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As the great pyramids of Egypt had their origin in the mind of a designer, so the church of
Christ began in the purpose of its Designer — Almighty God. It is a divine entity which God
purposed, promised, prophesied, prepared and perfected in Christ, through the Holy Spirit. The
church is related to today's world as the ark was related to the world of Noah's day. As the ark
was the only locus of salvation from the flood, so the church is the only place where man may
escape the guilt and eternal consequences of sin. To be in Christ today, redeemed by His blood
(Eph. 1:7) is to be in the church which is His fulness (Eph. 1:22-23). If one is
in Christ, he is in the church, and if one is in the church he is in Christ.
The church is neither a stop-gap measure, an afterthought in God's mind, nor the product of a 19th century religious movement on the American Frontier. That the church as we know it today came from what apostates call "The Stone-Campbell Movement" is absolutely false and is a denominational concept embraced by those who have drunk too long and too deeply at denominational cisterns. The church of the New Testament was built by Jesus Christ and exists in our country today because of the "seed of the kingdom" planted in honest hearts (Luke 8:11). The gospel of Christ is God's power to save (Rom. 1:16-17) and whenever and wherever that gospel is preached without addition, subtraction or substitution, and believed and obeyed it produces the church as it did on Pentecost (Acts 2:37-41, 47). Its divine origin includes not only its purpose in God's mind, but the time of its establishment. When the church began on earth is important since that is one of the identifying marks of the church of Christ in the Scriptures. It began on the first Pentecost following Christ's resurrection and any religious organization that had its genesis before or after that time is not the church purposed by God and built by His Son, Jesus Christ. When Jesus said, "Upon this rock, I will build my church... And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 16:18-19) He used the terms "kingdom" and "church" to refer to the same institution. The church which He built is the kingdom over which He reigns today. That church — or kingdom — was the subject of Old Testament prophecy which foretold both the time and place of its establishment. As the church existed in God's eternal purpose (Eph. 1:9; 3:8-11) so it also existed in Old Testament prophecy when men of God, moved by the Holy Spirit, foretold the coming kingdom. One of those was Daniel, a Judean captive taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. In a dream which he could not recall, the king saw a great image with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, thighs and belly of brass, legs of iron and the feet a mixture of iron and clay. In the dream, the image was broken into pieces by a small stone cut out of a mountain "without hands". The phrase, "without hands," indicated that this was not a thing of human, but divine origin. The small stone represented the kingdom of heaven — the church — which "became a great mountain and filled the whole earth" (Dan. 2:34-35). God revealed the dream's meaning to the king through Daniel who said the various parts of the image were four kingdoms of men. The head of gold represented the Babylonian kingdom over which Nebuchadnezzar reigned. The breast and arms of silver represented the Medo-Persian empire. The thighs and belly of brass were the empire of Alexander the Great, and the legs of iron and the feet of iron and clay were the Roman empire. The dream, Daniel said, foretold the establishment of the church, or the everlasting kingdom of heaven in the days of the kings represented by the feet of iron and clay. "And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it shall stand forever" (Dan. 2:44). "In the days of these kings" — the Roman Empire — specified when the kingdom of God would be established. That time, during "the days of these kings," was further narrowed in a later vision Daniel had. "I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed" (Dan. 7:13-14). Daniel predicted that the Son of man — Jesus Christ — would come to the Ancient of Days — God — with the clouds of heaven. When this occurred, He would be given dominion, and glory and a kingdom. Those events surrounding the establishment of the church, and predicted by Daniel some five centuries before, were precisely fulfilled in the New Testament in approximately 33 A. D. "And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11). Christ was given dominion after He ascended to the Father and the church was established when the events described in the above passage took place. The kingdom was established on the day of Pentecost following Christ's death, burial, resurrection and ascension. On that day, Peter recounted those events, crowning his sermon with the proclamation that Christ is now the ascended and crowned King. "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:32, 33, 36). The church was established when Rome ruled the world. That was the last great kingdom represented by feet of clay mixed with iron of the image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the establishment of the everlasting kingdom of God took place "in the days of those kings." What Daniel called "the days of these kings," Isaiah called "the last days" in his highly figurative prophecy and also foretold the place where the church would be established. "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isa. 2:2-4). "The mountain of the Lord's house" in Isaiah's prophecy is the church. That is made clear by Paul's statement to Timothy: "But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God..." (1 Tim. 3:15). Isaiah also prophesied of the universal nature of the church, saying, "all nations shall flow unto it" and that, "out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." The church of Christ was established in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost following Christ's resurrection as prophesied by Isaiah and Daniel. It is an eternal entity, originating in the mind of God and established when God sent forth His Son in "the fulness of time" (Gal. 4:4) while Rome ruled the world. "Churches" originating this side of Acts two are not the church of Old Testament prophecy or New Testament establishment. Some of those and their dates of origin are, The Roman Catholic Church (606 A.D. as a result of apostasy), The Lutheran and Presbyterian Churches (1500s), Baptist Churches (1600s), The Methodist Church (1700s), The Mormon Church (1800s), Pentecostal Holiness — including The Assembly of God and The Nazarene Church — (1800s-1900s) and the so called, "Community Churches" of the 20th century. |