JESUS and :MY CHURCH"

JESUS and "MY CHURCH"

In the gospel account by Matthew, in verse 18 of chapter 16, we read these words "You are Peter, and upon this rock will I build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it". NKJV. If we read the entire passage from verse 13-20 to put verse 18 in context, we clearly see that Jesus is talking about building "His Church" on the declaration Peter had given, in answering the question Jesus had asked in verse 15. So that is what He said He would build His Church on, and not Peter as a person. To Peter He said "And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven", meaning he would be permitted to preach the "gospel of the kingdom", which he and the other disciples did after they were filled with the Spirit in (Acts 1:8). We all know that keys are meant to open locked doors, and that task was given to all followers of Jesus. But the "church" that developed out of the joining together of the "True Church" we see developing in the book of Acts, with the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, spawned what has become the "false church", in my opinion. And the two should never be confused by considering them all together as being the "church". That would be like mixing together several "counterfeit" 100 dollar bills together with real ones, and think you were quite wealthy. This would not be wise, and when we consider what we call the "church", as a building people go to on Sunday morning, we are not wise either.

Martin Luther, who is looked to as the "Father of the Reformation", who was a Roman Catholic priest who was given illumination by the Holy Spirit regarding the truth that Paul explained in (2 Cor 5:17-21), and this shoke up the church of the day. He certainly brought forth the truth of "righteousness by faith without works", but he stopped short of changing the "structure" of what the church had developed into, back into what Jesus had in mind when He made His original declaration in (Matt 16:18). Each of the Reformers who followed Luther, and started various "Protestant Denominations", all kept pretty much the same church structure. Derek Prince, in his book entitled "Rediscovering God's Church" which was published in 2006, a few years after his death, by the ministry he had established, deals with this whole matter in a clear easy to understand way. I definitely would recommend it to anyone who is interested in knowing how far off the original pattern for the church, that we have strayed in our day!
Sincerely submitted.
Dave Jamer