Is the Church God’s Governing Authority on the Earth?

Is it true that the church is God's governing authority on the earth? Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Digging deep into the word together and really trying to understand who we are, what God's purposes are for us here on the earth. Just a reminder that as we come to the end of the year, we really pray for folks with generous hearts to stand with us if we've been a blessing to you. We ask that you stand with us if you're able to. We have great vision to expand and touch many more people in 2021 to do it more effectively, to do it more widely, to take the resources that we have and the message we're getting out and to get it to even more people. And we can do that with your help. So if you feel prompted to stand with us, go to our website, askdrbrown.org, askdrbrown.org. Click donate.

Of course, your year-end gifts at any time of the year are tax deductibles. We are a nonprofit ministry. Also, if you're watching on YouTube, there's a dollar sign there in the bottom of the chat box you can give through YouTube. Or on Facebook, there's a donate button, a donate button, so you can click on that for your donation. But either way, stand with us in prayer.

If you're able to help at the end of the year, that would be absolutely awesome. And know that I'm spending time on my knees before God, crying out for His best and praying for God's best in your lives as well. All right, let's go to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew 16, and this is a famous account. As Jesus asked His disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is?

So Matthew 16 verse 14, they answered, some say John the Immerser, John the Baptist, others say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, one of the other prophets, so their spirits back from the dead. But he said, who do you say I am? Who do you say I am?

Well, what's your opinion? And Simon Peter, always quick to speak, you're the Messiah, the Son of the living God. When he said you're the Christ, that's what it means. You're the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Yeshua said to him, blessed are you, Simon said of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who's in heaven. And I also tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my community.

My community, in Greek ekklesia, but Jesus would not have been teaching in Greek, He would have been teaching in Aramaic or possibly Hebrew, but most likely Aramaic. So what's He saying there? I will build my community, my congregation, translated to most of our English Bibles, church.

What do they mean? And the gates of Sheol will not overpower it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, whatever you forbid on earth will have been forbidden in heaven, whatever you permit on earth will have been permitted in heaven. Then He ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.

If they want announcing to everyone, He's Messiah, He's Messiah, He's Messiah, then the messianic fervor and the desire to try to set Him up as King would have short-circuited what He was seeking to do. Okay, so what's Jesus teaching there? Interestingly, the Greek word ekklesia only occurs three times in the Gospels, Matthew 16 and twice in Matthew 18, and that's it. Otherwise, it's a word we see in Acts, and then of course Paul uses it a lot, and it has become known as church, ekklesia associated with the word church, but really that's not what the English word church originally meant. In fact, the church could refer to a physical building, whereas the ekklesia was a community, and in this case a community of believers. In fact, translations before King James, like Tyndale translated English translations, translated ekklesia with congregation, I will build my congregation, and then King James translated with church. It was one of the rules that the King James translators had was to use the older ecclesiastical language, hence church, rather than congregation, but then that creates a wrong idea, because we think of the church as a location, or the church as a building. We just built a beautiful new church.

Oh, you get to see our church, or the place we go to, we're going to church this week. So, there's a misconception with it. Now, if you speak German, you have gemeinde, that's the congregation, that would be the word for ekklesia, and then you have the kirche, that's the physical building, right? But if you speak Spanish, you have ekklesia. Ekklesia is the building, ekklesia is the people, and that comes from the Greek ekklesia.

So, what does ekklesia really mean? And when Jesus said, I will build my ekklesia, my congregation, my community, and the gates of Sheol, the gates of hell, Hades will not prevail against it, what did he mean? And why is he teaching there about what you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, which you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven? There is a teaching that has become very popular in recent years, especially in charismatic circles, and it has become very relevant now with the election controversies and the role of the church in prayer. And it is the teaching that the church is not just a gathering of believers or community of believers or the congregation of the saved, that the church is God's governing authority on the earth. That if you will look back in the ancient Greek and see how ekklesia was used, you would see that it meant the governing authority. So that we, by the Spirit, according to this teaching, we by the Spirit are called to be God's governing authority on the earth. So if there's a plague, if there's a pandemic, we should be the ones that deal with it in the Spirit.

