Mission Shaped Church: Forward and Introduction

If ‘church’ is what happens when people encounter the Risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other, there is plenty of theological room for diversity of rhythm and style, so long as we have ways of identifying the same living Christ at the heart of every expression of Christian life in common.

• Mission-Shaped Church (forward).

 

We need to recognize that a variety of integrated missionary approaches is required. A mixed economy of parish churches and network churches will be necessary, in an active partnership across a wider area, perhaps a deanery.

• Mission-Shaped Church (introduction).

Our diverse consumer culture will never be reached by one standard form of church. The working group has evaluated a wide variety of ‘fresh expressions of church’. All have strengths and weaknesses, and none are appropriate for all circumstances.

• Mission-Shaped Church (introduction).

One of the central features of this report is the recognition that the changing nature of our missionary context requires a new inculturation of the gospel within our society.  The theology and practice of inculturation or contextualization is well established in the world Church, but has received little attention for missions in the West. We have drawn on this tradition as a major resource for the Church of England.

• Mission-Shaped Church (introduction).

Church has to be planted, not cloned.

• Mission-Shaped Church (introduction).

The gospel has to be heard within the culture of the day, but it always has to be heard as a call to appropriate repentance. It is the incarnation of the gospel, within a dominantly consumer society, that provides the Church of England with its major missionary challenge.

• Mission-Shaped Church (introduction).

The Book of Magick Power: Brainwaves Altered States of Consciousness

Beta: These are the kind of brainwaves that are observed by an EEG machine when we are in an active and alert state of mind.

Many of us spend  far less time in this state than we might suppose. This is a state of outer awareness in which we are focused on what is going on around us. This is the state we are in when we are jolted into full awareness such as when we must solve a problem, or when someone swerves in front of us while driving.

It is a state when we are seeking solutions, facing opposition, doing deductive thinking or any conscious reactive state of mind.

Magick that may be conducted in the Beta State: for the most part, you should  be in a light alpha state for any serious work, but occasionally you may have success with telepathic sending, intuition, prophecy through flashes of insight, magnetic charisma or fascination in the Beta State.

Alpha: These are the brainwaves patterns observed when a person is deeply relaxed and focused inwardly. It is often called the light trance. This is the state we are often in when watching TV or a movie, meditating, doing yoga, or driving long distances on the highway. Many of us spend a lot of time in this state.

When performing magick rituals, it is ideal to be in the alpha state of consciousness, but when we first start to do rituals, we are usually in the beta state, trying to remember all the steps, words, and gestures correctly.

Theta: This is the state associated with extreme relaxation and the deeper trance states of advanced meditation or deep hypnosis. It is sometimes called the "hypnagogic state."

Magick that may be conducted in the theta state: Out of body experiences, illumination, inspiration, intuition, channeling, communication with other planes, and past life experiences.

Delta: This is the deeper sleep, sometimes both dreaming and REM sleep and the deeper so-called dreamless sleep.

Magick that may be conducted in this state: Out of Body Experiences, Channeling,

Gamma: This state of hyper-alert mental activity. The Gamma state has been observed in certain monks and yogis in higher states of consciousness, and may be useful in some remote viewing experiences.

Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermetics: Exercises Step 1

It is impossible to acquire and maintain magical equilibrium if the body and the spirit are not trained simultaneously.

The fundamental conditions of this development are patience, perseverance and tenacity. You will be richly rewarded for the effort which you devote to your development.

Be kind, friendly, and lenient towards your fellow man, but unrelenting and pitiless with yourself. You can only expect success in magic when you act in this manner.

Allow no one an insight into your inner sanctum. A magician never speaks about his path, his ascent and success. Silence contains the greatest might, and the more this commandment is obeyed, the more accessible and easier to reach are these energies.

Human beings are creatures of habit, and once they have become accustomed to a particular hour for their exercises, then the urge to exercise comes automatically.

Magical Schooling of the spirit

Thought Control,Thought Discipline, Mastery of Thoughts

Thought Control: 
Seat yourself comfortably in a chair, or lie down on a sofa or bed. Relax your entire body, close your eyes and observe your train of thought for five minutes, and make an attempt to remember these thoughts.

