The Biblical Basis of Division

by James Jacob Prasch

When is Church Division Ordained of God, and When is It Not?

As we have often noted, in His high-priestly prayer in the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus prefaces His prayer for unity amongst believers, in verses 17 to 23, with a prayer that they first of all be sanctified in the truth. Biblical unity, that is the unity of the Spirit, first and foremost depends on that unity being grounded in doctrinal truth. “Sanctify them in the truth, Thy Word is truth” . Moreover, Jesus identifies Himself personally, as the literal incarnation of truth itself (John 14:6), because in the context of the Gospel of John, particularly, Jesus Himself is literally the incarnate Word (John 1:1). In short, if there is no truth, there is no Jesus and if there is no Jesus, there is no unity in Him. His teaching, in which we are to be sanctified, of which He Himself is both the eternal Logos (or “davar” in Hebrew) and of which He is the physical incarnation, is referred to in the New Testament by the Greek term “didaskein“. Those rejecting biblical doctrine reject truth and consequently reject Christ, placing themselves under a divine curse, where the Lord Himself will send a delusion, causing them to believe what is false, which will ultimately be the Antichrist (2 Thessalonians 2:3-11).

Yet in today’s world, Paul Crouch, of Trinity Broadcasting Network, denounced doctrine as “excrement”. We have heard many people from charismatic backgrounds tell us that doctrine is bad because it divides and instead we need love. In actual fact, according to Hebrews 4:12, the Word of God is meant to divide, designed by Him for that very purpose. In an age where Christians would choose to believe a Chuck Colson, Nicky Gumbel, Tony Campola, Robert Schuler or some other ecumenical deceiver instead of the Word of God, biblical imperatives about discernment are rejected in the name of love as divisive. It is easily overlooked by those paying attention to such people that real love, that is the love of Jesus, can only abound where there is real knowledge of Scripture and real discernment (Philippians 1:8-9).

The Two Primary Kinds of Popular Mistakes and Misconceptions

The question becomes: When do we divide? When should a church split? When should someone leave a church? When should someone sever fellowship with another believer? At what point should we refuse to co-operate with others in the ministry?

The answers to these kind of questions are far more straightforward in Scripture and generally less complex than most Christians today recognize. In today’s church we see two kinds of pitfalls. The first category are views that confuse unity of the Spirit with a mere unity that is nothing more than the path to Babylon the Great. With the rise of a non-democratic federal Europe becoming the embryo of the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophet Daniel’s prophecies, we see a parallel trend towards ecumenical unity, inevitably leading to inter-faith unity in the church. These two trends are related and ultimately will constitute two aspects of the same deception, contrived and orchestrated in hell. The issue of Europe would be purely political and would have no place to be editorialized about in a Christian periodical – unless one examines the expressed ecumenical agenda of the Vatican in relation to a united Europe. This cause has been echoed by, among others, Tony Blair, who describes himself as both Europhile and ecumenical. What we see is a rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire which once more is neither “holy” nor “Roman” under Romano Prodi than it was under Otto the Great.

A time will come where not subscribing to European unity will be portrayed as not subscribing to Christian unity and, as in pre-Reformation Europe, dissident political opinions will not simply be seen as seditious but will falsely be termed heretical – having no relation to what the Bible means by that term. Conversely, dissident theological views on ecumenical and interfaith unity will not be merely seen as a bogus definition of heresy, but be seen as fermenting hate crimes and be labeled as an insidious criminal activity.

The second category does the opposite. It holds views born more out of paranoia, sometimes personal opinion disguised as doctrine, not infrequently personality conflict and, in the case of Northern Ireland, possibly even prejudice.

What is the biblical balance? In a nutshell, that any average Christian should be able to understand, what is the essence of the instruction in God’s Word on permissible and non-permissible division?

Let us first consider what God-ordained division is not. We must accept the fact that the most godly of men can honestly disagree, and this can result in the kind of contention that transpired between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:36-39). In this account, there were no doctrinal disagreements between Paul and Barnabas, but a serious difference of opinion concerning a third party, John Mark.

