The "church" today is almost unrecognizable due to the fact man has ignored the clear NT teachings. Here are some great Christian Courier articles to help anyone get on track with the truth about the church. Enjoy!!

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1178-what-is-a-pastor

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1378-the-awesome-responsibility-of-church-leadership

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1603-the-elders-duty-of-watchfulness

Christian Courier is an awesome resource for anyone questioning the truth on a wide range of topics. Explore and find answers that are always based upon the Bible.

Ah, a source that agrees with you because it's written by someone from the Church of Christ denomination. Go figure.

Unrecognizable compared to what? Jesus and his Disciples would have found any modern church unrecognizable considering they were Jewish and followed Torah. We know this continued at least in the Holy Land until the late 60s AD.

As far as non-Jewish Christian worship the earliest records are the Didache and Justin Martyr, and they describe a very Catholic/Orthodox/Lutheran style worship. After that it only gets more similar to today's high liturgical services, though the mixed Jewish elements continued to be prominent for hundred of years.

Is there some specific time period you're trying to reference that would find current services unrecognizable? Best I can tell there is a hypothetical window between 70 and 100 AD where all Christians could have been non-Jewish and "non-liturgical". Problem is that there is no evidence of that at all, and it's still not much to hang your hat on.

It's weird. I've attended the Church of Christ denomination for the last 10+ years, and I don't ever recall walking in and saying "yeah, this is exactly how it looked with the Apostles".

That video was the opposite of getting a lesson or an education. So much wrong with it I honestly don't even know where to begin. Is this really representative of what you believe?

The church today is unrecognizable because very mad Prots severed themselves from the Body of Christ and then tried to boast they'd invented the wheel even though it had been invented 1500 years earlier.

The Orthodox damaged the connection with the body of Christ, but kept things pretty much the same, and don't make much of a mess mumbling to themselves in Eastern Bloc countries.

So you're telling me that the people and practices have changed over a 2000 year period as it moved from a peasant movement in Galilee to an international movement of people of all backgrounds?

This is shocking information.

"By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you publish lots of papers."
- Jesus, probably

No it doesn't. It doesn't say that at all.

"For Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

It notes that Moses, ie the Torah, has been read every Sabbath day. That is an "indeed" statement which ratifies the earlier statements - which are a close reading of Leviticus as to how non-Israelites dwelling among Israel must behave (abstain from blood, idolatry, and sexual immorality).

For what its worth, there was a mixed type of worship - synagogue on Sabbath, Eucharistic service on the Lord's day. In the beginning there wasn't Judaism and Christianity, merely people who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and people who did not (Jews, and Gentiles in both categories). After the Jews expulsed the followers of Jesus from the synagogues, the people who would become Christians continued their Saturday worship in combination with their Sunday worship. And this remains, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And unsurprisingly, the Liturgy of the Word remains extremely similar to what we understand to be ancient Jewish synagogue practices.

The biggest mistake we could make - and a common mistake for Christians of all time periods - is to assume that 1st century Judaism looks like contemporary Judaism in our time period. It doesn't. It's nothing like it. Modern Rabbinic Judaism was essentially created as a reaction against, and a repudiation of, Christianity. 1st Century Jews were not like the Jews that meet in Synagogues today, and to try to suggest that "proper" Christianity looks like that is a huge error.

Win At Life said:

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Zobel said:

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No it doesn't. It doesn't say that at all.

"For Moses has been proclaimed in every city from ancient times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath."

It notes that Moses, ie the Torah, has been read every Sabbath day. That is an "indeed" statement which ratifies the earlier statements - which are a close reading of Leviticus as to how non-Israelites dwelling among Israel must behave (abstain from blood, idolatry, and sexual immorality).

For what its worth, there was a mixed type of worship - synagogue on Sabbath, Eucharistic service on the Lord's day. In the beginning there wasn't Judaism and Christianity, merely people who accepted Jesus as the Messiah and people who did not (Jews, and Gentiles in both categories). After the Jews expulsed the followers of Jesus from the synagogues, the people who would become Christians continued their Saturday worship in combination with their Sunday worship. And this remains, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And unsurprisingly, the Liturgy of the Word remains extremely similar to what we understand to be ancient Jewish synagogue practices.

