Long before God started something new with Abraham, the father of the nation Israel, people corrupted the idea of the creator God. Isaiah's famous rendering of idolatry, a form of insanity, we find in 44:14-15, "He plants a fir, and the rain makes it grow. Then it becomes something for a man to burn, so he takes one of them and warms himself; he also makes a fire to bake bread. He also makes a god and worships it; he makes it a graven image and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he eats meat as he roasts a roast and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, "Aha! I am warm, I have seen the fire." But for the rest of it, he makes into a god, his graven image. He falls down before it and worships; he also prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god."

​​

The strange thing about institutionalized religion is its mechanical nature and devoid of intimacy with the living God. God is not a doctrine to be learned, a rabbit's foot to be rubbed for luck, and not an idol made in our own image. Let us notice the personal and caring way that God cared for Adam. "The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed" Genesis 2:8. 

​

The God that creates from nothing planted a garden, and He placed the man in it. Next, God gave him everything he needed to stay alive and warned him against the temptation to come that would cause his death. All Adam had to do was obey; in obedience, there is faith, allegiance, submission, and love. 

​

​From all eternity, God had a plan to save man from sin and lost condition, and he would do so through a family that he began with Abraham. God promised Abraham many descendants who would become the nation of Israel. Moses gave the law, and within the law was the means for God's chosen people to be a light to the nations. Nevertheless, the religion became institutionalized, a legalism that suppressed God's sacrifices meant to lead the people to the prophesied Messiah (Savior). 

​

Religion, from Latin, means back to God, and the most significant part of religion is the individual-mended relationships between God and those who repent and believe. Therefore, God speaking from Jesus Christ tells us in the Greatest sermon ever preached, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter" Matthew 7:21.

 

Authentic religion is not about empty words from hypocrites who say one thing with every intention of doing the opposite. People can call Jesus Lord, but if they do not do what He tells us to do, then is He Lord to them? Jesus is a person to worship, adore, honor, respect, and, most importantly love.  

 

Paul's declaration of salvation is this: " If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9. Only the man speaking sincerely is saved; all professing but false converts will be revealed on the Day of Judgment. God disapproves of believers and unbelievers worshipping together, a fact not even considered in today's church. 

​

From Paul's following comments, we can understand a division between those belonging to Christ and those who persecute them. "...giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited, but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love, in the word of truth, in the power of God; by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; [regarded] as deceivers and yet true; as unknown yet well-known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things," 2 Corinthians 6:3-10. On the one side of the terms above, God is sending Paul, and on the other is the persecution that the truth about God and men provokes from wicked sinners. 

​

There is a close parallel between Paul's and James's thinking throughout their letters. Paul tells his hearers not to regard the rich as important, as did James, and disregard the poor who believe in Jesus Christ. Paul continues to do this within the context of believer/unbeliever, not marriage. 

​

Therefore, he says, "Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Paul speaks about coming together for worship, which is confirmed in the following verses. 

 

Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols?" (Verses 14-16)

"For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. "And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty." (Verses 16-18) 

​

We can see how often Paul references God's Word from the Scriptures. If there was ever a person who completely turned from legalism, it was the Apostle Paul. The law of sacrifices points to Christ, and God's dietary law meant to separate Israel from the surrounding nations. However, such laws were never meant to keep them from being a light to the nations. It was pride, idolatry, and absorbing the ways of pagan worship and their worldly ways that caused Israel to become a stumbling block. Nothing has changed in the ways of God. For this reason, gatherings of believers for worship must also be to come out and be separate from unbelievers - a reality overlooked and disobeyed in our present "Christian" culture. We are then  commanded to into all the world and make discples, teaching them what Christ is teaching us. If we disobey Christ we become a stumbling-block to the world. 

​

For this reason, gatherings of believers come out and are separate—a reality overlooked and disobeyed in our present "Christian" culture. We are then commanded to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them what Christ is teaching us. But if we disobey Christ, we become a stumbling block to the world. 

 

 

​

 

 

 

 

The very first time the word church is used in the Bible is by our Lord Himself in Matthew 18:15-17, "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. "But if he does not listen [to you], take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." 