Today, I have often experienced the same kind of problem. At a recent church split in England, one very dear and sincere sister, who was hurt in an unfortunate episode, condemned the pastor on the basis of Hebrews 10:29 which, in context, damns him to eternal hell. Against him she quotes that he “made a mockery of the Lord Jesus and His blood”. I personally found this a premature judgment and an overreaction, which I attribute more to her personal sense of hurt than I do anything else. In both Greek and Hebrew an “elder” and an “older brother in faith” are the same term, deriving from the Hebrew word “zaken” (which, in turn, has its etymological root in the Hebrew term for “a bearded one”) and we are told directly before being told to approach younger women as sisters, older women as mothers and younger men as brothers that we are to approach older men in church leadership as “fathers”. We are strictly commanded by the Lord not to sharply rebuke them, but to appeal to them. Invoking the text of Hebrews 10 against anyone, particularly a pastor, is probably the most serious charge we can bring against someone and every biblical principle and instruction must be exhausted before such a passage can be applied against someone.

Without judging the merits of the dispute on either side, even if she were correct, others would need to decide after this pronouncement whether or not they can be aligned with such a pastor. No pronouncements of such a serious nature should ever be made without a strict adherence to the instructions of Jesus in Matthew 18:15-20 and biblically such a pronouncement must be made by the Holy Spirit through the Body, not by an individual.

The dispute emerged from a situation where the pastor’s son owned a video shop with the tacit approval and support of the pastor and his wife. A shop assistant informed this sister that the shop would be carrying the Harry Potter video. (Moriel and Jacob Prasch dislike Harry Potter). The film was still in cinema and the video did not even exist, yet an explosion of angry opinions tore the church asunder. I was not present, but my own approach would have been, in love, to watch the video with the pastor’s son and first try to explain the potential spiritual dangers such a film could have for small children in their formative years. Church splits are the last resorts, and imprecatory pronouncements of hell-damning divine wrath should be the last resort of last resorts. I do not agree with elephant hunting, but if I did, I would say that “Elephant guns should be reserved for elephants”.

If differences can split a ministry team like Paul and Barnabas, how much more vulnerable are those of us less spiritual in stature?! Yet God put this in His Word to instruct us of this very thing. I prefer Abraham’s disposition towards Lot – “You have first choice of the land”. This is the procedure I followed when I could no longer be a part of Sulam Yakov Messianic Fellowship in Manchester, which was planted under the auspices of a ministry of which I had been evangelistic director. I simply left it and helped begin a new Messianic work in Leeds. I desired no personal strife, although the leader who took it over lost most of the initial membership and took up the practice of passing on very confidential information about Jewish missions and evangelism and about Jewish believers in Israel, and even their unsaved families to the Jewish community newspapers. This kind of very sensitive information was, of course, used against Jewish evangelism and against Jewish believers and their families.

There is a particular danger about trying to invoke biblical doctrine in order to vindicate ones position in a Paul and Barnabas type split. You must be absolutely sure there is a clear abrogation of Scripture or some unrepentant immoral misconduct in order to make it a doctrinal issue where we place others in the position of having to choose sides. Paul and Barnabas separated but they invoked no doctrinal condemnations of each other in the process, and neither should we.

There is a tremendous distinction between “Guilt By Co-operation” and “Guilt By Association”. There is only one case where Christians are deemed guilty of guilt by mere association, and that is where a false or backslidden brother or sister goes into immoral conduct and refuses to repent. Here we are directly commanded to break fellowship and disassociate (1 Corinthians 5:9-13).

In the “Chink in the Armour” teaching, we teach, based on the example of Jehosophat riding in Ahab’s chariot that godly men and women should not share ministry with ungodly ones because, like Ahab, they make themselves a target, they become duped by those who are mal-motivated, and become identified with the wicked in whose chariot they ride and whose robes they inevitably begin to wear. In love, we have tried to advise godly leaders, such as Josh McDowell, Chuck Smith, Randal Price, Chuck Missler and others known to us as good brethren, not to appear on platforms or on the TV and radio broadcasts of those whom they personally admit are apostate and unethical, particularly in the area of fund-raising. Our fears are that these good men will be set up the way Jehosophat was and their much needed ministries harmed as a result. We are unable to agree with the rationale that they are putting grain in the toxic stew, as in 2 Kings 4, because for that to work there must be a recognition that the stew was poisoned, and those running heretical organizations, such as Trinity Broadcasting, will never admit to that since their apostate empire depends on it.