If there's fraud in the elections, we, the church, should be the ones that fix that in the Spirit. That that is some of the authority that we have been given by Jesus spiritually, and that's what he meant about binding and loosing and things like that. Others would say you have the different mountains of culture, the so-called seven mountains, be it education, be it media, be it government, and that the church is God's governing authority should exert its authority in every one of these areas. And that ultimately on some level the church takes over these areas before Jesus returns.

Now there are several different things I'm putting together here. This is not reflected of my teaching and my understanding of Scripture, but I want you to know some of what's out there. So there's a concept of spiritual dominionism. There is a concept of seven mountains theology of the church, not just influencing and infiltrating every area of society, but actually dominating, taking over through the gospel. And then the idea of the church as God's governing authority. Now people may hold to one or two or three of these pieces.

They may hold to just one of them. In other words, some may understand the church's authority is purely spiritual. The church's authority comes entirely through prayer, and that's how we exercise authority. Others may say nowhere to have authority exerted in other areas of society, not just through prayer, but through our activity. What does the Bible actually say?

What is the right understanding here? Let's take a look in Matthew chapter 28, beginning in verse 18. Matthew 28, 18. We know that previously Jesus had given his disciples authority over demons and disease. Luke 9, Matthew 10. We know in Luke 10, he said, I've given you authority over all the power of the enemy. You'll tread on serpents and scorpions.

Nothing will by any means hurt you. Speaking of demonic power. Now, after the resurrection, look at what he says in 28, 18. It says, now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain Yeshua designated when they saw and they worshiped, but some wavered.

And Yeshua came up to them and spoke to them saying, verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So we don't debate that. Nobody that understands who Jesus is, debates that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

Right? We don't debate that. That's not in question. He is the Lord and the Father has given him all authority. Therefore, we can go up to any opposition, to any wall that's been put up, be it the Berlin wall, be it the iron curtain, be it the bamboo curtain, be it the opposition of Islam, be it secularism, be it any other ideology. And in Jesus' name, we can use his authority in prayer and in preaching the gospel to see those kingdoms crumble or those walls come down because of the authority of Jesus.

All right. So we agree on that, right? All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. So the fact that we have his authority, we go based on that. We go based on that, working within the systems of the world that are here.

All right. And yet knowing that we have a higher authority in Jesus that can break down all opposition. And then we are to go and make disciples of all nations. Now, does that mean disciple whole nations? In other words, we, through the gospel, quote, Christianize a nation, that word can be misused or misunderstood. But people come to faith, the government leaders come to faith, educators come to faith, and we actually disciple the nation. We take a nation that was idolatrous or pagan, whatever, and now this becomes a, quote, Christian nation. Or does it simply mean make disciples of all nations, meaning the people of all nations, disciple the people of all nations, immersing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Ruach HaKodesh, immersing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I've commanded you.

Remember, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. So we go with the authority of Jesus to the ends of the earth, to the ends of the age. And you could make the argument that when it says immersing them, baptizing them, that it's obviously speaking of individuals.

You don't immerse whole nations. In other words, go and make disciples of all nations, meaning of the people of all nations. But how far has this authority of Jesus been given to us, the church? And how much is it up to us to enforce his will on the earth? This is some of the question that's coming up now as we see evil in the world around us, as we see natural disaster and calamity, as we see people doing wrong, whoever the people are. I'm not just talking politically.

I'm not talking Republican versus Democrat. I'm talking about human beings. As we see this, if you have tremendous crime in your neighborhood, if you have rising tides of opiate addiction, if there is a plague of pornography sweeping young people, if sex trafficking is growing, how much authority in the spirit does the church have to turn the tide?

What's a realistic expectation? And what is one that misunderstands our role, that gives us an authority beyond what God has? And do we have any more authority than the early apostles did? And if not, obviously the answer is no, we don't have more authority than they had. Then do we have some secret that they didn't have? Have we discovered some new teaching that they didn't have? So what do the apostles teach?

Come back. We're going to dig in to some Greek dictionaries and answer that very question. Hey friends, welcome to this special broadcast on WANafire, not taking calls or responding to online comments today. We are digging into the word and doing our best to understand the language of the New Testament. And the question is, what authority has God given to the church or to the ekklesia, to God's community, to the messianic congregation? What authority has He given to His people? Are we God's government on the earth? How far should we go with that teaching?

