[A little brother]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Point 1: Coming out of Babylon (or anything) usually means physical separation, division.

Biblical insights: The Israelite's physically came out of Egypt and Babylon, Lot physically came out of Sodom, The early Christians physically left Jerusalem on heeding Christ's words. They all divided from something to obey God's voice.

In your examples, ALL Israelites came out of Egypt (I am not sure about Babylon's case though). Lot's whole family came out of Sodom. That's what I referred previously as "all God's people" and why I said it is not division.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

I think it is obvious that not all true believers left the Catholic church with Luther. They chose to stay. But many left and joined Luther. So there is a division, but it is a right division because it is leaving a situation which cannot be fixed.

I think you have forgotten “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

Anyway, I think your point on physical versus spiritual division is valid. I have been focusing more on the spiritual side (division in the body of Christ) along this discussion thread. I don't know enough about the reformation history. If Luther was still spiritually connected with the fellow true believers in the Catholic Church, that was not division in the body of Christ at all. If they were cutting out fellowship with the believers staying behind, than it would be wrong.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Let's see what the bible says about false brothers. Here is one verse:

Galatians 2:4
4 And this, because of the false brothers, brought in secretly, who stole in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into Slavery under the law.

This is in no doubt in reference to Judaizers, or Christians who follow the law. Is this not Catholicism which follows good works to get to heaven?

Is this what Catholicism follows? Good works to get to heaven? I may not know enough about it. I did some searching and seems they say good works are result of grace by God and some believers will not become perfect in this life so they will have to go through purgatory.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Yet here, the churches in Galatia were genuine churches, with some false brothers in their midst.

Suppose a false brother established Roman Catholicism in the same city, and was named as Pope. Then, we have an entirely different situation, where it is a majority of false brothers and a lesser number of true brothers in their midst. We cannot say that the few true brothers should remain, to preserve a "oneness of the body" that does not really exist between the true and the false.

Then it was the "false brother" causing a wrong division in the first place if he did manage to deceive true brothers to join him.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

If 90% of the Catholic church are false brothers, including the leaders, then it makes no sense to ask the true brothers to remain to preserve a false unity with false brothers. In the case of Luther, he had no choice but to oppose it. He had to separate himself from it. Catholicism, is not part of the body of Christ.

Again, don't mix up division in the body of Christ with division with false brothers.

I won't jump into that conclusion of Catholic Church not being part of the body of Christ. If it is not part of the body, then who are the overcomers in Thyatira according to Lee's interpretation of the seven churches in Revelation?

Originally Posted by Evangelical

In summary, I believe it is right to divide from the false, and wrong to divide from the true.

The danger here is that we could have replaced God in judging right and wrong. You know what, if you subsitute "Catholicism" in your arguments with "LC" and "Luther/Reformation" with the members who separated with LC in the past few decades, you will see what they were thinking.

Originally Posted by Evangelical

The issue with denominations is that they were or are often divisions between the true (e.g. baptist and presbyterian people being divided over opinions regarding baptism or salvation), whereas the reformation was division between the true (Bible followers, Luther, et al.) and the false (papal system).

But in reality, the first divisions came about when people decided to start denominations rather than going back to the common ground upon which all Christians can fellowship - the locality. Any two or more Christians can come together and fellowship if they live in the same place.

You may find LC is not that different from all other denominations. In fact, I think there are more fellowship between different denominations these days than those between LC and all others.

And LC didn't break up with denominations because they were evil false brothers. The reason was just that they had a different view on locality.

Aron has it right - our common ground is not geography but the faith in Jesus Christ.