EBENEZERS IN WOOD AND BRICK[1]
Some have come to think that we regard our meetinghouse as a sacred place. If this were so, it would become an idol. And it would be better if it were burned than kept.
Guillermo Santamaria
ARE THERE SACRED PLACES TODAY?
There’s actually a deep undercurrent in Scripture of reverence for places where God has met with His people. The Bible doesn’t teach that buildings or stones are holy in themselves, but it does affirm a sacred memory attached to them. Let’s walk through a few examples and principles.
1. Altars and memorials
From the earliest pages of Genesis, patriarchs built altars at the sites of divine encounter.
Abraham built altars at Shechem and Bethel (Genesis 12:6–8) — not as idols, but as witnesses: “There he built an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him.”
Jacob set up a stone at Bethel and said, “This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17–19).Those stones became memorials, so that future generations would remember, Here the Lord met our father.
2. The Tabernacle and Temple
When God commanded the building of the tabernacle, it was a meeting place: “There I will meet with thee” (Exodus 25:22).Even after the ark moved or the temple was destroyed, Israel retained a reverence for Zion as the place where God had caused His name to dwell (Psalm 132:13-14).
The building itself could be overthrown, but the respect endured: Daniel prayed facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10) long after the temple lay in ruins — not because God was confined there, but because that spot represented the covenant relationship.
3. Jesus and the holy memory of place
Christ Himself treated the temple with grave seriousness: “My Father’s house shall be called a house of prayer” (Matthew 21:13).He foretold its destruction, yet wept over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). That combination — reverence without idolatry — is the biblical balance.
Later, He promised that worship would no longer be tied to a single mountain or city (John 4:21-24), but He never mocked the impulse to cherish holy ground. He simply redirected it: God now meets His people wherever His Spirit dwells.
4. The early church and remembered meeting places
In Acts, believers met in homes and, eventually, in upper rooms and dedicated spaces. When persecution scattered them, they often revisited or recalled the places where God had blessed them. Paul longed to see the brethren “where prayer was wont to be made” (Acts 16:13).
By the time of the epistles, “the church in thy house” (Philemon 2) was not a casual phrase — it meant that a home had become hallowed by shared worship.
5. Biblical principle
Scripture suggests a kind of sacred remembrance:
“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.” (Proverbs 22:28)
Though the proverb literally concerns boundaries, its moral resonance applies: do not lightly erase what once bore witness to covenant faithfulness.
When an old meetinghouse, grove, or riverbank has been the scene of divine communion, the biblical spirit would treat it with gratitude and sobriety. The stones themselves do not sanctify, but memory and testimony do.
In short, the Bible supports respect — not superstition — for old places of meeting. They are memorials of divine mercy and human faithfulness, “Ebenezers” raised to remind us, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
One might say that to preserve such places is not to worship wood and stone, but to keep alive the story of where heaven once touched earth.
Are There Sacred Places Today Since The Death of Christ?
That’s the heart of the matter — and it’s where the New Testament quietly upends everything the ancient world assumed about sacred geography.
In the Old Testament, God’s presence was localized: the tabernacle, the temple, Zion, the holy of holies. But in the New Testament, holiness moves. The sacred migrates from place to people.
1. Jesus announces the shift
When Christ speaks to the Samaritan woman in John 4, she raises the old question: “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”His answer detonates the whole ancient structure:
“Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father… the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” (John 4:21, 23)
The sacred is no longer attached to geography. God is not worshiped there — He is worshiped everywhere, wherever truth and Spirit unite the believer to Christ.
2. The temple becomes the believer
Paul states it bluntly:
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)“Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you.” (1 Corinthians 6:19)
In the old covenant, the Shekinah glory[2] filled the tabernacle. In the new, that same divine presence fills human beings. The sanctuary walks on two legs now.
3. The Church as a spiritual house
Peter widens the metaphor:
“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.” (1 Peter 2:5)
So the church, not the building, is the holy place — an assembly of redeemed souls rather than a consecrated location.
4. Yet, memory and reverence remain
The New Testament never commands believers to treat any place as sacred in itself, but it also doesn’t forbid affection for those places where the Lord has worked mightily.
