The Leadership Institution
The Assembly (Ekklesia) is the model of gathering instituted by the Lord Jesus and practiced by the Early disciples and Christians. The model of meeting in an Ekklesia is Fellowship (Koinonia), which is an interactive meeting when believers gather as a local assembly. Both the style of gathering (Ekklesia) and the style of meeting (Koinonia) in an Assembly are different from that of the Church.
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Historically, "Church" existed long before Jesus instituted His Assembly (Mat 16:18). It was known as the "house of the Lord," the "Lord" being, a Greek goddess called "Circe."
Circe was a Greek name translated to "Kirke" in German, and "Cherche" in Scottish English. It metamorphosed over the years to "Churche" in old English, and then, "Church," as we know it today. But the meaning has always being same, "the house of the Lord, Circe," or simply "Kuriakon" in Greek.
Kuriakon was a flourishing, popular, powerful, ancient and pagan religion in the then world, particularly in Roman Empire, which was more or less the capital of the world.
In around 300AD, all religions in the then Roman Empire were forced to either shut down or become Christians by the decree of the Emperor. This was based on the Emperor's purported "conversion" to Christianity through a supernatural sign from heaven. To encourage and enforce compliance, all the religions were told they could keep their practices, rituals, doctrines, festivals, etc, but must be Christianized. Kuriakon, as with all other religion became "Christian."
With the help of the powerful priests of the pagan religion, they soon over-ran the true Christian Assembly through a state-sponsored machinery as the Emperor himself who was a priest of the state religion.
The religion took over the leadership, meetings, and structure of the normal Christian Assembly. They immediately banned Bibles, stopped meetings in houses of members and changed meetings to the "house of the lord" (Church), which was their place of meeting with lord, Circe. The style of meetings was changed from Koinonia (interactive gathering in people in homes) to the default style of meeting of priests-over-people (Clergy/Laity). Bibles were seized from members of the Assembly and those who resisted to give up their Bibles were killed. Assembly leaders in each home were dethroned, others were persecuted and those who resisted were slaughtered publicly to serve as warning to others. Those who escaped fled the city, some hid their bible parchments in caves as they fled. Many of these parchments were later found thousands of years later and discovered to be way different from regular bibles today. In the pretext of "translating the bible", it was doctored to include many strange doctrines and verses not in the original parchments.
The priests of the "house of the lord" (Church) took over the leadership of the Assembly and swapped titles among themselves to match their own titles from their "church" religion. The high-priest of that religion, known as the Pope assumed the overall leadership of Christianity while other priests who were canons, fathers, nuns, etc, appropriated titles and positions to themselves to match bible and existing positions and offices in the Assembly.
Since the whole population of the Roman empire was Christianized automatically by default by the decree of the Emperor without anyone having an encounter with Jesus, without bible, without the true Christian community to guide and lead them into true Christian doctrines of baptism, repentance, the whole population simply went to the "house of the lord' to sit and listen to what the priests had to say. The priests, who had no prior knowledge of Christianity or Christ taught the people about the doctrine of the "church. With striking similarities between the pagan religion and Christianity, personalities were swapped to fit into Christianity.
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Since the church was basically the worship of goddess Circe called the queen of heaven, it was named after Mary, who still occupy the highest worship, and her son called Jesus. The greatest practices that were migrated from the church religion were the infant baptism, which was never in the true Christian doctrine, worship of Mary, called the mother of God who is charged with praying for them, transubstantiation which was swapped with the Lord's supper with a marked difference and many other practices, rituals, and festivals like Easter, Christmas, etc which were strange and was never part of Christianity but have become core of Christian doctrine today.
Another Several other doctrines that are difficult to divorce from true Christianity were have come to stay which has no bearing
​And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers (Act 2:42)
"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (2Co 6:17 -18).
"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues (Rev 18:4)
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