Read Some OT Verses that Mention the Church in the Old Testament

G1577 ἐκκλησία ekklesia is translated “church” in the NT, so how would it read if we translated ἐκκλησία ekklesia as used in the Septuagint as “church”?

“And Moses spake in the ears of all the church of Israel the words of this song, until they were ended.” (Deut 31:30, KJV)

“He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the church of the LORD. A bastard shall not enter into the church of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the church of the LORD. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the church of the LORD; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the church of the LORD for ever:” (Deut 23:1-3, KJV)

“And Moses spake in the ears of all the church of Israel the words of this song, until they were ended.” (Deut 31:30, KJV)

“And the chief of all the people, even of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the church of the people of God, four hundred thousand footmen that drew sword.” (Judg 20:2, KJV)

And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O LORD: thy faithfulness also in the church of the saints. (Ps 89:5, KJV)

“Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the church of saints.” (Ps 149:1, KJV)

“The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy church.” (Lam 1:10, KJV)

“Gather the people, sanctify the church, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.” (Joel 2:16, KJV)

In a reversal, by avoiding church in the NT:

“And I also say to thee, that thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my assembly, and gates of Hades shall not prevail against it;” (Matt 16:18, YLT)

“And if he may not hear them, say it to the assembly, and if also the assembly he may not hear, let him be to thee as the heathen man and the tax-gatherer.” (Matt 18:17, YLT)

I’ll relate an early time in my Christian life, as I grew up on the 1917 Scofield KJV Bible, in a Dispensationalist church. In my youth, 1950s up into the early 1970s, I had dispensationalism so burnt into my brain, I was really separating the OT people of God solely as Israel, never referring to the OT people of God as a “church”, only the NT people of God were properly referred to as “church”.

When I began to question some of the teaching I had received, I found a devotional book by Charles H. Spurgeon in the Bible bookstore. There was no Internet or WWW at that time. In reading some of Spurgeon’s comments I encountered times when he used the word “church” in reference to the OT people of God. I thought to myself, “How quaint, Spurgeon was before the time of truly deep biblical knowledge by Scofield, Bob Jones, John R. Rice, etc.” I surely was arrogant! BUT, that was the norm for dispensationalists at that time. When the Pastor gave us a scripture to look up, he would say, “That’s page #xxx in your Scofield.” Of course, I knew I was being taught the true old-time religion, and if I heard any preacher refer to a “general resurrection” or a “general judgment” I knew I was hearing from a modernist, blood atonement denying heretic. Probably those awful deceivers were using the RSV as well.

Of course, when you visited another church, you cast your eyes about to see if they were using the Scofield, and if they weren’t, we knew they just were not well taught, and they certainly were not real students of prophecy.

Being in an independent, fundamentalist, dispensationalist, Baptist church, I’d hear speakers quote fondly from Charles H. Spurgeon, and then years later realized that the 5-point Calvinist Spurgeon would not even be permitted to speak in my church.

It was only in recent years I learned that the KJV translators had been given instructions to use the ecclesiastical words, and in the “Translators to the Reader” they stated: “Lastly, wee have on the one side avoided the scrupulositie of the Puritanes, who leave the olde Ecclesticall words, and betake them to other, as when they put washing for Baptisme, and Congregation in stead of Church: as also on the other side we have shunned the obscuritie of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tunike, Rational, Holocausts, Præpuce, Pasche, and a number of such like…”

Prior translations such as Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew’s, Great Bible, Geneva and Bishops did use the word “church” occasionally in the OT translation.

I don’t know if Dispensationalists of today still have the arrogance about Bible doctrines as we had back then, but I relate truthfully how it was in that day in my experience.