​

Ekklesia, derived from 'ek' meaning 'out from and to,' is a word of divine origin. The Ekklesia is called out of the world and to God in Christ. Some of the following ideas are from a historian and a godly Christian, and some I know to be uncompromising regarding the Christian faith as it is meant to be by God. 

​

 

 

​

​

 

 

 

 

"Why are our institutions leaving the Christian Faith and the people of God so vulnerable to what are in many ways far less sophisticated and less intellectually sound challenges than the Christian community faced in the 1960s or 1990s? There are undoubtedly many reasons for this to be the case. But one, which I will advance here, lies in the definition of Ekklesia and how that truth has been ignored or blatantly mishandled by virtually all of American Christianity, "I would add by Christian.  

​

"What you say? How could the Church, the common practice of Christians, be wrong? Would God allow his people to miss the meaning of a word as basic as the meaning of the Church? Indeed, look at all the successes that we have had throughout the centuries. Well, first of all, if you are a Protestant, you should not say such ignorant things. If you are sheltering under the right and privilege to return to the Scriptures as the ultimate authority, a right purchased by the sacrifices of the Reformers and then repurchased generation after generation since, always with rejection and often with blood, you should know better." 

 

"People, our experience in the West with the Divine Right of Kings and all of its attendant evils should silence our tongues. God allows his people to engage in spectacular structural sins."

​

"Ekklesia is a Greek word for the assembly of the freemen of a particular area or the citizens of a specific city. Freeman and citizen were technical terms, often requiring land ownership, the ability to trace your ancestry, or some other proof of multi-generational commitment to kith, kin and country to be allowed voting rights or the right to hold office. The Greeks had since time immemorial understood this free assembly, to be the natural and inevitable locus of legitimate political authority, in terms of appointing executive leadership, writing laws, and judging individual cases, as well as the center of culture, education, and philosophical life. The members of an ekklesia, were also the business leaders and financiers of the community, and so while business deals were rarely (in peacetime at least) formally on the agenda, the hall or amphitheater where the Ekklesia met was where the serious commerce of the city was conducted."

​
"Ekklesias were not, even in their later corrupted Roman incarnations, places where one man stood and taught, with no opposing views allowed to speak and persuade to the contrary based on faith and logic. The Ekklesia was, in a true sense, a marketplace of ideas. Certain Elders may have had the right to (broadly) set the agenda and have the last word (no small privilege). But no one had the right to advance their opinions without being forced to listen to those of a contrary opinion."

​

"By the time of Christ, the Roman empire had suppressed mainly the political elements of the Ekklesia, outright denying several cities the right to assemble in public (Act 19:40) and stripping the remaining ekklesias of critical rights such as the power of capital punishment (John 18:31). But the Romans still used ekklesias. In fact they relied on cultural and educational elements of the Ekklesia as part of their pacification process. After conquering a city, and brutally removing the existing leadership structure, the remaining notables of the new Roman possession would be organized into an ekklesia. Using the decentralized framework of the Ekklesia to innovate, learn, collaborate, and implement, these would-be Roman citizens organized the transformation of their cities, adopting Greco-Roman law, culture, religion, technology, and financial structures in shockingly short periods of time."

​

"There was another form of association that existed in the Roman Empire. Above simple freemen were a class of persons who qualified to be called kurios which can be translated as "lord" or "master." This referred to a person who was the master in his own right, of a household, a city, or a larger political unit. As a person of rank within the Roman empire, the house of such a man of rank would contain at least one lecture hall, from which tutors, whose primary duty was to educate the sons of the kurios, would give public lectures to promote the glory and honor of the house (in greek the oikos) to which they belonged."

​

​"When the family involved had political power, the kind that would make them be called titles like kurios, the household buildings would often be used for public purposes. When a family lost political power (which usually involved the death of all males within the family), certain key buildings, such as the lecture halls, would continue to be maintained by the public purse and used by scholars and philosophers. Whatever the case, this public or semi-public nature of lecture halls allowed visiting teachers to hold classes with their direct students, subject to the needs of the actual owners or city government.'"

