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Commentary on Ephesians

Introduction

My journey in the church:

My observations.

I have been involved in churches for over 50 years. I can say that the Church can be a house of God for worship, or a house of Satan to make people run away from God and from each other.

God revealed His mystery, the church, to be His body and His voice at every time in history. I am sorry to say that the church in the time of reformations, killed millions from reformers. It is a black history, when it should have been a good and different history. It failed to be what it was meant to be.

What I saw in churches looks like this:

I was born in Iraq and I grew up in an Orthodox Church. I was taught in the old Aramaic language. I was learning and reading in the old language for many years. My grandmother sent me to the summer church lessons and the teacher there was very harsh. When she taught, she would beat the children very badly. She used to throw her stick at us and when a child brought it back to her, she would beat him until he dropped.

One day she threw the stick at me and I saw that the door was open. So I took the stick and threw it back at her and then I ran for my life. Some of other children ran to catch me. As I was a skilled hunter with a stone, able to hit anyone in the face they ran away from me. That was the end of going to church for me. After this, I became a communist and atheist.

After I had lived with my grandmother for 12 years I went back and joined my family. At that time I experienced different kinds of churches in my city. There were two main kinds of churches that I came across. One was the Evangelical Church. They would have preaching, singing and collecting offering before going home. They had communion once a month and they also baptised children. It was an American who had set up this church.

The other kind of church occurred in peoples’ homes. People would come together waiting on God and they would be searching their lives before the Lord. The Holy Spirit would reveal if there was anything that hindered the presence of God in these meetings. They started moving in worship and they practised all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Their lives were full of prayer and it was here that I learnt how to pray. It was in a home church that I learnt to move in all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They would share what the Lord put into their hearts, in a similar manner as happened in the early church according to 1 Corinthians 14. People would start to sing and everybody would join in singing with them. There were no organised meetings or programs at all and they allowed the Holy Spirit to be the leader.

That church life was very like what was recorded in the Book of Acts in the early Church. Christian love was real and their lives were real. After that I left my country and travelled all over the world. Most of the churches that I encountered were different to these house churches. The churches copied each other in how they would organise their meetings. The Churches of the Book of Acts were not seen anymore and the churches now ran their meetings according to the principles of man.

The Church is not all about what we do or what we offer to people. Jesus died for us, not for how we run or organise things. We spend a lot of time in preparing our programs and very little time in prayer. When we are in the building, we think that we are in church. We need to spend time in showing real love and care to each other.

The most important thing is in how we conduct our lives. People learn in two ways; the first is with their eyes and the second is with their ears. They want to see Jesus in us. Let us compare ourselves with the early church:

Act 2:42- 47 And they kept their attention fixed on the Apostles' teaching and were united together in the taking of broken bread and in prayer. ⁴³ But fear came on every soul: and all sorts of wonders and signs were done by the Apostles. ⁴⁴ And all those who were of the faith kept together, and had all things in common; ⁴⁵ And exchanging their goods and property for money, they made division of it among them all, as they had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, going in agreement together regularly to the Temple and, taking broken bread together in their houses, they took their food with joy and with true hearts, ⁴⁷ Giving praise to God, and having the approval of all the people; and every day the number of those who had salvation was increased by the Lord.

George Matti

This book is all about my experiences, comments, explanations, remarks, clarification and interpretations of the church of Ephesus and of today.