Does the Bible ever say that there is only one church on the earth? No! The Bible shows us that God establishes churches on the earth, that is, one church in each locality. Here is an important matter which we must notice before God: In the Bible, God has never united the churches in the many localities together as one church.
Do we have proof of this? Yes! We will look at this matter from three directions. First, after the Romans defeated the Jewish nation, Judea was changed from a nation into a province of Rome. Many churches, each in one locality, existed in the region, the province, of Judea. When the Bible speaks of the churches of Judea, it does not say the church in Judea, but “the churches” in Judea (1 Thes. 2:14). Have we ever seen the importance of the word churches? Although all the churches existed in one province, there was not a provincial church. If there was a provincial church, it would have been recorded as the church in Judea, not as the churches in Judea. Since the Bible speaks of them as the churches in Judea, it means that there were many individual churches, not the uniting together of many as the one church of Judea. There was no such thing as a united church.
Second, we can consider Galatia, which is not a city, but like Judea is a province. When the Bible speaks of Galatia, it never says “the church” in Galatia, but “the churches of Galatia” (1 Cor. 16:1), not church in the singular, but churches in the plural. This shows us that several churches were not joined together in Galatia to form one church. They were still churches.
Third, during that time the largest province was Asia. We can see that all the important churches were in Asia: Ephesus was in Asia, Colossae was in Asia, and Laodicea was in Asia. We should not consider that Laodicea was not so good because the Bible did not give it a good report in Revelation. In fact, Laodicea was very good in the beginning, and it was a very large place. Many churches existed in Asia (1 Cor. 16:19), but they were not united together as the church in Asia; rather, Revelation 1:4 speaks of “the seven churches which are in Asia.” Therefore, there is not a united church in the Bible. The churches in a province did not unite, and the churches in the whole world did not unite. The Bible never indicates that the churches in a province should unite as one church, that the churches in a country should unite as one church, or that the churches on a continent should unite as one church. There is no such church in the Bible. There is no such indication that the churches in the whole world should unite as one church. Acts never speaks of such a thing.
Furthermore, what does Paul say when he speaks of the church in the Epistles? For example, in 1 Corinthians he speaks of “the churches of God” (11:16) and of “all the churches of the saints” (14:33), that is, he speaks of not one church, but many churches. The church composed of all the saints is not the church, but the churches of the saints. Three or four brothers and sisters become a church here, and three or four brothers become a church there. They are the churches of the saints. The Bible does not use the phrase the church of God when it refers to the churches on earth; it does not use the phrase the church of the saints. The Bible clearly speaks of the churches of God and the churches of the saints. It is evident that God has no thought of uniting all the churches into one church.
In order for God to do something, He must first accomplish two works: The doctrine must be preached, and the apostles must work it out. There is no doctrine of uniting the churches. I have studied the Bible many times, but I have never seen a doctrine in it that indicates that there is only one church on earth. Neither do the apostles work toward such a thing. The Lord wanted the apostles to be completely obedient; He would not let them have their own opinions and act by themselves. Everything done by the apostles was done in obedience to the Lord; therefore, they were qualified to be apostles. If they had acted by themselves and by their own opinions, God would not have acknowledged their work as His work because a distance would have existed between them. God demanded that they obey completely and be thoroughly consecrated. Then God acknowledged what they did as His own work. The apostles did not unite the churches on earth into one church. We do not have such an apostolic pattern, nor do we have such a scriptural teaching.
If God intended to unite all the churches on the earth into one big, grand church, why did He not do such a thing through the hands of such men as Peter, James, John, and Paul? Why did He wait three or four hundred years to accomplish this through the pope? I believe in the pattern of Peter and Paul, but not in the pattern of the pope. I believe in the things done by Peter and Paul, but not in the things done by the pope. I believe in the apostles who were absolute to the Lord, but not in the popes. We absolutely cannot follow them. This is the reason I do not believe in such a thing as the Church of Christ in China. The church is local. There are only “the churches” of Christ in China, not “the Church” of Christ in China. Brothers, do you see the difference? Only the churches in China, not the church in China, should exist. There should be one church in Shanghai, one church in Tientsin. There may well be 8,000 or 9,000 churches throughout the whole of China, but it is absolutely impossible to make them become one church in China.
We see one thing here: The Bible contains absolutely no pattern or commandment for combining all the churches on earth into one organized, formal church. On the contrary, all the patterns and all the teachings in the Bible show that the churches are local and plural in number.
If I am a seeker after God, I cannot join the Roman Catholic Church. It is a worldly organization, one in which all the churches in the whole world are combined into one church. In this one church, the pope acts like an emperor, and the cardinals act like princes in each nation. Since they are an organization of the world, we cannot join them. When we speak with the brothers and sisters in different localities about the unity of the church, we must tell them that our unity is not the unity of the Roman Catholic Church. Today on this earth, there is a unity which is the unity of the Roman Catholic Church. This will not do, because it is not of God. According to history, this is something worked out by man; it is not what God wants us to have.
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