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Is a Gathering of the Church, “a Worship Service,” a Biblical Belief?
When a pastor or church calls its meeting on Sunday morning or evening, “a worship service,” is that a biblical belief or practice? For years, I’ve called the assembling of our church “AM Worship” and “PM Worship.” Is that just a tradition? Is it the scriptural way to look at it? Recently, an online commentator […]
The Unscriptural Decline of Singing the Psalms in Churches
As I grew up in an independent Baptist church, not only did we not sing the psalms; I never heard of doing it. It never even occurred to me that a church should sing the psalms. I hate to report this. During my Bible college and seminary years, no one mentioned psalm singing. It was […]
The Terrible Effect of the Wrong View of Church on a Truly Biblical Understanding of Unity and the Truth
In two passages, Jesus taught how to pray — Matthew 6 and Luke 11 — with a model prayer. Both those are the same. The New Testament references Jesus praying many times, but actual recorded prayers of His are very few: a couple of thanks (Matthew 11:25-26, John 11:41-42), very brief cries on the cross […]
Ekklesia in Pre-Christian Greek Literature
The Greek word ἐκκλησία (transliterated as ekklesia in English) fundamentally meant “a duly summoned assembly or gathering” (from ἐκ “out of” + καλέω “to call”) throughout its history in pre-Christian Greek literature. This usage is thoroughly documented in classical authors (5th–4th centuries BC) long before Jesus employed it in Matthew 16:18 (spoken circa 30 AD, […]
Textual Variants, Preservation of Scripture, and the Westminster Assembly (Part Four)
Part One Part Two Part Three Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8 in the section on the Holy Scriptures reads: The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most […]
Steps in the Right Process for Belief Change (Part Two)
Part One Change, Sanctification, and God’s Purpose The Bible says change is God’s purpose for people. The Apostle Paul in a pivotal moment in his epistle to the church at Rome, writes (Romans 8:28-30): 28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the […]
Jesus, the Mystery Form of the Kingdom, and Last Things
A Tipping Point Israel as a whole and its religious leaders rejected Jesus Christ with chapter twelve of Matthew the deciding juncture, a tipping point. They said that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub. The Lord declared that it was the treasury of their heart out of which they made that pronouncement about Him. Jesus […]
The Historical Story of External Factors Perverting the Meaning of Church
The New Testament Meaning of Church God revealed His Word, which is the special revelation of every and all of His Words by God the Spirit through human authors. Those words communicate plainly the will of God to man, including the nature of the church. The church is what scripture says it is through its […]
Faith in God and the Sufficiency of the Church
Pleasing God by Faith In a now very familiar verse, James writes in James 2:19: Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Someone may say that he has faith, but what is the […]
The Sinner’s Prayer Absent From Evangelism in Church History
Is the sinner’s prayer a methodology for evangelism present in the overwhelming majority of church history? No. Some time ago I read Dr. Paul Chitwood’s 2001 Ph. D. dissertation The Sinners Prayer: A Historical and Theological Analysis (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2001). It is a valuable historical analysis of the development of the evangelistic methodology […]
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