I myself would never appear on a platform with anyone who is faith prosperity, ecumenical, Toronto/Pensacola or restorationist unless, of course, it was to debate them. Likewise, I turned down offers of television series of my own, in both the USA and in Europe, simply because I did not wish to visibly align myself in any way with such wickedness. Scripture tells us, however, that Jehosophat was a righteous figure, howbeit unwise in this one particular area. So too brothers like Josh McDowell, Chuck Smith, Randal Price, Chuck Missler and others are good brothers, and the notion that I should disassociate from them because of whom they refuse to disassociate from, is an opinion to which someone may be entitled, but it is not an opinion that can be presented as a doctrinal argument governing Christian conduct. I can choose my own associations and Moriel refuses, in any way, to being identified with anyone or anything heretical or immoral as the Bible, and not people’s self-righteous preferences, define heresy and immorality. But there is nothing in the Bible that tells me to break fellowship with those who themselves are not heretical or immoral, even where we may disagree with their own associations. Guilt by co-operation is one thing, guilt by association is another.

Because the UK Evangelical Alliance is dominated by restorationists and pro-Toronto extremists, and by those willing to compromise with such nonsense, Moriel chose not to become a member of the EA and some time ago I chose not to renew my personal membership. Yet it is ridiculous to say that those remaining in the EA are necessarily all wrong people or bad ministries. I in fact know of certain individuals, such as Tom Chacko, Asian evangelist to the Hindus, who remain in the EA, specifically to try to warn it how what they call “the Toronto Experience” and the “paradigm shift” from the Vineyard Movement, and the altered states of consciousness theology of Patrick Dixon, are actually nothing less than the Kundalini yoga of Hinduism infiltrating the Church in Christian masquerade. I cannot dismiss the Lord’s leading for Tom Chacko’s ministry if he is outspokenly challenging such deceptions from within, and I cannot condemn Philip Foster remaining in the Anglican ministry as a voice for truth and sanity in an age where the Thirty Nine Articles, upon which Anglicanism is supposedly built, has become a discarded joke. It would be different if such good brothers subscribed to these deceptions themselves, or compromised and failed to speak out against them, as they do, but I have no biblical basis to consider breaking fellowship with them over what they believe to be God’s leading for them at this time, even though it is not God’s leading for myself or for Moriel.

When someone does align himself with someone involved in something the Bible calls immorality, such as divorcing your Christian wife to marry another woman, as Peter Horribin of the Ellel Grange hyper-deliverance debacle, and the Ebenezer Trust which signed an agreement to withhold Christ from Jewish souls on their way to eternal hell without Him, the situation becomes different. Many of our readers, who contacted us, were shocked when Lance Lambert and Derek Prince (who also endorse Pensacola), joined forces with Peter Horribin in order to promote this contra-biblical Ebenezer organization. When they joined forces with Mahesh Chavada who, with his wife, called going into Toronto “following the yellow brick road”, said that in a dream the Holy Spirit was Toto the Dog, Dorothy was the Church, the Lord was the Wizard of Oz and those disapproving of Toronto are wicked witches, it was, in my view, a mistake that alienated many who had once respected them. Once they violated the command of 1 Corinthians 5, however, and promulgated an organization cursed of God for withholding the Gospel from the Jews (Acts 20:26, Ezekiel 3:18-19), it was not a matter of guilt by association, but guilt by co-operation.

Another example of this kind of situation that was extremely sad for us was what transpired when David Pawson published his book on the Toronto deception, calling it A Yellow Light and advising people to proceed with caution. The light was, in fact, red and people needed to stop and keep away. For a Bible expositor and Christian writer of his calibre to give such reckless and potentially detrimental advice on such a serious demonically inspired delusion was, to say the least, very disturbing. (It was a position he also introduced into his arbitration findings in Moriel’s conflict with Elim). We have heard of many cases that once someone in any way compromises with the Toronto deception, or its American equivalent from Pensacola, that the rest of their ministry seems to begin to disintegrate spiritually and their once good Bible teaching seems to degenerate into a spiral of spiritual and doctrinal decline.