Let me start here and say this with all candor, all right? The Greek word ekklesia translates some Hebrew words in the Old Testament, so the Hebrew Bible, when it was translated into Greek a couple hundred years before the time of Jesus, the word ekklesia was used to translate a couple of different Hebrew words, primarily the word kahal, which is congregation, could be edah, assembly, all right? But it did not have a particular or unique meaning as having to do with government or authority. Honestly, again, just to be candid with you, having read the Hebrew Bible for decades in Hebrew, it would never have dawned on me that the Hebrew word kahal or the Hebrew word edah had some special meaning other than congregation or assembly.

In other words, it has nothing to do with authority, it had nothing to do with certain power, it had nothing to do with legal authority. No, it was the gathered assembly coming together as God's community, and that's how it was used through the centuries in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature. So, if Yeshua was talking to his disciples in Matthew the 16th chapter, and he says to them, I will build my, now remember he wasn't speaking Greek, so he wouldn't have said ekklesia, I'll make it as if he was speaking Hebrew, okay?

I will build my kahal, I will build my community, I will build my congregation, the gates of Sheol will not prevail against it. You would not, hearing that word, think to yourself, oh, he's talking about the governing authority on the earth, he's talking about the people of God being the governing authority on the earth. That would not have occurred to you if you were reading this in Hebrew or the same thing in Aramaic, where a similar vocabulary would have been used.

So, I'm just laying that out, to be honest, that's the first thing. The second thing, just going through the New Testament references to ekklesia, I would not from that have gotten the idea that the primary emphasis was governing authority. Now, we've seen Matthew 28, that all authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus, and we go based on his authority to go and make disciples. We understand that. And Paul elsewhere, for example, 2nd Corinthians 10 talks about the authority we have in the Spirit to pull down strongholds in Ephesians 6, that our war is a spiritual war, all right?

But to what extent is the church called to be a governing authority on the earth, and what exactly does that mean? Again, it's a very prevalent popular teaching today. So, let me, and a lot of it is well-meaning and well-intended with good application, and then other parts I have to respectfully differ with.

So, if you know my educational background, my PhD is in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from New York University. I've referenced it recently just to talk about how I learn, how I understand things, that I always want to get back to the original source. I want to get back to the actual quote. I want to get back to the words in the original language to do my best to understand what the original author was saying in context, okay?

So, for example, if I'm reading the Bible in English, okay, great, I read in English, that's my first language. I'm learning and being edified and growing and God's speaking to me through it. But now, hmm, what does that verse actually mean? So, I'm immediately going to look at the Hebrew, the Greek, or in some cases, the Aramaic, and then just digging in because I want to see, okay, what did they say in their original language?

What did it mean? So, over the years, I amassed a large library, a significant library of lexical books, of dictionary books, okay? I mean, every major dictionary of the Hebrew language I own, be it medieval, be it modern, I own them. And then other ancient languages, be it what's called Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, or major Syriac dictionaries, or Aramaic dictionaries, or Arabic dictionaries. You have a 15 volume dictionary called Lisan al-Arab. It is Arabic, Arabic.

It's all Arabic. It's beyond my level of being able to use it constructively because my Arabic is not nearly as strong as it used to be. I'm just saying I have the dictionaries of the languages put together by scholars who spent their whole lives looking at text, looking at text, and then analyzing and putting things in categories.

And even then, I've written articles challenging some of the dictionaries since then, and my articles have become part of the new dictionaries. Well, even though my Greek is not nearly as strong as my Hebrew, I mean, night and day not nearly as strong, I've learned enough Greek to know how to use the tools and to dig and sift. And so, I own every major New Testament dictionary or key dictionary of classical Greek or a Septuagintal Greek.

Basically, that exists in terms of major dictionaries. I own them. Just like if you're at a major seminary library, they'd all be there, all right? And some of you now with software, biblical software, you own a lot of these.

So, all that to say, I can dig. I can dig and look through these, and these are scholars from wide ranges of backgrounds, but the key thing is they're looking at text, text, text, text. What does it say? And they know it all, and they've studied what the other authors say and other writers analyze the text, but they're digging into the original. All right, so I print it up. How many pages is it?

