Questions and Answers with Pastor Andrew Rappaport

The Biblical Meaning of the Local Church

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's summer school sessions where we're going to do this week a Q &A. That's a question and answers. For those of you that didn't know what Q &A was, yeah.

Anyway, we're going to do questions and answers. We have some questions that came in through Facebook and through our email. And some who are in the chat room now can start putting their questions in now.

The way to put a question in in the chat room if you're watching live is the letter Q and a colon that makes it stand out and we can see the questions. And we can answer even the silly ones like, did Andrew get a haircut?

Yes, he cut his own hair. All right, doesn't everyone cut their own hair? Yeah, well. All right, so we are going to have, I'm sure looking at the rowdy crew that we usually have in the chat room, I'm sure we're going to get a lot of interesting questions.

But this is going to be a question and answer class where we're going to get to answering hopefully as many questions as we can. And so we'll see if we can get them answered as best we can in the time that we have.

So one of the first questions that came in that we got through Facebook, I'll ask this one first. The question came in from Alex and the question was whether or not the term local church is biblical. Whether the term local church is biblical.

That was a question he had asked. We ended up, for clarification, I needed to get some background to understand what he meant in the question. After having got that, we have that. And so one of the things that he was asking was there's a difference that people often refer to as the local church and the universal church.

Another way you sometimes hear it referred to is the visible church and the invisible church. So let me define all those terms. And if you actually go to the Greek, the word we have in our English for church is ecclesia.

Sorry about that. So the word ecclesia is a word that means to call out for a public assembly. And so this was a group of people that would be called out for a specific purpose in a general assembly. So the word specifically meant a local gathering of believers.

It was those believers, we even have the names of some of the churches, Ephesus, we have the church names of Corinth, Philadelphia, things like that. So we have the actual names of some of those churches.

So what we have is a case where we have specific names of churches that were the local or visible churches. I say those two for specific reasons. In theological terms, the local church is those people that gather together on hopefully a weekly basis and they gather together for the purpose of worshiping God.

Now, that's also called the visible church because it is the church gathering that we can see. But within every local body of believers, you have those that are members of a church. You have those that are true genuine believers and some of those who are not genuine believers.

So you have true and false converts that are in the local body, that local church or that visible church. And so what is commonly referred to as the universal church or the invisible church is the extension of that term for ecclesia that means all of those that are part of the body of Christ.

These are specifically those that are regenerate people that make up the universal body of Christ. In other words, those people that around the world are all believers. So when you speak of the local body of Christ or local church or the visible church, that could be made up of believers and unbelievers.

But those that are part of the universal church or what's called the invisible church are made up only of regenerate people. So the term that is meant for this local gathering is extended to a universal worldwide gathering in the sense of people all over the world that are part of the true church.

You see, the local church has people that are true regenerate people and some that aren't. So there's the true church there and then there's false converts. But the universal church is made up only of true believers.

So in the question of is the local church biblical, yes it is. It's actually the primary meaning of the word that we have for church, ecclesia because they're called out into public gathering. But we use it often in extension when we speak of the church.

And so when we speak of the church, there are some things that are true only for regenerate people. So when it speaks of the body of Christ, when the scriptures speak of the body of Christ or the church, and it's speaking only to those things that are true only for believers, it's referring to the church universal, those that are truly part of the church.

You could look in a passage, Romans 9 for example, where Paul says not all of Israel was Israel. What he's saying is not all of those that made up the children of Abraham, those that were considered Israel, were specifically Israel, spiritual Israel.

So in other words, there was Israel the nation and Israel the believers. So you see those distinctions? So what you have there is two groups of Israel. You have the same thing with the church. You have two groups of church.

You have the regenerate and then that visible body that gathers. So this is something that we do see and we shouldn't be surprised by it. So I hope that answers the first question we had. If you do have questions, by the way, even after the show, if you're watching on YouTube and watching it later, you can always email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org, academyatstrivingforeternity .org or join the Facebook group, the Striving for Eternity Facebook group and you can always ask those questions there.

We always seek to get somebody, if not me, to be able to answer those questions. So that was one of the first questions that we had. Another question that may be a little bit easier to answer. I say that only because we have a question that's going to be, not so much that it's going to be hard to answer.

We have some questions, we have a question here that's going to take a little bit more detail to answer. And so that will take some time. So let's look up the question. If there's any questions in the chat room, feel free to put a colon, a Q, a Q and then a colon and then your question.

