Topic: Church
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. (I Corinthians 3:3-6 KJV)
There are many divisions are going on in today’s Christian churches as well as divisions of the Holy Bible. Instead we should be in unity with other Christian brothers and sisters in Christ, we are dividing from each other within church and family. No wonder why many Christians are pulling themselves from their home churches. “According to Rainer Research, 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are 22 years old. Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be "disengaged" by the time they are 29 years old. Unlike older church dropouts, these young "leavers" are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community, such as home churches and small groups. When they leave church, many leave the faith as well.” (See Christianity Today article: The Ones Who WalkAway.)
Many Christians have decided to change the church because either they would itchy for the lifestyle messages or the preacher wouldn’t bring the truth from the Word of God. Either way, we are accountable what we have done when we would come to the Judge before we’d enter the eternality.
Sadly, we have too many divisions within the church. We have Baptist, Pentecostal, Seven Days of Advance, Mormonism, Church of God, Church of Christ, Calvary and many others. These church denominations are good, but when we’d try to believe certain biblical doctrines, then we would have problems in our hearts. For example, Baptist church doesn’t believe speaking in different tongue, even though it’s one of spiritual gifts in the Bible. Some denominational churches may proclaim that Roman Catholic Church is the sister of Christian churches, or we can combine Christian and Islam together. These are against the Word of God.
We must believe all the doctrines in the Bible and not portion of it. We also must not be embraced with other religions. Right now, TBN is starting to sell Quran (Islamic Bible) in their bookstores. I used to enjoy watching some TV programs on TBN during 90s, but when I heard what TBN was doing and some preachers tried to twist the Word of God, I stopped to watching of it. They are few good and solid preachers on any Christian TV channels. But when any preacher (your or mine) may try to manipulate to against the Bible, we may need to resign from that church. Not only the preachers are accountable, we also are accountable as well if we would decide to keep staying in the same church.
The church has to be in unity with Christ and not separate from each other.
