The disciples struggled to reach the realization that Jesus is God.

We’ve grown up with it – that Jesus is God – it’s cultural, we’re familiar with it, over familiar, but for them it was counter-cultural. It’s a claim that smashed both their religious and civil culture. For them it was nuclear ☢️

It’s an enormous claim, completely off the scale.

They knew from the healings, the miracles, that this man was unique – very special – but they struggled to get to the realization that he is God.

It was just too big for them. It’s huge.

But when they did grasp it that’s all they preached. The church at its beginnings preached nothing else. The early church just stood in front of people and said “Jesus is God!”

That’s why pagan practices disappeared. Once people grasped that Jesus is God there was nowhere else to go – there is nowhere else to go! If Jesus is God, why would they bother with other practices?

We’re part of a number of generations that have lost this realization in its original power, the personal transformative knowledge that Jesus is God.

This is the reason we’re seeing phenomenal growth in all sorts of different spiritual practices, even an interest in and a reappearance of some of the old pre-Christian practices in new forms.

We’ve lost the transformative knowledge that Jesus is God.