept looking for escape openings marked by holes in smoke that at times burned upside down. Behind, where I did not dare to look, the main fire was sound and heat, a ground noise like a freight train.” 

That is the situation of the Western Church. 

Significantly, some Church leaders are calling their local experiences of renewal “spot fires.”

The Asbury Revival was a spot fire. The all night vigils at Church of the City New York are spot fires. The outpourings occurring, more and more often, at places like Reality San Francisco, Red Church Australia, my house church network in Colorado Springs, and in prayer rooms around the world are spot fires. At this point I’ve given up keeping track, because I’ve heard firsthand reports from Egypt, Lebanon, Eastern Europe, East Africa, and spent time with leaders from those regions. The news is the same: God is moving.  

Let me tell you: If the global spot fires of which I’ve been hearing are any indication, the main conflagration is going to be a banger. We could be in for a veritable firestorm. 

“Pentecost” by Jean Restout

To be clear, I don’t mean revival per se. I mean a large-scale movement of God through His Church. 

We have to get our imaginations straight on this one because the great actions of God in history have a unique character. 

Was the spread of Christianity in the Roman and Persian empires a revival? Of course not—it was the original movement. But what about the conversion of the Slavs, or the aforementioned Christianization of Ireland, or the Christianization of the khanates, or the early infiltration of the Gospel into Japan, or the astonishing spread of the Gospel among the North African Copts and in Ethiopia? Were those revivals? Kind of—but that is not the best way to put it, because the great actions of God in history are not what most people think of when they hear the term “revival.” They are not defined by charismatic leadership (though they do have leaders) or influential congregations (though they do have resourcing hubs and some institutional support). They’re not geographically circumscribed (the best you could say of the early growth of Christianity in Persia, for example, would be to call it the “Central Asian Revival;” what would you call the Christian revolution in Rome? The North African/Near Eastern/Anatolian/European revival?). And though they are accompanied by a unique display of the Holy Spirit’s power, that power is so widely distributed you can’t nail it down to a night of fire or a second Pentecost. 

That is the main point: The great actions of God in history have been a distributed work, one in which ordinary Christians give themselves over to the way of Jesus and the leadership of the Spirit en masse. It is the spiritual equivalent to total war: the boundary lines between the sacred and the secular fade or disappear. 

What this means is that everyday disciples incarnate the Kingdom of God, and they do so into the frontiers of their ordinary lives. 

That is simultaneously exciting and profoundly sobering: It means that though God is moving, it is by no means certain that His activity will reach your city, or your church, or your friends. 

Whether or not it does depends, to an alarming extent, on you. 

III. Total War

As a result of the Businessmen’s Revival in 1857 at least 10% of the US population started following Jesus. That’s amazing but it’s also grim, because a much larger percentage of the population did not. Or this one: by the fourth century at least 10% of the citizens of the Roman Empire were following Jesus (I know—10% again), and what that means is that even with the special witness of the early church 90% of the empire refused to stop doubting and believe.

Of course, people who study these things want to know who converts and why and there are some trends: People without power convert more often than people with power (remember the camel and the eye of the needle?). Women choose to follow Jesus more often than men do (probably as a result of the previous point). But those are hardly prescriptive. Saint Sebastian was a member of Diocletian’s Praetorian Guard; Saturus, who volunteered to be killed with Felicity and Perpetua so that he could show them how to die (how’s that for a mentor?) was male. 

Would you like to know the single most accurate predictor? 

People who come into contact with serious disciples and experience radical love are more likely to start following Jesus. 

In contrast, people who come into contact with nominal Christianity are much less likely to make the same choice. 

(Note: That point always makes me think of a favorite story: The scholar David Barrett—who studied evangelization—once gave a talk to a group of influential businessmen. At one point, one businessman raised his hand and asked, “Professor Barrett, can you tell us what's the most effective missionary tool the Church has?” 

“Based on all our research,” Barret replied, “I'd have to say the answer is martyrdom.” 

There followed a long silence, after which another man asked, “Professor Barrett, can you tell us what the second most effective missionary tool would be?”)

Now, here’s the even more alarming news: Not everyone will display radical love, and not everyone will facilitate the Holy Spirit’s power. 

Would you like to know the single most accurate predictor for that one? 

It’s those who are doing it now.

As evidence, consider the work of psychologist Samuel Oliner. Oliner survived the holocaust. But his family did not—they were murdered, all of them, by Nazis in Poland. Samuel survived because a Polish Christian woman sheltered him. After the war, Samuel married, and after that, he and his wife studied altruism. They wanted to know who helped Jews and why, and so they conducted some 700 interviews and published the results in a foundational book The Altruistic Personality. 

It turned out that the people who sheltered their Jewish neighbors were diverse; there were no national or political or occupational predictors. There was only one strong common denominator: love. People who cultivated love in their closest relationships were likely to respond with sacrificial love in an emergency. 

What that means is that (my summary here) people who read aloud to their spouses would be more likely to shelter the needy. 

People who stay up singing to sleepless children would be more likely to shelter the needy. 

People who write Thank You notes to their friends and listen in conversation would be more likely to shelter the needy. 

Love is a skill, and love is habitual. 

The kingdom of God is like that, and what that means is that people who are praying right now are more likely to pray during a move of God. People who narrate their life with Jesus now are more likely to do so later. People who kick out demons now will find it easier to do so when things get really serious. 

