Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
And on what authority is it that anyone that does something that is not approved is dismissed from status as "the church"?
What about people who knowingly break the traffic laws, even in small things? Who know that the police won't ticket them as long as they are no more than about 9MPH over the speed limit?
Or what about those that practice the deeds of the Nicolaitans? Even that didn't get anyone's lampstand pulled in Revelation.
Yet you stand ready to do worse than God Himself.
On what basis does any of your positions justify dismissal from the "one church"? Seems that there is only one body. Do you think that some actual believers in Christ are not in that one body? When Paul said that about the one body, he was saying to "Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." All those "ones" that followed were not bases for exclusion, but the things to be careful to be inclusive about. They were what should be seen in our position if we are truly keeping the unity.
It seems that the Local Church's position is to seek bases for breaking the unity of the Spirit. You insist on reasons to exclude who you chose. Or declare that there are deficient people who have not lived up to your version of the rules so you can relegate them to observers of the body and not participants.
I suggest that you carefully read the passages that you use. Not just a few words selectively chosen, but the entirety of any passage to determine what is actually being talked about. I began to be bothered many years ago when I saw first one, then another portion of scripture that did not actually say what I have been taught by Lee and the Local Churches. Their teachings stood in opposition to the "clear" words that were there on the pages (in any translation).
Don't start with the assumption that what you have been taught is right. Start with the assumption that there are words that need to have real meaning and see what they say. Not just understand them in some different way just because someone else says that is how to understand it.
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We can see that the words about the Nicolaitans was to the church in Ephesus. They were one church but the Nicolaitans were most likely a sect within following (Acts 6:5). It appears as yet they had not broken away from the locality. The Nicolaitans once they left the ground of locality and became a religio-political entity, became the Roman Catholics.
Clergy-laity distinction is a distortion of the truth. Then all churches that practice that are a distortion of Christianity, or what Lee would call a degradation.