Does God have a purpose in divisions and factions in the Church?

18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. 1 John 2:18-19 (NASB) 

19 Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21 (NASB) 

Only those Christians who put their head in the sand, that is, those who are deliberately ignorant would say that the visible church is not under extreme attack from charlatans, out-right heretics, false-teachers, and compromisers.  That last being the most dangerous for they look so good and orthodox, have a great following, and yet they do and say some of the strangest things at times so that even their supporters have a hard time explaining them, which causes great confusion. This ministry has mostly been concerned with three major heresies since its inception. The first being the seeker-sensitive paradigm which has caused huge numbers of local churches to fall apart and be destroyed as deceived pastor after deceived pastor has fallen for the Purpose Driven Church lies and attempted to implement that model and ended up with simply a store front church full of goats. The second heresy I have spent much time on is the Emergent Church or as some call it now, Emergence Christianity. This takes many forms and I often finds elements of it in the third heresy I have spent much time on, which is a strange combination of Reformed doctrine, but includes the false doctrines found in Charismatic teachings and as well as Roman Catholicism and even Gnosticism. I don’t have a concrete name for it so I simple call it NAR/New Calvinism/Acts 29. There are 3 commonalities found in all three of these heresies, though not to the same degree.

1) Their Jesus is not the Biblical Jesus. 2) Absolute Truth is found outside the Bible. 3) Doubt is the marker of true faith not assurance. View article →