Worship: Unity in the Church / Wellness: Spiritual Influences in Healing

Worship: For Heaven’s Sake  Unity reform follows talks by Pastor Flemons on a number of reforms instituted after 1798, when the Dark Ages ended. These reforms included the Bible, the Spirit of Prophecy, the Sanctuary, the Sabbath, Worship, Country Living, as well as Financial, Education, Home, Prophetic, and Faith reforms in his series “Preparation for the Final Crisis.” It’s preparation for Heaven, he says. The prayer of Jesus Christ in John 17, expresses the desire that Christians be one, unified, as are Jesus and His Father.

In part 3 of his talk on unity, Pastor Flemons says that we are our own greatest enemy to unity, as he read these passages from the Spirit of Prophecy:

“It is not the opposition of the world that most endangers the church of Christ. It is the evil cherished in the hearts of believers that works their most grievous disaster and most surely retards the progress of God’s cause. There is no surer way of weakening spirituality than by cherishing envy, suspicion, faultfinding, and evil surmising. On the other hand, the strongest witness that God has sent His Son into the world is the existence of harmony and union among men of varied dispositions who form His church. This witness it is the privilege of the followers of Christ to bear. But in order to do this, they must place themselves under Christ’s command. Their characters must be conformed to His character and their wills to His will.” {Acts of the Apostles, by Ellen G. White, AA 549.1}

“How true are the words of the apostle, ‘Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.’ One person in an institution or in a church who gives loose rein to unkind thoughts by speaking evil of the brethren, may stir up the worst passions of the human heart, and spread abroad a leaven of evil that will work in all who come into association with him. In this way the enemy of all righteousness gains the victory, and the result of his work is to make of no effect the Saviour’s prayer when He pleaded that His disciples might be one as He is one with the Father (The Review and Herald, March 12, 1895).” {SDA Bible Commentary, 7BC 937.1}”

“Never can the church reach the position that God desires it to reach until it is bound up in sympathy with its missionary workers. Never can the unity for which Christ prayed exist until spirituality is brought into missionary service, and until the church becomes an agency for the support of missions.” {Counsels on Stewardship, by Ellen G. White, CS 47.2}