Conclusion

Personal differences should never be equated with doctrinal differences, unless the Word of God assigns that distinction. Divisions are, at best, a necessary evil and we should refrain from invoking divine wrath on another, unless we can rightly exegetically demonstrate from the Word of God, showing it to be a clear case where God, and not we, has placed the anathema. We need to remember that there are clear New Testament procedures for dealing with iniquity in the Church (Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 5:9-13, John 7:51, 1 Timothy 5:19) remembering that the standard by which we judge will be the same standard by which we are judged (Matthew 7:2). Failing to abide by these guidelines is as wrong on one side, as failing to act against heresy, deception and immorality are, on the other. Moreover, confusing guilt by co-operation with guilt by association is as untenable and as biblically unsupportable on one extreme, as is a counterfeit unity where people fail to divide when the Scripture says they should, on the other extreme.

The Key Passages

We have been using the term “heresy” rather generously. We read the term in 1 Corinthians 11:19, where we are told that within the Church there must be “factions”, in order to prove which is true, or perhaps better translated, that those who are approved may manifest. The Greek word here for “factious” is “heresis” from where we get the term “heresy”. Its actual meaning is a schism; heretical doctrine is schismatic and will cause factions to emerge. When someone takes on a heretical doctrine, they make it a basis of fellowship and those not sharing it are excluded, causing a schism. We witnessed an example of this in the “drunken hysterics” counterfeit revival where people were asked, “Are you in the move of God?”

Those not falling under the hypnotic spell of the demonic deceptions of Rodney Howard Browne, John Arnott, John Kilpatrick, Colin Dye, Ken Gott, etc, were seen as not part of what God was doing. As the Elim movement was devoured by this deception at the behest of its leaders who propounded it in issue after issue of their tabloid, godly people, who had not already left Elim, were corralled into a dilemma where they either submitted to the demonic and stayed in Elim or submitted to the Lord and left. This is genuine heresy, when Scripture is abrogated and a new doctrine, lacking biblical foundation, becomes the central focus and schism becomes inevitable. In this case, the divine truths of the fruit of the Spirit being self-control (Galatians 5:23) and human animal imitations being a divine judgment (Daniel 4:16) are dismissed in the name of “being religious”. Divine commands about judging manifestations scripturally (1 Corinthians 14:29) and directives of having discernment are denounced as “pharisaical”. Those adhering to the Word of God were seen as divisive for refusing to succumb to deception. The practitioners of the drunken hysterics were and are too ignorant to understand that their antics were void of biblical support and so by teaching as precepts of God the inventions of men, they themselves are of the kind whom Jesus called Pharisees (Matthew 15:9, Mark 7:7). In fact, it was Isaiah who first described such people (Isaiah 29:13) and, as we explain on the “Church for the Churchless” tape series, in this chapter the Prophet Isaiah describes them with acute, if not devastating, accuracy. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, heresy should bring division.

The second New Testament passage giving instruction on division is Romans 16:17, where we are urged to mark a divisive man who causes dissensions contrary to the doctrines of Jesus received via the teachings of the Apostles. These teachings are again called didaskein and the Early Church attempted to formulate a condensed version of these apostolic teachings in a document called the Didache.

The Greek word here for “divisive” or “factious” is dichostasia, which is related to the Greek word from where we get the English term “dichotomy”. It literally means what happens when we come to a fork in the road where the road continues straight, but another branches from it at an angle. As Amos said, “Two cannot walk down the same road unless they agree” (Amos 3:3). Notice, however, that in the context of the passage, it is the one who departs from New Testament doctrine who is divisive. In the ethically and doctrinally perverted ecclesiastical environment we so often see today, those who depart from biblical doctrine accuse those who do not as being the ones who are divisive. In God’s sight, the diametric opposite is true. I have formerly been a part of two church movements. The first were the Baptists and the second were the Penecostals (although I never believed tongues must be initial evidence of Spirit baptism despite my belief and personal practice of this gift, understood biblically).

Under Bernard Green and Douglas MacBain, the UK Baptist Union entered into ecumenical union with the Church of Rome through “Churches Together in England“, which precipitated my own departure. In their ecumenical venture they effectively renounce the heritage of the much persecuted Baptist Fathers that began with the saner elements of the Anabaptists and created a legacy that endured through the ministries of John Bunyan, William Carey, and Charles Spurgeon. All of them opposed Rome for its false gospel, antichrist papacy, idolatry, superstition, and moral corruption. Strangely, at that time, the Baptist leadership attempted to justify its ecumenism by arguing that Roman Catholics believe in a literal resurrection and virgin birth, while the liberal churches already in the Baptist Union, do not! False doctrine, instead of the truth of God’s Word, becomes the barometer of unity!

