We continue to arrange Sellers’s teachings on ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia).
The word “does not mean ‘church,’” Sellers insists, “no matter what definition is given to this term.” The facts adduced in the preceding post “are generally known, but they have been misconstrued by many, and probably will continue to be until His lightnings enlighten the world (Psalm 97:4),” that is, until the Kingdom comes.
The exalted meaning of “out-called” is degraded and stultified so that it can be used to signify something that we are today. They say that since the followers of Christ have been called out of the world, this makes us the out-called ones. All this is in spite of the fact that Jesus Christ said of His own:
I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. John 17:15
They illustrate this by saying that Israel is called “the ekklēsia in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38), declaring that this was because they had been called out of Egypt. These are not the facts in the case of Stephen’s declaration, as will be shown later.[1]
Sellers had nothing but disdain for what churchmen have made of this term:
I suppose that the most prevalent error in Christendom today is the idea that when the Lord Jesus said: “Upon this rock I will build My ekklēsia” (Matthew 16:18), that He was speaking of the great mixture of organized religion that travels under the canopy which today is called “the church.” . . .
In spite of the attempts to prove otherwise, the word “church” comes from the Latin word for “circle,” and it is from this that we get our English word “circus.” So today when we see the pretentious parades and the religious extravaganzas that are put on display for all to see, we are convinced that the word “circus” fits it to quite a degree of exactitude. If I were any part of this great three-ring American religious circus, I would hang my head in shame. But, thank God, from all this I have been delivered and separated. I consider all of this highly successful religious activity to be little more than men putting on the “form of Godliness, but denying the power thereof,” as Paul said would characterize men in the concluding days of this Dispensation of Grace (2 Timothy 3:5).
In other words, the last thing Sellers was going to do was to read the manmade societies of today, especially any to which he may have belonged or in which he was raised, back into the Acts period.
So, what does ekklēsia mean?
The subject of the New Testament is the Kingdom of God, and it has been shown in previous studies that “kingdom” means “government.”[2] One thing that is essential to any government, even absolute monarchies, is that men shall be given positions that are out of the sovereign. In the United States we insist that the sovereignty belongs to the people; therefore, our President has a position which is out of the people. He is an out-called or out-positioned one in the true meaning of ekklēsia. . . . Since no man is able to do everything, even if it is his right and duty to do certain things, he gives positions to others, and these then become out-positioned ones, their position being out of the President. However, there must be no thought of severance in the word “out” as used here, no more than when we say the arm is out of the body—not severed from it but projected.
Jesus Christ could not, however, give to another a position that was not already intrinsic to Him:
When one gives a position to another, the place given must first be inherent in the one who gives it. It was the declared purpose of Jesus Christ to give many a position out of Himself. These would be a projection of Him, and individually and collectively they would be His out-called, that is, His ekklēsia. Therefore, Jesus Christ being the Son of God could give others this position so that they might be sons of God. He was God’s apostle, and He could give others out of what He was and they too became apostles. He was God’s prophet, and He gave of Himself to others and they became prophets. All such had a position out of Him and were the out-called of God. We could go on through a long list, for He was Shepherd, Teacher, Governor, Miracle-worker, Healer, Evangelist.
This is what it means for the ekklēsia to be His σώμα (sōma) or “body” which He would build:
Thus as the Lord Jesus gave of Himself so that others could become in a measure what He was, He built up His own body or substance [σώματος, sōmatos] upon the earth (Ephesians 4:12). . . . And we need to note that no man could ever be anything in the sight of God unless this position is first found in Jesus Christ. Truly, Jesus Christ loved the ekklēsia and gave Himself for it that it might become in a measure what He is.
Sellers then offers an explanation of Stephen’s message given in Acts 7 “where in speaking of Moses he declared: ‘This is he that was in the ekklēsia in the wilderness.’ This is usually taken to mean that Stephen was telling these Israelites that Moses was in Israel. If so, this would have been a bit of gratuitous and useless information, about the same as if I should tell a Britisher that Queen Victoria was a citizen of Great Britain. The ekklēsia spoken of here was not Israel, and we will miss important truth if we think so.”
The man Moses had a position out of God. He was ekklēsia, an out-called man. He was Israel’s Chief Executive, Supreme Judge, and Lawgiver. But let no one choke on the idea of one man being out-called of God. This is one truth that all must learn. As Karl Ludwig Schmidt, the renowned Greek scholar, puts it:
To put the matter in a nutshell: a single individual could be—would have to be—the ekklēsia if he has communion with Christ.[3]
Moses was the monarch in Israel. He ruled alone, but when at the suggestion of Jethro (Exodus 18:23), he chose able men out of all Israel and made them “heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens,” an enormous ekklēsia was produced that numbered about 80,000, all of whom had a position out of Moses. And it was a position that he could take back to himself at any time.
Moses’s administrative burdens, however, increased to the point that he complained to God for relief (Numbers 11:10-15). In response the Lord told him to gather seventy elders of Israel into the tabernacle of the congregation. Furthermore, the Lord declared:
And I will come down and talk with thee there: and I will take of the Spirit that is upon thee, and will put it on them: and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou bear it not thyself alone (Numbers 11:17; emphasis added).
These seventy men had a position out of Moses. He was in them.
They partook of what he was—his position, his substance, his very essence. This is what Stephen was talking about when He said of Moses: “This is he, that was in the ekklēsia in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). He was telling them that Moses was in the seventy, for in fact they were the body of Moses, or his substance, which is what the word “body” means. And it is my understanding that this is what the dispute was about when Michael the archangel contended with Satan over “the body of Moses” (Jude 1:9). Satan was most eager to seize control of the seventy men.
This sheds light on Matthew 16:18, where the Lord, speaking through Peter to the other apostles (Judas excluded) declared:
And I say also unto you, that you are rock, even as I am rock, and upon this rock I will build of Me the out-called ones, and not even the power of the state of death shall prevail against them.
Indeed, His out-called ones must be built out of Him.
The elaboration of this point must await a future post.
The chief characteristic of all out-called men is that they mediate between God and men. There were many of these in the 33 years of the Acts period, but not one in this the dispensation of God’s grace [cf. 1 Timothy 2:5]. All anyone can claim today is that he is a sinner saved by grace.
But, I also believe that in view of the service we will perform when God governs, we will need to have a position out of Him and to mediate between God and men. Then we will be units in that great ekklēsia Jesus Christ said He would build out of Himself.[4]
To Be Continued
Notes
[1] Otis Q. Sellers, “What does Ekklēsia mean?,” Seed & Bread, No. 97. Quotations in this blog post are from this study. This Quora discussion, however, suggests that the Latin circus and the Greek kuriakon are false cognates. The rhetorical potential of this “connection,” given Sellers’s indictment of “churchianity,” was apparently too great for him to resist.
[2] See “Otis Q. Sellers: Prophetic Prayers about God’s Kingdom,” August 13, 2020.
[3] Karl Ludwig Schmidt (1891-1956) was a German theologian and professor of New Testament studies at the University of Basel (1935-1953). Professor of New Testament Studies from 1929-1933 in Bonn, he was dismissed from his position in September 1933 by the Nazi regime due to his resistance to the Aryan paragraph. He wrote the article on ekklēsia for the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. I have not yet found the source of Sellers’s quotation of Schmidt.
[4] Of Himself, that is, the genitive singular μου (mou), not ἐμός (emos).