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Biblical View of the Church

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Biblical View of the Church

The Church was birthed in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost after receiving the promised Holy Spirit. The book of Acts describes the beginning as well as the characteristics of the risen Christ newborn church (Acts 2:42-47). During this time, the Good News of Jesus Christ was proclaimed initially to Jews in Jerusalem and later spread to Gentiles throughout the Roman Empire. Since Jews and Gentiles were God’s “called out ones”, their mutual hostility was transformed into a cooperative unity due to their common salvation provided through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:13-16). All the people that God has called to himself constitute Christ church on earth, which is surrounded by a big “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1).

Undoubtedly, the New Testament teaching on church is essentially the “ekklesia” formed by a group of people who has been called out of the world by God. Paul refers to the church in Rome as the ones “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and “called to be saints” (Rom. 1:6-7). Hammet (2005) asserts in his book Biblical Foundations for Baptist Churches, that the New Testament churches gathered with the absolute goal “to worship (Acts 13:2-3; 1 Cor. 14:23ff), which included prayer (Acts 12:5; 13:3; 14:23), reading of Scripture (Co. 4:16; 1 Tim. 4:13), teaching from the leaders (Acts 20:28-31; Eph. 4:11; 1 Tim. 3:2), and the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:18ff.)”. It is important to notice that even though the people of God in the New Testament received new blessings, “both the usage of the term church in Scripture and the fact that throughout Scripture God has always called his people to assemble to worship himself, indicate that it is appropriate to think of the church as constituting all the people of God for all time, both Old Testament believers and New Testament believers”. On the other hand, in his book, Biblical

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