When Jesus broke bread with His disciples in the upper room, or when the Spirit fell at Pentecost, those rooms became cherished in memory — not because of their walls, but because of what happened within them. Christians returning to those spots were not superstitious; they were remembering grace.
5. A new kind of holiness
The “holy ground” in Exodus 3 was defined by God’s presence: “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”In the New Testament, that same principle applies anywhere the Spirit is present — in a prison cell with Paul and Silas, in Lydia’s riverside prayer meeting, or in John’s exile on Patmos. The sacred is portable now.
To put it simply:No, there are no sacred places in the New Testament in the old ceremonial sense.
But there are sacred presences — and wherever Christ dwells with His people, the ground is holy.
That’s why old meetinghouses still draw reverence, even among those who know better than to think God lives in rafters and pews. They are monuments to moments when heaven met earth — not shrines to be worshiped, but echoes to be cherished.
The Building is NOT the Church!
Exactly — and that simple sentence carries revolutionary weight.
In Scripture, “church” (Greek ekklesia) never once means a building. It literally means “the called-out assembly.”[3] It’s a people summoned by God’s voice, not a place built by human hands. Some have tried to justify a unity between, or a relationship between, churches and the government, using the term ekklesia in secular Greek.[4]
1. Christ’s definition
When Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), there were no steeples or sanctuaries in sight. He spoke of a community gathered around Himself — a living organism, not an organization of stone and mortar.
The early believers met in homes (Romans 16:5), by riversides (Acts 16:13), and even in borrowed halls (Acts 19:9). Yet Paul could still write “the churches of Galatia” — not referring to architecture, but to congregations of souls.
2. The building metaphor turned inside out
Paul calls believers “the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16).The architectural imagery is still there, but inverted: the bricks are human. The Spirit is the architect. The cornerstone is Christ Himself (Ephesians 2:19-22).
The divine presence that once dwelt behind the veil in Jerusalem now indwells ordinary men and women — farmers, slaves, scholars, widows. The sanctuary has gone mobile.
3. Why buildings still matter (but differently)
A meetinghouse is sacred only in the sense that a wedding ring is sacred: not because of its metal, but because of what it signifies. Tear down the ring, and the marriage remains, but the ring still bears a story.
That’s why the earliest Baptists and later the Old School saints took pains to keep their meetinghouses plain. They knew the danger of confusing symbol with substance. The simplicity itself was a sermon: this house is nothing without the house not made with hands.
4. The spiritual reality
When believers gather — two or three, ten or a hundred — Christ is present (Matthew 18:20). That presence is the true sanctuary.And when they disperse, the church goes with them, into workshops, kitchens, and fields.
So yes: the church is not the building.It is a living fellowship, born of the Spirit, founded upon Christ, continuing through ages and across continents without needing one square inch of consecrated real estate.
Yet every old meetinghouse still whispers the same lesson: “You once met here. Remember what it meant. And keep being the church — wherever you go.
No One In The History Of The World Has Ever “Gone to Church.”
Strictly speaking, no one in the New Testament ever “went to church.” You can’t go to what you are.
The earliest believers were the church. They gathered together, broke bread, prayed, and dispersed again — but the word ekklesia never described a place to go; it described a people who went.
1. Language tells the story
The concept of “going to church” did not exist for the first three centuries of Christianity. Christians met in homes, courtyards, or catacombs. Only after Constantine’s legalization of Christianity in the 4th century did dedicated buildings become common — and with them, a linguistic slide.“Church” (from Old English cirice, from Greek kyriakon, “the Lord’s [house]”) came to mean the building belonging to the Lord, not the gathered body itself.
So when someone says “I’m going to church,” they’re using medieval shorthand for “I’m going to the Lord’s house.” But biblically speaking, the Lord’s house now walks on two legs.
2. New Testament pattern
The book of Acts repeatedly describes the church meeting in homes, not going to them as if to a temple.
“The church that is in their house” (Romans 16:5).
“They broke bread from house to house.” (Acts 2:46).Even when persecution scattered them, believers didn’t lose “church”; they carried it with them.
