Messianic Protestant
BE inspired! Subscribe for posts sent to your email
Those Who Are Called Out
The title Messianic in our name reaches back into the Older Testament, to show the inextricable linkage Christianity has with God's chosen people, Israel, historically, culturally and doctrinally, as it also reaches forward into the New Testament, since Jesus is our Messiah, as is testified to in each of the 528 times the Greek word Christ is used in the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 5:7 the Apostle Paul stresses that this Messiah, who was seen in a very different, militaristic light hitherto, was sacrificed as the Passover lamb, an idea totally new, even shocking to any Israelite, and this becomes the central message of the New Testament.
The usage of Protestant sets us squarely in the lineage of great reformers like John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Menno Simons, John Wesley, and many others, who pushed back against the excesses and errors of the Medieval church, and started the process of moving Christianity back towards a biblical basis for doctrine and practice, a process we feel should continue today.
In Paul's second letter to the Corinthian church, he sets forth the great truth that became central for the Protestant Reformation, that this same Messiah, "who knew no sin," somehow took on himself our sin, "so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
The word Assembly. in our name harks back to a usage denoting the gathering or community of Israel before Yahweh. Since the Septuagint uses the Greek word 'ekklesia' (they who are called out) to translate this Hebrew word for the assembly of Israel before Yahweh, and the same word is translated church in the New Testament, it therefore links together the communities of faith in Old and New Testament times alike.