Thought Discipline:
Retain one single thought or idea for a longer period of time while you steadfastly suppress all other thoughts which obtrusively try to join it. Select any idea or train of thought or any other suitable concept for this purpose at your own discretion. Retain this concept with all your power. Vigorously reject all other thoughts which have nothing to do with the one you are practicing. In the beginning you will succeed for only a few seconds, later on it will be minutes. You must succeed in maintaining and following one single thought for at least ten minutes.

Mastery of Thoughts:
Once you have mastered this exercise you can proceed with the next exercise. We will learn now to produce a complete vacancy of mind. Relax your entire body by lying comfortably on a sofa or bed or by sitting in a comfortable chair. Close your eyes. Vigorously reject any thought that attacks you. Nothing must be permitted to appear in your spirit or mind; only complete vacancy should prevail. Then maintain this vacant state of mind without digressing or forgetting yourself. In the beginning you will succeed, but only for a few seconds. However, through repeated practice you will become more successful. Once you have succeeded in remaining in this state for a full ten minutes without forgetting yourself or falling asleep, then the purpose of this exercise has been achieved.

Magical Schooling of the Soul

Introspection (Self-Cognizance)

Magical Diary: 
Psalm 77:5-6

אָ֭חַזְתָּ שְׁמֻר֣וֹת עֵינָ֑י נִ֝פְעַ֗מְתִּי וְלֹ֣א אֲדַבֵּֽר׃

חִשַּׁ֣בְתִּי יָמִ֣ים מִקֶּ֑דֶם שְׁ֝נ֗וֹת עוֹלָמִֽים׃

Piece 1:

Record all the negative characteristics of your soul in a magical diary. . . . It is a so called "control book."

(When practicing self-control, you have to be pitiless and strict with yourself when it comes to shortcomings, failings, habits, passions, urges and any other negative character traits. Be unrelenting towards yourself and do not glorify any of your failings and shortcomings.)

Piece 2:
Meditate and contemplate about yourself; place yourself in different situations of your past and consider how you behaved, taking note of the various failings and shortcomings which arose while you were in this situation. Record all the weaknesses in their finest nuances and variations. The more you discover, the better. Nothing should remain hidden; everything should be unveiled, whether the failings and weaknesses be significant or insignificant. Students that are especially gifted have discovered hundreds of failings in their finest nuances. These students had the ability of meditating properly and penetrating profoundly int their own souls. Wash your soul completely clean and sweep out all the filth.

(This psychic or astral preparatory work is the most important component in achieving magical equilibrium; without it, a consistent ascent in your development is not possible.)

Devote a few minutes to self-criticism every morning and every evening. Should you have a few free moments during the day, make use of them; contemplate intensively as to whether some failings still lurk in hiding somewhere. Should you discover some, record them immediately so they do not fall into oblivion. Whenever you discover a shortcoming do not hesitate, but record it immediately.

Piece 3:
Through deep and intensive contemplation, try to assign each of your negative characteristics to one of the four elements. In your magical diary, allow a column or a page for each of the four elements, under which you record your shortcomings. Should you not be certain which element a characteristic should be assigned to, add another category with the heading "indifferent." Eventually, as you advance in your development you will be able to determine to which element a characteristic belongs.

e.g.

Fire:  Quick Temper, Jealousy, Hate, Vengefulness, Anger.
Air: Thoughtlessness, boastfulness, self-conceit, gossip, wastefulness.
Water: indifference, apathy, cold-heartedness, acquiescence, carelessness, shyness, defiance, inconsistency.
Earth: easily offended, laziness, irresponsibility, ponderousness, melancholy, inconsistency.

Piece 4:
In the following week meditate on each characteristic in the above-mentioned categories and divide them again into three groups and record them in your magical diary.

Group 1: Those negative characteristics that influence you the most.
Group 2: Negative characteristics that occur less frequently and have less influence
Group 3: Negative characteristics that occur infrequently and have little influence on you.

Everything has to be done in the same form and manner when it comes to positive characteristics. They have to be divided in accordance with the elements, the category with the heading "indifferent" and the three groups.

