…Covered Ekklesia

The called-out assembly of all flesh, constituted by the cross, without walls, without exclusion mechanisms, without a statement of faith that qualifies or disqualifies, became a building with a door that could be closed.

Part 5 of 5

 

The first four documents in this series examined translation choices that covered declarations about the one the gospel proclaims, his name, his covenantal title, his Father’s name. This fifth document examines a translation choice that covered the nature of the body his cross constituted. Not who he is. What his work produced. And what the tradition built in its place.

The body constituted by the cross of Yeshua is without walls. It was constituted for all flesh, every nation, every kind of human being, every person the cross declared righteous before any of them believed, agreed, transformed, or qualified. It has no door that can be closed because its constitution was not a decision made by any human institution with the authority to open or close doors. Its constitution was the act of YHWH holding both sides of the covenant alone between the pieces while Avraham slept, unable to fail his side because YHWH had taken both sides himself. The body is as wide as the covenant YHWH held alone. Which is as wide as all flesh.

The word Yeshua used for this body was ekklesia. And ekklesia does not mean church.

Ekklesia, the called-out assembly of all flesh, constituted by the cross without walls, without exclusion mechanisms, without a statement of faith that qualifies or disqualifies. Church is a building with a door. These are not the same thing.

Ekklesia is a Greek civic and communal word. In the world of the Greek polis, the city-state, the ekklesia was the assembly of citizens called out from their homes and daily lives to gather and conduct the business of the city. It was not a religious term. It was not a building. It was not an institution. It was a gathering, the people assembled, called out from wherever they were and brought together for a common purpose. The ekklesia was inclusive by its very nature. It was the people, the whole community, gathered.

When Yeshua said in Matthew 16:18 I will build my ekklesia, he was using this word deliberately. He was not saying he would build a religious institution with a hierarchy, a statement of doctrine, and a membership process. He was saying he would call out an assembly, a gathering of all flesh, called out from every nation and background and category, brought together not by their agreement with a human institution’s requirements but by the cross that had constituted their righteousness before they were born. The ekklesia of Yeshua is the assembly of the called-out, all of them, everywhere, of every kind, constituted by what YHWH did at the cross before any human institution existed to manage it.

The translation chain from ekklesia to church passed through Latin ecclesia, still carrying the called-out meaning, and then into the Germanic languages where it encountered kyriakon. Kyriakon means belonging to the Lord, and it referred originally to a building dedicated to Christian worship. A building belonging to the Lord. Kyriakon became kirche in German and church in English. And church in English carries the building-and-institution connotation of kyriakon from its etymological roots, not the called-out-assembly connotation of ekklesia.

Ekklesia came from the Greek civic world, the people gathered, inclusive by nature. Church came from kyriakon, a building belonging to the Lord. A gathering and a building are not the same thing. One has no walls. The other has nothing but walls.

The difference between a gathering and a building is the difference between all flesh and a membership list. A gathering has no walls to define who is inside and who is outside. A building has walls. A building has a door. A building can have a sign out front that says who is welcome and who is not. A building can have a statement of faith that defines the boundary between the qualified and the unqualified. A denomination built around a building can exclude. And the church, as institution, has excluded, systematically and consistently, throughout its entire history.

The evidence of the exclusion is the forty-six thousand denominations. Each one drew its boundary at a different coordinate. Each one found the previous boundary insufficient or incorrect or too broad or too narrow and drew a new one. Each one built its walls in a slightly different place and called the people inside the walls the true expression of the body. And in doing so each one left someone out, because that is what walls do. Every denomination that has ever existed has left someone out that the cross constituted righteous. Every statement of faith that has ever been written has excluded someone that YHWH included when he held both sides of the covenant alone between the pieces.

The body of Mashiach contains all forty-six thousand denominations and everyone they have each excluded. It was constituted at the cross, not at the Council of Nicaea, not at the Diet of Worms, not at any founding document of any denomination in the history of Christianity. The righteousness that constitutes the body was declared for all flesh by the one who held both sides of the covenant. If YHWH held both sides, the question of who qualifies to be in the body was answered before any human institution existed to ask it. The answer is all flesh. And all flesh is wider than any building, any denomination, any statement of faith, any exclusion mechanism that any church has ever constructed.

This is why this research does not use the word church for the body of Mashiach. Not because the word is evil or the people in the institutions are wrong in every particular. But because the word carries the architecture of exclusion in its very etymology, a building belonging to the Lord, with walls and a door that can be closed, and the body constituted by the cross has no such architecture. The ekklesia is the called-out assembly. The calling is YHWH’s. The assembly is all flesh. The constitution was the cross. Nothing in that sentence requires a building. Nothing in that sentence permits a door that can be closed.