When I and a few others like me took a stand, we were misrepresented as the divisive ones. In actual fact, doctrinally, I am still a Baptist. I still hold to the autonomy of the local fellowship, to believers’ baptism and other quite biblical Baptist principles. I still believe what the Anabaptists, John Bunyan and Charles Spurgeon believed.

It was the leaders of the Baptist Union who jettisoned the original biblical principles on which the Baptist Union was founded. It is they who “caused a stumbling” with things contrary to the teachings of the New Testament. Today, while the Baptist Union may have hijacked the name “Baptist”, it is rather the Federation of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) who are more the actual Baptists because they, like I, still believe the authentic Baptist dogma. It is not those still retaining Baptist convictions who are divisive, according to Romans 16:17, but those who now effectively negate those convictions. It is not I (or others like me) who left the Baptists, it was the Baptist Union who left the Baptists!

Similarly, it is no longer movements such as the Assemblies of God, Elim, and Four Square who are the genuine Pentecostals, in the biblical sense, but rather those who have left such movements, such as David Wilkerson in New York, and also the Calvary Chapels and Gypsy Light and Life Missions who now represent a biblical Pentecostalism or charismatic evangelicism. I myself have never left my beliefs in pre-millenialism, the gifts of the Spirit, and my inclination towards lively, but reverent and biblical, worship. It is rather the mainstream Pentecostal denominations who seemed to have abandoned Pentecostalism.

A third mandatory area for doctrinal division is those who have another gospel. We are told directly, in Galatians 1:8, that those having another way of salvation, be it good works, ex opera operato sacramental rituals, or atoning for your own sin in purgatory when the true Gospel teaches that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin. It is amazing how many people today, supposedly saved through things like the Charismatic Movement and Alpha courses, were never actually born again and how few of those who may have been are able to explain the Gospel biblically in terms of justification by faith and salvation by grace. Fewer still understand the relationship between the justice and the love of God, where a biblical understanding of the Gospel was dissipated by a combination of cheap grace versions of the Charles Finney corruption of Weslyan Armenianism and the erosion of biblical teaching of judgement under the influence the late John Wimber and his New Age Vineyard Christianity.

Once another gospel is introduced, adherents to the true Gospel must either throw out the false one or leave. Paul, however, admonishes us, even further linking rejection of those with another gospel with those having another christ (2 Corinthians 11:4). Those who do this operate in the nature of Satan the serpent, trying to seduce the Church. And they are called by Paul “false apostles” according to 2 Corinthians 11:3,4. And Paul’s lament that the Corinthians bore these false apostles of a false christ with their false gospel, could easily and accurately be reiterated today to the followers of Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and the Elim movement. A false christ is someone with a false anointing and an apostle means someone “who is sent”. We certainly see the false anointings and those “sent” to disseminate it with spiritual seduction. Their “Jesus” is no more the Jesus of the Gospel than their faith is the faith of Hebrews 11 or than the Mormon “Jesus” is the Jesus of the Bible. Thus a false gospel, and a false christ go hand in hand and always constitute biblical grounds for division.

Indeed, wrong christology (doctrine of Christ) and wrong pneumatology (doctrine of the Holy Spirit) are easily as prolific today as they were in the patristic era of the early church. Denials of the Father-Son relationship are plainly called “antichrist” in the New Testament (1John 2:22,23) and Sabelianism (’Jesus only’) and unorthodox views of the tri-unity of the Godhead, or denial of it, automatically warrant that there be a split. Yet, today, we see televangelist T. D. Jakes, one of the most popular figures on so-called “Christian” TV. Tommy Tenny author of “The Godchasers” was welcomed as a featured conference speaker by Paul Weaver and the UK Assemblies of God, despite both of these men not being orthodox Trinitarian. In Belfast, Elim’s Jim McConnell continues to baptise people “in the name of Jesus” only and names rooms in his Whitewell Tabernacle (eg the Magee Room) after those well-known to have vehemently denied the doctrine of One God in Three eternal Persons.

