Finding Jesus in the Bible…So We Can Follow Him in Life
Bible Reading Plans
- Plan One: New Testament Only
- Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
- Plan Three: New Testament + History
- Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3
Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.
Extras
Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute
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(Today’s Book Installment)
Living in the Kingdom of God
Chapter 4 – Looking Back on the Progression
If we look backward from the 21st century to the 2nd, we can see a progression in God’s workings where the institutional is concerned. But at first glance, it doesn’t look like a progression. On the contrary, it looks like a disintegration.
I’m talking about the institutional church’s ever-increasing divisions.
In The One True Church, we saw that the 1st-century churches, under the leadership of the apostles, were united. And that unity was a dramatic contrast with the disunity of the churches that have followed it. There are so many different denominations and churches today that they cannot even be counted – their number can only be estimated. And practically all estimates are in the tens of thousands.
The emperor Constantine sought to unite churches in the 4th century. What success he achieved was in the periodic councils of all bishops that he initiated. There were seven of these formal gatherings between the 4th century and the 8th – the Council of Nicaea being the first.
During the time of these councils, the thousands of churches across the Roman Empire eventually became organized into five geographic divisions. They were headquartered in Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
By the 11th-12th centuries, the churches of the western Roman Empire (headquartered in Rome) and the churches of the eastern Roman Empire (the other four) separated. The churches of the west became known as the Roman Catholic Church (the one); the churches of the east became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church (the four).
The four divisions that originally comprised the Eastern Orthodox Church have been maintained to this day. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church was divided by the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.
Protestants, of course, have divisions of their own. We know them as Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and so on. And each of these divisions has their own divisions.
Non-denominational churches took off in the 19th and 20th centuries, such that together they now comprise one of the largest Protestant segments.
What all this amounts to over the past two millennia is an ever-increasing number of divisions in the institutional church. If unity is a good thing and division is a bad thing, why should we regard this as progress? Because God’s goal for the 1st-century church was unity, and His goal for the church ever since has been disintegration. Why? Because the kingdom of God replaces the church.
I took great pains in The One True Church to explain the unique purpose of the New Testament church. Mankind’s pursuit of church ever since then has been a rejection of God’s plan: which is the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is a return to an Adam-and-Eve order. This means a return to the family as the divine institution without the need for a mediating organization like the nation of Israel or a church.
Therefore, divisions, which arise because of strife, are an evil thing God is using for good in the case of the institutional church. Thus we can look backwards in time and see progress toward the kingdom.
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