Church... A word of pagan origin -

[amadeois]

To clarify it:

When I came to this forum and I signed up on my credentials I never wrote that I was Anglican, somehow it got there.

I so not follow any particular denomination, I just follow the word of God and I believe every part of it and I am trying to understand His message and I am passing along on what I have found to be the message of God.
Not my message, His message.
We are all sinners, I'm just pointing out some errors on what I have discovered by trying diligently to study His word.

I know that people may not like what I write but you better back up your presentations based on the WORD and not on other persons. We need to place ourselves on God's sandals ( matter of speech, since He is a Spirit, He doesn't need to wear shoes or sandals) to understand His message.

WE NEED TO INTERPRET HIS WORD HIS WAY AS HE MEANT IT.

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[amadeois]

[MENTION=13]Josiah[/MENTION]

You are putting words in my mouth.

I just mentioned YOUR WORDS, not the rest of the people.

I made a mistake with More Coffee and I apologized.

That's my clarification.
We are not here to fight but to come to an agreement.

We need to do it in a sensible and inteligente manner, but it seems is NOT working.

May God bless you and guide you and all of us.

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[amadeois]

[MENTION=62]tango[/MENTION]

So what?

It seems that saying that, nothing is important.

So should I pay attention to what you say?

Should I take that posture?

SO WHAT?

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[tango]

To clarify it:

When I came to this forum and I signed up on my credentials I never wrote that I was Anglican, somehow it got there.

You should be able to change it in your profile. I identify merely as "Christian" because I don't feel the need to explicitly identify with any particular denomination.

I so not follow any particular denomination, I just follow the word of God and I believe every part of it and I am trying to understand His message and I am passing along on what I have found to be the message of God.
Not my message, His message.
We are all sinners, I'm just pointing out some errors on what I have discovered by trying diligently to study His word.

Sure, but we always need to remember that we're presenting our understanding of God's message. If someone else disagrees it may be that their understanding is the correct one and ours is wrong.

I know that people may not like what I write but you better back up your presentations based on the WORD and not on other persons. We need to place ourselves on God's sandals ( matter of speech, since He is a Spirit, He doesn't need to wear shoes or sandals) to understand His message.

WE NEED TO INTERPRET HIS WORD HIS WAY AS HE MEANT IT.

When presenting an unpopular message it's even more important to back it with Scripture and, ideally, consider in advance texts that might appear to support an alternative explanation and explain why you believe they support rather than undermine your position.

 

[amadeois]

[MENTION=62]tango[/MENTION]

The RCC dresses his cardenals and bishops in scarlet and purple colors.

Have you read Revelation 18 and specifically Revelation 18:16

"And saying, Alas, alas that great city (Reference to Rev. 17:4), that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with holf, and precious stones, and pearls!"

What city dresses that way?

The Vatican City center of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).

What happens to it?

Read all about it from the news given in the WORD OF GOD:

Revelation 18, verses 17 through 19.

SO WHAT?


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[tango]

[MENTION=62]tango[/MENTION]

So what?

It seems that saying that, nothing is important.

So should I pay attention to what you say?

Should I take that posture?

SO WHAT?

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So what? - it's a simple question that helps save us from all sorts of pointless jabberings that go nowhere. So what? - forces us to focus on what matters and how it might be useful. If you can't answer the question "So what?" it raises the related question of why you're even presenting a message.

In business - "we sold $50m of goods this month" might be answered with "so what?" because it lacks context. Is $50m in a month good, bad, normal? Without context nobody knows. If for the last six months the highest you saw was $20m then you've had an awesome month; if the last time you saw sales this low was a year ago then you've had a pretty poor month. The question "So what?" asks for more, for context, for an explanation of why the information is being presented and what we gain from the conclusion. If sales have spiked we might look to figure out what has driven more customers to our doors - maybe the latest marketing campaign has worked, maybe it's just been really warm and people are buying our ice cream. If sales have slumped we might look to figure out why people haven't been buying - maybe our competitor just introduced a new promotion, maybe it's been a dull wet summer and nobody is buying our ice cream. The thing is that the raw piece of information in isolation is worthless, with context it provides a bigger picture that then invites us to understand the context and take any appropriate action.

In this context - "So what?" asks why anyone is making a fuss over the origin of the word "church". Depending on the context it can mean a building or the people who assemble just like "bank" can, depending on context, mean the place you deposit your money or the bit of land beside the river. If you're giving someone directions and say "turn left at the church" you wouldn't expect to get into a philosophical argument about which particular group of people they should be watching for so they can turn - you're clearly referring to the building. If you say "I'm going to church on Sunday morning" you probably mean that you're going to attend the building. If you say "I'm going to a church picnic this afternoon" you're clearly referring to a picnic attended by a group of people. Hence the question, "so what?" asks what point anyone is trying to make under all the words. If there was some reason it was important to find another name for the building then the "so what" question is answered. If all we're doing is having a discussion that concludes little more than that language evolves then we might as well argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or some such.