A final New Testament passage providing a clear mandate for division is where a different basis for authority, other than Scripture, is elevated to the status of determining doctrine and conduct (2 Timothy 3:16). In this epistle Paul tells us something similar to what he does in Romans 16, only with an eschatological emphasis (aimed towards to the last days). He warns that a time would come when they “will not endure sound doctrine” but literally seek for false teachers to tickle their ears with what they wish to hear (2 Timothy 4:3). As in Romans 16:17, Paul tells us that it is they who turn away from the truth and follow myths; it is not those holding to sound doctrine, who remain in biblical truth, who turn aside.

The proliferation of unbiblical doctrine among evangelicals today is unprecedented. Not since the post-apostolic era of the Early Church has there been such an avalanche of destructive lies hatched by Satan and his servants coming to us, like him, masquerading as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). As Jesus warned, the wolves indeed come to us in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15) and, as He also warned, pastors, who are hirelings and not shepherds, do nothing about it (John 10:12,13). Perhaps never in the history of the Church has there been so little biblical discernment amongst born again Christians.

Conclusion

The early Messianic Jews were forced out of the synagogue for the sake of biblical truth. For all of their mistakes, the Reformers were forced out of the medieval church for the sake of biblical truth. The Methodists were forced out of the Anglican communion for the sake of biblical truth. And today, many spiritually minded and intelligent born again Christians, of all backgrounds, are being forced out of their churches and denominations into more biblical ones, holding to the truths that their old churches apostosised from. In the Last Days we will have the apostate church already being set up for the advent of Antichrist, and we will have the true Church being adorned as a Bride.

Moriel’s Perspective

We generally classify other ministers and their ministries or churches into several major categories. In the first category would be those with whom we would be in doctrinal harmony and with whom we have no apparent differences of any significance. This would include figures such as Ray Borlaise, Tony Pearce, Mike Oppenheimer, Chris Hill,  Andrew Gould, Bill Randles and Philip Powell. These would be closely followed by people such as Philip Foster, and David Wilkerson, who would be in almost the same category.

The second category would include those with whom we are in essential agreement on 100% of the fundamental doctrines of the Bible, and 90% of the secondary issues, which are also important, but obviously not as important as the primary ones. In this category we would place Arnold Fruchtenbaum, moderate Calvinists, such as Richard Gibson of Christian Witness to Israel (CWI), Dave Hunt, David Nokes, Mark Haville, Chuch Missler, Barry Smith, Michael Penfold, Cecil Andrews and various others. We do not always agree with them on every issue, nor do we expect them to always agree with us. But the points of divergence never involve anything that could be considered heretical and do not provide any reason to cease co-operative fellowship in the ministry. We regard them as good brothers, irrespective of occasional areas of amicable brotherly disagreement on a few points which, more often than not, are minor ones.

The third category consists of those with whom we unfortunately cannot have co-operative fellowship in the ministry because the doctrinal disagreements are too wide. But this is not to state that they are wide enough to amount to something heretical on the basis of the biblical passages cited above in this article. In this class we would place a host of figures ranging from John MacArthur in Los Angeles, to Ian Paisley in Belfast. Although we would be unable to share co-operative fellowship in the ministry with such brothers since the nature and depth of our doctrinal differences with them are of a weightier substance, we still regard them as brothers in Jesus. Despite the barriers to standing with them in co-operative fellowship in actual ministry, this would not necessarily translate to an unwillingness to share personal fellowship with them, should the sentiment be reciprocal.

The final category, of course, are the apostate purveyors of heresy and deception and the immorality that so commonly accompanies it.

We explain this for the consumption of our subscribers and supporters, because we feel they have a right, if not a responsibility, to know what our standards of practice are. We are not, however, trying to create a template for others. This is simply what we believe God’s will is for our ministry on the basis of our understanding of His Word. We are not infallible. But then again, neither are our critics!

Summary

There are cases where biblically we must divide. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, not of error, and He is the spirit of holiness, not immorality. And where apostasy, with its twin pillars of heresy and immorality is found, God’s true people will not be found.

There are cases where divisions are permissible (howbeit not necessarily desirable), but we must exercise the greatest caution not to equate personal differences with doctrinal differences or attempt to ascribe a biblical motive for so.