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Chapter 2: The Promise Fulfilled – The Church is Born

Connect…

Put yourself in the place of the disciples. Jesus Christ, whom you have followed and for whom you had
abandoned everything to follow, had recently been crucified but appeared in your midst and promised
that a new day was coming soon. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to live inside of you, but perhaps
you really did not understand how that was possible. After all, since the beginning of time, while the
Holy Spirit came upon the prophets or other men of God, it was only a temporary thing. Can you
imagine what it was like to wait 50 days until finally this amazing event occurred? Let’s look at this
event more closely…

Objectives…

1. The student should be able explain how the church was born at Pentecost. The student should be
able explain how this experience changed the lives of believers in the first century.

2. The student should be able describe difference between the church universal and the church local.

3. The student should be able describe the responsibilities of the church as commanded by Jesus. The
student should be able site how the modern-day church may have wandered from those responsibilities

The Lesson ...

The Birth of the Church

It is from the New Testament primarily, if not really exclusively, that the real meaning and idea of the
Church is derived. This mystery of the Old Testament was introduced at Pentecost and will end at a
future rapture and wedding feast. Two words are of special importance in understanding what the
church is:

1. Ecclesia – comes from two Greek Words meaning “to call out from.” This word is used about 115
times in the New Testament. In Acts 7:38 Luke refers to Israel in the wilderness by the same word.
v
Again, this is why Israel is a type of the church in the Old Testament. But it is primarily referred to the
assembly of believers in Christ (Matt 16:18, 18:17, I Cor. 1:2, Eph. 5:25-27). The idea of being specially
“called out” is understood in the book of Romans.

Romans 8:30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he
justified, he also glorified.

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