Because I actually have the chat room right there this week so I can see. So this question is going to take a little bit of reading from this passage. So let's take a quick read of this. And it says, the question is, it's a little bit lengthy but let me try to read it.

Angels in Jude, Revelation 12, and 2 Peter 2

Jude 1 .6 states this, and the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

The second passage is in Revelation 12 verses 3 and the first part of 4 and then verses 7 to 9 and they read, then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and the seven crowns on his head.

His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them down to the earth and there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against these dragons and the dragon of the lost angels fought back.

But he was not strong enough and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon who was hurled down, the ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray, he was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

Now this one is a little bit more difficult to understand. The question was, can you reconcile these two for me? And the answer is no, I can't. So let's move on to the next question. The reason actually I can't reconcile them is because I don't think they have anything to do with one another.

I believe these are two things that are speaking of two different groups of angels in two different time periods. So what we have is a case where I think in the passage of Jude, there's two interpretations that you have with the angels in Jude.

If we open to the book of Jude, that's toward the back of your Bible and I know that you all brought a Bible to class. So if you look in Jude, it's going to speak of, in this passage, it's going to speak of in more detail of them.

So if you back up a little bit and you start at verse 5, you see that he says, now I want to remind you, although you already knew it, that Jesus who saves, who left out of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe and the angels did not stay to their own position.

So he speaks of Egypt, then he speaks of these angels. Verse 7, though, just as Sodom and Gomorrah surrounded the cities and likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued the desire, so serve as an example, undergoing punishment of eternal fire.

So you end up having several examples here of some bad teaching, bad angels that do some things, some bad people that do some things. Now, when we look at Jude 6, which is very similar to 1 Peter and some things, I believe, and there's different people have differing views on this, and I think that both are some good views, but these angels seem to be angels that were involved in the day of Noah.

So this is going to be a little different. Some think that the angels referred to in Revelation 12 refer to those being sent down when Satan first fell and was cast down to earth, but yet in the context, it's talking about the seals later, so it's kind of hard to see that being there.

It seems to be a future event, future to us at least. And so, what I think that we have here actually is a case of, I think these are two different groups of angels that are in two different time periods, one being in the time of Noah, one being, some argue for the time that Satan first fell, but I think just because of the casting down to earth, but it's probably more future event.

So I think you're dealing with two different groups of angels in two different time periods. I hope that kind of helps answer the question. But there is some interesting surrounding of the angels referred to in Jude 6 that also deal with that in 1 Peter.

So the question that just came in the chat room, how do you get the time of Noah? Well, we get that actually out of the 1 Peter passages 1. And let me look that up real quick. Where this becomes of interest is that these angels, I believe it's 1 Peter, but I'm trying to find it.

It might be 2 Peter. Let me look real quick. Sorry about that. Let me look it up. Yeah, 2 Peter 2 verse 4. For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them into chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, if the turning of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned the extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly.

So what you see here is very similar language to Jude. And so there's some connection. And so someone in the chat room is already jumping the gun here and asking Genesis 6. And yes, you have an account in Genesis 6 of the sons of God that have sexual relations with the daughters of men.

And so there's question of that. Now we do know the sons of God is a reference that we saw in our theology class to angels. So that should bring an interesting question. Not the son of God. Son of God is a specific individual, but sons of God often refer to angels.

So were those angels that had sexual relations with the daughters of men that so corrupted the human race that it required a worldwide flood? And some will say, no, no, no, that's mythology. How do you get there?

How do you get into angels that can have sexual relations with men? That's Greek mythology. But whatever did happen in Genesis 6, it was something so severe that God had to wipe out all of the human race for it.

And it seems that these angels, in whatever way that they corrupted the human race, were cast into a temporal location of punishment that they are held. Now when Jesus saw different demons as he walked the earth, the demoniac, the man we know of as the demoniac with legion, and they say, you're going to cast us into that place of darkness.

In other words, there is a place where there are some demons that are cast into now, which is still not their eternal resting place because we see in the end of Revelation that hell and death and the demons and the devil are cast into the eternal lake of fire.

So the eternal place is the lake of fire. So what you have there is that it seems that there is a place where some demons are right now chained up for one reason or another, and they are not able to be free, and they will eventually join the rest of the demons that will be judged and cast into that eternal lake of fire.

So what are the angels or the sons of God that are referred to in Genesis 6? Well, there's a couple different answers it could be. I actually do believe because of such a severe consequence that somehow these angels did corrupt the human race in some way.

