By Roy B. Blizzard
Have you ever paused to ask the question, "What did Jesus really mean when he said, in Matthew 16:18…ve al hasela haze evneh et kehilati…?" Let me give you some background to the incident.
Jesus and his disciples are at Caesarea Philippi, the Caesarea of Herod Philip, located at the foot of Mount Herman. In Jesus' day, the large city built on the site was called Panias after the Greek god, Pan, who was worshipped there. You remember Pan, the little half goat, half man god of the Greeks who played on the pan flute and was known in Greek as To Pan, The God; that is, the principle god of the Greeks.
Until today, one can see the shrines and the inscriptions engraved on the walls of the mountain at Panias where the headwaters of the Jordan River flow out from underneath the mountain. The site today is known as Banias because the Arabs who live in the area cannot pronounce the "P" sound, so there is a linguistic shift from "P" to the "B". Thus, it is known today as Banias although there is a move currently under way to change the name of the site back to its original first-century name.
It was to this place where the Greek god Pan was worshipped that Jesus came with His disciples as recorded in Matthew 16. Jesus questions His disciples, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"
And, Peter replies, "Ata hu hamasiach Ben Elohim Hachaim" – you are the anointed one, the Son of the God who lives…as opposed to the god in this place who does not live.
And Jesus responds to Simon Peter by saying, "Blessed are you for flesh and blood did not reveal that fact unto you." In other words, no man had to come up and tell him, "Hey, do you know that this is the Messiah!" But rather, it was revealed to him from above.
Then Jesus responds and says that upon this foundation of all of those who have spiritual insight to understand who He is will He establish his Kahal (translated into English as Church, but more properly as Congregation or Assembly). In fact, it is quite possible Jesus uses the word Edah, which was used by the Qumran community in reference to themselves. It comes from the Hebrew word to tell or to witness, so Edah would be the witnessing body.
Dr. Robert Lindsay believed that it was, indeed, this term that Jesus used in Matthew 16:18. However, that which Jesus intended to establish was to be a living organizism against which the very gates of hell itself would not be able to stand.
It is unbelievable and inconceivable that such a thing as did happen could have happened. Frankly, the institutional church has become a grotesque monster with over 400 different, warring denominations, each saying, "Lo, here is Christ." Frankly, most of them haven't got a clue.
But it did happen and we know how it happened, when it happened, and with whom it happened and we can trace it historically. We know that the original congregation of believers who received the in-filling of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost were all Jews. We know where the event happened. We know where the ritual immersion baths were located in which the 3000 were all immersed. We know that they worshipped in a Jewish context, had all things together in common and basically remained in Jerusalem and in the immediate area until they were scattered abroad by persecution in the year 38.
As the congregation of believers moved to the west and off of Hebrew soil, they, over the years, embraced those from a non-Jewish background and established congregations that were more oriented toward Greek and Roman roots than they were towards the historical foundations of the faith.
Frankly, things changed very quickly.
By the time of Constantine and his Edict of Toleration in 313 and in 325 his exhortation to all to embrace Christianity, it would appear that by that early age, all was already lost.
It wasn't until Gregory I (590-604) that the Ecclesiastical Church was formalized with Gregory regarded as the first Pope.
In 1054, the Church to the West, i.e., Rome, split with the Church to the East at Constantinople and a long period of dissension culminated with the beginning of the Inquisition with Innocent III (1198-1216) during which period of time literally millions were put to death for heresy against the Church.
It wasn't until October 31, 1517 that a small ray of light broke through the darkness of Ecclesiastical corruption when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church in Worms, Germany. Keep in mind that these indictments were not a call for restoration, but rather a call for reformation.
In 1519-1531, we have Zwingli in Zurich, Switzerland.
In 1536 we have John Calvin, and the beginning of what becomes known as Presbyterianism.
In 1524, Henry VIII of England broke with the Papal Church and formed the Anglican Church or the Church of England.
In the beginning of the 17th century, we have the beginnings of the various Baptist movements.
In 1609 and following, we have the Armenian controversy.
1703-1791 marks the beginning of Methodism with John Wesley and George Whitefield – 1714-1779.
From the very beginning of the population of the new world, the various religious movements followed soon after.
The Episcopalians were transplanted in Virginia in 1607.
The Congregationalists established New Plymouth in 1620.
The Quakers arrived in 1656 in Massachusetts, Virginia and New York.
The Mennonites were established in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1688.
They all quickly established their religious institutions, which existed for one principle purpose – to promulgate the denomination.
- Harvard College was established by the Congregationalists in 1636 in Massachusetts.
- Yale was established by the Congregationalists in Connecticut in 1702.
- William and Mary was established by the Anglicans in 1693.
- Princeton was established by the Presbyterians in 1746.
- Columbia was established by the Anglicans in 1754.
- Brown was established on Rhode Island in 1764 by the Baptists.
By this time, there are literally hundreds of Bible colleges and Seminaries across the United States alone. But, the real question is, "Why were they founded?"
Historically, there was never an attempt on the part of the religious leaders to go back of the Protestantism of the last 1700 years, the Catholicism of the fifth and sixth centuries or the Gentile Churches of the second through fifth centuries. None of the religious leaders ever went all of the way back to the historical foundations of the faith and asked themselves: Who were these people? What did they believe? What were they doing? Why were they doing it? What were the benefits that resulted from their doing it?
The fact is that the historical foundations of Biblical faith are Jewish! Jesus was a Jew! Those who followed after Him for the first ten years of the existence of this movement following His death, burial and resurrection were all Jews. As a matter of fact, there were no non-Jews that were even admitted into the fellowship of the Believers until after 40 CE.
We might ask ourselves again: What were these roots? Where did they begin? For that, we are going to have to go back another 2000 years before the time of Jesus and His movement. All the way back to circa 2000 BCE, with a man by the name of Av Ram in Mesopotamia, in a city called Ur of Chaldees. And it is here where we will pick up our story.
