The General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn
By Roy W. Culley
As a young pastor I remember asking a gentleman, Sir, are you a member of a Baptist Church? No Sir, he replied, I am a member of the General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, and that is good enough for me. Not knowing how to respond, I moved our talk on to safer subjects.
Since then, I found I was not alone in my ignorance about the true meaning of this expression in the KJV. Not a few of our respected fathers in the faith have wrongly interpreted it as referring to all of the redeemed after the first resurrection. Those who believe and teach the universal invisible church heresy naturally read that false concept into this expression with a big amen.
Please join me in a careful Bible study of the phrase and its context with a prayer for the Lord's help in discerning and rightly dividing His precious Word. The effort will be rewarding in exposing error and confirming basic biblical truth about the Lord's true churches.
The context of this expression, the 12th chapter of Hebrews, follows the inspired writer's call for the Hebrew believers to run the Christian race with endurance, looking unto Jesus and His blessed example. The writer called them to endure God's chastisement and warned that those without it are not sons. Then in verses 12-17 he urged them to respond to such discipline properly lest anyone should fall short of the grace of God and let bitterness spring up to trouble and defile many, like Esau, who so rashly sold his birthright. That thought paved the way for the writer to set forth, in verses 18-29, his final and strongest warning against anyone turning away from the Lord as some had already done.
The writer began his warning in verse 18 by reminding them of the awesome giving of the Law Covenant at Sinai, "For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched...."After expounding how terrifying that event was even to Moses, the writer moves on in verses 22-24 to explain the greater danger of refusing Him with Whom they now have to do, Who speaks from the true mount Zion in heaven.
Carefully notice that he began in verse 22 by saying, "But you have come to Mount Zion.."His thought is that in coming into the midst of the Hebrew Christian churches, they had spiritually come to heaven's highest authority. As God's executive agents for Kingdom business on earth, each New Testament church with Christ as Head presents and represents that ultimate authority.
Having said that the writer proceeded to lay down in seven fold completeness the fulness to which they had come by entering into the midst of the Lord's church and her blessed ministry. Since he was writing to Hebrews, the writer waxed poetic as a Hebrew by using the most common poetic pattern of expression, called synonymous parallelism, where the first line reinforces the same thought with an equivalent (appositional) expression in the next. Each of these seven expressions about where they had already come is set apart from the preceding one with the conjunction kai translated and unfortunately the KJV translators failed to give us their usually fine literal rendition of the Greek text by inserting the article where it is omitted by the Greek text, by translating the plural form of firstborn as singular, and by failing to rightly translate the dative case once. Please patiently observe the KJV in bold type and its departures from the literal Greek text as noted in plain text in parentheses. I am numbering the writer's seven descriptions of what coming to the heavenly mount Zion involved, underlining the equivalent parallel expressions for emphasis.
22 But ye are come unto mount Sion,
and 1) unto the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem,
and 2) to an innumerable company of angels,
23 To the general assembly (It is NOT the Greek word ekklesia rendered assembly here, but it is paneguris which occurs only here in the New Testament. In Isaiah 66:10 the Greek version renders a kindred word from the same root, keeping a festal holiday. Wuest's expanded translation rightly rendered it, to a festal gathering, without the definite article for there is no definite article in the Greek text. Consistent with the Hebrew writer's pattern of parallelism it is clear he is referring to a festal gathering of God's angels. Jesus told us there is celebration and joy in their presence when one sinner repents. Apparently the Catholic KJV translators were more intent on supporting their heretical concept of the universal church than conveying the plain meaning of this phrase.) and 3) church of the firstborn, (Apparently the Catholic zeal of the KJV translators, intensified by the King's warning against translating anything which might overturn the doctrine of his State Church of England, moved them not to render the dative ekklesia correctly as, to a church. It seems they choose to convey their heretical notion that the general assembly and church of the firstborn is the catholic (universal) church. By supplying a definite article before firstborn when there is not an article preceding the Greek plural number noun, prototokos, it seems they sought to convey that Christ's Church is a universal general assembly. Had the dative ekklesia and the plural noun been correctly translated, to a church of firstborn ones, no suggestion of a universal church would be given.)
which are written in heaven, and 4) to God the Judge of all, (the KJV translators supplied the article not in the Greek text. I wish they had put all supplied words in italics.)
and 5) to the spirits of just men (the KJV translators supplied the article not in the Greek text)
made perfect,
24 6) And to Jesus
the mediator of the new covenant, (the KJV translators supplied the article not in the Greek text)
and 7) to the blood of sprinkling, (the KJV translators supplied the article not in the Greek text)
that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
The Hebrew writer stated His application of verses 22-24 forcefully in verse 25, See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven:
This study and analysis of the text and context of the widely misunderstood subject, The General Assembly and Church of the Firstborn, makes it clear that the inspired writer spoke NOT of one but of two different kinds of assemblies. The first is the festal gathering of the holy angels who celebrate the repentance of each sinner entering the Kingdom. The second is an earthly assembly of the scripturally baptized saints whose names are written in heaven. The two groups are separated by the conjunction, as are each of the seven parallelisms. Different Greek words were used to describe them. Also their parallel descriptions make it clear enough that the first is an assembly of angels, while the second is a New Testament church assembly of saints.
It should also be observed that the inspired writer to the Hebrews was Not referring to any future gathering of all the redeemed. That he made perfectly clear by not saying you shall come, but you have come to Mount Zion. There will be a gathering of all the redeemed into one fold according to the Good Shepherd, John 10:16, but that is still future.
Brethren let no one deceive you. Jesus is still building only the one kind of church which He personally instituted during His personal ministry. As our ABA doctrinal statement #17 biblically declares, it is always and only a local visible assembly. It is not both a local assembly and an invisible body of all saints nor a forming body of saints which is not yet formed. Let us stay with the simplicity of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus and speak as best we know how as do the oracles of God. Let all of those who are unwilling to do so be honorable enough to join an association of Baptist who believe as they do, and not persist in undermining the faith of our weaker brothers.