​

"When the family involved had political power, the kind that would make them be called titles like kurios, the household buildings would often be used for public purposes. When a family lost political power (which usually involved the death of all males within the family), certain key buildings, such as the lecture halls, would continue to be maintained by the public purse and used by scholars and philosophers. Whatever the case, this public or semi-public nature of lecture halls allowed visiting teachers to hold classes with their direct students, subject to the needs of the actual owners or city government.'"

​

"This use of teachers is probably the relationship Paul entered into; he taught in the hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus. The key point here is that this was not an ekklesia and would not have been investigated as such, but instead, it would have been a school that met in a Kurios Oikos, which was sometimes shortened to kyriake. Indeed, the Bible does not call the disciples an ekklesia during the entire time that Paul resides in Ephesus (Act 19). Only after he leaves does the text call them an Ekklesia. The word Church is not used even though Paul did everything the modern Church does for YEARS."

​

"It should be noted that specific Biblical commentaries, while admitting that there is nothing in the historical record about Tyrannus of Ephesus, assert that he was probably a philosophy teacher or a rhetoricist. Without casting aspersions on the writers of such commentaries, it is exceedingly unlikely in Roman society that a teacher of rhetoric or a doctor or professional of any kind would own property in his name. Those who owned property did not teach; they hired teachers."

​

"In addition, Tyrannus is a derivative of the word kurios, translated into Latin and then back into Greek, and it specifically refers to a person without political superiority. Kurios is hardly the name that a professional, dependent on the truly wealthy, would use to rise to prominence." 

​

"Over time, Christianity grew within the Roman Empire, leading to it becoming the official state religion of Rome. While much good came from the attempt by the Emperors to Christianize their empire, there were also significant issues. One of those issues came from the places of worship. One of the things that the Emperors did to consolidate power was to centralize control of religious structures. From the early days of Caesar Augustus, the cult that he started was highly aggressive at co-opting and buying out other religious structures. While the precise nature of this religious co-option is hard to pin down, almost certainly, by the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, virtually all temples in the Roman Empire were technically owned by the Roman Emperor. As the Roman emperor was the kurios, the master and lord of the Roman empire, all such houses became kurios oikos, a House of the Lord."

​

​"When the empire Christianized, the emperor exercised his legal right of ownership to turn out the old priests and install his new Christian priesthood. In theory, this was accompanied by a shift from the house of the Lord Caesar to the house of the Lord Jesus Christ. In practice, the emperor retained legal and practical authority over those houses of worship. While it is likely that there were significant reformers who believed in the shift from Caesar as Lord to Jesus as Lord, the history of the Roman Catholic Church demonstrates that the mindset of political and religious authority being concentrated in a man here on earth continued and eventually triumphed over the Christians within the Roman Catholic hierarchy who confessed Jesus as Lord."

​

​"Meanwhile, the word Kurios Oikos, or Kyriake, continued down the centuries. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that it created a forgotten Gothic word, which became the root of similar Kirk-sounding words in Saxon, Norse, Frisian, Dutch, and several varieties of German. When the Bible was translated into English, Kirk was a Scottish word (the English sounding was Church) that primarily meant religious authority or power."

​

"Now, the inquiring reader might ask why the translators of the Bible would pick a word like Kirk rather than a more honest translation. Let us take William Tyndale, the prince of translators. Why did he select the Church as the translation of Ekklesia? Oh, well, actually, he did not. He asserted that Ekklesia should be translated as congregation or assembly, a stance for which he was martyred. Contemplate that. One of the key men responsible for translating the Bible into English believed that telling the people of God that the Church was the proper translation of Ekklesia was such a betrayal of his Lord that he was willing to die rather than engage in such dereliction of his duty as a translator."

​

"The king of England, a practical ruler, understood the inherent dualism of the terminology of the Lord's House as he was the technical owner of all church property, with the practical authority to decide which priests and bishops would be funded. He wanted the ambiguity of the Lord's House to remain in full effect."