17 pages here. I print it up what the major Greek dictionaries say about Ecclesia. I wanted to see how many of them understand the New Testament writers to be talking about governmental authority.

Now, if you're listening on the radio or a podcast, I'm going to make this as clear as I can, but forgive me if it's a little bit more dense than a typical radio show or just taking calls on hot button topics, okay? For those watching, I'm actually going to put the text up and look at some of these definitions. Now, I have some encyclopedias, Theological Diction in the New Testament in 10 massive volumes or New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology Exegesis.

That's what is four big volumes. I didn't print all those out because it's just it's too much material, but these are the major lexicons, all right? So here, let's look first at the Bauer, Arendt, Gingrich, Danker lexicon. This is the most authoritative lexicon of the Greek New Testament. So it gives these definitions for ekklesia. So this is in ancient Greek literature as well as in New Testament usage. So one example is first, ekklesia, a regularly summoned legislative body assembly as generally understood in the Greco-Roman world. So it's acknowledging that, yes, the ekklesia, that was a name given for a regularly summoned legislative body assembly or assembly. And it's used like that in the book of Acts, in Acts 19, 39. So there's an example of that. And then it's got all these other Greek citations and everything's in abbreviations because you have to, when you work with these dictionaries, everything's abbreviated because they're not going to print the same words 10,000 times.

So you have to learn all the abbreviations, et cetera. All right. Then a second definition, a casual gathering of people, an assemblage gathering. And it gives other examples from Acts or from the apocryphal literature. So like first Maccabees, things like that. Then another usage, people with shared belief, community or congregation.

All right. So people with shared belief, community or congregation. And then it now puts under that definition, the rest of the New Testament usage. In other words, it's saying that the New Testament is using ekklesia in terms of people with shared belief or the word community or the word congregation. In other words, this dictionary is saying the idea of the ekklesia being a legislative body is not how the word is used with reference to the New Testament church.

So it begins to list. Here's usage from the Septuagint, from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, of Old Testament Israelites, meaning assembly or congregation, or of Christians in a specific place or area. Then it says of a specific Christian group assembly gathering ordinarily involving worship and discussion of matters of concern to the community. Or it can mean congregation or church as the totality of Christians living and meeting in a particular locality or larger geographical area, but not necessarily limited to one meeting.

If you're if you're looking on the screen, not just listening to me, you're seeing scores and scores and scores and scores of references. So it's saying most commonly the word is used for congregation or church as the totality of Christians living and gathering in a particular community. Or it can mean the global community of Christians. All right, so there's much more that it gets into there. All right, but key point I want to make and we'll look at some more definitions in a moment.

Key point I want to make. The leading dictionary of the Greek New Testament originally in German then translated into English, then expanded and updated with a wide range of scholarly contribution to it. The one that whether you're an evangelical, whether you're a liberal, whether you're a charismatic, whether you're a cessationist, it's the first dictionary you go for in terms of if you find what you're looking for there, you got good backing. Even though it recognizes that the word ekklesia could be used as a legislative body and was used as such in some literature in the Greco-Roman world, the New Testament usage does not reflect that. When it comes to the ekklesia that you and I are part of, that Yeshua, Jesus is building, does not have that meaning.

Well, maybe it's just one dictionary. Let's look at what some of the others have to say. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us on this special broadcast on the Line of Fire. As you are listening or watching, unless it's like years later, but if you're listening, watching live, I am right now away praying. Just needed to get a week away to refresh, get with the Lord, do some focused writing as well.

But at this very moment, as shows are going on, I'm going to be doing a little bit of a moment as shows are going on. I'm praying for God's blessing in your life, and for the fire of God to burn brightly in your heart, and for God to use you to fulfill His purposes for you. My friend, Jesus didn't save you to put you on a shelf. Jesus didn't save you just to give you a ticket out of hell. Jesus saved you out of His love for you, and out of His purpose for you to Him that will make a difference. And you may be 90 years old and shut in.

I tell you your prayers could change your generation. You could be 12 years old and saying, what's the purpose of life? You could be a university professor. You could be a ditch digger.

