Church Confusion

One of the biggest deceptions and hindrances to Biblical Christianity in America is the equivocation of the word “church”. When God used Rome to destroy the Temple in 70 AD, He made a clear statement that He no longer dwelt in a building, particularly the holy of holys in the Temple.

The day of Pentecost was the fulfillment of God’s promise to dwell in His people rather than in a physical edifice. The people of God now are the temple of God.

The problem is that in English we do not have two different words to distinguish between the building where Christians gather and the People in whom God now dwells. Both concepts use the same word “Church.”

In modern American 501(c)3 corporation “churches” the use of the word “church” for a physical building is reinforced by the State’s mandate of imposing the unbiblical office of Trustees the responsibility of oversight of the property, particularly the most common building being called the “church.”

As a result, the mindset of modern Christians in State religious corporations is they “go to church” rather than they “are the church.” So when Christians come and go, they leave the church and go about their lives apart from the church they attended on Sunday.

Unless and until Christians return to the Biblical definition of the Church as the People of God and not a building in which we gather, American Christianity will remain anemic, irrelevant, and impotent, which, by the way, is exactly what the government wants. The only real challenge to expansive governmental power is Biblical Christianity, but that is a subject for another day and another blog.