If they could have corrupted the human race, then they could have been able to basically prevent the Messiah, and they understood the prophecies that were seen all the way back from Genesis 3, and therefore that's always been their desire because they realize they've already lost, but they're doing everything they can in their power to still try to win because they've got nothing to lose.

So is that mythology? I'll let you decide. It's an interesting study if you want to study that out more than we have time for in this class because we do want to get to a couple more questions. Again, if you have questions in the chat room, feel free to put them in there.

Also, you can always email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org, and we'll hope to answer all of those questions. We did get an email that came in that is a question that is often asked. It's asked out of the book, out of 1 John, and it is one that says, let me read it here.

It says, Can you lose your salvation? In other words, can somebody sin in such a way that if they continue to sin that they lose their salvation? Because they say in 1 John it says that the one who sins cannot be saved.

And so let's look at 1 John. I want to take a look at 1 John, and I want to read it actually starting in verse 5 just to get some context here, but it says this, This is the message we have from Him and proclaim to you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

Now, it's interesting that the person wanted to stop there, because if you continue it says, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. Now, let me deal with the passage here, and we're going to jump around on this one because this comes up often, and this is one that some people have to understand.

They always go to 1 John because 1 John is a black and white type of book. Now, if you remember or if you haven't taken our school of hermeneutics, biblical hermeneutics, you should watch that. Okay? There's 20 lessons there.

And so, if you go, you can see that one of the things we're going to teach you is that context is important. Not just the context that you see in literary context. In other words, as we just looked, we read beyond what was quoted in the question.

See, the person that asked the question wanted to read 5 to verse 7, but stopped there and didn't read to the rest verses 8 to 10. So, the literary context is important. Alright? But, another thing that's important is going to be looking at the context of history, the historical context.

The question really being, why did John write what he wrote? Who was he trying to address? What was he trying to address in his question? And so, what we have there is this. We have the question that John is speaking to a group of people called Gnostics.

Now, what do we know about Gnostics? Well, the Gnostics were people that believed that anything material, physical, was evil. But anything spiritual was good. And one of the things that they would do is they would justify their sin.

They would go sleep with a prostitute and say, well, my spirit didn't do it. Only my flesh did it. My body did it. But I didn't sin because it wasn't my spirit that was doing that. And we would look at that and go, who are you trying to fool?

They were trying to fool themselves and God if they could get away with it. But God will not be fooled. And we see this throughout time. Many people that do many things make many arguments to try to justify sin.

So, what John is specifically addressing in these black and white terms is if you're claiming you have no sin, that you do not sin, you make God a liar because God says you do sin. But He gives us a remedy for that sin and the remedy is going to Him in forgiveness as the cross.

But notice the language here. He says if you walk in the light, if you walk in darkness, do you see that in the passage? Walking has the idea of a pattern of life. It's used in a figurative sense to mean the way you conduct yourself yourself.

It's a pattern of life. In other words, if your pattern of life is evil, is sinful, now granted we're all going to sin. That's not His point. It doesn't mean if you have to be absolutely perfect as some try to argue and only if you're absolutely perfect are you walking in the light and therefore you have Christ.

That's not what He's saying. What He's saying is that if you walk, in other words the pattern of your life is continually being more and more spiritual and that's your conduct and your pattern. That's what you're known for.

In other words, when you die and people speak of you with the obituaries, is that going to be, they're going to talk about what a party animal you were and what a sinner you were or are they going to talk about your spirituality and how you continue to do that which was right in God's eyes.

Though there was sin there, we all have that, but there's going to be an aspect that we are always walking in the light. He's speaking to those that walk in darkness but claim to have light. That's who He's speaking to.

That's the group of people, people that claim they don't sin because they're not doing it in their spirit. So that becomes a distinction. Now, can we lose our salvation? That's a separate question and let's address that.

Because the way people will argue, and they'll argue from Revelation, well those who overcome, well I would argue that those who overcome will go to heaven because those that God has already saved already overcame.

Not because of what they have done but because of what God has done. Remember when we look at this, and we're going to get into this in our systematic theology class, when we look at salvation and we look in detail and we see that in that we will notice that we have a case as we look through the doctrine of salvation that it is God who saves.

Now if it's God who saves, a simple question, who are we to think we're stronger than God that we can break the bond that God says no one can break? Let's look at Romans chapter 8. I want to read a little bit of a lengthy part because I want to make sure we get the context.

After reading Romans 7 where he speaks about I believe someone coming to salvation as in Paul's case and he says, oh wretched man that I am, he comes to saving knowledge and then it says verse 8, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the spirit is life has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death. For God has done that what the law weakened by flesh could not do. Do you notice who's doing the saving there?

