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THE CHURCH OF CHRIST

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 27, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 30.

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THE CHURCH OF CHRIST.

A Wonderful Chapter.

THE most wonderful, most comprehensive, chapter of all the Book of God is the twelfth chapter of Revelation. It spans the great controversy between Sin and Righteousness, between Christ and Satan, for all time past, till the setting sun of earthly history is sinking upon a persecuted church. Yet it does not leave one struggling soul in despair; it is vibrant with the shout of victory.
Three prominent personages stand out in bold relief in its symbolic language—the Woman, the Man-child, and the Dragon. The old prophet sees them as tho acting in the sidereal heavens among the stars, showing that the conflict, the warfare, the battle-ground, lies in the spiritual realm, not in the physical.
Brief studies of this wonderful chapter will help all our readers, we are sure. First of all, then,—

The Woman.

In symbolic prophecy a woman represents a church, an assemblage, of people called out and united for a spiritual purpose, either good or evil. For we use “spiritual,” not in contradistinction to “carnal,” but to outward and physical, just as there are spirits both good and evil.
The true church is represented by a true woman. The Lord says, “I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman.” Jer. 6:2. The apostle writes to a church, “I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ.” 2 Cor. 11:2. Consonant with this, His message to His people anciently is, “I am a husband unto you.” An apostle with the same relationship in mind declares that Christ’s work for His people is “that He might present the church to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Eph. 5:27.
We need only to refer to those parts of scripture where backsliding Israel and Judah and Babylon and her daughters are likened to harlots, who have ensnared souls, and corrupted the nations of earth. Eze. 23:5-21; Isaiah 47; Rev. 17:5.
The woman of Revelation 12 represents the true church of Christ as she stood just prior to, and at the time of, the birth of Christ. The moon, which shines not by its own light, is under her feet. The glory of the sun clothes her. Twelve stars crown her head. The age of types and shadows, borrowing, like the moon, its light from a burning and shining body, is cast off, and will soon be removed from sight. The Sun of Righteousness, with a glory of character such as the world never before saw, yet ever longed for, was about to arise, and in the period of the vision did arise, filling all with His splendor. The twelve stars represent the twelve tribes of God’s true people, over which our Lord places the twelve apostles. Hidden from man tho they may be, all are remembered, all are recorded, before Him who holds all in His power. James 1:1; Rev. 7:4-8; 21:12, 14.
That church is therefore shown as belonging, not alone to the period since our Lord walked the earth, but belonging to past time as well. God had a church in the days of Moses and David and Elijah as truly as He did in the days of Paul and Luther and Wesley. From the beginning of the conflict of sin among the children of earth, from the time that the mercy of God called man from sin’s doom, there has been the church militant of God.

The Word “Church.”

Our English word “church,” according to the Standard Dictionary, comes from the Anglo-Saxon “circe,” the Greek kyriakos, “of the Lord”; from kyrios, “lord,” kyros, “might.” But, desirable as this origin might be, it is not the Bible origin of the word “church.” In every instance in our English Bible the word church comes from the Greek word ekklēsia, from which “ecclesiastical” is derived.
The meaning of the Greek term, ekklēsia (pronounced, ek-klay-see’ah) is derived from two words, ek “out,” and kaleō, “call,” and means “called out.” The church of Christ is therefore composed of “called-out ones.” More than this: The word ekklēsia has larger meaning than merely called out, but, as defined by Liddell and Scott’s Standard Greek Lexicon: “An assembly of the citizens regularly summoned, opposed to sullogos, an assembly, concourse, or meeting of persons, whether legal or riotous.”
The church of Christ is therefore composed, not of a promiscuous assembly, not of a congregation called together by some one without authority, but an assembly, a people, “regularly summoned.”
We do not have the word “church” in the Old Testament in our English Bible; the terms there used are generally “assembly” or “congregation.” But two things show quite clearly that the assembly, or congregation,—even army,—of God’s people in past ages is identical with the church in the present. (1) The martyr Stephen in Acts 7:38 refers to the children of Israel, as they journeyed from Egypt to Canaan as “the church in the wilderness.” (2) The Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek about two and one-half centuries before Christ, many times speak of the assembly, or congregation, or tribes, of Israel by the term ekklēsia. Instances of this may be found in Lev. 8:4; Deut. 9:10; 2 Chron. 30:23; Deut. 23:1, 2, 3, 8; Judges 21:5; 1 Kings 8:14, 22, 55, 65; 1 Sam. 17:47. These evidences are conclusive that the congregation of God (the better term) are the called-out ones by God in all ages, by whatever name they may be called.
When Adam and his posterity yielded to Satan, they became his bond-servants, in the sore slavery of sin. They turned from their true Master and chose a tyrant and murderer. God in His mercy and goodness calls them out of that condition to be His. All who accept the call become His called-out ones, His ekklēsia, or church. In Adam’s household those who accepted God’s call became, as truly as in later times, the church which was “in his house.” Col. 4:15. And thus also with Noah and Abraham, and the good of all patriarchal times. The patriarch was the first under God.
When God called Jacob’s seed from Egypt, the church took on a larger aspect. The nation became the ekklēsia, the church, the congregation of the Lord. Its services, its government, its worship, its priesthood, and all pertaining to it became more elaborate. Its membership shrunk by death and apostasy; it was replenished by births and conversions. New light and duty weeded out the time-servers and hypocrites, but they also won noble souls and developed strong, loyal characters. And thus the church passed from century to century, from crisis to crisis, till we come to the first advent of our Lord, the chronological view-point of our prophecy.
[The “Calling of the Church,” will be considered in our next.]