GOD IS NOT MOCKED and He is not stopped, and He is issuing the call in this hour for HIS TRUE PEOPLE TO JOIN IN THE FORCE OF COMMUNITY. I am not speaking of the community as the world would see it, but I am speaking of the Spirit-joined community led by the Spirit of God. Throughout the Bible, continual reference is made to God’s people in their various forms of community, and the laws that God gave concerning His people were for them to adhere to within their community structure. For too long, the American people have assumed that they could glide along, as Christians, mixing and mingling with the heathen and be a two-headed beast, one side pleasing to God, and the other pleasing the world. But this is the hour when God is calling for a separation and an exclusivity for His people. We have attempted to play “social worker” to the whole world and in so doing, we have developed a pseudo Christianity that is a disgust unto the Lord and His righteousness. In this generation, the call is going out and God is demanding that His true ones be willing to forsake all and follow Him and be identified as HIS PEOPLE.
Professing Christian people are so full of disobedience and self seeking that they can quickly tune out every command of the Lord as being “extremist and cultish,” and go on listening to their worldly serenades and imagine themselves to be pleasing to the Lord. But the truth is that God desires a people who are not afraid to be identified as HIS. The devil and his demons are well-acquainted with the power that is in Christian community and that is why they attack it with every weapon of the world: media smear, government intervention and destruction, fear, magnified bad reports from false-Christians, and cultish accusations. When a people are joined together in the true spirit of the Holy Ghost unity, there is nothing that will hinder their prayers, and the blessings of God are multiplied for it gives the Lord pleasure to bless His people. The blessings that come to a community of believers far out number the blessings which the Lord bestows upon individuals living in isolation from a body of true spirit-filled believers.
Over the last forty years, our nation has been rocked by two outstanding“cult tragedies,” namely *Jones Town (an American community in Guyana, South America) in the late 1970’s and the *Waco, Texas fiasco in the early 90’s. Because of these tragedies, every fearful, lying, compromising Christian is able to dismiss the call to community from their minds and their hearts as being “cultish and dangerous.” Consequently, very few believers are willing to walk out the full blessing and challenge of the Lord and the prayer of Jesus. For He prayed for us that we would be one. There is nothing that makes a people more in union spiritually than living, loving, and serving one another DAILY, not just once or twice a week on Sundays or Saturdays, but continually from day to day. Also, there is nothing which shows up the hypocrite and Pharisee in us quicker than the beautiful, refining pressure of community living. If more Christians would stop seeking to please the world and upholding the world’s opinion of then, and get busy pleasing God, they would find that He would lead and direct their lives to a much greater degree and take them into a covenant relationship with other believers where they would truly learn the truth: WE DO NOT LIVE TO OURSELVES ALONE, BUT TO OTHER PARTS OF HIS BODY.
We do not compel people to obey and live-out Jesus’ prayer for His disciples and then live our lives contrarily. Since 1982, we have been called and committed to living as an ekklesia (a spirit-joined community). We are a body of believers who live together and move together under the direction of the Holy Spirit. We have forsaken all to dedicate our lives wholly to furthering the spread of the gospel to all of the world. We try our best to live what the Bible teaches, and we encourage you to also take the challenge that Jesus presented to all of His disciples to live-out what He taught.
During the early stages of living as an Ekklesia, we published many articles in Tribal Call to clarify a number of important points regarding the “church.” The first publication of The Tribal Call publication came out in1994, and our goal was to show the difference between the church and the ekklesia. More specifically, there are three different types of what modern society refers to as the “church”: (1) the strictly man-made church, (2) a mixture between the man-made church and the pure ekklesia, and (3) the pure ekklesia. All three versions of “the church” have been skewed completely. There are differences, and we intend to expose these differences. We have been an ekklesia since 1982, and we encourage you to read these articles that will help you to understand why these differences are important.
TRIBAL THEOCRACY
By: Generals Jim and Deborah Green, Ben Williams, plus an anonymous contribution (p. 12 in Issue one of The Tribal Call)
The Tribal Theocracy consists essentially in these three things: A) God himself, as Lawgiver, orders or modifies the relations of the spiritual and common life of the tribe by immediate revelation given to its leaders. B) God takes into His own hand the control and government of the tribal state, in that He is ever present to His people, makes known His will in important state affairs by His Holy Spirit through His Prophets and Leaders, and when necessary, interposes in a miraculous way, judging, punishing, and blessing. C) Finally, God raises up for the tribe the needed Leaders, Rulers, and Prophets, furnishing them with the power required for their office. Thus, all the human superiors of the tribe are, in the strictest sense, servants and representatives of God, whose duty is to carry out His law and execute His will. Our one Lord and Sovereign is Jehovah, the covenant God, who through His Son Jesus Christ is Lawgiver, supreme Judge and Ruler of His people. He unites in Himself all power and authority, constituting the Tribal Theocracy of His people and directing them by His servants.
Spirit Tribe
As the Spirit solidified the principle of warfare within our hearts, then came the expansion into the concept and the revelation of community, and He taught us that He has longed for a people who commune of the same spiritual bread and partake of Him in His fullness. We were taught that we act and react as one body and that we are joined together by the bond of His love. Not only did we receive the teaching and the revelation but we were also put to the test by God and we have lived as one people with all things common, trusting Him to be our head, our source, and our life.
