Author Archives: npdev

Mediaeval Mercies – During the Middle Ages, God reached out to the Roman Catholic Church with two monastic movements, to remind people of the original “by my Spirit” vision. The first was the Cistercian movement (led eventually by Bernard of Clairvaux), which sought to revive the original Rule of St. Benedict, which was based on […]

The Middle Ages – Power and might Christianity corrupted the Church of the Middle Ages, until the whole concept of “Christianity” became unrecognizable.  Control of the Papacy fell to a few Italian families who vied for control of vast wealth and influence.  In the end, a second “Vatican” was established at Avignon in France, with […]

The Next 700 Years. The advance of the Kingdom of God can be seen as a conflict between two versions of Christianity.  During the first 700 years, “by my Spirit” Christianity prevailed in the West, up to the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D. “Power and might” Christianity prevailed during the Middle Ages, leading to […]

The Triumph of Rome. For fifty years, there were two contrasting Christian churches in Britain: a “power and might” church and a “by my Spirit” church, growing side-by-side.  This unstable situation was resolved at the Synod of Whitby in 644 A.D., in which the Roman Church edged out the Celts, who began the slow and […]

Reintroducing Rome.  Just as Aidan (from Iona) established the outreach to Anglo-Saxons at Lindisfarne, Rome came back into the picture in 597 A.D.  It’s first archbishop, a Benedictine monk named Augustine, set up shop at Canterbury, and challenged the Celts to accept his authority.  Lacking the one quality (humility) that would have won their allegiance, […]

Columba and Kentigern.  After establishing 30 houses of prayer in Ireland, and after making a pilgrimage to honor Martin at Tours, the hot-headed Columba created some serious problems in Ireland—and was banished from his homeland in the middle of the sixth century.  Founding the prayer community at Iona, Columba succeeded in bringing the Picts and […]

Patrick and the Irish. As a teenager, Patrick was whisked away from his home in Dumbarton, Scotland, to be a slave in Ireland.  This improbable beginning set him on a journey of prayer, which God would build into one of the greatest examples of Kingdom transformation the world has ever seen—as described by Patrick himself […]

Evagrius, Cassian and Germanus. Evagrius of Pontus, experiencing the temptations of wealth and power in the Byzantine Church, fled to the deserts of Egypt, where he became the leader of the spiritual descendants of Anthony at Nitria.  Two men—Cassian and Germanus—attached themselves to him, then carried the teaching of the Desert Fathers into Gaul, and […]

The Early Celts. The Desert Fathers, beginning with Anthony, continued to live by the original “by my Spirit” pattern Jesus modeled out for them.  Martin of Tours picked that up from the biography of Anthony by Athanasius, and passed it along to Ninian, who planted it in Scotland in 397 A.D.  Scotland became a matchstick […]

Power and Might. When Constantine moved to make Christianity the official “religion” of Rome, Pope Sylvester I assumed that he was to form an alliance with the Roman emperor.  In this way—beginning in 313 A.D.—Christianity stopped being a “by my Spirit” kingdom, and began to function as a “power and might” religion. My teaching shows […]