Is church authority the government of God?
What happened after our baptism? We assembled with other baptized believers in various congregations, then we were introduced to the government of God, or church authority, which was an instance of sleight of hand. We were told that the ministers had rule over our lives. As time went on, that rule became more and more stifling. Why was it so hard for people to readjust once they left an authoritarian Church of God? It was partly because they had allowed the ministers to think for them. But the problem ran deeper than that. We were told that, if we left the authoritarian rule of the church, we would lose our salvation. We were originally told that the church was a spiritual organism. We were also told it was possible that there could be people sitting in the one true Church of God who did not have the Spirit of God. Therefore these people were not truly a part of God’s church. Even though an individual might be a member of a congregation of the Church of God, he must have the Holy Spiri
