Just as we all must come to know Christ individually and cannot come to a saving, personal knowledge of Jesus by our association with a group or organization, so we must also seek out for ourselves the truth concerning the Church. Regarding the Church, every truly born-again believer will ultimately have to ask four fundamental spiritual questions in their own heart.

1. Who is the Church?

2. What is the Church?

3. Where can the Church be found?

4. How do I fit into the Church once I find it?

Finding the answer to these questions can be more difficult than what our initial expectations might expect, especially if we are coming out of a denomination that we grew up in or had some adult connection with. Especially, if we have been injured or abused by some bogus church experience, or terrorized by some bible-belter weirdo trying to work out their own salvation by tacking you to their idea of the cross which they themselves have refused to mount.     

It can be a great struggle to find the true answers to these questions, people are so frustrated that they give up trying. It requires a supernatural visitation, a  move of the hand of God, spiritual biblical gifts such as words of knowledge, words of wisdom and prophecy, as well as the others enumerated in the epistle of 1 Corinthians chapter 12, to draw us to the arms of the savior. In these last days it is by prophecy and the on-going fulfillment of things Jesus said would take place at the end that are designed to help the forsaken, the forlorn, the bruised and battered ones, to fall into the arms of the living God.

If you have wondered why the biggest problem to the Churches is the Churches themselves, you are not alone. We, too, wonder why our biggest problem as Christians sometimes seems to be the Church, where to settle and the truth of our relationship with it. In America we are free to roam, not confined to a tighter authority or a state-church with legal regulations as in Europe and Great Britain, or as in our former days of Puritan societies. In this modern age we have been freed up to range away from our parent’s church, the one in which our family and fathers once had the clout to demand that we attend. The latest generation of American churchgoers and born-again believers have no conception of the way their parents were situated in the Church.

People today have the freedom to choose and wander about from church to church at their whim. If they have been found to be injurious or hypocritical they can merely move on to another roosting spot. As soon as they are criticized or challenged, as soon as they are offended or meet with an unfriendly fellow they are at their discretion to bolt. All this has made it so there is no accountability. Priests rape children, businessmen manipulate entire congregations. Regrettable demands to forgive sins, where no forgiveness is merited, are leveled at child victims and the innocent where the pressure is on the victim to let sinners keep on sinning with impunity. Many have been sinned against with egregious sins so that Christ has been condemned by association. It is an evil of the end times which its victims do not have to be deprived of the love of Christ because of the sins of self serving faithless Christians.

It can only be that people do not ask themselves the fundamental questions of Who, What, Where and Why, concerning the church the body of Christ. It is too convenient not to seek the Church. Plus modern believers, I think are just down-right scared and lazy in regards to demanding faithfulness and truth concerning righteousness and honesty. Christ has never approved of lying, cheating, hypocrisy, deceit. and bearing false witness. He has never approved of trampling on relationships, family or otherwise. People in the Church have been handed salvation on a silver plate, and they continue to abuse it, taking freedom as freedom to do sin, or anything they please because, they say, Christ has saved them. Why should they do anything to expend energy or concern to do right; why should they fear to do wrong?

But the complexities of this vast realm of Christ’s Church, in every corner of the earth, with its good and bad, wicked and righteous, thorns and fruits, idolatry and true worship is an entire world into which we are born when we come to Christ. Like it or not it swirls about us unseen, but nevertheless, powerfully real, effecting our welfare in every way possible. This is why we may have, as many Christians have since the second half of the 20th Century, numerous encounters with believers, fellowships and churches, all with mixed results, before we can settle in and fellowship with that portion of the body of Christ with which God wants us to cohabit and serve Him and righteousness, and not sin.

It can take time to find out about the vast expanses of God’s Church and where we fit into it. Along the way we are certain to have bad teachings about the Church. In fact, wrong ideas about the Church abound from Evangelical doctrine to mainstream Christian conventions. All too often the platitudes of accepted, popular born-again doctrine fill the believer with man’s ideas about the Church and the way man thinks God ‘ought to be’ rather than the way God and the Church actually is. The Church can all too easily feed the sheep baloney rather than the sincere milk of God’s Word, especially when it comes to the subject of itself, or when teaching the straight and clear reality which God Himself, has declared about the Church. “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonor If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” 2 Tim 2:22.

We are here counseled by the Word of God that we should follow Christ with “those who call on the Lord out of pure heart”. The reason for the advice is in God’s house not all believers actually believe or act like they believe. Some are in it only for what they can get out of it. Some are very dishonorable. It is taken for granted all too often that every professing believer is ‘saved’ and being saved, that the four questions above have all been asked and settled by our pastors and the teachings of their denominational affiliation. Upon deep scrutiny (and sometimes not so deep) we are shocked to find out, however, that these questions have been answered with trite clichés or broad sweeping generalities or things no longer pertinent; they sound all fine and dandy but don’t really conform to the Truth of the revealed Word of God. We find out that God is there in name only and that another spirit resides there, in spite of the fang-dangles and pretty speeches. Sometimes we find out that the enemy, just as the parable depicts, has sown many weeds among the wheat and that we are among weeds and fools. This is all part of who the Church is, however. Don’t get me wrong – not the pure and true Church, or even the purest church, but the unsavory side of the house of vessels which dishonor it.