Through these exercises you will attain two astral soul-mirrors, one black, which represents all your negative astral characteristics, and one white, with your good and noble traits. These two magic mirrors are considered to be actual occult mirrors and no one but the proprietor has the right to view himself in these mirrors. . .  These two magic mirrors give the magician the ability to accurately determine which element in the black or white mirror is predominant. This knowledge is absolutely necessary in order to reach your magical equilibrium. All your future development depends on it.

Magical Schooling of the Soul

Introspection (Self-Cognizance)

The mystery of breathing:

Make yourself comfortable sitting, or lying down. Relax your entire body and breathe through your nose. Imagine that, with the air, you inhale tranquility, inner peace, or whatever you are trying to achieve, and that it passes through your lungs and through your blood over into your body. Whatever you are trying to achieve, whether it be peace or success, must be imagined so intensively that the air which you inhale is impregnated with your wish - to the point that it has already become reality.

Breathing positive traits.

Conscious Intake of Nourishment:
Food which is impregnated with a wish has a particularly strong effect on the material plane, because it is subjected to the coarsest material elemental emanations. A magician would be well advised to consider this aspect if he wishes to achieve success in regards to his own body or other material wishes.

Whenever you have a meal, place the food which you are about to eat directly in front of you and, with the most intense imagination of which you are capable, concentrate on the idea that your wish be embodied in the food and that it is as effective in this manner as if it were already a reality. . . . All food and beverages are suitable for magical impregnation of wishes.

consuming positive traits

The Magic of Water:
Not only is water one of the most important elements in our daily lives, it is absolutely necessary for drinking, preparation of food, bathing, washing clothes, cleaning, etc.

Washing away negative traits
Drinking positive traits

The Political Economy of Peer Production - Michel Bauwens

Notes Taken from Michel Bauwens Essay "The Political Economy of Peer Production."

Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a deeper transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. 

As political, economic, and social systems transform themselves into distributed networks, a new human dynamic is emerging: peer to peer (P2P).

As P2P gives rise to the emergence of a third mode of production, a third mode of governance, and a third mode of property, it is poised to overhaul our political economy in unprecedented ways. This essay aims to develop a conceptual framework ('P2P theory') capable of explaining these new social processes.

Peer to Peer

P2P does not refer to all behavior or processes that takes place in distributed networks.

P2P specifically designates those processes that aim to increase the most widespread participation by equipotential participants.

P2P processes:

• produce use-value through the free cooperation of producers who have access to distributed capital: this is the P2P production mode, a 'third mode of production' different from for-profit or public production by state-owned enterprises. Its product is not exchange value for a market, but use-value for a community of users.
• are governed by the community of producers themselves, and not by market allocation or corporate hierarchy: this is the P2P governance mode, or 'third mode of governance.'
• make use-value freely accessible on a universal basis, through new common property regimes. This is its distribution or 'peer property mode': a 'third mode of ownership,' different from private property or public (state) property.

The Infrastructure of P2P

What has been needed to facilitate the emergence of peer to peer processes?

The first requirement is the existence of a technological infrastructure that operates on peer to peer processes and enables distributed access to 'fixed' capital.

Individual computers that enable a universal machine capable of executing any logical task are a form of distributed 'fixed capital,' available at low cost to many producers.

The internet, as a point to point network, was specifically designed for participation by the edges (computer users) without the use of obligatory hubs.

Although it is not fully in the hands of its participants, the internet is controlled through distributed governance, and outside the complete hegemony of particular private or state actors. The internet's hierarchical elements (such as the stacked IP protocols, the decentralized Domain Name System, etc...) do not deter participation.

Viral communicators, or meshworks, are a logical extension of the internet.

With this methodology, devices create their own networks through the use of excess capacity, bypassing the need for a pre-existing infrastructure. 

The 'Community Wi-Fi' movement, Open Spectrum advocacy, file-serving television, and alternative meshwork-based telecommunication infrastructures are exemplary of this trend.

The second requirement is alternative information and communication systems which allow for autonomous communication between cooperating agents.

The web (in particular the Writeable Web and the Web 2.0 that is in the process of being established) allows for the universal autonomous production, dissemination, and 'consumption' of written material while the associated podcasting and webcasting developments create an 'alternative information and communication infrastructure' for audio and audiovisual creation. 

