Stolen Words

One of the many things you learn when you start to become a Bible believer is that many words you have become accustomed to applying to yourself are actually stolen. What I usually call “church language” is one of the primary causes of stolen words. Another cause of stolen words is that hymnal sitting in the church pew in front of you. There is a whole lot more of your belief system grounded in hymns than you are willing to admit. Let me help you understand with an example. We are currently studying through Israel’s kingdom program found throughout the entire Bible. The kingdom program that virtually every church today allegorizes to some extent. I grew up singing “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion, Were marching onward to Zion the beautiful city of God.” It’s a catchy song that I really wish I could sing. We don’t sing this song at AGBF. Actually, we don’t sing LOTS of songs found in lots of church hymnals. This song steals words from Israel’s kingdom program and falsely applies them to the body of Christ today. If you are saved today, you are NOT marching to Zion. Zion is primarily defined in scripture as the “city of David”. There are 153 uses of Zion in the OT and only 7 in the NT (Sion). Paul uses the word twice and only to quote an OT reference. These 2 references are in Romans chapters 9-11 where he is talking about Israel’s position dispensationally. So, you are NOT marching to Zion. Zion is in Canaan, or the Promised Land, and that land is not promised to you, it is promised to Israel. God himself guarantees on his Holy name that this land will indeed be occupied by Israel. The church language that we have grown up hearing and repeating and popular hymns that we grew up singing are replete with false teaching and bad doctrine. These days when you point out these obvious problems you are quickly wrote off as crazy. I’m not whining about this, just sad in general that dozens of stolen words flow out of the mouths of preachers and song leaders every Sunday and the people in the pews eat it up as truth. A fairly simple word study like this can be completed in one evening with a slight bit of effort. Truth is not so easy to hear these days. Truth however is not far from your reach. Stealing from Israel is commonplace today. Do you have the guts to seek the truth? I dare you. Do a study on every use of the phrase “for ever” in the OT. Maybe a study of every time God says “I will” in the OT in relation to Israel. Your eyes will be opened I promise you. Is the truth worth one evening? YES!