To put that another way, if God has no beachhead in your life, if there is no domain, however small, in which the Kingdom is coming, there is no reason to think that will change when the fire arrives. 

But that, friends, is why all this is happening. 

Reenchantment. Deep discipleship. Appropriated history. 

God is activating his people. He is building the kind of Church—even here, in the West—through which we could see one of the great actions of history. 

More to the point, God is calling to you. That the message has reached you is evidence enough. Remember Asa? “For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” He is doing that now. If you’re at all like me, when you hear that a grand action of God is by all accounts on the horizon, the first thing you feel is excited, and the second is left out. After all, what’s the role of the stay at home mom, or the government employee, or the graphic designer? 

Here is the answer: The primary role. The essential role. The miracle working role.

In Matthew 9 there is a story that has always troubled me. To put the event in context, it’s important to remember that Matthew structured his Gospel account in five acts—those five acts represent a new Torah, or founding law. The first act (chapters 4-7) centers on the Sermon on the Mount; it introduces a new kingdom. The second act (chapters 8-10) shows Jesus establishing that Kingdom. 

Right in the middle of that second act—while he’s establishing the Kingdom—Jesus stops. He’s been healing the sick and casting out demons and challenging power and calming storms. He is, in no uncertain terms, a one-man spiritual land war. And yet all of a sudden he stops and looks around and, in a moment of severe prophetic loneliness, observes, “The harvest is plentiful. But the workers are not.” His solution? “Pray that God would drive workers out into His field.” 

The language is extreme. 

Jesus tells his disciples to pray that God would cast them out, like shipwrecked sailors driven on a storm, or an army diverted by a powerful wind. It is a formidable image. For the sake of the sad and perishing world, we ask God to drive us out—by main force if necessary—so that we can bring the Kingdom to our assigned field. 

You should ask God to do that—to get you moving. You should ask him what He wants you to do. The answer will almost certainly seem small. Learn to narrate your life with God so that you can tell your barber a story that makes sense. Pray for five minutes at noon for your nephew who’s far from God. Abstain from all forms of social media and instead orient yourself to Jesus. 

In a great war, it doesn’t matter if your assignment is to storm a castle or to safeguard a bridge or to keen swords; what matters is that you do it. 

You have a part to play, my friends. If you haven’t grabbed hold of reenchantment, or deep discipleship, or history, do so now. The timing could not be better. Rod Dreher’s new one-stop introduction to reenchantment is out (read it!), Practicing the Way is killing it, and the tradition has never been easier to appropriate (try this show). 

Ask God to lead you. He will, because it’s what He does. At all times, God is faithful, but there is probably a special momentum now simply because of the times we are in.

And also because of the times that are coming.

IV: Isapostolos

In the West, cultural Christianity is dying and will almost certainly continue to do so. In some places, it may fade from view entirely. I cannot imagine that the efforts to resurrect Christianity’s social vision apart from Christ will succeed.

Nevertheless, it is coming. 

A movement of God anticipated for generations is coming.

Whether it happens in the next few years or the next few generations makes no difference; you live the same way in either event.

But I think that many Christians alive today will see it: The spiritual iron curtain that has for centuries suffocated the West will break. In many places, it is already splintering. 

And yet by all accounts hard times are coming also. Kingdoms rise and fall, and there are great evils rising to struggle with Christ for the mastery. 

Let them try. 

In the second century a Bishop named Abercius went into the temples of Hieropolis, in Turkey. In imitation of King Josiah, he broke the idols there and awaited the crowd. When they came they were enraged, but as they approached, Abercius began to cast out their demons. Fear fell upon them, and as a result the Gospel spread. 

In the third century a woman crossed the wind-streaked mountains of Europe and wound up in Georgia. She was called Nino, and though all her companions were tortured and killed, she spoke with boldness and converted the queen. As a result the Gospel spread. 

In the ninth century, two brothers, bookworms really, traveled to central Europe to a people called the Slavs. There was no alphabet in which to make the Gospels available, so the brothers created one. That was pretty impressive, but still, there was still no one to read it until those brothers created an education system that revolutionized a continent. They were Cyril and Methodius, and as a result of their work the Gospel spread.

What about Photine, the Samaritan woman at the well? She is isapostolos. Would you like to know what happened to her?

She traveled to Rome. According to the tradition, she preached the Gospel to Caesar Nero. Significantly, Photine means “Light,” and in the beginning, Nero was named light too. He was called “Lucius.” But he willed evil and in the end he changed his name to “Darkness.” Nero killed Photine and made a real attempt to cut Christianity’s throat. 

Did he prevail? 

Hardly. 

The great gears of history are turning. Almost you can hear them grind empires to powder. The time for great deeds may soon be at hand. And since that is true there is no better place to land than in prayer. Prayer to be strengthened. Prayer that many would encounter Jesus. Prayer that God’s mercy, which washes the world, would meet many in a dark time. 

Rory Cooney is a Roman Catholic liturgist; he wrote a hymn based on Mary’s Magnificat. That has always been the anthem of the people of God. It is our anthem now. And so, with many saints across the ages, we still pray:

My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the one who waits.
You fixed your sight on the servant's plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
So from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.

Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me.
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.

From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
every tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
These are tables spread, ev'ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.

Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God's mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror's crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise that holds us bound,
'Til the spear and rod be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around. 

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.