The existence of such an infrastructure enables autonomous content production that may be distributed without the intermediary of the classic publishing and broadcasting media (though new forms of mediation may arise).

The third requirement is the existence of a 'software' infrastructure for autonomous global cooperation. 

A growing number of collaborative tools, such as blogs and wiki's, embedded in social networking software facilitate the creation of trust and social capital, making it possible to create global groups that can create use-value without the intermediary of manufacturing or distribution by for-profit enterprises.

The fourth requirement is a legal infrastructure that enables the creation of use-value and protects it from private appropriation. 

The General Public License (which prohibits the appropriation of software code), the related Open Source Initiative, and certain versions of the Creative Commons license fulfill this role. 

They enable the protection of common use-value and use viral characteristics to spread. 

GPL and related material can only be used in projects that in turn put their adapted source code in the public domain.

The fifth requirement is cultural. The diffusion of mass intellectuality, (i.e. the distribution of human intelligence) and associated changes in ways of feeling and being (ontology), ways of knowing (epistemology) and value constellations (axiology) have been instrumental in creating the type of cooperative individualism needed to sustain an ethos which can enable P2P projects.

The Characteristics of Peer to Peer

P2P processes occur in distributed networks.  

Distributed networks are networks in which autonomous agents can freely determine their behavior and linkages without the intermediary of obligatory hubs. As Alexander Galloway insists in his book on protocollary power, distributed networks are not the same as decentralized networks, for which hubs are obligatory.

P2P is based on distributed power and distributed access to resources.

In a decentralized network such as the U.S.-based airport system, planes have to go through determined hubs; however, in distributed systems such as the internet or highway systems, hubs may exist, but are not obligatory and agents may always route around them.

P2P projects are characterized by equipotentiality or 'anti-credentialism.'  

This means that there is no a priori selection to participation.

The capacity to cooperate is verified in the process of cooperation itself. Thus, projects are open to all comers provided they have the necessary skills to contribute to a project.

This is apparent in open publishing projects such as citizen journalism: anyone can post and anyone can verify the veracity of the articles. 

Reputation systems are used for communal validation. 

The filtering is a posteriori, not a priori. Anti-credentialism is therefore to be contrasted to traditional peer review, where credentials are an essential prerequisite to participate.

P2P projects are characterized by holoptism.

Holoptism is the implied capacity and design of peer to processes that allows participants free access to all the information about the other participants; not in terms of privacy, but in terms of their existence and contributions (i.e. horizontal information) and access to the aims, metrics and documentation of the project as a whole (i.e. the vertical dimension).

This can be contrasted to the panoptism which is characteristic of hierarchical projects: processes are designed to reserve 'total' knowledge for an elite, while participants only have access on a 'need to know' basis. However, with P2P projects, communication is not top-down and based on strictly defined reporting rules, but feedback is systemic, integrated in the protocol of the cooperative system.

The Unseen Realm: Chapter, Rules of Engagement

Looking back, I can explain all my study, education, and learning before and after my Psalm 82 moment using two metaphors: a filter and a mosaic.

Filtering the Text
Our tradition, however honorable, are not intrinsic to the Bible. they are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters.

The Mosaic
The facts of the Bible are just pieces - bits of scattered data. Our tendency is to impose order, and to do that we apply a filter, But we gain a perspective that is both broader and deeper if we allow ourselves to see the pieces in their own wider context. We need to see the mosaic created by the pieces.

Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole. Yes, the individual pieces are essential; without them there would be no mosaic. But the meaning of all the pieces is found in the completed mosaic. And a mosaic isn't imposed on the pieces; it derives from them.

Obstacles and Protocols
1. We've been trained to think that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible.
The proper context for interpreting the Bible is the context of the biblical writers - the context that produced the Bible. Every other context is alien to the biblical writers and, therefore, to the Bible. Yet there is a persuasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.

The Biblical text was produced by men who lived in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean between the second millenium BC and the first century AD. To understand how biblical writers thought, we need to tap into the intellectual output of that world. A vast amount of that material is available to us, thanks to modern technology. As our understanding of the worldview of the Biblical writers grows, so does our understanding of what they intended to say - and the mosaic of their thinking takes shape in our minds.

2, We've been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world.

