The Church of Christ: Its Place and Origin
In the Old Testament, hundreds of years before Christ and the church, Isaiah once wrote, “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, ‘Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:2,3).
To those familiar with this Old Testament prophecy,
it would have been no surprise when Jesus said, “Thus it is written, and
thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead
the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be
preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke
24:47).
Just as Isaiah prophesied and Jesus demanded, Peter preached the first
gospel sermon in Jerusalem in Acts 2 (2:5). Upon this day, men of all
nations were taught (2:9-11), the law of the Lord was declared (Acts
2:38), and the church was established as men were added to it (Acts
2:47).
Any religious body that claims its origin is on any other continent, in
any other country or in any other city is not the church referred to in
Isaiah’s prophecy and is not the church Jesus died to save (Acts 20:28;
Ephesians 5:23).
Where does your church claim to have originated?
February 2006