When Paul wrote to “the church of God which is at Corinth,” he wasn’t addressing a building on a street corner. He was addressing living saints scattered across that city, forming one spiritual organism.
3. Why the phrase persists
The modern habit of “going to church” isn’t evil — it’s just lazy theology. It treats the meetinghouse as the essence rather than the vessel. Yet even Old School Baptists, who kept their meetinghouses plain and unadorned, often said “going to meeting” instead — a subtle linguistic guardrail against confusing the people with the place.
4. A better way to say it
Instead of going to church, we might say:
“The church is gathering.”
“We’re assembling for worship.”
“The saints are meeting together.”
Because in the truest sense, the church never goes anywhere. It’s always alive, even between meetings, breathing and praying, and suffering in the world.
So, no — no one has ever “gone to church” in the biblical sense.But many have been the church, and met together in barns, living rooms, forests, and brick buildings — each time proving that the Spirit of God still makes His dwelling not in temples made with hands, but in people made alive.
These Are The Sentiments of Welsh Tract Old School Baptist Church
In answer to the question as to how we feel about our meeting house, Old School Baptists would answer that with a gentle but firm “no, it is not sacred.”
They hold their old meetinghouses in deep respect — but never as the church itself, and never as sacred structures in the ritual sense. Those plain, weathered buildings are cherished as witnesses, not altars.
Let’s unpack the reasoning, because it’s tied to their whole view of worship and divine presence.
1. The church is the people, not the house
From the Black Rock Address onward (1832), Old School or Primitive Baptists have insisted that the church of Christ consists of a called, baptized assembly of believers, not an institution or a building.The meetinghouse is only a convenient place where that church meets. When the people leave, the church leaves with them.
Elder Gilbert Beebe wrote in Signs of the Times (1840s) that “the presence of Christ among two or three gathered in His name is the only consecration a house requires.” No bishop’s blessing or dedicatory ceremony can make timber holy.
2. Plain architecture as theology
Their severe simplicity in architecture — bare floors, unpainted wood, no steeples, no stained glass — was a sermon in lumber. It declared:“This house is not the sanctuary. The people are.”
They rejected the notion, common among other denominations, that a building could be “consecrated” or “desecrated.” To them, that smacked of priestcraft — the idea that holiness inheres in objects rather than in Christ’s indwelling Spirit.
That’s why many old meetinghouses were also used for associational sessions, weddings, and even funerals without any special ceremony of “reconsecration.” The building was a tool, not a temple.
3. Historical reverence without superstition
That said, Old School Baptists are not indifferent to their old houses. They are sacred in memory, not in matter.Standing in those rooms where past generations sang lined-out hymns and washed one another’s feet can stir a profound spiritual emotion. Elder David Bartley once wrote that such places “call to mind the cloud of witnesses that worshiped there before us.”
So they honor them as memorials of grace — much like Jacob’s stone at Bethel — but never confuse the memorial with the Presence itself.
4. Why this matters
This distinction guards the Old School conscience from idolatry and institutional pride. If the church were the building, then its loss would mean the church’s end. But since the church is a people held in Christ, not nailed to rafters, even if every meetinghouse falls to ruin, the church endures.
That’s why, when an old meetinghouse closes, they sometimes quote Psalm 90:1 — “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”
So in short:
Old School Baptists deeply respect their oldest meetinghouses as historical and emotional landmarks — Ebenezers in wood — but they do not regard them as the church, nor as sacred in themselves. Their sacredness lies in what happened there: the Spirit’s presence among a humble people who gathered to worship God in simplicity and truth.