First, many Christians claim to believe in the supernatural but think (and live) like skeptics.

One is their suspicion that charismatic practices are detached from sound exegesis of Scripture.

The other reason is less self-congratulatory. The believing church is bending under the weight of its own rationalism, a modern worldview that would be foreign to the biblical writers.

The second serious shortcoming is evident within the charismatic movement: the elevation of experience over Scripture

Those two shortcomings, while seemingly quite different, are actually born of the same fundamental, underlying problem: Modern Christianity's view of the unseen world isn't framed by the ancient worldview of the Biblical writers.

-the truth is that our modern evangelical subculture has trained us to think that our theology precludes any experience of the unseen world.

My contention is that, if our theology really derives from the biblical text, we must reconsider our selective supernaturalism and recover a biblical theology of the unseen world.

3. We assume that a lot of things int he Bible are too odd or peripheral to matter.

"We're going to skip this section of 1 Peter since it's just too strange."

The more common strategy for "handling" strange passages is more subtle: Strip the bizarre passage of anything that makes it bizarre. The goal is to provide the most ordinary, comfortable interpretation possible.

There are many other passages whose content is curious or "doesn't make sense" and so are abandoned or glossed over. Here's a sampling of them:

Gen 1:26
Gen 3:5, 22
Gen 6:1-4
Gen 10-11
Gen 15:1
Gen 48:15-16
Exod 3:1-14
Exod 23:20-23
Num 13:32-33
Deut 32:8-9
Deut 32:17
Judg 6
1 Sam 3
1 Sam 23:1-14
1 Kings 22:1-23
2 Kings 5:17-19
Job 1-2
Pss 82, 68, 89
Isa 14:12-15
Ezek 28:11-19
Dan 7
Matt 16:13-23
John 1:1-14
John 10:34-35
Rom 8:18-24
Rom 15:24, 28
1 Cor 2:6-13
1 Cor 5:4-5
1 Cor 6:3
1 Cor 10:18-22
Gal 3:19
Eph 6:10-12
Heb 1-2
1 Peter 3:18-22
2 Peter 2:4-5
Jude 5-7
Rev 2:26-28
Rev 3:21

My contention in this book, is that if it's weird, it's important.

The Unseen Realm: Chapter 1 Reading Your Bible Again - For the First Time.

My friend handed me his Hebrew Bible, open to Psalm 82. He said simply, "Here, read that . . . look at it closely."  the first verse hit me like a bolt of lightning: "God (elohim,) sits in the midst of the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods (elohim).

The word elohim occurs twice in this short verse. Other that the covenant name, Yahweh, it's the most common word in the Old Testament for God. And the first use of the word in this verse worked fine. But since I knew my Hebrew grammar, I saw immediately that the second instance needed to be translated in the plural. There it was, plain as day: The God of the Old Testament was part of an assembly - a pantheon - of other gods.

I'd always thought - and had taught my students - that any other "gods" referenced int he Bible were just idols. As easy and comfortable as that explanation was, it didn't make sense here. The God of Israel isn't part of a group of idols. But I couldn't picture him running around with other real gods, either. This was the Bible, not Greek mythology.

The explanations I found from evangelical scholars were disturbingly weak, mostly maintaining that the gods (elohim) in the verse were just men - Jewish elders - or that the verse was about the Trinity. I knew neither of those could be correct. Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth. The bible nowhere teaches that God appointed a council of Jewish elders to rule over foreign nations, and God certainly wouldn't be railing against the rest of the Trinity, Jesus and the Spirit, for being corrupt. Frankly, the answers just weren't honest with the straightforward words in the text of Psalm 82.

I discovered that other scholars had churned out dozens of articles and books on Psalm 82 and Israelite religion. They'd left no stone unturned in ferreting out parallels between the psalm and its ideas and the literature of other civilizations of the biblical world - in some cases, matching the psalm's  phrase word for word.

I came to realize that most of what I'd been taught about the unseen world in Bible college and seminary had been filtered by English translations or derived from sources like Milton's Paradise Lost.

- a theology of the unseen world that derives exclusively from the text understood through the lens of the ancient premodern worldview of the authors informs every Bible doctrine in significant ways.

