LSM's Sacrament - the "Ground of the Local Church" NIGEL TOMES

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

Anyone who tries to create a denomination or sect of Christians through some teaching is denying "the Lord who bought them".

I think this is going a bit too far, unless you are talking about a teaching which denies one of the "essential" items of the faith - The virgin birth - the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, His deity and lordship, his bodily resurrection after the third day and ascension to the Father, the giving of the gift of the Holy Spirit, baptism as a figure of our salvation, the resurrection of the saints. Maybe there are more, if so just fill in the blanks for me.

Creating a denomination or sect is certainly not the unforgivable sin, although this has caused untold confusion, grief and dissention among God's people for over 2,000 years. Yet the reality of the oneness of the Body of Christ still remains, as hard has man has tried to kill it....it still remains and thank God for this fact! I think the fact that man has not been able to completely extinguish the oneness of the Body is because it is based upon God’s life, which of course we know that nothing in the universe can extinguish God’s life.

I believe that the oneness of all the true believers, of the Body of Christ, is best described in Ephesians 4. “The unity of the Spirit” IS the unity of the Body. All the “ones” which follow – “one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of all” are no more or less than the description of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’s influence and work among the believers. Of course we latter day saints (especially those of us in the West) have fallen woefully short in our cooperation in letting the Head of the Body have his way in this glorious work. In light of all the recent world events, maybe we can do a little less fighting and bickering among us, and “let the Spirit have his precious way”.