You could be overwhelmed with four little kids and homeschooling, and you could be burdened with several jobs. You could be going through any kind of difficulty or challenge in life right now. But I tell you, if you know the Lord, He has a purpose for you. If you don't know Him, then you begin to find out your purpose by surrendering your life to Him and no longer living for self. And you do that through the cross. You do that through Jesus dying for you and rising from the dead. And with Him, you die to your old ways and your old life. You say, Lord, here I am.

Send me. Use me. But I want to encourage you, whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever failures, disappointments, they can be stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks. And everything in your past or present that Satan or society mean for evil, God can use for good. So I want to encourage you, as I'm speaking to you now on this broadcast, I'm also praying for you privately. May a fresh vision for your life rise in your heart. May you realize God can use God can use me, but my life can count. Come on, think of it. When I was 14 years old, I started getting high.

When I was 15, I was shooting heroin. How many people come out of that so that decades later they're leading productive lives and touching millions by the grace of God and can look at teenage grandchildren that love the Lord and you know, it's grace and the same grace that worked in my life and that works in my life daily is the grace to work in your life. God's looking for superstars. He's looking for people to say, Lord, here I am.

Send me, use me. And again, that's in the world in which you live. That's where it starts. That's where it starts. It starts secret in prayer in your heart. I'm telling you, cry out to God.

If you cry out to God and if you keep knocking and keep asking, trusting that He is good, I'm telling you amazing things will happen and you will know Him in ways you've never known Him and bear fruit for Him like you never knew you could bear. So, from my heart to yours, receive that. Receive that word. All right, let's look at some other major dictionaries. Let's see how they understand the Greek word ekklesia. Again, many scholars are looking for new meanings and new insights and they are very happy to go against the grain. They're very happy to come up with novel ideas, but then other scholars analyze, look at things, the text speaks for itself, and over a period of time, the exotic definitions kind of wash out. And you know, many years ago, Nancy said it was no fun going to meetings with me because someone would get up and they're preaching and say, and based on the Hebrew word this.

And she'd look at me and I go, no, no, mispronounced the word, misused it. It's not what it means. Oh, it's kind of a cool point. They say, no, no, the point is good. I can't find other scriptures to support that point, but they butchered the Hebrew and completely misunderstood the meaning of the Greek and got those verses wrong. But there are other verses that support the point.

They're trying to come up with something positive to make up for the disappointment if the point overall was true. So let's go back and see. I'm going to look now at Thayer. This is an older dictionary, but widely used. What does Joseph Henry Thayer say the meaning of ekklesia is? So the general meaning is a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place in assembly. That was the basic origin of the word.

All right. So among the Greeks, and he goes from various authors down, an assembly of the people convened at the public place of council for the purpose of deliberating. As in Acts, 1939, that the ekklesia there, it's not a religious it's not a religious gathering, but a legislative body. Then in the Septuagint, this is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, often equivalent to Qahal, the assembly of the Israelites, especially when gathered for sacred purposes. So it could have the idea, the emphasis of sacred gatherings, but not legislative body. Qahal was not a legislative body in ancient Israel. I'm telling you, the usage I'm telling you is someone that's studied Hebrew and the Hebrew Bible for decades.

Qahal is not a legislative body. Yes, called for sacred purposes, called to the mountain of the Lord, but not a legislative body. And then it could mean any gathering or throng of men assembled by chance or tumultuous acts, 1932, 41, et cetera. But then his next point, in the Christian sense, in other words, he understands that the word ekklesia was used in a specific way by New Testament authors. What did they mean?

What did they say? So here's the data. An assembly of Christians gathered for worship, a company of Christians, or those who hoping for eternal salvation through Jesus Christ, observe their own religious rights, hold their own religious meetings, and manage their own affairs according to regulations prescribed for the body for orders sake. And it goes through further details of gatherings and things like that. The whole body of Christians, scattered throughout the earth, collectively, all who worship and honor God in Christ, whatever place they may be, the name is transferred to the assembly of faithful Christians already dead and received into heaven.

So that's Joseph Henry Thayer. So he, just like the Bauer-Gingrich-Danke lexicon, they both say the same thing. That yeah, there is a secular Greek usage of ekklesia, where it can be a legislative body, but that's not the New Testament usage.

