Early Christians versus Modern (US) Christians

[Ashes]

I thought this was pretty interesting - it is a comparison (by one guy, admittedly) between what the first century Christians believed, behaved and taught versus what is 'fairly typical' of a particular sort of US Christian (aka fundamentalists such as coc) belief, behavior and teachings -

enjoy:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/formerlyfu ... NjM5NzY4S0

holding all things in common?
totally pacifists?
sharing everything?
despising 'the world'?
ignoring 'worldly powers'?

Thank you, I enjoyed this link since it destroys the coc claim of "we're the church you can read about in the Bible". I always wondered growing up, If the coc is the church of the Bible, the true church, the perfect example of the early church, then why can't the "denominations" see that when they read their Bible? That question gets answered with "they don't want to hear the truth". No! How about that answer is frikkin false!

False is right. "They don't want to hear the truth." and "Satan has a grip on them." are their brick wall-answers for everything. It's hopeless.

[ena]

So much so, that one early Christian leader thought they were separate gods entirely, and put together his own 'bible', which left out all the OT and good chunks of the NT as well. He wasn't successful and his ideas were labeled 'heretic' but the attitude is still there and still active.
Marcion, wasn't it?

It was Marcion. He took Luke and did a hack job on removing Jewish references. We don't have his hack job to refer too. The orthodox Christians were very good at expunging heretics. He thought the Jewish God was bad and the Christian God was good. I believe there is one God and he looks at things differently than we do. The demonstration is for man. God came to man directly and man wanted a King. God sent man a human King (Jesus) and man crucified him. He will come and be accepted as Lord of all. See Isaiah 9. Both Jewish and Christian traditions should agree and dovetail on his return. The Gnostic Texts we have found were buried in clay Jars in the desert. Probably to save them from burning. Marcion is seachable. He is part of Christian history. Tertullian wrote about him. Christians do have a history but most have no idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

[ena]

Yet this "unchanging" God of the New Testament doesn't even marginally resemble the God described in the Old Testament.

The problem was what was man ready for. What could he handle? Getting order in a chaotic world is much more difficult. God has not changed but man has. You have to have some peace to build anything. Early Christians were busy trying to survive. There was no paper, books were few and there was no refrigeration or much plumbing. I have seen a Roman toilet. It was two long stones hanging from a wall. You sat on it and went on the floor. There was another system that used flowing water but that was not Roman. I like our system.