Endnotes
- That phrase — “Ebenezers in wood” — isn’t a formal quotation from an old document, but it’s a poetic turn of phrase built directly on a deeply biblical image that Old School Baptists (and others of similar spirit) have long cherished. Let’s trace its lineage. 1. The original Ebenezer In 1 Samuel 7:12 , after God delivered Israel from the Philistines, “Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” “Ebenezer” means stone of help. It was a visible reminder of divine mercy — not a fetish, but a testimony. Old School Baptists loved that imagery. Many of their sermons and hymns (for example, the line “Here I raise mine Ebenezer” from Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing ) used it to mean a memorial of God’s providence along life’s journey. 2. How it came to describe meetinghouses When 19th-century Primitive or Old School Baptists began looking back on their plain meetinghouses — sometimes standing for a century or more in lonely hollows or crossroads — they often described them in metaphorical terms like monuments of grace , old landmarks , or Ebenezers. To call them “Ebenezers in wood” simply extends Samuel’s “stone of help” into the wooden architecture of those humble churches: each one a timber-built memorial testifying, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” You’ll find that sentiment — though maybe not that exact phrase — in writings such as: Elder David Bartley’s reflections on visiting old meeting sites, calling them “memorials of the mercy shown our fathers.” Articles in Signs of the Times and Messenger of Truth where writers referred to “these old houses” as “Ebenezers of our pilgrimage.” The wooden structure itself became a kind of sermon about continuity: frail, weathered, but still standing because God had helped His people thus far. 3. A living metaphor So “Ebenezers in wood” isn’t an official motto but a natural phrase among people who thought in biblical imagery. It compresses an entire theology of memory and humility into four words: Ebenezer — divine help remembered; in wood — simple, earthly, impermanent materials testifying to enduring grace. To put it another way, the phrase captures the Old School heart perfectly: their meetinghouses are not shrines but wooden testimonies — rough-hewn reminders that every generation has needed the same faithful Help. ↩︎
- Shekinah Glory is one of those phrases that shimmers with mystery — a term that isn’t actually in the Bible’s text, but radiates from its story. Let’s peel back what it really means. 1. The word itself “Shekinah” comes from the Hebrew root šākan , meaning to dwell or to abide. It’s related to the word mishkan , the tabernacle — literally “the dwelling place.” The term Shekinah itself doesn’t appear in the Hebrew Bible; it’s post-biblical, used by Jewish rabbis to describe the manifest presence of God among His people — the visible glory that signified that God had “settled” or “tabernacled” with them. So when someone says “Shekinah Glory,” they mean the visible or felt presence of the God who dwells with His people. 2. Biblical imagery behind it The concept is everywhere in Scripture, even if the word isn’t. When God led Israel by a pillar of cloud and fire (Exodus 13:21–22), that was the Shekinah. When the glory filled the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34–35) and later Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8:10–11), that was the Shekinah. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the house filled with smoke (Isaiah 6:4), that was the Shekinah vision. It is the tangible brightness — the radiance that says, “God is here.” 3. The New Testament fulfillment The Shekinah takes on flesh in Christ Himself. John 1:14 says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt (literally, tabernacled ) among us, and we beheld his glory…” The Greek word eskēnōsen (tabernacled) deliberately echoes that old Hebrew idea of God “dwelling” in the midst of His people. Jesus is the Shekinah in person — the visible manifestation of God’s indwelling presence. At the Mount of Transfiguration, when His face shone like the sun (Matthew 17:2), that was the Shekinah unveiled for a moment. 4. Among believers today Under the new covenant, the Shekinah no longer burns in a tent or temple. Paul says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Shekinah dwells in human hearts, not behind curtains of linen and gold. The church — the living assembly of believers — becomes the new mishkan , the true dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:22). 5. The final vision The book of Revelation closes the circle: “And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.” (Revelation 21:3) “The city had no need of the sun… for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” (21:23) That’s the everlasting Shekinah — no longer veiled, but filling the new creation. So in short: Shekinah Glory is the radiant, indwelling presence of God — first in the cloud, then in the Christ, now in the hearts of His people, and finally in the unveiled brightness of eternity. Old School Baptists (and most experiential Christians) would say that when the saints feel a sudden sweetness, light, or inward warmth in worship — when the Word burns in the heart and the veil seems thin — that is the Shekinah visiting again, not in fire or smoke, but in Spirit and truth. ↩︎