The biggest mistake we could make - and a common mistake for Christians of all time periods - is to assume that 1st century Judaism looks like contemporary Judaism in our time period. It doesn't. It's nothing like it. Modern Rabbinic Judaism was essentially created as a reaction against, and a repudiation of, Christianity. 1st Century Jews were not like the Jews that meet in Synagogues today, and to try to suggest that "proper" Christianity looks like that is a huge error.

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You are spending a lot of words to make the text sound like it's not saying something that it's saying on the plain reading of the text (pashat level) and sounds a little anti-Semitic. Many Jews wanted Gentiles to follow their law in order to be saved (Acts 15:1), and allowed in the synagogues by their rules. But the Apostles dismissed this out of hand because they believed people (both Jews and gentiles) are saved by grace (15:11) and not works. The remainder is what the Greco-Roman pagan gentiles needed to stop doing (15:20) to be allowed in the Synagogue (15:21).

Also, there was no Sunday-morning going to "church" back then. The meetings on the beginning of the the week were havdalah services to close out the Sabbath on Saturday evening (beginning of God's week).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havdalah#:~:text=Havdalah%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%94%D6%B7%D7%91%D6%B0%D7%93%D6%B8%D6%BC%D7%9C%D6%B8%D7%94%E2%80%8E%2C,wine)%20and%20smelling%20sweet%20spices.

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Nah Bro, While Havdalah has the wine, but it is a very different event. Even in Acts 20:7 the explicitly talk of breaking bread, not a Havdalah event.

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You are spending a lot of words to make the text sound like it's not saying something that it's saying on the plain reading of the text (pashat level) and sounds a little anti-Semitic. Many Jews wanted Gentiles to follow their law in order to be saved (Acts 15:1), and allowed in the synagogues by their rules. But the Apostles dismissed this out of hand because they believed people (both Jews and gentiles) are saved by grace (15:11) and not works. The remainder is what the Greco-Roman pagan gentiles needed to stop doing (15:20) to be allowed in the Synagogue (15:21).

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You outlined the plain faced reading well, except for the bolded parts. It was not about being allowed in the synagogue. That was never the matter under dispute. It wasn't what the gentiles had to do to go to the synagogue, because it was perfectly obvious to everyone what gentiles had to do to go to synagogues. There were already gentiles in synagogues, they were called god-fearers. This is likely where a large portion of the early gentile Christians came from.

The question was did they have to follow the Torah to be saved, and on a secondary level, what did those of the nations coming to follow Jesus have to observe? The answer was no, they do not have to follow Torah and be circumcised, and they had to observe the Torah. The parts of the Torah which always applied to gentiles among Israel still applied. The Apostles at Jerusalem neither added nor subtracted. Go read Leviticus, and note what is said to the sons of Israel and what is said to the sons of Israel and aliens and foreigners living among you.

It's incredible to say plain faced reading when your initial statement was "gentiles should go to the synagogue on the sabbath to hear Moses." I honestly can't imagine how that could be EVER construed as the plain faced reading of that verse. I also have no idea how what I wrote could be construed as anti-Semitic.

The whole identity of who was a Jew was following the Torah. All you're suggesting is that all the gentiles who were to come to Christ were to be saved, but then follow Torah. So you're saying they must become Jews. To follow the Torah ultimately you must be circumcised, in order to eat the Passover. Which was the same as before Christ came, the same option that was always available to anyone from any nation - to become a Jew, to follow Torah.

Yet St Paul says that the gentile converts in Corinth eat the new Passover (1 Cor 5:7-8). But they're not circumcised. They're not following Torah. Christians eat from "an altar those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat." Yet consider 1 Cor 10:17-18 "Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf. Consider the people of Israel: Are not those who eat the sacrifices fellow partakers in the altar?" So all Christians are united by this, yet they are NOT all following Torah, and this transcends and is DIFFERENT than following a Torah. Because if they were all following Torah as Jews, they would all be Jews, no longer aliens and foreigners.

St Paul clearly teaches that being a Jew - defined by following the Torah - doesn't make you righteous, even if you follow Torah -- "even we [Jews] have believed in Christ Jesus that we may be made righteous by faith from Christ, and not by works of Torah, because by works of Torah not any flesh will be made righteous."

This whole insistence that those of the nations coming to Christ must become Jews - because this is what is meant by you when you say they should go to synagogue to hear Moses, you mean to hear and follow the whole Torah, which is to become a Jew - is exactly the error St Paul preaches against in Galatians. Did the Spirit come to the gentiles by their following Torah or by the hearing of faith? If you begin in the Spirit, will becoming a Jew according to the flesh perfect you?

