- published: 18 Nov 2008
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Calvary Chapel is an evangelical association of Christian churches with over one thousand congregations worldwide. Calvary Chapel also maintains a number of radio stations around the world and operates many local Calvary Chapel Bible College programs. It presents itself as a "fellowship of churches" in contrast to a denomination. Churches which affiliate with Calvary Chapel may use the name "Calvary Chapel" but need not do so.
Beginning in 1965 in Southern California, this fellowship of churches grew out of Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. Doctrinally, Calvary Chapel is evangelical, dispensational, pretribulationist, and believes in the principle of sola scriptura. Calvary Chapels place great importance in the practice of expository teaching, a "verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book" approach to teaching the Bible. However Chuck Smith will gloss over passages of scriptures if he feels it is controversial and may cause division or cause polarization on issues. Typically, Calvary Chapels operate under a senior pastor-led system of church government, sometimes referred to as the "Moses" model; Chuck Smith's "Calvary Chapel Distinctives" summarizes the tenets for which Calvary Chapel stands.
Calvary or Golgotha /ˈɡɒlɡəθə/ was the site, outside of ancient Jerusalem’s early first century walls, at which the crucifixion of Jesus occurred. Calvary and Golgotha are the English names for the site used in Western Christianity.
Golgotha is the Greek transcription given by the New Testament, of an Aramaic title, which has traditionally been presumed to be Gûlgaltâ (but see below for an alternative); the Bible glosses it as place of [the] skull — Κρανίου Τόπος (Kraniou Topos) in Greek, and Calvariae Locus in Latin, from which we get Calvary.
Golgotha is referred to in early writings as being a hill looking like the skull-pan of a head very near a gate into the city of Jerusalem.
Since the 6th century it has been referred to as the location of a mountain, and as a small hill since 333. The Gospels describe it as a place near enough to the city that those coming in and out could read the inscription 'Jesus of Nazareth - King of the Jews' . When the King James Version was written, the translators used an anglicised version — Calvary — of the Latin gloss from the Vulgate (Calvariæ), to refer to Golgotha in the Gospel of Luke, rather than translate it; subsequent uses of Calvary stem from this single translation decision. The location itself is mentioned in all four canonical Gospels:
Costa Mesa is a city in Orange County, California. The population was 109,960 at the 2010 census. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to a primarily suburban and "edge" city with an economy based on retail, commerce, and light manufacturing.
Members of the Gabrieleño/Tongva and Juaneño/Luiseño nations long inhabited the area. After the 1769 expedition of Gaspar de Portolà, a Spanish expedition led by Father Junípero Serra named the area Vallejo de Santa Ana (Valley of Saint Anne). On November 1, 1776, Mission San Juan Capistrano became the area's first permanent European settlement in Alta California, New Spain.
In 1801, the Spanish Empire granted 62,500 acres (253 km2) to Jose Antonio Yorba, which he named Rancho San Antonio. Yorba's great rancho included the lands where the communities of Olive, Orange, Villa Park, Santa Ana, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach stand today.
After the Mexican-American war, California became part of the United States and American settlers arrived in this area and formed the town of Fairview in the 1880s near the modern intersection of Harbor Boulevard and Adams Avenue. An 1889 flood wiped out the railroad serving the community, however, and it shriveled.