Okay, I know this is an urban legend, but it's still a fun party trick.
In 1611 the King James Bible was completed. William Shakespeare was a favorite of King James and (the legend goes) was brought in to put the finishing poetic touches on some of the translated passages. During the process, Shakespeare wanted to leave his "signature" somewhere in the text.
So if you open your Bible to the very middle (Psalms) and find the 46th chapter and count 46 words down, you will come to the word "shake." If you count 46 words up from the bottom of the chapter you will find the word "spear."
And why 46? Because William Shakespeare was 46 years old at the time the project was completed.
So next time you inadvertently stumble into a Bible translation debate, you can relay this senseless story to confuse everyone before you make your escape.
(Hey, I should write a novel called "The Shakespeare Code").
Okay, Cindy brought this topic up so I thought I’d open the door on it so she—or anyone else—could comment. But I’m no expert and am not sure I have a dogmatic opinion on it. The issue is church succession: how should churches be started...and how have they been started throughout history?
Some claim that churches should reproduce new churches. In fact, they say, God’s true type of church has been propagated this way since the days of the apostles. I suppose this is called unbroken succession.
Others say God’s true type of church has always existed at any given point in history, but that the genealogy has not followed an unbroken chain of succession. That is, just before a good church faded from existence in the Alps, another one might have sprung up in Wales to keep the flame alive. I guess this is called church perpetuity.
Still others say that the New Testament church got off track and basically went out of existence for several centuries when the Romans melded it with the pagan state religion; but thankfully the Reformers tinkered with the Catholic model a little bit and--voila!—God’s church was resurrected from the dead. This is the Protestant view.
So does it matter? Does it matter how churches are started or who leads them? Some people start home churches from scratch. This can occur out of pride, or desperation, or even necessity (I’m thinking of underground home churches in China). Others think a church needs to be “planted” by a mother church. And the present reality is most churches are actually started by seminaries or mission boards that may be only nominally affiliated with any church.
As to the historical angle, here is Charles Spurgeon’s opinion:
"We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the Reformation, we were reformers before Luther or Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the very days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel underground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents.”
It may sound like a saucy Brazilian woman, but it’s actually a new Christian website. Hard to explain it, but it’s one of the handful that I click on frequently to see what’s new. Its subtitle is “Christian News and Views.” It’s like a Christian Drudge Report, except you can post your own headlines with links to news articles or good blog posts.
Some of the links are informative or newsworthy. Some are just entertaining: like the boater who called the police because a church baptism service was blocking the boat ramp (and the authorities sided with the church). It’s a nice break from the predictable news selections you get on the mainstream media sites. Here's the link (also found over on the right).
Actually I'm not sure if it's Ziza or ZIZA...but whatever. At least I spelled it right.
(Summary of Part 1: Scripture doesn’t teach a “universal church”).
But isn’t the church the “body of Christ,” and aren’t all Christians part of “the body of Christ”?
Yes, it is. And no, they’re not.
Paul uses the metaphor of the human body (eyes, ears, hands, feet) to describe the ekklesia, the summoned assembly: different members with different gifts working together as one functional unit. “[T]he body is not one member, but many…whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (I Cor. 12: 14, 26). The members of a local church are one body for Christ, one body in Christ, one body established by Christ. “Now ye [the church at Corinth] are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (I Cor. 12: 27). So the “body” metaphor refers to each individual assembly—not a composite of all those assemblies.
You are not in the same ekklesia as a Christian man in China. If he suffers, you cannot suffer with him. You don’t even know him. If he is unrepentant about a public sin, you cannot “tell it unto the church” (Matt. 18: 17). Who are you going to tell? The two of you are not members of the same functional body. Such an amorphous affiliation as a “universal church” can never be the organized, effective unit that Christ intended when he said “I will build my church [ekklesia]” (Matt. 16: 18).
But aren’t all Christians somehow “related”?
Of course. We are all part of the Kingdom. We have one King presiding over us from Heaven. We are each members of our own ekklesias, which are orderly assemblies meant to spread the Kingdom. We don’t all belong to the exact same ekklesia, anymore than all schoolchildren belong to the same school. But we are all in the same Kingdom and share the same purposes, which are to be achieved through our individual ekklesias, each working in its own sphere of influence and encouraging the others. One day, too, we will all be members of a larger assembly—a general assembly of all saints in Heaven. But all the saints won’t constitute a summoned assembly until then.
Why does it matter anyway? What’s wrong with teaching a “universal church”?
Well, if you are automatically a member of Christ’s “universal church” then joining a local ekklesia becomes an afterthought. This is why Satan triumphs when Christians buy into the idea of membership in the “universal church.” The allegedly-ideal “universal church” sure beats the local assembly with its personality quirks and flaws, doesn’t it? So many Christians become slack in seeking out an ekklesia where they can grow in the Word, edify each other, and spread the Kingdom.
The individual local assemblies, weakened by their own identity crises, give way to para-church organizations that appear to offer better “central unifying principles”: associations, conventions, seminaries, and national youth groups. Ekklesias have been redefined as mere buildings where these para-church groups hold sway, while self-professed members of the “universal church” float aimlessly in and out of them, receiving no discipleship or doctrinal training from the church leadership itself. For many modern Christians, the ekklesia has become the red-headed stepchild of God’s ultimate plan.
But the ekklesia--the functional local assembly--was the sole institution created by Christ to spread the Kingdom to all nations until “every tongue shall confess God” (Rom. 14: 11).
Pop quiz: is this a) an ekklesia, b) a kirche, or c) a universal church?