All of the references to it over and over and over and over and over and over and over do not refer to legislative issues. Oh, there is divine authority that the church operates in in the spirit. So for example, if you have someone that's claiming to be a follower of Jesus and is walking in open sin and rebellion and refuses to repent, you have authority to turn that person over to Satan, or you have authority at the least to excommunicate that person and say, we no longer treat you as a believer.

We will not have fellowship with you. And yes, there is spiritual authority given over demonic powers, and it doesn't mean that we have complete mastery in this world. We're in a fallen world, right? And Paul said, you know, we apostles, no one had more authority spiritually than the apostles did. He said, we apostles, we're set forth like the scum of the earth, just the off scouring of the earth, the worst of the worst. And we're made a spectacle before men and angels and we're beaten and we suffer, and they didn't just snap their fingers and say, we're just going to take authority over all these powers. And no, we're in a fallen world and there's going to be conflict. But in Jesus, we have authority to set people free. In Jesus, we can drive back powers of darkness. So in that sense, those who talk about the church as governing authority, meaning that we have spiritual power, meaning that through prayer and through spiritual warfare, we can bring about positive change.

Amen and amen. And I know of striking examples where pastors gathered together for daily early morning prayer in the city. They came together across denominational lines and ethnic lines and racial lines, and they came together and prayed for breakthroughs and they fasted and they saw dramatic supernatural breakthroughs. I remember many years ago while preaching in Richmond, Virginia, it was right after they had had an extraordinary breakthrough. There was a prayer leader known in prayer circles as one of the great fathers of the intercessory prayer movement in this last generation. And he came in to meet with these pastors, did teaching on prayer and said, okay, will you gather with me every morning, whatever, it was six in the morning or something, and we're going to come together every morning and pray. They hadn't done that. These are busy pastors, busy lives. They hadn't done that.

They did it. He said, okay, what's the number one stronghold in the city right now? Well, at that time, and this would have been mid-eighties, thereabouts, at that time, Richmond had the highest per capita murder rate in the nation, as I was told. Not the highest total murder rate numbers, but per capita. And there was basically one murder a day in Richmond.

It's not that giant city, right? So they felt to target this in prayer, to come against the spirit of murder. Yes, there are people doing it, but they felt there were demonic forces driving it. And they came together and they prayed, and they came together and they prayed. And instead of a murder a day, there was not a murder then, once they started gathering for early morning prayer. There was no murder that day.

And then the next, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next. By the time I got there, and I met with these pastors, all right, by the time I got there, they had gone 28 days without a murder. They had a gathering, and one of the pastors read a quote from the newspaper from the mayor, saying, whatever you're doing, I don't know who's doing what, but please keep it up. And then right after that, there was like a triple homicide in one day, but the numbers were still low as the pastors were gathering. When they ceased gathering, numbers went back up. Now you explain that to me some other way.

You explain that. No, I believe in spiritual power in Jesus, and as we come together in God crying out to him. But I don't believe in the teaching that the church is God's governing authority in the earth, and that we are to serve as his legislative body.

Here, let me give you another example. Here's a James Swanson dictionary of biblical languages with semantic domains. So ecclesia means a congregation, an individual assembly of Christians or Old Testament believers, usually with leaders who conform to a standard, who have worship practices with members interacting more or less local, or you can refer to the totality of all congregations of Christians at all times, or in other secular settings, an assembly gathering of persons for a purpose, even riotous. But the idea of the church being a legislative body is simply not found in the New Testament. You say, yeah, but what about Matthew 16? Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, etc. Some would simply argue that that means, if you take it in the first century Jewish context, that the things that you permit as a practice among believers are permitted, and the things that you forbid as a practice among believers is forbidden.

But the idea that we can just stop a plague, or stop a war, or stop famine, if that was the case, the world would look very different, wouldn't it? With all the Christians around the world, you say, well, they didn't know their authority. Oh, so did the early apostles not know the authority? Did the early church not know its authority? Why couldn't they just snap their fingers and stop all the disaster? Why couldn't they stop the neuros and the collegians and the crazy leaders of that day?

