Second: Erosion of the Church in contemporary thinking and living compels us to a more intent focus on her significance throughout the ages. The Church’s fragmentation into thousands of independent bodies has changed and defied Christ’s purpose. In this fragmentation, conservative bodies offer at best individual salvation, to please people, and liberal bodies offer global salvation, to escape the fear of the Lord. These new centralities for the purpose of the Church only emphasize the decline into brokenness. Not the glory of God the Father but interests of members center the attention.
Third: Another reason for reflection/study comes out of Dispensationalism, a popular ideology which generally and strangely cuts history into seven sections, to make the Church a departure from the course of the ongoing history of Israel. Dispensationalism now defines Protestantism and Evangelicalism.
These three give cause enough for continuous contemplation on and purification of Christ’s Church.
At the start, it is necessary to say that the history of the Church is one, from the beginning to the end of time.2 To make the basic doctrine of the Church clear, we shall call Christ’s almighty salvation work in the first dispensation the Old Church, and in the second dispensation the New Church.
THE OLD CHURCH
In the light of progressive revelation with respect to the Church, Christ created and gathered her from among the patriarchs, that is, from Adam over Noah to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,3 and Moses. Then already the LORD made her an eschatological community, preparing the Church for the glory of the new heavens and earth.
Adam-Moses
Christ’s church-gathering work began with Adam; in the beginning, church membership consisted of two people, Adam and Eve. With respect to earliest times, it is difficult to speak of congregational worship/life, a fact that remained so for the duration, until Moses. Except for one reference, Gen 4:26b,4 little definite with respect to ecclesiastical doctrine appears in the early context of the Church.
Throughout this patriarchal period the heads of families successively in the line of the covenant served as kings, prophets, and priests, first Adam, then Noah, then Abraham. Respecting kingship, the LORD charged these men with government and they ruled respective families. With respect to prophecy, the LORD spoke to these men, they in turn to their respective families. In relation to the priesthood, the LORD called them to sacrifice and these men did so in behalf of their families. Noah, for instance, offered to the LORD, Gen 8:20. Abram/Abraham began building altars to the LORD in the Land of Promise, Gen 12:7. We may in this context also mention Job, who sacrificed on behalf of his children, Job 1:5, and for his friends, Job 42:8. Beyond main functions of the office of the congregation, ruling, prophesying, and sacrificing, it is difficult to garner from the Bible what specific doctrine of the Church the LORD gave the early people of the covenant, other than that they, separated from the world, were his.
In Noah’s era the descendants of Cain, the children of man, had overpowered in popularity the children of God. Gen 6:5, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” As this wickedness burgeoned at the expense of holiness, the Old Church was dying.
Yet the LORD, faithful to his promises, maintained covenant and the line of the covenant promises/obligations moved over Noah to his son, Shem,5 and hence to Abraham. However, before Abraham, in the aftermath of the Tower of Babel confusion of language, the Church was dying again; rebellion against the LORD was the current order of the day.
In faithfulness the LORD renewed the covenant promises and obligations with Abraham, and separated him and Sarai/Sarah from the Semites, indeed, from the nations of the earth, so that he and his descendants be a people holy to the LORD. This comes in memorable revelation, Gen 17:7, “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.” It is important to note already at this point that in the course of time the LORD by progression in salvation-history continually renewed the Old Church: for renewal he broke through the darkness of sin and revealed more of his glorious purposes with respect to the Church.
To Abraham and his descendants the LORD granted the first of the two ecclesiastical sacraments, circumcision, thereby commanding a more liturgical structure to congregational worship, even though the congregation was still limited to Abraham’s immediate household,6 and the cutting away of foreskins occurred at home. Eventually the LORD transformed circumcision into the sacrament of baptism, but for the duration of the Old Church retained this bloody rite for Abraham and descendants.
Until the time of Moses and the Exodus, the LORD gathered, defended, and preserved the patriarchal families in the line of the covenant as the one Church. From the perspective of the New Testament she was undeveloped until with progressive revelation he gave fuller knowledge of and structure to ecclesiastical unity and worship.
Moses-Christ
In the way of the covenant and during the Egyptian enslavement, four hundred and thirty years, Exod 12:40–41, or four hundred years, Acts 7:6, the LORD multiplied the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as sand on the seashore and stars in the heavens. Under Moses he created them into a nation and revealed more of the reformation of the Church with renewed promises and obligations; from then she remained much the same until the opening of the New Testament period.
Again, as with Abraham and the circumcision of men bought with money, the LORD revealed a missionary initiative among all non-Israelites who chose to leave Egypt with the covenant people at the time of the Exodus, Exod 12:38, “A mixed multitude also when up with them . . ..” These Egyptian ex-slaves too joined the departure for liberty in unity with Israel, for Moses wrote, Exod 12:41b, “. . . all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.” To Mount Sinai.
The LORD granted to Israel the second sacrament, the Passover. Exod 12:14, “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance forever.” However the Church lived and functioned during the enslavement, the LORD gave the renewed essence and structure even before she left Egypt.
In due time, the LORD revealed the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and the Levitical priesthood of Aaron, plus the many ordinances for congregational worship involving (bloody) sacrifices. The whole nation of Israel formed one congregation, the renewed Church. Church and nation were one, with ecclesiastical and civil laws. Among the twelve tribes fashioned by the sons of Jacob, the LORD brought out the Abrahamic unity of His people.
At Mount Sinai, upon covenant renewal, the LORD instructed Moses and Israel to build the Tent of Meeting, in order to centralize worship and in unity magnify the glory of God. A central sanctuary, the Tent of Meeting, became a structure of extraordinary beauty, particularly because of the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant with its mercy seat. Exod 25:22, “There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you of all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.” The most remarkable aspect of all this was the central prophecy of the covenant, a new prophet, the Messiah, Deut 18:15–22.
At the conclusion of the Tabernacle construction its significance showed. Exod 40:34, “Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.” About this Tabernacle the LORD willed Israel, the Church, to gather at his command, also on Sabbath days.
With the Tabernacle the LORD commanded precise ritual, particularly with regards to the sacrifices, as he had with the construction of the