In God’s Kingdom, the leadership structure is turned inside out and upside down. That’s why the Lord teaches that leadership is humble servanthood, and the better a believer serves the best interests of others the more frequently Father God will update that person’s leadership status.
In the ancient Greek city-states, it was the sound from a herald’s blown trumpet that called forth/summoned the different groups of Greek citizens to their own ekklesia (a word in the ancient Greek cultural that depicted the basic idea of an “assembly”). Every different ekklesia was held in a local community meeting place where each assembly (ekklesia) of Greek citizens discussed their own city-state’s various political concerns. These facts are why if the last days alive believers in Christ Jesus are going to be alert AND prepared for God’s promised last-trumpet summons, which will call them to come up hither, then it is vital that every one of today’s believers in Christ Jesus takes part in the process of recapturing the first-century followers of Christ’s cultural commission of going into the world as they knew it to both evangelize their world and disciple all the NATIONS. For the Word of God is crystal clear about this display of a global influence being exactly what God always intended for every one of His Household of Faith children to achieve.
It is a huge interpretive mistake that always causes many to identify the Bride of Christ as the Tribulation’s “elect.” The Bride of Christ absolutely is not the Tribulation’s “elect,” because the Scriptures show that it is the spiritually blind Jewish people, the unbelieving Gentile masses, and the unprepared, unwatchful Body of Christ members who are the ones who will experience the Tribulation Period. The Bride of Christ (the faithful, obedient, prepared, and watchful Body of Believers) is raptured before the seven year Tribulation Period ever begins!
There can be no doubt that the way Christ Jesus uses the word Ekklesia, when He declares to Peter that the Lord would be the foundation upon which Christ Himself would build His Community of believers, is to express His original intent for His Ekklesia. That original intent for His Ekklesia is that the Lord expects every Ekklesia to be a Community of believers—disciples who not only are concerned about the world, from a Christ-like perspective, but also are representing the Kingdom of God on this Earth in such a way that they are causing the entire world to conform to the culture of the Lord’s Ekklesia. In other words, Christ Jesus’ original intent for His Ekklesia is that each Community of called-out believers would be changing the world until everyone in the world begins to walk, talk, and act like true believers in Christ are supposed to walk, talk, and act.
Hatred for born again, saved (justified), and progressively sanctified full of the Holy Spirit Resurrection-Rapture believers is ever so evident these days. There are so many mass and social media contributors, and even Christian pulpit preachers and classroom teachers who not only are denying the concept of a Resurrection-Rapture but also these deniers are bashing those true believers who have given their total trust (faith) to God and, as a result, earnestly do believe that the Resurrection-Rapture is indeed imminent. Thus, it wouldn’t hurt to pray to God, asking Him not only to prepare the unsaved but also the saved hearers’ hearts so that the sown Seed will fall in “fertile” ground.
The “church” is the globally recognized spiritual body of loving, caring, born again, saved believers in Christ over whom Christ is the Head and the Lord, which gives Him the authority and the power to add new believers daily to His spiritual body of “called out” Christians who have assembled in the public and private places located throughout this entire world.
