Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
What you believe in is a confusion of different fellowships within the one city and not biblical Christianity. The situation of Christians being divided according to denomination is not biblical. These are not "one visible church" as you claim, but many visible denominations.
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Lee established false standards for Christian meetings in order to condemn the rest of the body of Christ. For example, even though the New Testament rejects circumcision as a requirement for salvation (Acts 15.1, 28), it does allow for for both Jewish and Gentile ministries (Gal 2.7-9). These, in effect, were two emerging N.T. denominations, contrary to
Evangelical's rigorous claims. You can say that circumcision is nothing, neither is uncircumcision, but a new creation. (Gal 6.15) Cannot the body of Christ also say that Luther is nothing, Baptism is nothing, Pentecostalism is nothing, locality is nothing, but we are all one in Christ!
It doesn't take more than a passing interest in people to know that different peoples need different meetings of the church, and for sure churches would develop over time to meet these different needs. The N.T. mentions widows, for example, (Acts 6, I Timothy 5) and were not many gatherings, prayers, fellowships, etc. needed to care for them? If a church is primarily a widow-serving church (e.g. Gahanna Community Church) is it not still a church, though it is affiliated with widow-serving churches around the world? Or is it a dreaded denomination because of the burden the Lord put in their heart?
LSM prides itself with all their language meetings, i.e. Chinese-speaking, Spanish-speaking, college-speaking, new-ones-speaking (
Yes, I have heard all of this) It is a joke to declare that some of the larger churches do not have "divided" English and Chinese churches in the same city. They have different places to meet, different offerings, different leaders, etc. but since both are attached to LSM, they declare them as "one church" in the city, with, of course, 94.5% of its members living in different cities.
Hypocrisy, my friends, is doing what they do, but claiming you do not, so that you can condemn them. (Romans 2.1)