Most pastors I know teach that there are two kinds of churches. Once you are saved, they say, you automatically become a member of Christ’s church, which is an invisible organism composed of all believers worldwide, living and dead. They call this the “universal church.” Later, if you wish, you can join up with a more quaint and less pure local assembly, which is also called “the church.”
But does the Bible really teach two kinds of churches? Specifically, does it speak of a “universal church”? I don’t think it does. I think the idea of two churches is confusing and self-contradictory and ultimately weakens the institution that Christ established to spread the gospel message.
The words “church” and “churches” appear about 115 times in Scripture. With one exception, the word is always translated in the original Greek as ekklesia (in one instance, the English translators loosely used the word “churches” in reference to particular buildings--specifically, pagan temples). So ekklesia is the only word used to describe the New Testament church. Ekklesia has a specific meaning: it literally means “called out” or “summoned.” Christ did not invent the word: it was commonly used in that time to refer to “a summoned assembly”—such as the “town council” meetings in ancient Greece. The disciples would have interpreted it to mean not just “an election” but “an assembly of the elect.” Today we might use a term like “congress.” Of course a nebulous universal affiliation cannot assemble or convene.
[The English word “church,” by the way, is taken from the German kirche which refers to an actual building, making the whole discussion even more confusing since nowadays we wrongly think of a church as a building.]
There is no separate Greek phrase in Scripture connoting a “universal church” as opposed to an ekklesia. This fact alone is enough to do away with the teaching of a separate universal church. There is no passage in Scripture that claims there are two different kinds of churches. There is no passage that explains the differences between two such “churches.” There is no passage that suggests the word ekklesia is to have more than one definition.
The confusion comes when the word “church” is used in the singular. Christ and the New Testament writers sometimes use the generic singular to describe something that is plural. For example, “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph. 5: 23). Here Paul is using the idea of a generic church rather than one specific local assembly. He no more means that there is a “universal church” than he means that there is a “universal husband.” In fact, the concept of a universal husband is as much an impossibility as the concept of a universal local assembly. So this usage is the generic singular: each husband is the head of each wife, even as Christ is the head of each ekklesia. Here is another example: “…if he [the unrepentant church member] shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church” (Matt. 18: 17). He doesn’t say, “tell it unto the church at Jerusalem,” or some other specific local assembly, because He means the principle to apply to all churches, plural.
Yet another example is found in Mathew 16: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). This does not mean “I will build one church only,” but rather, “I will build my (generic) kind of assembly.” If God had said in the Garden of Eden, “I will establish the family,” we would plainly understand that He was using the generic singular to describe multiple units of one type. The same applies to “the church”: an ideal type, manifested as multiple real individual assemblies.
Once we understand the usage of the generic singular, the doctrine of a “universal church” becomes less tenable and less necessary.
...Schoolhouse Rock, we bought the entire collection on DVD and the kids love it. It's a great supplement for math, history, science and grammar. It's amazing to think that these were shown on network TV instead of commercials. Maybe the network felt guilty for feeding us a steady diet of junk like "Jabberjaw" and "Captain Caveman," and this was their penance.
Here's one of my favorites: "Three is a Magic Number" by jazz musician Bob Donough.
And for some hilarious comic relief, here's a knockoff called Public Schoolhouse Rock.
If you liked that, there are two more here and here, with some mild bad language.
This is a vitally important question, because Abraham’s seed is to be the recipient of great promises. The Bible says all the nations of the world will be blessed by Abraham’s seed. It says his seed will number as the stars of the sky and inherit the world. So who is it?
Unfortunately, many Christians interpret the phrase carnally. To them the seed is the Jews and national Israel. To them the seed is spread not by the Spirit but by sperm. How many times have you heard that the Jews are God’s chosen people, or, more incredibly, that Christians must act reverently and deferentially toward the current inhabitants of political Israel—regardless of their relationship with Christ?
The problems with this view are numerous.
One obvious problem is that Abraham had many children, yet the seed was passed only to one: Isaac. Ishmael was a carnal seed of Abraham, yet tradition tells us he was the father of the Arabs. After Sarah died, Abraham remarried and had many more children who had nothing to do with Israel. God “hated” Abraham’s grandson Esau and excluded him from the line of blessing. So right off the bat most of Abraham’s carnal seeds were out of the running.
So what does it mean to be of the seed of Abraham? Rather than me rambling on, let’s see if Scripture makes it clear.
“Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham” (Galatians 3: 7).
“For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3: 26-29).
“For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Romans 9: 6-8).
“For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4: 13).
Pretty straightforward. The seed represents faith in Christ. If one of your children believes, he is of the seed. If another of your children doesn’t believe, he is not of the seed. It actually has nothing to do with genetics. The genetic descendants of Abraham are not necessarily God’s people. In fact, they never were. They were only considered so on an individual basis if they were saved by grace through faith in the Messiah.
The Sunday school song actually gets this right: “Father Abraham had many sons, and many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let’s all praise the Lord.”
That’s not a song to be sung by ethnic Jews only, though they can certainly sing it if they are saved. And one day, most of them will sing it (Romans 11: 26)--along with the majority of the world (Psalms 22: 27; Isaiah 2: 2; Habbakuk 2: 14).
So if Christians are the seed, they will number as the stars of the sky, they will cause all nations to be blessed through the “gospel of the kingdom,” they will inherit not just a sliver of dry land in the Mideast, but the world. It will not be a political dominion but a spiritual one.
Kind of changes the perspective doesn’t it?
Dispensationalists have to devise a theology that takes Christians off the map (the imminent Rapture) so that national and carnal Israel can supposedly receive all those promises. But the promises were never given to national Israel or Abraham’s fleshly offspring. They were given to those who, like Abraham, have faith in Christ.
Okay, I know this is an urban legend, but it's still a fun party trick.
