For many this question will be offensive. Certainly it’s provocative, even religously irreverent. But less so, I suggest, than the Bible translators’ ongoing blasphemy in renaming God’s precious “out calling” of his people after that of a pagan goddess and her stone circle shrine of devil worship.

For that is what nearly all bibles have done. Anciently, the goddess in question, Circe, was depicted by pagans as seated on a throne with a cup of wine in her hand and controlling the kings of the earth through her seduction and sorcery. Ring any bells? If it doesn’t then take a quick look at Revelation 17:1-5. Here’s an excerpt.

And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Let’s ask another question: How is it that this woman “drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” came to so rule the Christian world that the very word “church” is derived from and originates from her name?

Fact is the earth is replete with the remains of stone circles and pagan temples with altars on which animals and even men and women were done to death. And such executions were done in the name of Circe, the demon goddess so ancient that the very words circle and circus derives from her name. History records that Circe was (and to many still is):

Church, daughter of the Sun, a woman who had (still has?) the power to turn men into animals. She also trained animals to perform in her circus.

Legend holds she met Ulysses returning from the Trojan War, seduced him and bore a child Latinus, supposed founder of the Latin race. And wasn’t it was Latin Roman Catholics who first called their organisation and buildings “church”?

As to turning men into animals, I know of some so-called Christian services in which people under the influence of a certain spirit barked like dogs, flew like eagles, roared like lions, mewed like cats, ran wildly and rolled on the floor. So perhaps Circe as a circus is still alive and active.

Interestingly, when Circe died she was buried on one of the islands of the Pharmacusii (as in pharmakeia – sorcery) Group in the Aegean Sea in eyesight of the Isle of Patmos where the Apostle John saw most of the Book of Revelation. No wonder he so well describes her and her deadly sorcery and fornication.

Be that as it may, worshipping Christians should be appalled to know that the “church” they so lovingly attend gets its name from arguably the nastiest, filthiest female demi-god of all time. Yet they are not. And translators who deliberately used the pagan word cirice, circe or churche in Latin - all derived from her very name, instead of ecclesia, a good Greek word meaning the “called out” - should hang their heads in shame.

An angel tells of the “mystery” of “the woman” in Rev. 17:7. It is that she is “that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth” – and evidently over the “church” since that is called by her name.

Aside from pagan stone circles and circuses, “church” is also said to derive from Kuriakos, Greek for “House of the Lord.” But the Greek Bible word in question as traced in Strong’s Concordance is not Kuriakos but ecclesia. Fact is no building made by man should be called “The house of the Lord”, for heaven is his home. As Stephen said (Acts 7:47-48): “But Solomon built Him an house. Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, as saith the prophet”. So, once again we see the translators deliberately got it wrong.

So how should we rightly translate the Greek word ecclesia? Not by “church” but by “called out”. Ec means out and clesia means called. Thus ecclesia means a calling by God unto Himself of those who are brought to believe. It should not be thought of as a building, an organisation or lasting institution but a one-time summons to believe and become his own people and possession.

You see, the ecclesia, or calling out, was often short lived. Jesus ministered for only three and a half years to Israel as her Messiah. Those who responded to his “calling out” were saved and the rest perished, as Jesus warned they would. In the Pentecostal dispensation during Acts there was another “calling out”, that of Gentiles for the first time in some 2,000 years. As James said in Acts 15:14: “How God … did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people for his name”.

Even today the calling out, the “taking out”, the ecclesia, far from being a long lasting institution is temporary in that each person has only their own short lifetime in which to respond. Furthermore, the “calling out” is couched in the unique truths of the particular dispensation in which it occurs. Thus, as seen above, Gentiles were called out after Acts 10, where they had not been so summoned beforehand.

Actually, in Greek pagan culture an ecclesia was a meeting of a special few called out for a specific and usually temporary purpose. And so it is with God and his “callings out”. Like supermarket specials they are for “a limited time only”.  Not only are they a “calling out” but also a special dispensing by God of mercy and grace. Trace this in the Greek of Matt. 16:18 where Jesus says” Upon this rock I will build my ecclesia”. Here “build” is oikodomeo, similar to oikonomia, Greek for “house rules” and translated as “dispensation” in Paul’s epistles. The “rock” was the revelation of who He is as Saviour, Messiah and Lord.

Thus we see that ecclesia, “church”, is a “calling out” and it was this “calling out” that Jesus said he would “build” through different dispensations so that “the gates of hell (Hades, the grave) shall not prevail against it”. In simpler words, though they die the “called out” who respond faithfully will be resurrected to be part of the Lord’s kingdom, his heavenly rule, even though they cease to live bodily in the meantime.

 Christians set much store on their “church” services and “meetings”. Yet the meeting God is concerned about is your personal meeting up front and face to face with Himself. And temporarily with others who also believe. If you think you are saved just by going to “church”, please think again.

John Dudley Aldworth

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

Website: https://www.dayofchristmnistries.com/rss/all.xml

Cell phone: 027 1801 0277