Why couldn't they stop the persecution, the beheading? No, there's an authority we have in Jesus, but it's different. We don't control other people, and we don't take over society. Rather, we infiltrate through the gospel, and then through conversion and making disciples, we can see radical, dramatic change come. And who knows the profound effect that can happen in society when the church awakens, not just spiritually, but infiltrates every area of society with the gospel and gospel values.

Yeah, we can see tremendous change. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. There is an amazing story from the ministry of John G. Lake from 1870 to 1935, and really did pioneer apostolic work in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century. It was only there for several years, birthed a movement that continues to this day. And Lake tells the story of a terrible plague that was sweeping through the community where they were, and decimating lives. And especially when you get into more rural areas where you have less hygiene, less medical care, a plague can be absolutely devastating in its impact. And there was much prayer, and much crying out, and much prayer, and much crying out, and still the plague continued.

I'm talking about Christians crying out and praying, and of course, the medical world doing what it knew how to do. And Lake just got this sense, if I could just get somebody that really knew how to pray, we could break this thing. In other words, he understood it was demonic. He understood that Satan was trying to kill, and steal, and destroy.

And Lake found another prayer warrior. And as they're praying, he said in front of their eyes, they saw it was like a flock of demons. He said like a flock of sheep. It was like a flock of demons. They recognized the demonic powers behind this. And they said in Jesus' name, they took authority over this, they saw the things scatter, and the plague stopped.

Lake recounts this. I don't know how many people died. I'll say this, a far higher percentage of people were dying then than through COVID now, all right? And I don't know how much prayer and crying out happened until then, and I don't know how many Christians died.

I'm sure plenty along the way. Again, it's not just we snap our fingers and have dominion over everything, but there is a place in prayer, sometimes in prayer, and fasting, and crying out, where these kinds of breakthroughs happen. I believe in that, and I believe that if Christians who have been praying fervently for the elections, leading up to the elections and then after the voting, Christians who have been praying fervently for the elections, if these same Christians and Christian leaders will keep organizing prayer and pushing prayer for revival in the church and awakening in society, and we keep crying out and seeking his face, we can see amazing things happen. And then as we see breakthroughs, then as believers, we have to infiltrate, meaning why not be university professors? Why not be administrators or superintendents of school districts?

Why not be newscasters? In other words, why should it just be the world that runs everything? Let believers be raised up. Let there be godly people in politics and in every sphere of society. Why not? We want to be salt and light. Yes, it's not a matter of taking over, it's a matter of serving and shining and making a difference.

But is God looking to the church to be his governing authority on earth? That can be fraught with misunderstanding. Let me go to another dictionary. This is a multi-volume dictionary, and oh, how many pages did I print out from here? Yikes, a lot of pages from this dictionary. The three-volume exegetical dictionary of the New Testament. Whoo, yeah, Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, three volumes edited by Balz and Schneider.

It started coming out in 1990 in English. How many pages did I print there? Nine pages on Ecclesia. The opening page just initially has a bibliography. Here, relevant books, relevant articles, all right, so it cites this. We're on page five, okay, and the document I printed out for my team here.

Let's go over to page six, all right? Page six, this is from Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. The 114 occurrences of Ecclesia in the New Testament are unevenly distributed. There are only three occurrences in the Gospels, all in Matthew 16, 18, and 18, 17, twice. The word appears most frequently in Paul's letters, 46 occurrences, 22 of which are in 1 Corinthians, in Deutero Pauline letters, 16 occurrences, so they don't believe all the letters of Paul were written by Paul. So let's just say that it's 62 references in Paul's writings, and in Acts, 23 occurrences. It appears twice in Hebrews among the Catholic epistles of the general letters. It's found only in 3 John, three occurrences, and James, once.

Of the 20 occurrences in Revelation, 19 are in formalized phrases in letters to the seven churches, chapters one through three. The noun Ecclesia is derived etymologically from ek and kaleo, so out of and call. Accordingly, it was used to designate the totality of those who were called out. However, this original meaning nowhere plays a recognizable role in our material.

It is always displaced by terminological shifts, which the concept is undergone during a long history. In classical Greek, as well as in Hellenistic literature, it became a technical expression for the assembly of the people, consisting of free men entitled to vote. This political usage is present also in Acts 13, 1939, which refers to the regular assembly of the inhabitants of Ephesus. All right, so every lexicon I've looked at so far, every one of them has said the same thing, all right?