I am not a son of Israel according to Torah, yet I am a part of Israel through Christ, as an heir. Does this mean I can violate Torah? No - sin is sin, and it is sinful for anyone, even a foreigner and an alien to eat blood, commit sexual immorality, or worship idols. But nowhere does the Torah say that foreigners must follow Israel's dietary restrictions, or that Israel must impose those dietary restrictions on other nations.

You saying gentiles must follow Torah upholds the Pharisees saying that they must follow Moses and be circumcised. It is the opposite error of those who say the Torah doesn't apply to the gentiles.

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Also, there was no Sunday-morning going to "church" back then. The meetings on the beginning of the the week were havdalah services to close out the Sabbath on Saturday evening (beginning of God's week).

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Speculation, for one, and historically unsupported for the other. Christians worshipping on the 8th day, the Lord's day, the first day, is the norm for as long as we have historical record. (Didache, Pliny, St Justin Martyr, St Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, St Cyprian, St Ignatius, etc).

Zobel's post are proof that Brandolini's law is real: "The amount of energy needed to refute something wrong is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

Also, how many times has someone used the phrase 'plain reading' or 'plain english' only to absolutely butcher that written verse? You know what's plain english? Building codes; and people still argue about those. The bible and its accounts are far from plain anything. There is always context to interpret and even poetry to unravel.

I mean, pants are pretty much terrible and long hair is best. If these are the only things I need to submit about WIFE ME UP. I'M A TOTAL TRADWIFE.

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our only doctrine is the Bible.

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Let's start here.

Can you explain how the NT churches would have had this belief, before the bible existed?

aggiedad20 said:

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PacifistAg said:

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It's weird. I've attended the Church of Christ denomination for the last 10+ years, and I don't ever recall walking in and saying "yeah, this is exactly how it looked with the Apostles".

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I don't really like responding to you directly because I truly feel sorry for you on a personal level, so my only advice to you or anyone else who agrees with you is maybe open up your Bible more often and with less bias than you seem to have towards the church. The true churches of Christ today are identical in structure, methodology and worship practices to the New Testament church. We sing, pray, take communion, hear a message and give of what we have prospered EVERY FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK because that's what the NT churches did. There are elders, deacons and a minister in every autonomous local congregation because our only Head is Christ and our only doctrine is the Bible.

If you can provide scripture that shows anything other than that, please lay it all out there for us to see because I don't think you've ever "walked into" an actual church of Christ, otherwise you wouldn't be mocking its scriptural foundations and those of us who strive only to be Christians.

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Why feel sorry for me? And I have no bias towards the church. I love the church. It's the body of Christ. I love the beautiful variety that our Orthodox brothers and sisters bring (imo closest to the early church), our Catholic brothers and sisters, countless various Protestant brothers and sisters. It's a beautiful church and I cherish it, even if I get frustrated by legalists, fundamentalists, and other warts we find on that body. I don't agree with the legalists who deny the reality that their denomination is, in fact, a denomination. But hey, whatever floats your boat in the end. It doesn't change the fact that I'm your sister-in-Christ.

Oh, and I've been a member of the Church of Christ denomination for over 10 years. My wife is a lifelong member.

aggiedad20 said:

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Good luck to you, but the sign out front is worthless unless you are in a denomination, and it sounds like you are.

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Oh, of course I'm in a denomination. I don't deny that. My denomination is called the Church of Christ. Famous Church of Christ'ers are men like David Lipscomb, Alexander Campbell, Tolbert Fanning, and many others. It's the same denomination that you're in.

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I don't really like responding to you directly because I truly feel sorry for you on a personal level, so my only advice to you or anyone else who agrees with you is maybe open up your Bible more often and with less bias than you seem to have towards the church. The true churches of Christ today are identical in structure, methodology and worship practices to the New Testament church. We sing, pray, take communion, hear a message and give of what we have prospered EVERY FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK because that's what the NT churches did. There are elders, deacons and a minister in every autonomous local congregation because our only Head is Christ and our only doctrine is the Bible.

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It is somewhat strange to think that early Christians judged the New Testament based on what they had already been taught and (some) modern Christians judge what they have already been taught based on the New Testament.

Kindly,

What the hell is wrong with you?