Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
Look, God is very capable of telling us exactly what He wants. If He wanted there to be only one church per city, He would have told us this in the Word. Look at the detail He gave about the Temple! He spelled out exactly what He wanted. If one church per city was the Way to go, surely He would have said so! Our God knows that we are prone to failing and to mistakes. If He wanted us to do this so badly, He would have said it where no mistake could be made and no guessing would be necessary. Something like this: "Thou shalt have only ONE church in each city."
At the time Revelation and other parts of the New Testament were written, they were not yet large (in today's terms) in number. So, the Lord addresses THE church in each city because, more than likely, it was the only one due to size. Also, people lived in very close proximity to one another and cities were much more compact. This, plus the smaller numbers, ensured one church per city--for a time. Again, if God wanted there to be only one church per city, He could/would have said so. There would be no guessing--no straining to make an example into a doctrine.
Regarding the idea of a MOTA: if this were really true, again--why is it not clearly spelled out in the Word? But again, we only have ideas and thoughts about what we see in scripture as the basis for this. Since Paul wrote so much of the NT, then HE must be the MOTA of that age, they say. But does Paul dare to claim this? No. Does Peter--who walked with the Lord? No. John? No. Is it not ridiculous that all of this time later there should be a person with the audacity to claim this? Where is humility? It is gone. There is no MOTA--there are MANY ministers in each age.
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Christ told us what he wants here:
John 17:21 that all of them may be one
Some people think this is about setting up one church in each city, but it is not. It is about "the one church", in each city. The Bible teaches
one Head,
one Body,
one Church (Col 1:18). The idea of one church per city is a statement of fact about the reality of the matter that there is only one church in the world and only one church that Christ established.
Denominations violate this truth because they see themselves as individual and independent churches. As soon as a denomination or a person starts saying "churches" , they are already not in line with the reality as revealed in the Bible. They stand for
many heads,
many bodies, and
many churches.
Regarding the MOTA, one would find it difficult to deny that God raises up
individuals (not many people) to release His vision of the age including Abel, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Paul.
In fact it is almost comedy when people say there are MANY ministers in each age yet if they read the New Testament, almost half of it is written by Paul! Who is the other Minister of The Age on the same level as Paul? Timothy? Silas? Barnabus? James?
Protestants in particular, should know better that there is only one MOTA because everytime they say "we are saved by faith alone" that vision was from Luther alone. The idea of the "local church"came from Nee/Lee but now many groups and denominations are using that term but they have MOTA Nee to thank for it.