That Acts 1939 reflects Ecclesia as a public assembly, a legislative body. But they all also say the same thing. This is not how it is used in the rest of the New Testament.

So, here's what they write. In the overwhelming majority of the New Testament passages, Ecclesia is used as a fixed Christian term and is to be translated with congregation or congregational assembly, or church, obviously with a changed meaning, church, but church is really not the right word to use in translation. Distinguishing among passages that use Ecclesia with these different meanings as possible, only within limits the distinction between congregation, church, the body of Christians at a specific place, and church, the super congregational association of God's people and the totality of all Christians, is far in to the New Testament. So, it's a foreign distinction to make a break between the local assembly of believers and the universal assembly of believers. Closely related is the fact that early Christianity did not conceive of Ecclesia primarily as an organizational, but rather as a theological entity. The Ecclesia Universalis is neither a secondary union made up of individual autonomous churches, nor is the local congregation only an organizational subunit of the total church. Rather, both the local assembly of Christians and the trans-local community of believers are equally legitimate forms of the Ecclesia created by God. Now, I could go through page after page after page after page after page, and you will not find references to the church as a legislative body, the Ecclesia as a legislative body, in the New Testament.

I'm simply going through the dictionaries, and it's one after another after another after another. You say, well, why is that so important? Because we need to rightly understand our role. Yes, all authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus. Yes, we go in His name into all the nations to make disciples. Yes, we have authority in prayer. Yes, in Jesus, we have authority over Satan. It doesn't mean that we can stop people from doing bad things. It doesn't mean that we can just go to a dictator and say, well, I drive Satan out of you in Jesus' name, and you're now going to be a dictator.

No, we don't have power over people's wills, all right? And we overcome by dying, right? When Paul says we're more than conquerors, he means you can kill us. We still serve God.

We still honor the Lord, all right? The message to overcomers is often the message to churches in persecuted countries. You know, Richard Wernbraun, the most famous tortured prisoner for Christ of the last century, he said, you know, before the Iron Curtain fell in Romania, there were fine Christians that came over missionaries and tried to serve the church. He said, then the Iron Curtain fell, he said, and this new breed of people came over, and they're all going to teach the Romanian Christians about overcoming life and spiritual life and power and all this. He said, it didn't occur to them to say, you were tortured for 20 years and didn't deny Jesus. Could you teach us something? No, they came because, especially from America, oh, we got all the cool new methods, and we're going to operate in our authority, and we're going to fix everything.

He said, they didn't even ask, what can we learn from you who were faithful to Jesus, even watching your family die? Friends, we are not going to take over this world. We are going to usher in the return of Jesus who will take over this world, and I believe we'll see great harvest before he returns. And I actually believe that it's possible that America's greatest days are still ahead through revival and awakening and the ecclesia impacting the society.

I have a victorious mentality. I just believe that we can get off track with an emphasis on the church's governing authority based on a misunderstanding of the Greek. Let me see if I have time to do this. Oh, let's see. I'm going to skip down to page 14 in my document. And this is from the Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek. This is just from 2015, so perhaps the newest dictionary of ancient Greek. Ecclesia, assembly of people called together, meeting, gathering. And then when it gets to New Testament usage, same thing. It's once again, the community of believers, the lexicon of semantic domains, lo nida, congregation of Christians implying interacting membership, meaning congregation, etc.

It does not see anything as to a legislative body. I even print it up, print it up for those who are watching. I printed up the Hebrew from Ezra, for example, where it mentions the kahal in exile, the communion in exile. This is on the last page of the document. I printed up the Greek beneath it that says ecclesia. And then I printed up the and then I printed up the Aramaic Targum, which just speaks of the assembled congregation and then the Syriac.

All right. So it's if you're looking at it, top right is Hebrew, bottom right Greek, top left Aramaic, bottom left Syriac. Syriac just says people. The idea of legislative body either tying in with ancient Hebrew concepts of kahal or later Greek concepts of ecclesia in the New Testament. It's not there. The church is not a legislative body. The church is God's family on the earth with this authority, yes, not legislative body.