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| Q: | Acts In the early Christian Church many of the believers sold their personal possessions or at least shared everything they owned (Acts 4:32). Do we have any way of knowing how long this "practice" lasted? Verses 34 & 35 would seem to indicate a time period..... Could/should this be a model for the church today? Why or why not? | ||||||
| A: | In a sense this practice still continues today. Christians share unselfishly, as faith is active in love. In that sense, what is described in Acts 4:32 is a "model " of what could/should be true in the church today. We must not lose sight of the fact that what they did was not by apostolic command or in keeping with some theory of social justice. These Jewish Christians knew that the Law of Moses (God's law) required that there should be no poor in Israel. As members of the new Israel, the true Israel, they were motivated to see to the needs of those in need. We do not read elsewhere in Scripture about anything just like the practice described in Acts 4. We cannot know how long it continued in the Jerusalem church. It could not have been too long, since the first generation was soon scattered by persecution. | ||||||
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