Instead of Returning to the Divinely-ordained Local Churches Look What We Have Today!

The Divine method of making locality the boundary line between the different churches has various obvious advantages. The foremost is that if each church is locally governed, and all authority is in the hands of the local elders, there is no scope for an able and ambitious false prophet to display his organizing genius by forming the different companies of believers into one vast federation, and then satisfy his ambition by constituting himself its head.

Rome could never sway the power it does today had the churches of God maintained their local ground. Where churches are not affiliated, and where local authority is in the hands of local elders, a pope is an impossibility. Where there are only local churches there can be no Roman Church. It is the federation of different companies of believers that has brought such evils as dabbling in politics into the Church of God. There is power in a federated “church,” but it is carnal power, not spiritual.

God’s thought for His Church is that she should be like a mustard-seed on earth, full of vitality, yet scarcely noticed. It is federation that has brought the Church of today to the state of Thyatira.

The failure of Protestantism is that it has substituted organized churches—State and Dissenting—for the Church of Rome, instead of returning to the Divinely-ordained local churches.