Worship at Home

Why Worship at Home

 

• When you’re on the run

• When the nearest congregation of your spiritual journey is too far away

• When you’re leaving one church and still research for another church to attend

• When you want to start a small group meeting, etc.

 

Elements of Worship

 

Your worship at home session can have a part for praise and worship music, prayer, and Bible study. You can also have special music, e.g. a solo song. As for the tithes and offerings, ask God where you should send money to His Storehouse and bless that place. You can use some of the offerings to get pay for your resources used in the worship at home. Remember, everything costs money, and a worker deserves his wage. God’s storehouses must be equipped for his ministries. [Ephesians 5:18 (HS), Acts 1:14 (Meet), Malachi 3:10 (Storehouse), 1 Timothy 5:18 (worker)]

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Leadership

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Qualifications for a leader – must be a disciple of Jesus Christ with good morals – having personal time spent with God – in prayer, bible reading, private research- take notes of what God has revealed to you during those times, so that you can share your faith in Jesus. [Matthew 28:19-20, 1 Peter 3:15, Luke 5:16, I Tim. 3:2-8]

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Study Tools

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Here are some tools we recommend you use when you prepare for your Bible Study and sharing- Concordance (e.g. Blue-letter Bible), Multi-versions bible (e.g. Biblegateway.com), Hebrew and Greek interlinear Bibles (e.g. from Scripture4all.org). Additional resources include Greek Septuagint online (which gives an understanding of the Bible translated into Greek from Hebrew Bible of 285 BC), Peshitta/Peshitto Bible online – (which give an understanding from the Aramaic perspective). Also, you should have some knowledge of where the KJV text (or your bible translation) mistranslated, knowledge of where the Masoretic Text differs from the Greek Septuagint (OT), knowledge of where the Greek Text differs from the Aramaic (Peshitta and Peshitto), knowledge of other religious texts that are not in the current canon of your Bible. But, even if you are not well versed in these tools, at a minimum, you should always walk closely with Jesus Christ. He promised that he will always lead you into all truth. [John 16:13]

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Some bible verses do not tell enough about a topic because it is already written in details elsewhere. Leaders should use books and resources that the early Christian leaders use, e.g. Book of Enoch, Book of Jasher (Book of the Just) or the Book of Jubilees to help them understand what the Scriptures say rather than relying just on their own interpretation. The Book of Jasher was mentioned in the Bible as having more details of certain events. [Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18]

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Early church leaders like Clement and Irenaeus considered the Book of Enoch Canonical. Likewise, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Eritrean (Tewahdo) Orthodox Church, and the Zadok line of priests who preserved for us the Dead Sea Scrolls all uses Enoch’s writing. Jude even quoted directly from Enoch’s prophecy. The Book of Jubilees is used by the Dead Sea Scrolls priests also.  The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the Qumran caves, and Qumran was previously known as Bethabara, where John the Baptist had his ministries, not the Essenes whose headquarter was on the hill right above Ein Gedi.

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Here’s an example of the usage of these writings.  The mysteries of these bible verses below can be understood because the Book of Enoch gave much more details about the story of how 200 angels (Watchers) sinned against God when they left their cosmos and unite with earthly women. These angels got banished to the underworld known as Tartarus.

 

Jude 1:6 “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”

 

2 Peter 2:4 “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell [gloomy dungeons], putting them in chains of darkness [Greek – Tartarus] to be held for judgment

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Another example is that 10,000 saints as not exactly 10,000 as a count:

 

Jude 1:14-15 “And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of His Saints To execute judgment upon all, And to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, And of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”

 

This verse was quoted from 1 Enoch 1:9.

 

Using the Greek Interlinear Bible, the word 10000 is translated from the Greek word for “myriads”.

 

A similar allusion to the 10000 is in the Old Testament (Hebrew: tens of thousands, most likely denoting multitudes or myriads)

 

Deuteronomy 33:2  “The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands [Hebrew – Tens of Thousands] of Saints [One Holy], with flaming fire at his right hand.”

Thus, you can see how a better understanding of Scriptures is provided by other sources that the early Christians used that are not in our Bible today. You also saw the use of the Greek and Hebrew interlinear bible versions arrive at a fuller understanding of a verse.

 

Happy Leading/Learning!