Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
It seems to me there are 3 things that God sees:
1. He sees the human heart, whether it is responsive to His love or not.
2. He sees the "ekklesia" the gathering, the assembly, the congregation of those who are called out of the world into the name of His Dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
3. He sees the "universal church", the Body of Christ, His dear bride.
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Actually, of course, God sees much more than three things. Not a sparrow falls but the Father doesn't know. Every hair on your head is counted.
I am just doing a simplification for the sake of my argument. I am focusing on 3 things which I believe are precious to God.
Likewise, we don't say literally that the RCC, the Lutheran Assembly, the Baptist Convention, the Methodist Church, the Anglican Church don't exist. It's just that God doesn't show these, at least positively, in the NT useage, nor the OT type. What God seems rather to be revealing in His Word is the local assembly. If we take care of our relations with our neighbor, God can do the "universal" stuff quite nicely, thank you.
If you look at the human body, each cell is given a place and a function. Each has neighbors, with whom it communicates, sending signals (pressure, heat, electrical impulses), and with whom it trades substances (food, oxygen, waste). Each cell has been carefully chosen to fill a local place in the universal organism, the body.
But unfortunately, occasionally some cells take it upon themselves to go "universal", to reproduce unchecked and spread their domain beyond the carefully chosen boundaries ordained by physiology. These are called cancer cells. They don't know how to keep their own place.
"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." Jude v. 6
I think it would behoove us to look at boundaries, from the "anointed cherub" in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, to the scene in the Garden of Eden, to the Babel tower in Genesis 11, right up through the OT record (both the Jewish kings and their Babylonian counterparts come to mind) and into the NT, gospels ("who gets to be the greatest among us") and beyond. What happens when people leave their appointed place?
In the NT we do have positive examples of supplies being sent to others, located elsewhere, who are in need. We also have many messengers, and messages, going back and forth. Surely isolation is not envisioned by anyone. But is there any positive record of "universalistic control", save that found in one faith, the baptism in one Spirit, the one Father, and the one Lord of all?
Second, look at the history of universalism, both in the Bible, with the decrees shown in Daniel and Revelation for enforced, universal worship, and then in subsequent church history, from the RCC to the New England Puritans to the current LSM-orchestrated polemics against Dong, GLA, etc. What can be found there that we might wish to emulate in any way?