Yeshua said in Matthew 16:18 the gates of hell shall not prevail against my ekklesia. The gates of hell, the powers of death and exclusion and condemnation, cannot prevail against the called-out assembly because the assembly was constituted by the one who abolished death, constituted universal righteousness, and finished judgment. The gates of hell have no power over a body whose constitution is the cross. But the gates of forty-six thousand denominations have prevailed, one exclusion at a time, against the people the cross had already included, because the institution built walls where the cross had made none, drew boundaries where the covenant had declared none, and closed doors that the death and resurrection of Yeshua HaMashiach YHWH had opened for all flesh forever.

The gates of hell shall not prevail against the ekklesia. But the gates of forty-six thousand denominations have prevailed, one exclusion at a time, against people the cross had already included. A building can close its door. The cross cannot be undone.

The restoration of the word ekklesia to the vocabulary of those who proclaim the gospel is not a minor adjustment in religious terminology. It is the declaration that the body constituted by the cross is as wide as the cross, and the cross was for all flesh. It is the declaration that no human institution’s statement of faith is wider than what YHWH declared when he held both sides of the covenant alone. It is the declaration that every person in every one of the forty-six thousand denominations, and every person every one of those denominations has ever excluded, is in the body that YHWH constituted before any of them built their first wall.

The ekklesia is the body without walls. Called out by YHWH. Constituted by the cross. Open for all flesh. The house declared in the first letter of the first word of the Torah, the enlarged Bet, the house, written before anything was made, open. Because the nail at the center of the Torah held it open. Because the one who bore the nail in his hands showed Thomas the name. Because YHWH saves, Yeshua, the name above every name, is the name of the one who called out the assembly and constituted it for everyone.

That is the ekklesia. It was always the ekklesia. And it was always wider than any church that has ever been built in its name.

 

The ekklesia is the called-out assembly of all flesh, constituted by the cross, bounded by nothing, open for everyone the cross declared righteous. Which is everyone.

 

The Four Together

The Series Complete

Five documents. Four words. One gospel that was covered by them and is now uncovered.

Yeshua: YHWH saves. The divine name embedded in the name of the Son, declaring that YHWH is doing the saving and the salvation belongs to YHWH alone. Covered by Jesus — a label with no declaration, a sound with no testimony, a name that points to a person without saying anything about who he is or what his name declares.

Mashiach: the anointed one of the covenant, the king, priest, and prophet commissioned by YHWH, the completion of the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets, the destination the entire covenant story was aimed at. Covered by Christ, a surname attached to a first name, a title absorbed into a two-word designation so thoroughly that almost no one perceives the title as a title, and the covenant connection it was meant to invoke has been invisible for sixteen centuries.

YHWH: behold the hand, behold the nail, the identity declaration of the divine name in four Paleo-Hebrew pictures, the name that was supposed to be remembered in every generation, removed six thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight times and continued into the New Testament where Thomas’s recognition of the name in the nail marks of the risen Son was covered with a title of respect. Covered by Lord, a declaration of authority where the text had placed a declaration of identity, a rank where the covenant had placed a name.

Ekklesia: the called-out assembly of all flesh, constituted by the cross before any institution existed to manage it, open for everyone the cross declared righteous, which is all flesh. Covered by church, a building with walls and a door, a denomination with a statement of faith and a membership boundary, forty-six thousand different expressions of an exclusion architecture built over the body that the cross made boundless.

The four coverings together accomplished something that none of them could accomplish individually. They produced a version of the gospel that could be proclaimed in the English language without the name of YHWH being present in the name of the Son, without the covenant connection being heard in the title that designated him, without the identity declaration of the divine name being read in the nail marks of the risen Son, and without the boundless called-out assembly being distinguished from the walled institution built in its name. The gospel became a religion. The religion built institutions. The institutions built walls. And the first word of the Torah, which had declared the Son and the covenant and the cross and the house before anything was made, was left speaking to itself in the language Moshe had drawn in the wilderness, in a script that had been replaced, carrying a name that had been removed, pointing to a body that had been walled.

The coverings are now removed. The words have been examined. The declarations have been heard. Yeshua HaMashiach YHWH, in the ekklesia of all flesh. That is what was written before anything was made. That is what was covered. That is what is restored.

 

Jesus covered Yeshua — YHWH saves.

Christ covered Mashiach — the anointed one of the covenant.

Lord covered YHWH — behold the hand, behold the nail.

Church covered Ekklesia — all flesh, no walls, no one left out.

 

Four coverings removed.

 

Yeshua HaMashiach YHWH, in the ekklesia of all flesh.

 

Written before anything was made.

Covered for sixteen centuries.

Speaking again now in full voice.

 

The Gospel Revolution  •  Mike Williams Ministries

William Ethan Massengill  •  Michael Lilborn Williams  •  Daniel Thomas Rouse

Published by Audrey Williams