God did what the flesh could not do. Which makes it interesting when people argue that if we can somehow lose this salvation that God has given us. Continuing in verse 3 there, middle of verse 3, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

So how do we walk? We walk according to the spirit. Why? Because of what God has already done. For those who live according to the flesh have set their minds on the things of the flesh but those according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.

For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind of spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You however are not in the flesh but in the spirit. In fact the spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him but if Christ is in you all together the body of the body is dead because of sin.

The spirit is life because of righteousness. Do you see here? I mean I hope that this becomes very clear who it is that does the saving and who it is that did the work. Notice if it is God that saved us and he's saying he's strong, he can do this, then who can be against him to undo what he does?

Now some will say that yeah, but there's things that we see people that live in sin. Well actually 1 John has an answer for that. It's very simple. Those that live a lifestyle of sin but they argue that they're going to argue that well look this person claimed to be a believer but now look at their life.

It means they never were Christians. John says they went out from among us because they were never of us. That's an important thing. They were never believers. So we have to understand that but continue reading later in chapter 8 of Romans it says in verse 31, what shall we say then to these things?

If God is for us who can be against us, he did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will we not also with him graciously give all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies. Who is it to condemn us? Jesus Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised. Who is it who is at the right hand of the father who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Now he's going to give a list of things here. What he's saying here is God saved us, God gave us salvation, God is strong, in fact he's all powerful, nothing is stronger than him and therefore who can be against him who saved us?

He promises to keep us and look what he says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulations, so in other words you see people that have given up supposedly on God because tribulations came in their life or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword.

If any of those things cause a person to walk away from the faith it means they never had the faith. There's not two classes of Christian. There's not those who are true believers and cardinal believers.

There's those who are saved and those who are false believers. There's true and false converts is what there is. So no one can save us. Look at verse 37, no in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Notice the focus, God loves us for I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor those things present nor those things to come nor powers nor heights nor depth nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of Jesus Christ.

In other words some people say oh yeah none of those things but I can lose my own salvation by my works. He says here as a catch all not nor anything else in all of creation. In other words there is nothing, nothing that is stronger than God that can make you lose your salvation to separate you from the love of God.

Now we could go on on that, we'll hit that in our theology but we have some more questions that are coming in. If you need more on that essentially what we're saying is you cannot lose your salvation because God is the source of the salvation.

Catholicism, Added Works, and Added Books

Another question that we have, Christine asks how do you answer someone who insists that Catholics are Christians with extras? Well very simple, the extras they often refer to is either they're extra books that they add to the Bible or they're extra works that they add to faith.

Both of which God says he's going to condemn. It's those extras that are dangerous. You see when you say the Bible plus which the Roman Catholic Church never accepted those extra books until the 1500s.

So to them even they were extras and they only added them in response to the Reformation. But that would be, what does it say? Oh in the book of Revelation, oh yeah those that add to these books are going to have the plagues added to them.

You're not to add to God's word. When we see them add their traditions to God's word, those extras are the very things that are going to condemn them. When they add their works to the faith of God, then guess what?

They've added to what God says is salvation and that condemns them. It's those very works that's going to condemn them. They add things like purgatory which is proof of their works based salvation. Because in purgatory you work off any of the things you haven't done in life.

Yeah that's proof that it's works. Alright so what I would say is it's those works that they rest upon that actually condemn them. Someone's asking do we see a connection of the Nephilim in Genesis 6 and Daniel 2.

Let me just look at Daniel 2 40 and 43. It's always good to check with the scriptures and check them in context. So let us read. This is Daniel 2. I'm going to back up to verse 36 and read this. Nephilim in Genesis 6 are those giants that some would say the sons of God that we read about earlier in Genesis 6.

This was the dream, now we tell you, we'll tell the king its interpretation. You O king are the king of kings to whom the God of heaven has given his kingdom and power and might and the glory and into whose hand he has given wherever they dwell the children of man, the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the heaven making rule over them and you are the head of gold.

Another kingdom in fury to you shall arise after you and yet a third kingdom of bronze shall rule over all the earth. Then verse 40 says and there will be a fourth kingdom strong as a lion because of iron it breaks to pieces and shatters into all things and like iron that crushes it breaks and crushes all things into very small pieces.

So this is verse 33. So verse 41 now. And as you saw the feet and the toes partly of potter's clay and partly of honor, iron, it will be divided into the kingdom but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it but as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay and as to the toes and the feet were partly iron and partly clay so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle.