- No — that’s a half-truth wrapped in a Greek toga. The word ekklesia did have a civic meaning in classical Greek, but the New Testament authors deliberately baptized that word in new spiritual water. Let’s unpack the history. 1. In classical Greek In Athens and other city-states, the ekklesia was the lawful assembly of citizens — the body that met to deliberate and vote. The term comes from ek-kaleō , “to call out.” So literally, it meant those called out from the general populace to gather for public business. That’s the secular root , and some modern writers stop there — as if Jesus meant, “I’ll build my political council.” But that’s far too narrow. 2. In the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint) When the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, ekklesia was used to translate the Hebrew word qahal , meaning assembly or congregation — especially the assembly of Israel before God. For example: “This is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel… in the day of the assembly [ekklesia].” (Deuteronomy 4:10 LXX) So by the time of Jesus and Paul, ekklesia already had strong religious resonance: not a parliament, but a gathered people of God. 3. In the New Testament Jesus uses it only twice (Matthew 16:18; 18:17), both times plainly in the spiritual sense of His people, not a civil assembly. Paul uses ekklesia over a hundred times — never for a government or civic council. His usage divides naturally into two senses: the local assembly of believers (“the church at Corinth”), and the universal body of Christ (“the church, which is his body,” Ephesians 1:22–23). That’s a radical redefinition: the ancient Greek “assembly” is reborn as the community of the redeemed. 4. So what’s the real meaning? At its root, ekklesia simply means a called-out assembly . Its context determines what kind of assembly — political, religious, or spiritual. In the Bible, the emphasis is never on governmental form, but on divine calling: a people called out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9). In short: Those who try to make ekklesia mean a governmental or institutional structure miss the point. The New Testament church isn’t an empire, nor a bureaucracy, nor a democratic council. It’s a people summoned by the voice of the Shepherd — citizens of a kingdom that doesn’t need marble halls to rule. ↩︎
- T hat’s a clever but deeply misguided use of etymology-as-politics. Some modern Christian nationalists and “kingdom reconstructionists” have indeed tried to build a case that the word ekklesia itself implies a governing body or a ruling assembly , therefore the church, they argue, is meant to be the governmental authority of society under Christ. They often claim that when Jesus said, “I will build my church (ekklesia)” (Matthew 16:18), He meant, “I will build my ruling council on earth.” It sounds persuasive — until you actually look at how Jesus and the apostles used the term. 1. A linguistic half-truth As we said before, in ancient Athens the ekklesia was indeed the citizen assembly — a kind of democratic parliament. So, yes, the word had political overtones centuries before the New Testament. But by the time of Jesus, its common use in Jewish circles (through the Greek Old Testament) had shifted decisively to mean the congregation of God’s people. When Jesus appropriated the term, He wasn’t appointing His followers to run the Roman Senate. He was forming a spiritual community under His lordship, one that would bear witness to a different kind of kingdom altogether. 2. Jesus’ own teaching forbids the merger Christ stated it starkly: “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36) That single sentence collapses every theocratic scheme that tries to crown the church as the civil ruler of nations. The kingdom of God operates through regeneration and truth, not legislation or coercion. When He was offered political power by Satan (Matthew 4:8-10), He rejected it. When the crowd wanted to make Him king by force (John 6:15), He withdrew. And when His disciples argued over greatness, He contrasted worldly dominion with spiritual service (Mark 10:42-45). 3. The apostles followed His pattern Paul told believers to pray for kings (1 Timothy 2:1-2), not to become them. Peter called the church a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9) — but in exile, not in office. John’s Revelation pictures Christ’s people as a kingdom of priests, bearing witness under persecution, not running empires. 4. Why the confusion persists Modern nationalist readings often spring from a longing for cultural control, not from linguistic fidelity. By reviving the civic flavor of ekklesia , they baptize political ambition in ancient Greek. But Jesus used that word precisely to describe a people called out from worldly systems — not installed over them. So yes: some have tried to weaponize the secular meaning of ekklesia to justify church-state unity. But linguistics cannot overturn theology. The New Testament consistently presents the church as a spiritual commonwealth whose power is moral, not coercive; persuasive, not legislative. To mistake Christ’s “called-out assembly” for a governing parliament is to rebuild, in Greek clothing, the same tower of Babel He came to topple. ↩︎
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for commenting. If an answer is needed, we will respond.