Yesterday I had the joy of teaching a lecture on the History of the Christian Church, a course that looks at early church history from the Bible’s perspective, looking at Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation as historical details about the practices of early Christianity as models for our own beliefs and practices.

Yesterday’s lecture focused on Acts 1, which a lot of people skip over on the way to Acts 2, but which holds a worthwhile amount of depth. Acts 1 has its most powerful points in connecting Israel to the Church through the need to replace the treacherous apostle Judas with Matthias, so that there could be 12 godly apostles to rule over the 12 tribes of Israel. One of the students asked me a very insightful question about the replacement of Judas, and it prompted me to make a connection I had not made before.

Just as Judas was “replaced” within the 12 Apostles (by lot!) by Matthias, Revelation 7:5-8 contains a similar replacement. Manasseh, the son of Joseph, replaces Dan because of the idolatry of Dan (one of the two Golden calves of Jeroboam was in Dan, the other in Bethel (in Ephraim), the reason why those two names are struck from Revelation, though it is to be understood that the righteous Ephraimites are included within Joseph). Now, once the students saw the relationship between the replacement of one of the tribes in Revelation and one of the apostles, they immediately understood the connection, itself part of a larger truth that the righteous outsiders replace the ungodly “natural” branches of Israel, a truth that these students themselves demonstrate, perhaps unknowingly.

Now, in a previous post I had commented on the political implications of Acts 1:20, something which tended to upset those who saw themselves painted as treacherous Judases for their own rebelliousness against godly authority. It is hard not to see Acts 1 (particularly in terms of the reference to Judas and the replacement of ungodly leaders with godly ones) and to the reference of using lots, without thinking grimly about the political mess of the Church of God culture. I have no disagreement whatsoever with those ministers who would wish for leaders to be chosen by lots–it would remove any hint of political process, though it might make some people look for ways to shave dice if they are politically ambitious, because cheaters will seek to corrupt any selection process because they are ambitious for power and not willing to let God bless people however He sees fit.

I hope that the students in the class understood that I am not a particularly politically ambitious person myself, and also that the political grandstanding that goes on so often in churches is ungodly. Acts 1 has an important part in showing the qualifications of Apostles (which would prevent anything like apostolic succession from taking place in a truly biblical church–see Acts 1:21-22), given that no one since John has met the standard set by Acts for an apostle, and also the ungodliness of political ambition within the Church. Whether we are as keen on listening as my students though, remains an open question.