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What is the Church? The word "Church" means "called out," so the Church
embraces all who have been "called out" during the present age to form the
"Body of Christ." In the Old Testament we find that the Jews were God's
chosen people, [Footnote: Exod. vi. 7.] so they had all the privileges,
but in later times, the Jews rejected the Gospel of the grace of God, and
then God graciously visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people to
be called by His Name. [Footnote: Acts xv. 14.]
When did this special "_calling out_" begin? Nearly 1900 years ago on the
Day of Pentecost, and it has been going on ever since, and when the number
of "the called-out ones" has been completed, then "The Lord Himself shall
descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and
with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we
which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air." [Footnote: I Thess. iv. 16, 17.]
Each of those three words, "_chosen_," "_called out_," and "_caught up_,"
leads us on to something more. We were chosen in Him to be holy;
[Footnote: Eph. i. 4.] we are called out to be the Body of Christ now, and
by and by we shall be caught up to meet the Bridegroom and to be with Him
for ever. If you are a child of God, you can say with holy wonder, "God
has done all this for me."
The Church was formed out of a little company of 120 men and women who
were gathered together praying in the Upper Room at Jerusalem.
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