So as you saw the iron mixed with soft clay so they will be mixed with one another in marriage but they will not hold together as iron does not mix with clay. I would answer no this is not the Nephilim of Genesis 6 and the reason I would say that is because what this is is speaking of the Roman Empire.

We see that King Nebuchadnezzar as this passage speaks in its context you have Babylon, you have then another which isn't mentioned which we now know is the Medo-Persian Empire but later in the book of Daniel he will refer to the other two, the third and the fourth kingdoms by name which is Greece and Rome.

So that's how I would answer that. I hope that helps. Those were some quick questions. We have another question from someone in the chat room who says some people cite Hebrews 6 as proof that a person can fall away from the faith.

I don't think it means this but what's your take on that? Okay so let's go back to that because this is again to the salvation. Can you lose your salvation? And on our website down here you can go to the website and you'll see or you should see, let's see I'm going to actually jump out there real quick I hope and see if I can find it to see we have on the website we should have a paper on this specific passage and it should be under, if you go on the website under biblical commentaries and then Hebrews there is a paper right there that says does Hebrews 6, 4 -6 teach that you can lose your salvation?

Let us read that. I'm going to just read 4 -6 and I think it will be kind of clear. It says for it is impossible, note that word, for it is impossible in the case for those who have once been enlightened who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away to be restored again to repentance since they have crucified once again the Son of God in their own harm and holding Him up in contempt.

So a couple things to note, one is that it is impossible for these people to ever be saved again. If this passage is referring to people losing their salvation then it is impossible for them to ever gain it again.

Which is something that those who hold to losing their salvation never hold to. They believe you can lose it and then gain it, lose it then gain it. Another thing that we see and we noticed this already when we spoke about the church is that there is a visible church and I believe what this is speaking of is just that.

The visible church that there is people that are in the visible church who are not regenerate. They have tasted of the things of God but they do not have a regenerate heart. So they do not really know the things of God.

They are not regenerate. And therefore we have the case where I believe He is speaking to people in the visible local church that has some regenerate and some not regenerate. He is saying those who are sitting in the church and refuse to bow their knee to Christ, it is impossible when they fall away, when they had the truth, they leave the truth knowing full well what the truth is and reject it, they cannot be regenerate.

Regardless if you believe this means you can lose your salvation then in its context it means you can never ever be saved again. It contradicts those other passages that we looked at where we looked at some of the context that we looked at where we looked at some of the context of Romans 8 where it is saying that God saves you, where it is speaking specifically of salvation.

And this is a good hermeneutical principle. A good hermeneutical principle is when you have an easier to understand passage you interpret that to explain the harder to understand passage. So you never want to take a difficult passage as Hebrews 6 in its language, the book of Hebrews, the whole book is a difficult book to interpret.

But you need to see in this that there is a case where when we have this that seems more difficult to understand, it is not as clear, we are going to let those easier to understand passages, those clearer passages to interpret this.

So the clearer passage would be that there is many, many, many passages in Scripture, most of the parables, most of the things Christ spoke about that speak of hypocrisy. People that would be in the church but not really of the church.

Those who profess Christ but do not possess Christ. They proclaim salvation but they don't have it. That is consistent. So this passage very easily could be speaking of hypocrites in that way because that is a consistent theme in the New Testament and in the Old actually.

But we also see passages like Romans 8 that are very clear who saves and that nothing can separate us from that love of God and that if we have that love of God we are Christians. So if nothing can separate us that seems pretty clear that once God who does the saving saves us, we are not stronger than Him to lose it.

So in that clear understanding I think it is better to understand Hebrews 6 as referring to false converts that refuse to accept the faith, walk away from the visible or local church and therefore can never be saved because they knew the truth.

They now call themselves to be atheists. That is really who it is, those hardened atheists that have so rejected God. Can God still save them? Sure. God can do whatever He wants. He knows when He has hardened someone's heart like Pharaoh's heart.

Pharaoh hardens his heart, hardens his heart, hardens his heart and at some point God hardens Pharaoh's heart. You can read that in Romans 9. So God can do that. When we look at this we see that, and if you want to look, go to the website down here and look up that paper.

You'll get more information. Now there are some questions we will not have time to answer because there is just too much detail. Job 38 verse 7, Revelation 2 verse 28 and Revelation 22 verse 16 are these verses referring to angels?

I don't know if we are going to have time to answer those. If we have time email us that question and let me try to answer that offline. We'll see if we have time for that. I'm just concerned that we are running short on time but we are going to see.