It is OK to purge ourselves from fellowship with such vessels of dishonor. Even more, it is suggested and counseled that we do so.

Even more alarming we may discover that the fundamental questions about the Church have never even been asked by those assembled together in the name of Christ. In its simplest form the Church can be defined as those who are separated from out of the world and assembled under the banner of Jesus Christ. Christians say we should accept anyone who calls himself a brother, or trust the motives of everyone who has answered an altar call or come forth at a convention. They think that where church is mentioned in Scriptures (77 times) that it automatically means ‘perfect’ and saved. But that does not conform with 1 Corinthians 5 where we are told to separate ourselves from wanton sinners in the Church. It does not consider the great criticism leveled at believers in the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 & 3. It does not consider Paul’s words to those churches throughout the Roman Province of Galatia when he stood up and told them “I stand in doubt of you.” In turn we are scolded by misguided ones to ‘judge not lest we be judged’. But that does not hold fast with Jesus’ statement that we judge not by appearance but judge righteous judgment, or that we shall know them by their fruits, or that the Church is duty bound to judge when a stumbling block has been cast by one brother in the way of another. We do not have to judge the sinner per se’ but we must make a judgment on the stumbling block and its effects. Read 1 Corinthians 5. The word Church is from the Greek, EKKLESIA, meaning a calling out, or the called out ones, or the separated ones. God’s call in 2 Corinthians 6.17 to “come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you” is a call to become a member of the true Church of God without reservation.

The EOE believes the Church is a spiritual body made up of individuals here, there and everywhere that cannot be contained in a building, place, denomination, or teaching. (Though there can be groups, ‘bodies’ here and there communing in the Lord in friendship and faith as the Philadelphian Church of old apparently had). The Church is contained in a person – Jesus Christ. By the power of the shed blood of Jesus Christ these people have been given new birth through the conversion of repentance so that they have been made new creatures in Christ? Within this greater body provision has been made to give us increase and speed us along the way to a mature and healthy relationship with Christ and the Father by way of the Spirit and the Word of God. This is what the Church is. The body of faithful believers assembled in His name is who she is, including all her imperfections, weeds and acquired spirits of error, and such. We have to pick our way through briars and brambles to find a place, a body, genuinely seeking after the purer form of church. The apostle Peter described this body, this Church like this: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ…. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:…  Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” 1 Pet 2

This is the picture painted in God’s Word of the part of the Church, which pleases Him. God is building up a place for His own habitation, one of “lively stones”, “fitly framed together”  Eph. 2:19-22 that has come ‘out from among the unclean thing and become separate’ from the world and all idolatry. But this is only corner of the vast expanses of the Church. The letters to the seven churches in Revelation, the parables told by Christ to His disciples in the Gospels and the teachings and doctrines of the Epistles shine forth the truth and reality of what God’s overall Church is really like. These words uncover great mysteries unknown since the world began about where the Church is to be found and what her condition truly is. They coax us, encourage us, and instruct us so that we can find out that good portion of the Church, where we should reside and where our spirits can best thrive in Christ.

It is our hope to delve into and provide answers ­ for our readers about who and ­what the church is, where it is and how we should live and move within her. It is our belief at the EOE that Philadelphia fellowships do exist, though they may be difficult to find since they are off “the beaten path” and that there is a high calling of God in Christ Jesus, a crown of righteousness that is attained by obedience that not all believers acquire. There are wheat and tares in the Church. There are vessels of gold and silver, which by purging themselves from vessels of dishonor become “sanctified and meet for the Master’s use and prepared unto every good work.” We believe there are faithful and slothful servants and wise and unwise virgins. All these are in God’s house. The Church is a conglomerate body of both faithful and struggling souls. Hypocrites and people who have departed from the faith with seducing spirits, those whose God is their belly and walk as the enemies of the cross of Christ, walk imperiously in her halls and sit in her chairs of authority. Our question must be how should the believer who seeks to be called and chosen and faithful move in this vast and great household of God? Should one settle for the first seat they find, or ought they to seek their proper place in the body of Christ? Though it may be a hard quest it should be part of our Christian journey to find our place in the body of Christ and that includes seeking for a fellowship of faithful believers who seek the Lord out of a pure heart.

“For to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
   To another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
   To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:
   All these work that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he the Spirit will.” 1 Cor. 12:8-11