Feel free to correct me if you expect people to turn left when they see a group of people gathered together in the name of Christ, or if the old building with a steeple shows up to the park to enjoy the picnic.

 

[tango]

[MENTION=62]tango[/MENTION]

The RCC dresses his cardenals and bishops in scarlet and purple colors.

Have you read Revelation 18 and specifically Revelation 18:16

"And saying, Alas, alas that great city (Reference to Rev. 17:4), that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with holf, and precious stones, and pearls!"

What city dresses that way?

The Vatican City center of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC).

What happens to it?

Read all about it from the news given in the WORD OF GOD:

Revelation 18, verses 17 through 19.

SO WHAT?


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Is that relevant to the discussion of the origin of the word "church"?

Feel free to discuss it in another thread, it's just that even as a non-Catholic it gets a little tedious when threads take side turns to dig at the RCC.

 

[amadeois]

The RCC says that they are the "true church" so it is related to it and to know more is to obtain wisdom.

The Word of God, not mine, says that this institution will be destroyed in one hour, so we should learn everything of what church means and which one is the true church.

If you follow the wrong church, what do you expect?

I believe is important what you need to know about the church, it's meaning and what it represents.

The word "church" appears 77 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

Jesus used the word "ekklesia" in Matthew 16:18 about building His church.

The word "ekklesia" appears 118 times in the Bible of which 115 were translated as church and only 3 as assembly.

The translations sometimes have been done incorrectly and have
changed the original message.

So I believe here we are discussing the Word of God and not only the definition of church but everything surrounding it's meaning.

But to you it seems, so what?

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[amadeois]

The original OP was about what was said on the link to "andrejao" and to explain the bases of what church means in different languages and it's meaning today that has strayed away from the original meaning of what Jesus said in Matthew's book.

That article said that many people currently think thew church is the building because they say that on Sunday the go to church. And church is a building very different from the original intention of its usage. Also as it was explained, they created a rule on translating the word "ekklesia" that appears 118 times. But when I checked in the "blue letter bible" it said 77 times. So they are doing double talk.

So is IMPORTANT to understand the meaning of the word and also the entire message. Words only convey a short message, but phrases and paragraphs and chapters convey the ENTIRE idea of the person writing it.

Somebody may say: So what?
Somebody else may say: Does it matter?

Do those little details matter to God? Should they matter to us?
Why did He inspired them to be written?


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[amadeois]

[MENTION=13]Josiah[/MENTION]

You avoided my question, so here I'm going to make an assumption, that may be wrong, but you know the answer and you are not willing to tell me what it is.

You attend church on Sunday because your church believes Jesus was resurrected on Sunday.

If that is not the truth then I apologize.

Why I say this is because the majority of Christian churches believe in the Sunday resurrection that it is incorrect and already has been demostrated on 3 other threads.
The Bible warns us in Revelation 18:4

"And I (this is the apostle John) heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of he plagues."

IS THIS CLEAR?

THESE ARE GOD'S WORDS SO PAY ATTENTION

IT HAS TO DO WITH A CHURCH, NOT GOD'S EKKLESIA.



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[Josiah]

To clarify it:

When I came to this forum and I signed up on my credentials I never wrote that I was Anglican, somehow it got there.

Then we have a serious problem in the program - if the program is AUTOMATICALLY assigning posters to the Anglican Church. I invite you to report the problem to Mark or Romano (if you don't know how, PM me and I'll do it for you) before all of us are declared Anglicans.

I am passing along on what I have found to be the message of God.

Didn't you indicate that you don't accept all Scripture as truth? Didn't you insist that you don't care what people think or believe or theorize (thus, we should not care what YOU think or believe or theorize)?

I know you insist no one should care what anyone thinks the message of God is, so I'm confused, why should any care what you think the message of God is - rather than what the words actually ARE? Why is what YOU personally, currently, individually think/feel/theorize so important (just YOU) but what people think/feel/theorize doesn't matter and no one should care about that?

Not my message, His message

His message is found in the verbatim Hebrew and Koine Greek words in Scripture. Anything else (including every word in your posts) is YOUR message. Which you've indicated is irrelevant and none should care about it.

The word here is ecclesia. It is a pagan word (as ALL Koine Greek words are... indeed, as EVERY word in EVERY human language is). THAT'S the word God inspired. Not your message, not your words.... as if you are the one, singular, individual, exclusive, unique exception to your advice that what people think/feel/theorize/believe is irrelevant and we shouldn't care.

And.... why does it matter to you what WORD(S) God used (rather than the long plethora of words YOU use) when you don't believe that all Scripture is true?


:dunno:





.

