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Sreeram

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Sreeram

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Bill

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Bill

Hi all,

This is my fault. I was a little too sharp in some of my recent posts. I apologize to Sreeram. Lets put all this behind us and move on.

Thank you Platy. Honestly I do not believe it is anyone's fault. I understand people have different understanding of Church. To someone Church is a building, to another it is place where they can listen to sermons etc. When I post that God desires all of us to build his Church in our locality, people can see it in different sense.

It is hard for me to erase the preconceived notion on Church that anyone has. Also people are often attacked that they do not go to any building dedicated as a Church, so when I post on need for Church, it immediately rubs their past wounds from such accusations. They become very defensive!

I am not here to accuse anyone. I am not interested to know if anyone is part of a Church or not. I am here to post the truth plainly.

Personally to me to be committed to a body of believers has helped me to grow with respect to salvation. An unmarried man may think that he will be a great husband but only when he is married he sees how big a failure here is and how difficult it is to be the man of a household. Same way only when we fellowship with a body of believers in a committed way, we will see our own inner need for growth in Christ Jesus. If we are a lone Christian not in a committed relationship, we will only have a false understanding of our own need for salvation.

Just sitting alone and hearing sermons online will not result in the ultimate purpose of God. We will always fall short of God's purpose. God never intended any believer to be like that. He is grieved by such so called believers.

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Sreeram

This came to mind-
In many words, sin is not absent.

Please note that you hijacked Mr Bill’s thread which related do denominational walls. Even after he voiced his discouragement, you just ramble on.

Mr Bill, I can offer you this great truth-
Matthew 16:18
King James Bible
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Blessings

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J Kruger

I think it is not good to be too hung up on denominations. They are just a fact of life, and I think only God can and will one way tear them down. We hear the shout of zealous
brothers protesting: Lord, Wilt thou then that we go and gather [the tares)?
But the Lord said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.

If you try to do it by human effort, you will actually pull out the wheat with the tares, and cause collateral damage.


We are always happy for the walls of others to be torn down, how about our own?

Sometimes it is not even doctrinal matters, but length of skirts, Christmas, organ or guitar, pastors pay, vaczine, and other trifles.

Let it be the work of the Spirit, the only One who can bring us to the Unity in Christ.

I have been to many churches of various denominations. I have had bad church in many places, even there I always met a few starved hungry dear souls among a mass of nominal Christians, sticking it out for want of elsewhere to go. I have set under sound, but dead teaching. I have been in churches with whacky theology but great hospitality. I have seen churches great in prayer, great in outreach to the outcast, rich in sending out, great in song, but all may be lacking here or there.

I have seen beauty and freshness of the Spirit among conservative Russian Baptists founded by American Baptists in the 1920s, British Charismatic, Southafrican Pentecostal Brethren, German Baptists, A Chinese Church founded by Swiss Missionaries, a Hong Kong crowded home in the the Walled City, house groups and prayer retreats in Taiwan, and my most powerful eperience ever was in the Philippines back in 84, when a 5 feet tall pastor preached from Acts 8 where I had an open vision about the wrath of God.

All of them sort of belong to denominations, vary greatly in practise and emphasis and style, perhaps just because their founders were baptist or methodist or Lutheran missionaries from somewhere where people cared about the lost.

What I found is, though they do things wrong here and there, they may excel in other ways and virtues.

I can reject a lot of their baggage but also can learn a lot from them.

Actually the worst churches are those who say they got everything right and everyone else got it wrong. I love it when churches say, we are thankful for what we have but there is so much more we need to learn.

You may see them as walls, but they also can be like gemstones of differnt color and sparkle once Gods light shines on them.

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Sreeram

I just wanted to come back to ask everyone that has replied to this thread, to please, please go back to my original question and reread it. I don't know how or why it got off track/topic, to where it seemed like some thought I didn't belong to a Church, and seemingly attacked me “this is how I felt” thinking my question was to draw folks out of the church. For the record I do belong to a Home Church, if you don't feel like a Home Church qualifies "in your world" for a church, can't we just agree to disagree?

The really sad part is, some tried to put me under condemnation about attending a church, some went as far as making posts to justify why we all needed to be in a church, my original post had nothing to do with this, it only asked “will the walls of denominations will be torn down?” What does this particular question have to do with discouraging folks to leave the church, or not go to church? Again, I asked a simple question, and some took it to a whole new level, of trying to justify why folks should be in a church, how on earth did we get this far off track/topic?

It seems that these days when “some” Christians bicker they exaggerate passion into a legalistic belief and prosperity into a lukewarm belief. I do appreciate all the replies to my “original” question, to be honest, this is why I don’t post here much anymore, some just seem to want to air out their opinions on most all threads, rather than trying to understand the original posters questions, and keep the thread/threads constructive and "ON TOPIC".

I really wished Greg would do like a lot of other forums I belong to, warn everyone to please stay "ON TOPIC", if he or the other mods would do this, SI would be a more constructive place to come to and post, as I really only mostly read anymore, due to some many threads going off topic, and my thread pretty much proves this.

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Bill