burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The world has not been the 

same since the advent and ascension of Jesus Christ. The Christian 

Era is witness to the power of Christ working mightily within the 

individual to effect the bringing down of imaginations and 

principalities which set themselves against God, to the supplanting of 

wickedness in high places. The clear manifestation of change - spiritual 

and political - wrought by the Gospel is the appearance of the ecclesia 

in the world. The self government of the First Century local church 

was the foreshadowing of things to come concerning the governmental, 

Biblical relationship that Christianity was to establish between church 

polity and civil polity. Most importantly, the distinction in the contrast 

between self- government and voluntary union and its opposing idea, 

centralization through force were now drawn.