 

[amadeois]

I hope you read my explanation about what scripture is and you enter in a long tirade to attack my postings. It does not reflect what Jesus is asking from us.

So then, your postings are the only ones that are correct?

HUH???

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[tango]

The original OP was about what was said on the link to "andrejao" and to explain the bases of what church means in different languages and it's meaning today that has strayed away from the original meaning of what Jesus said in Matthew's book.

That article said that many people currently think thew church is the building because they say that on Sunday the go to church. And church is a building very different from the original intention of its usage. Also as it was explained, they created a rule on translating the word "ekklesia" that appears 118 times. But when I checked in the "blue letter bible" it said 77 times. So they are doing double talk.

So is IMPORTANT to understand the meaning of the word and also the entire message. Words only convey a short message, but phrases and paragraphs and chapters convey the ENTIRE idea of the person writing it.

Somebody may say: So what?
Somebody else may say: Does it matter?

Do those little details matter to God? Should they matter to us?
Why did He inspired them to be written?


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The point of asking "so what?" isn't to say that it doesn't matter it's an invitation to the person making the point to explain why it matters. But it seems you've merely taken to asking "so what?" all over the place, as if you don't understand the purpose of the question in the first place.

Can you explain why something matters? If not, throwing around the question of why it matters merely highlights the absence of depth to the post. If so, you don't necessarily need to throw it around because you've hopefully already answered the question within your post.

Should we care about the origins of the word "church"? We've already established that in different contexts it can mean either the old building with the steeple or the group of people who meet together for fellowship. Some people clearly do think that unless they are in church (i.e. the building) they are not "in church" (in any sense of the word), apparently not realising that church doesn't have to be in church, so to speak. Others realise that God's power doesn't start and stop at the threshold of the building, and accept that he can continue to work in someone's life even if they do step outside the building.

ETA: For the time my church was undergoing a major renovation project we met in a nearby school hall. We still referred to "going to church" - it made more sense than saying "going to school". We went to church, we just didn't go to church. Nobody saw the meetings as any less valid just because we weren't in the building identified as the church, we were the church - a group of people who went to church without going to church. It gets a bit silly constantly mixing and matching like this, much like if your financial institution doesn't happen to be beside the river so you have to go fishing on the bank to then leave the bank to go to the bank before returning to the bank to resume fishing, having only been to the bank once despite having been at the bank three times.

You keep saying it's important to understand the whole message. I don't see anybody disputing that. So I'm back to wondering what you're trying to accomplish here.

If anything I'd be more concerned about the format of a modern day church service than fussing over just what form of words we use to describe ourselves or the buildings we may choose to use as a meeting venue. I'm honestly not sure that a format of facing the front and a program of "sit down, shut up and listen" for the duration of the hour or two, broken only by standing to sing hymn 436 simply because the person at the front says "and now let's sing hymn number 436", is necessarily helpful. I'm more concerned that we've come a long way from the idea that one might have a psalm, another a teaching, another a tongue etc (1Co 14:26) in our passion to give everything a structure. That seems like a far bigger concern to me than the fact we've taken to using the same word for the building and the gathering of people.

 

[tango]

The RCC says that they are the "true church" so it is related to it and to know more is to obtain wisdom.

The Word of God, not mine, says that this institution will be destroyed in one hour, so we should learn everything of what church means and which one is the true church.

If you follow the wrong church, what do you expect?

I believe is important what you need to know about the church, it's meaning and what it represents.

The word "church" appears 77 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

Jesus used the word "ekklesia" in Matthew 16:18 about building His church.

The word "ekklesia" appears 118 times in the Bible of which 115 were translated as church and only 3 as assembly.

The translations sometimes have been done incorrectly and have
changed the original message.

So I believe here we are discussing the Word of God and not only the definition of church but everything surrounding it's meaning.

But to you it seems, so what?

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It would be nice if you'd make a case without merely throwing my own questions back at me. You could always try answering them, especially given I've described what their purpose is. But I guess it's easier to simply shrug in a passive-aggressive manner and act like people aren't interested, right? You commented earlier on the difference between knowing God and knowing about God, and the "so what" question is an invitation to turn something from a purely academic exercise into something far more useful that might be relevant to my life. If it's just a bunch of academic discussion it may be interesting but doesn't make any difference to my everyday life. If you don't feel like explaining why something is such a big concern it shouldn't be surprising that it gets relegated to "academic discussion" status, and therefore written off as largely irrelevant to daily life.

Here it seems you're just mixing and matching points and losing meaning every which way. I'm not taking a stance one way or the other on whether the RCC is the institution that will be torn down within an hour - if you want to discuss that why not start another thread? It has little to do with the issue of whether "church" should mean "building" or "assembly".

