Where is the consolation of the saints?
I have been sifting through the kinds of Church authority out there, asking questions about the history of each, the scope of its administration, its right to enforce ordinances and uniformity upon human beings. It is a terrifying thing to get through insofar as church authority has years of history behind it, intrigues of kings mixed in, functions that began out of service to communities and turned into power over people. I suspect these things began very, very close to the beginning but did not actually sprout from the gospel of Christ. Where to begin? I believe something in Acts speaks to the nature of church splits and reveals something about the scope of legitimate Church authority. It begins here at the time when Paul and Barnabas took John Mark with them on a missionary journey: Act 13:13 Now when Paul and his company loosed from Paphos, they came to Perga in Pamphylia: and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. Acts 14 gives us more details about the work that John Mar
