Reading the Bible does not Give us the Spirit

[Cal]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

God does not lead people out of fellowship with the genuine local church. There is no example in the Bible of anyone being led out of a church by the Spirit. Can you find one? I can't. The only "church" that God calls us to leave is the Babylonian worldly mixture of denominations.

So it must be option (2).

Well, I decided to revisit. I see Evangelical is still up to his shenanigans.

Anyway, EV, hope you are doing well.

Your statements above are typical of the LC mindset because, although they are are consistent in themselves, they are based on false premises.

You say God would never lead someone out of fellowship with a genuine local church. But you don't define "fellowship." More importantly you don't define a "genuine local church," and you can't because the Bible never differentiates between local and other kinds of churches, nor does it differentiate between "genuine" or "false" churches. We do not know if there is such thing as a "false" church, since the Bible never defines or cites such a thing. We can look at the extreme example of "Babylon," but we really don't know what Babylon is for sure. LCers believe it is the RCC. But it may just represent a generally corrupt and worldly religious view. When the Bible doesn't clearly define a idea, it is probably teaching us about a general principle, rather than an actual thing. I agree that the city churches in the Bible show us that unity is important. I disagree that they show us that churches must be organized around the borders of a city. If the Bible wanted us to believe that as bad as you do it would have told us to.

So "genuine local church" sounds good, but it is really a useless and probably destructive term. The Bible doesn't give you enough information to genuinely (ahem) and confidently define it. You cannot know for sure if any church is really such a thing. It's just words and puffery. This is why your posts on the subject have the ring of arrogance and condescension. If you were really confident in your beliefs you could afford to be gracious and generous about them. Since you don't you exhibit hardness.

The extremes are easy. The New Jerusalem or Babylon. But most of us don't live in the extremes. We live in the real world where calling an assembly of Christians a "non-genuine church" is a reckless thing to do. I admire LCer's desire for purity, but I don't admire the way they go about it. You can't be a church God approves of based on an obscure Biblical technicality. There are so many things much more important than that. Jesus said so in Matthew 23:23, if you care to read it. The local ground as espoused by you is not about justice, mercy and faithfulness. It's about mint, dill and cumin. It's about focusing on gnats while ignoring the camel dung piling up around you.

Jesus asks us to do something that is very much against our nature. He asks us to even (sometimes) not act like we are right even when we think we are. This is what really bring loves and unity. Most times when we think we are standing up for the truth we are really standing up for ourselves. It's a delicate thing. It's very easy to condemn others, but hard to be honest with ourselves. If you cheat the man in the mirror you've gained nothing.