Then, came the time and we could feel the wind of the Sprit stirring once again and as we leaned ourselves to hear Him, we heard the greater desire of God’s heart for this hour, the desire to bring forth TRIBES for His kingdom. At first, the revelation seemed shocking, but as we sought Him in prayers, we have come to see that indeed it is God’s desire, God’s call in this hour. The devil, of course, is busy imitating the call of God, and men and women everywhere are responding to the heathenistic incantation of demonic music, which calls to everything base within the human nature. Body piercing and mutilation has become the fad, and people are practicing scarification as though it were meant to be, cutting themselves, burning themselves with permanent identification such as tattoos as to their belief systems. People will endure all manner of hardships, with no comforts nor conveniences, to hear their favorite bands scream out vile incantic groanings which further call up the demonic forces motivating men to return to gross darkness.
On the opposite spectrum, the Living God is issuing the call to come unto Him as a separated people who will know Him in His goodness and see His power revealed. The true tribal people of God are as an indigenous people who are gradually being destroyed by the systems of men. No longer are men and women allowed to worship God as they desire but they are forced to report all of their activities to governments and authorities of men who claim to have the power over them. But the true TRIBALS are not ruled by men, but by God for they must answer the Spirit’s call and live in harmony with their Creator.
We are actually living in exciting times, for while the battle is tremendous, and the forces of evil are unleashed, the call of the Living God is also unleashed, and men and women will begin being formed into tribes who will relate to God as their head and their life. It is beyond, beyond the boundaries of men, into the realms of God where HE REIGNS AS MASTER. No longer do we have to put on our shows for men whereby they are given the right to approve or disapprove our lives, but we are called into the I AM dimension where what God is, is just simply accepted and lived, and His desires are utmost and they must be fulfilled.
The Tribe concept embraces both the army and the community and is a dimension far beyond what we have known in our lifetimes, yet if it were not attainable, God would not ask it of us. He is calling, we can hear Him, the Spirit sings His song, let us return to our Tribes where we are meant to belong.
A Holy Nation, belonging to the Living God, separated by God for His purpose, His plan, His desire. Release, release, and come into the realms of God, unending, infinite, eternal, for HE REIGNS.
The Correct Meaning of “Church”
Let’s start by defining the word. “Church” comes from the Old English and German word pronounced “kirché.” In Scotland, it was “kirk.”
The following entries are from the Oxford Universal English Dictionary:
Church [Old English cirice, circe; Middle English chereche, chiriche, chirche; whence churche, cherche, etc.:–Greek kuriakón…]
Kirk The Northern English and Scottish form of CHURCH, in all its senses.
In the earlier Greek, it was pronounced “ku-ri-á-kon.” As you can see, this word doesn’t even resemble the Greek word “ecclesia” whose place it has usurped.
The meaning of “ku-ri-á-kos” is understood by its root: “kú-ri-os,” which means “lord.” Thus, “kuriakos” (i.e., “church”) means “pertaining to lord.” It refers to something that pertains to , or belongs to, a lord.
The Greek “kuriakos” eventually came to be used in Old English form as “cirice” (kee-ree-ré), then “churche” (kerké), and eventually “church” in its traditional pronunciation. A church, then, is correctly something that “pertains to, or belongs to, a lord.”
Now, as you can see, there is a major problem here. The translators broke the rules in a big way. When they inserted the word “church” in the English versions, they were not translating the Greek word “kuriakos,” as one might expect. Rather, they were substituting an entirely different Greek word. This was not honest!
The word “church” would have been an acceptable translation for the Greek word “Kuriakos.” However, not by the wildest imagination of the most liberal translator can it ever be an acceptable translation for the Greek word “ecclesia.”
“Ecclesia” is an entirely different word with an entirely different meaning than “kuriakos.” In fact, the Greek word “kuriakos” appears in the New Testament only twice. It is found once in 1 Corinthians 11:20 where it refers to “the Lord’s supper,” and once again in Revelation 1:10 where it refers to the Lord’s day.” In both of these cases, it is translated “the Lord’s” – not “church.” This word does not appear again in the New Testament. Nonetheless, this is the unlikely and strange history of the word “church” as it came to the English language. Eventually, through the manipulation of organized religion, “church” came to replace “ecclesia” by popular acceptance. Again, I must emphasize the importance of knowing word meanings in order to know the intent of those who wrote the Scriptures.
The Correct Meaning of “Ecclesia”
Now, let’s look at the word, “ecclesia.” This Greek word appears in the New Testament approximately 115 times. That’s just in this one grammatical form. It appears also in other forms. And in every instance, except three, it is wrongly translated “church” in the King James Version. Those three exceptions are found in Acts 19:32, 39, 41. Here, the translators rendered it “assembly” instead of “church.” But, the Greek word is exactly the same as the other 112 entries where it was changed to “church” – wrongly.
In Acts 19, “ecclesia” is a town council: a civil body in Ephesus. Thus, the translators were forced to abandon their false translation in these instances. Nonetheless, 112 times they changed it to “church.” This fact has been covered-up under centuries of misuse and ignorance.
The Greek word “ecclesia” is correctly defined: “the called-out (ones)” [ECC = out; KALEO = call]. Thus, you can see how this word was used to indicate a civil body of select (called, elected) people.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:
In the New Testament, “ecclesia” (signifying convocation) is the only single word used for church. It (ecclesia) was the name given to the governmental assembly of the city of Athens, duly convoked (called out) by proper officers and possessing all political power including even juridical functions.
Obviously, in Greece this had no resemblance to a church. An “ecclesia” was a civil assembly in Athens even before the writing of the New Testament.
In the Oxford Universal English Dictionary (considered the standard for the English language) the word “ecclesia” is listed in its English form as used by our English forefathers. (Nowadays, only forms of the word appear – like, “ecclesiastical”).
Quoting from the Oxford Universal English Dictionary on the word “ecclesia”:
Ecclesia [mediæval Latin, and Greek εκκλησια – from εκκλητος: SUMMONED] – A regularly convoked assembly, especially the general assembly of Athenians. Later, the regular word for church.