My goal is simple. When you open your Bible, I want you to be able to see it like ancient Israelites or first-century Jews saw it, to perceive and consider it as they would have. I want their supernatural worldview in your head.

But it would be dishonest of us to claim that the biblical writers read and understood the text the way we do as modern people, or intend meanings that conform to theological systems created centuries after the text was written. Our contest is not their context.  

Seeing the Bible through the eyes of an ancient reader requires shedding the filters of our tradition and presumptions. They processed life in supernatural terms. Today's Christians process it by a mixture of creedal statements and modern rationalisms. I want to help you recover the supernatural worldview of the biblical writers - the people who produced the Bible.

One People of God in Faith

Recent post on Facebook does a lot of the research I hoped to do on the essential Jewish nature of the Church.


Shared by Kelly Crabb

The Church is Israel, we don't replace them, we are grafted into the Olive Tree!
We are the descendants of Abraham by faith.
Gal 3:7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
...

Here Stephen calls Israel the Church in the wilderness:
Act 7:38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and [with] our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us:
Here Paul, speaking to Christians, calls the Church the Israel of God:
Gal 6:16 And as many as walk according to this rule, peace [be] on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
Here the angel tells John that the prophets are our brothers, meaning that we are one people, one faith, one baptism, and one Body of Christ, and all believers, Old Testament and New Testament, are members of one Church.
Rev 22:9Then he said to me, “See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”
One Body, One Faith, God doesn't have two people, the middle wall of partition is torn down in Christ.
The Old Testament saints were saved because they looked forward to the Messiah and the cross. The New Testament believer is saved by looking back to the cross.
There is not two plans of salvation.


and more. . .


From Sean Hoss
Israel and the Church.
July 16, 2010 at 12:27pm
The church does not replace Israel because the church IS Israel! We have this faulty notion that they are radically different entities, and we forget that Christianity is the 'sect of the Nazarenes' (Acts 24:5) That means in early Christianity, the churches of Christ were considered part of Judaism. They are really one entity, though:
6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. (Gal 3:6-7)
26 For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal 3:26-29)
Believers ARE the seed of Abraham, and heirs of the promise.
6 Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.
8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. (Rom 9:6-8)
Not all physical descendants of Abraham are his true seed.
25 For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.
26 Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?
27 And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?
28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:
29 But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Rom 2:25-29)
12 Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. (Heb 2:12)
Which quotes this:
22 I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee. (Psalm 22:22)
The church is simply the same word as the congregation of Israel, especially as mentioned in the wilderness with Moses:
37 ¶This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear.
38 This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: (Acts 7:37-38)
16 For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.
17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree;
18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.
19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in.
20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear:
21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee.
22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
23 And they also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in: for God is able to graff them in again.
24 For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree? (Rom 11:16-24)
Believers are grafted into Israel as it also states in Ephesians 2:
11 Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
12 That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
13 But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
15 Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
16 And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
17 And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
18 For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
19 Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
20 And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; (Eph 2:11-20)
If the Gentiles were once aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, now they are fellowcitizens with the saints and of the household of God. They belong to the house of Israel, as this next two verses teach:
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: (Jer 31:31)
For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matt 26:28)
The New Covenant was made with the house of Israel. If we are forgiven our sins because of Christ's blood, and are in the New Covenant, then we belong to the house of Israel. There are many other verses which I could mention, such as Peter calling us like Israel:
But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:
10 Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. (1 Pet 2:9-10 cf Ex 19:6) or how Paul describes the Gentiles in Christ:
24 Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
25 As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.
26 And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God. (Rom 9:24-26 look at Hosea 2:23 and 1:10)
Suffice it to say the bible shows a continuity between the Old Testament Church (National Israel) and the New Testament Church (Jews and Gentiles who profess Christ) that many today deny. Israel IS the Church and the Church IS Israel!
© 2010 Sean Hoss


Finally, My contribution.


Though the church today is populated by mostly gentiles - the foundation of the church is thoroughly Jewish:


Jesus, the chief cornerstone of the new Temple is a Jew. Eph 2:19-20
The Apostles and Prophets are Jewish - ibid.
The scriptures were written by Jews - Rom 3:2
You could even argue that Luke was a Helenistic Jew living in the Diaspora.