The church

Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?

Acts 7:48-49

Baptist Church. Methodist Church. Catholic Church. Lutheran Church. Non-denominational Church. Every time I go to into town, or just down the road I see church building after church building. Some I think to myself ‘I might could go there’, most I want no part of. Even the few I think I wouldn’t mind attending I know have little chance of holding the treasure I’m seeking.

            Because the treasure can’t be held inside a building. It’s held inside true believers, inside me, inside Scripture. And most churches contain very little of that true treasure. The real believers, those that the Lord has saved, are as hard to find in a church building as are the deeper truths of Scripture.

America today labels any place of worship as a church. Those that know the Scriptures know that the Lord’s church isn’t made of brick and wood, it doesn’t have walls and a steeple. Scripture after Scripture tell us that the true church is the believers, the saints. It is Christ’s people.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.  Acts 20:28

So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.  Romans 12:5 esv

For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. 1 Corinthians 3:9

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.  1 Corinthians 3:17 esv

But Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.  Hebrews 3:6

A minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. Hebrews 8:2

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.  Ephesians 2:19-22

If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.  1 Timothy 3:15

These are only a handful of verses that tell us the church is the believers of Christ, it is the saints. Yet, today it’s nearly impossible to speak of a building where people gather without calling it a church. I’ve heard them referred to in a few places, usually from times long past, as meeting houses, gathering places and the like but today they are simply called churches.

This isn’t Scriptural. But like most things with American Christianity Scripture is barely considered when the ‘church’ is involved.