This is a post from another forum I am on. The question was about when the church began and if the church was in the Old Testament. I thought this was a pretty good summary of different opinions and I have the author’s permission to quote it and post it in other forums.
The word "church" in our New Testament is a translation of the Greek word ekklesia. This is designated by number 1577 in the Strongs Concordance and in there it is given the pronunciation of ek-klay-SEE-ah. It means a called out group or assembly. According to Strongs the word church (singular) occurs 80 times in the New Testament and the word churches (plural) occurs 37 times. I think, if I remember correctly, it applies to God's people in just about every case except in Acts chapter 19 where it applies to a group of people who had assembled together to see what they could do to get rid of the Apostle Paul and the effects of his ministry. In this case it is called an assembly.
Israel in the wilderness is called "the church in the wilderness" by Stephen in
Acts 7:38. Again, this means assembly. God's people were assembled in the wilderness and that has the same meaning as church.
There are differences of opinion among Apostolic Pentecostals as to when the church began.
1. In Ephesians chapter 1, it speaks of God choosing "us" in Him before the foundation of the world. Some see this as the beginning of the Church. In their opinion, the church existed in the mind and plan of God before He ever called Abraham, or gave the law to Moses, and everything before the New Testament Church was temporary and preparatory.
2. Some believe that Adam, Eve, and the Word (Jesus) were two or three gathered together in the name of the Lord so the church began there and then, continued through the line of Seth, was on the ark as Noah’s family, and has continued on through Abram and his seed (natural and spiritual seed or natural and spiritual Israel.
3. Some believe the "church" began with the call of Abraham and the church has always been God's called out ones whether it was Abraham and his family, or the congregation in the wilderness, or God's people in Canaan, or God's people even in captivity. When Jesus came and presented Himself to His people and they rejected Him, the real Church was those who accepted Him even though the "visible" Church was all of Israel after the flesh. When Jesus spoke in
John 10:16 of having other sheep which were not part of the fold but they would be brought into the fold, He was speaking of Gentiles who would later come into the Church which would be "the Israel of God."
Galatians 6:16,
Romans 10:6-8, and
Galatians 3:16-18, 26-29.
4. Others see the Church and the Kingdom being different terms for the same thing. They see the Church beginning after John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the Messiah and as the Lamb of God. In their opinion, the church then began in
John 1:35 where John pointed some of his disciples to Jesus and they left John and joined themselves to Jesus. The following day, more joined themselves to Jesus. The simplest definition of "church" is two or three gathered in Jesus' name so according to this teaching, when those disciples left John and began to follow Jesus, that was the beginning of the New Testament Church. A couple verses for this teaching are
Mark 1:14-15 and
Luke 16:16.
5. Others, some times referred to as "dispensationalists" believe the church began on the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.
Acts 11:15 refers to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost as "the beginning." Some who believe this dispensationalism, believe that the 120 who gathered together in
Acts 1:12-16 were not actually saved or converted or born again until they spoke with tongues on the Day of Pentecost. Some dispensationalists believe that the 120 (including 12 Apostles) got baptized in Jesus' name on the Day of Pentecost and are included in the number of "about 3000 souls" who were water baptized that day.
Dispensationalists place a lot of emphasis on the word "will" in
Matthew 16:18 and say that since the word "will" is future tense it means the church did not exist at the time Jesus spoke those words but that the church would come into being some time in the future. This is promoted by the notes in the Scofield Bible which is "dispensationalist." However, the word "build" is the word "edify" as in
1 Corinthians 14 and Jesus could have just been saying that He was building up His church (which was already in existence at that time).
There may be other opinions among Oneness Pentecostals, but these are the main ones I can think of right now. There is a lot more diversity among Apostolics than we may hear about in our local church.
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