-day to find seven towering
meeting-house steeples, where assemble as many different bodies of
believers, termed sects. No one minister addresses them all. No one elder
gives orders to all these different sects. 1 Cor. 16:1. No one minister
ordains elders in all the separate bodies. 1 Cor. 7:17. The word churches
was used to denote the different geographical location of the
congregations of the Lord. The minister arguing in favor of the plurality
of denominations from the plural term churches as found in the Bible is
either ignorant or unfair. A plurality of sects is Babylon confusion.
The plural form is used in the Bible with reference to location and not to
bodies having a different faith or belief. The church at Antioch had no
contrary faith with the church at Corinth as we find existing between the
denominations of to-day. They were separated by geographical distance, and
not by difference of belief. Had these different churches come together in
one place they could all have listened to Paul preach and said, Amen.
Oneness Of God's Church.
"The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul."
Acts 4:32. Can these same words be correctly used when speaking of the
believers throughout the various denominations of to-day? "Now the God of
patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another
according to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify
God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Rom. 15:5, 6. "Now I
beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all
speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that
ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same
judgment." 1 Cor. 1:10.
By these two texts we learn that the church of God has but one mind; it
has but one mouth, and all speak the same thing. This is beautiful, this
is heavenly. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to
dwell together in unity." Psa. 133:1. It is only the church of the Bible
that enjoys this pleasant unity, and we must never confound this church
with the confusive sects. Babylon has as many mouths as there are sects,
and they speak contrary things.
"For ye are all one in Christ Jesus." Gal. 3:28. "Only let your
conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come
and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand
fast in one spirit, with one mind striving to
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