I've already made it pretty clear that I can see "church" as a word with two possible meanings, much like the word "bank" has two possible meanings, where the meaning intended can usually be determined by the context. So on that basis I'm not sure why you keep making the point that nobody seems to be disputing.

 

[MoreCoffee]

[MENTION=252]amadeois[/MENTION] - I wrote that "church" is derived from Greek. I said nothing about pagans. You are misrepresenting what I wrote.

...
More Coffee said that the word "church" is of pagan origin but he doesn't tell us what is based on.

...

[MENTION=252]amadeois[/MENTION] - I wrote no such thing. I wrote only that the English word church is derived from the Greek word kuriakon [doma] meaning Lord's [house]. This is the second time you've misrepresented what I wrote.

 

[MoreCoffee]

The RCC says that they are the "true church" so it is related to it and to know more is to obtain wisdom.
...

The Catholic Church says it is the Church that Christ established. The Catholic Church also says that the Orthodox Church is also the Church that Christ established but that it is out of communion with the see of Rome. The Catholic Church also says that other ancient Churches are the Church that Christ established are they are either in communion with the see of Rome or not according to their situation at this time in history. The Catholic Church also says that among the various denominations of Protestantism the body of Christ is present and the gospel is present but such bodies are usually not called churches because they have ceased to administer the full complement of sacraments - for example, many Protestant denominations do not recognise holy orders as sacramental, nor do those denominations recognise marriage as sacramental, nor do they recognise confession/reconciliation/repentance as sacramental and so forth.

 

[MoreCoffee]

[MENTION=60]MoreCoffee[/MENTION]

Sorry, I confused you with Josiah.
You said "means house of the Lord."

That is not correct either.

Read my comment #31.

Sorry that I placed word in your mouth. If we are wrong, we should say so and ask forgiveness from the person that was misquoted.

So I ask you to forgive my error.

Peace be with you my brother.


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[MENTION=252]amadeois[/MENTION] - I accept your apology. I am not Josiah. I do not share his views. I do not choose to express my views in the forms that he chooses to express his.

 

[amadeois]

[MENTION=60]MoreCoffee[/MENTION]

Thank you my brother.

Peace be with you.

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[amadeois]

Definition from the Urban Dictionary of:

"So What?"

A phrase used to describe complete lack of interest in what another person is saying, considered rude or necessary, depending on the conversation.




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[Josiah]

Definition from the Urban Dictionary of:

"So What?"

A phrase used to describe complete lack of interest in what another person is saying, considered rude or necessary, depending on the conversation.




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Real dictionary: So what? It means so what? What is the point you are trying to make? What are we to make of this?


To the point: I think virtually all Christians know that the NT was not penned in Modern Twenty-First Century English, and that the translations typically used by laypersons (and not any in formulating theology) are translations and not the language those who penned Scripture used. So, yes, the modern ENGLISH word "church" is different from the Koine Greek one in the NT (ecclesia). Yes, of course. All know this. Of course, both words are HUMAN words, invented by HUMANS (quite possibily pagans although it would be impossible to document who first used these words). Thus, the "so what" seems not only appropriate but unavoidable.

And yes: I think virtually all people - pagan and otherwise - know that modern words can have more than one possible meaning and thus likely meanings unintended by the original author. And certainly words of one language might have different meanings than those of an entirely, wholly, completely different language over 20 centuries earlier. Yup. I think we all know that. In this case, for example, the modern 21st Century ENGLISH word "church" can mean a building or a denomination which are not known meanings of the Koine Greek word "ecclesia" over 20 centuries ago. But then the Bible doesn't say "church," it says "eccelsia" - different words - your TRANSLATION into MODERN ENGLISH may have "church" of course. Again, theology is never formulated by translations. Theologians, pastors, etc. learn and study ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek for this (and other reasons) so that they can learn and study and discuss theology from the original Bible - not modern Translations. I'm sure your own pastor uses the original Hebrew and Greek as he forms Bible studies, writes sermons, etc. - indeed, it's quite likely he NEVER uses a translation at all. It's still one more reason (oh, how many are there?) for NOT leaning on one's own understanding, with self appointing self individually as the judge and arbiter of all things, for insisting that God only leads and teaches ONE (self) and only ONE (self) learns and follows (all based on some modern English TRANSLATION and not the words God actually inspired).

No. I have never written that not all Scripture is true (you did). And I have never written that the opinions and views of all but me are irrelevant. Nor have I written that I'm right or authoritative - the only claim I've made for me is that I'm a sinful, accountable, lay bloat. I have NOT claimed that I'm better than any other Christian or equal to the whole corpus of Christians. If you don't want to read my posts - you can just do that, and if my posts are too irresistable for you to ignore, this site has supplied an "ignore" feature. But I HOPE you'll see value in humble, COLLECTIVE, discussion as WE seek His truth and will. Together.



Pax Christi



-Josiah