The Kingdom Of Matthias By Robert Matthews

Author Richard Wurmbrand grew up in Romania under the influence of a religion-absent home. This lack of religion and period of poverty caused by World War I led to his bitter heart towards religion, especially that which spoke of God (Wurmbrand, 11). Wurmbrand admitted to feelings of emptiness and longing for a God of love. Spiritual conflict within himself led him to enter a catholic church where he prayed to a God he did not believe in, asking for a God to be revealed to him. After stumbling across a village that he was immediately drawn to, he met a carpenter who had been praying for the opportunity to witness to a nonbeliever (Wurmbrand, 12). This miraculous connection, sharing of the gospel, and fervent prayer led to the conversion of

Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and enlarge his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. He wanted to understand what changed her like this. He wanted to relate with his wife so he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel began his journey and interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament. Strobel splits the case for Christ into three basic sections: Examining the Record, Analyzing Jesus, and Researching the Resurrection.

I sat down at my kitchen table with Michael Bruxvoort, a friend and fellow Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on October 25th, 2015. We laughed and talked about his journey through life and all the memories, obstacles and pleasures along the way. Among the many topics we spoke about, the ones that seemed most relevant to him and myself were: the family dynamics of religion within his household, his process of religion through secular spaces and lastly, his transition to Chapel Hill, NC and making it his home. Our conversation through Michael 's life shows how his faith has shaped him to be the man he is today. Through this paper, I will explain and analyze these topics in hopes of better understanding geographies of religion.

The Kingdom of Matthias, written by Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, examines the story of the self proclaimed prophet Matthias, formerly known as Robert Matthews. They tell the story of how Matthias built his kingdom based on his religious beliefs related to the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening was a religious movement that took place during the early nineteenth century. During this time period women played the role as the caregivers who stayed at home with the children while their husbands were out working. However, it wasn’t until the Second Great Awakening that women began to play a more dominant role in society, especially in the church. Matthias was one of the main people who was directly impacted by the effects of the Second Great Awakening and the power it gave to women. Throughout Matthias’ life he had numerous troubles with women and this continued to show throughout the reign of his kingdom. Johnson and Wilentz saw that the empowerment of women in the Second Great Awakening was a factor in the demise of Matthias’ demise Kingdom. Matthias refuses the ideas of the Second Great Awakening by making sure that women in his kingdom are subordinate and condemns those who are not. [inserts thesis statement]

The Kingdom of Matthias gives us the story of Matthias the Prophet. A religious con that lived in New York in the 1800’s. Matthias made an empire of followers that eventually caused a scandal that spread all around america. Elijah Pierson was Matthias’s main followers, he was a merchant in New York.

As his life began, Robert Matthews seemed to have had the makings of a radical, religious man. In 1788, he was born into the religious New England Scottish town of Colia, where his family belonged to a Scottish Presbyterian sect known as the Anti-Burgher Secession Church. As a young boy, he began with odd visions and dreams that he claimed where to be from God, “In 1835, an enterprising Manhattan journalist disclosed that, as a boy, Robert Matthews had his own conversations with supernatural spirits and impressed his friends with feats of clairvoyance (56).”

Early in the 19th century, The Second Great Awakening, a popular evangelical movement, was raging through upstate New York. Nicknamed the “Burned-Over District,” this region was “often swept by the flames of the Holy Spirit” thus creating a supercharged atmosphere perfect for up and coming religious zealots (Gopnik 4).

The critics of the followers of the “Kingdom of Matthias” reflect a variety of ideologies that characterized the societal changes of the 19th century Northern region of the United States. The Kingdom of Matthias was a spiritual cult founded and primarily administered by Robert Mathews, an American religious figure and former businessman whose spiritual activities inspired his followers to refer to him as Matthias the Prophet. The Kingdom of Matthias received a great deal of publicity and national media attention in the US during its time, and has thereafter become an issue of historical consideration whose analysis reflects interesting characteristics of the changing American society of the 19th century. The critics of the Kingdom of Matthias

“The Sequel: The Church, Christ’s Body,” in the book Survey of the New Testament, by author Irving L. Jensen is a story in the Gospel of Acts that continues Christ’s earthly journey and the church. Jensen’ account of this story is important considering it is the first history of the Christian church. Meaning, it involves the history between the resurrection of Jesus also the death of the Apostle Paul. The book of Acts is also known as the “Acts of the Apostles” that can be traced to the second century. However, to understand the Gospel of Acts, it must first be understood that this was an era when Christian beliefs also the organization of the church was being developed (Jensen 200-201).

There were group men who were dissatisfied with religious division they found themselves in the 1800’s. Men like Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone began to study the bible with two new goals in mind.

Still these often scattered and marginalized members of society had sought to be a church composed of committed disciples of Christ who had experienced God’s salvation and were living witnesses to

Our new convert now faced an economic dilemma, however, since he was no longer gainfully employed. So, instead of acting, Marcus opened an acting school. This apparently created quite a stir among Marcus’s fellow Christians, and the surviving letters exchanged by his pastor and the church’s bishop paint a portrait of the church truly living out its strong-group family values.

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In order to understand the ramifications of Matthias's formation of his kingdom, the social,financial, ethnic, and sexual conditions of the times must be realized as the catalysts that cause the cults to form. A whole series of evangelic congregations appeared in the early decades of the nineteenth century in order to serve the poor, the emotionally needy, those barred from the new prosperousness, hopefulness, forbearance, personal freedom and sensible thought of the business classes. Combining good narrative skills,excellent characterization, and historic detail, Johnson and Wilentz recreate the engaging tale of a hypocritical prophet and his erroneous followers in New York during the eighteen twenties

Gospel (Carey, Greg. “Were the First Christians Rich or Poor?” The Huffington Post, 18 Sept.