Is God divided? If not, then why are there so many religious institutions claiming to be the true church?

Answer 1

God is not divided, no matter how many churchs we have we are all united in Chirst!

Answer 2

Although people disagree on issues and interpretations, it is their thing. God has always been the same and we just struggle to come as close to the right answers as we can.

People in their arrogance make the divisions. But God in his power is able to even use this for good. If all churches looked like the old-school-pipe-organ-type church then how many rockers like me would ever have come to know Christ? God needs churches that draw new believers, that focus on international missions, that attract the older generation, that see miracles, that hold to tradition and those that help grow people into mature believers.

Every church should try to do as much as they can for the Kingdom of God, but not every church can do everything well. So we get a lot of churches that look different from each other. God uses the great variety of churches out there to speak to the incredibly diverse world that we live in.

I like to think that I have a pretty good understanding of God's word, yet I've been called, "The deceived" by a "Christian" with different views. I am humble enough to accept that I could be wrong about this or that and I try not to judge people that see things a little different.

The Bible is clear that there is ONE body. Either you belong to Jesus or you don't. I think that more than any other time in history, a lot of churches are starting to get this. Hopefully the rest will get on board and we will have more unity in the global church. Keep praying.

Answer 3

Looks like beta fishy summed this all up pretty well. The one person, (outside of L.Ron Hubbard), who just about everybody agrees was a fraud, (false prophet), has declared that all other religions are false.

Lots of people here reiterate your observation of the divisive nature of religion and most of them skirt the question by separating God from organized religion. True to style, the fanatic Christians have no qualms about declaring their religion the only way to God. And some like Chakeyta don't even acknowledge the existence of about five billion religious people who don't follow Christ. "No division here! We're the ONLY religion!"

So your question remains unresolved: There are many different faiths and Gods. They are mutually exclusive. Some have to be false. Who has the authority to say? My belief is that they are ALL false, including LDS.

Answer 4

Jesus promised, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return. Among the Christian churches, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus. Every other Christian church is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches broke away from unity with the pope in 1054. The Protestant churches were established during the Reformation, which began in 1517. (Most of today’s Protestant churches are actually offshoots of the original Protestant offshoots.) Only the Catholic Church existed in the tenth century, in the fifth century, and in the first century, faithfully teaching the doctrines given by Christ to the apostles, omitting nothing. The line of popes can be traced back, in unbroken succession, to Peter himself. This is unequaled by any institution in history: Even the oldest government is new compared to the papacy. The Catholic Church has existed for nearly 2,000 years, despite constant opposition from the world. This is testimony to the Church’s divine origin: Any merely human organization would have collapsed long ago. The Catholic Church is today the most vigorous church in the world (and the largest, with a billion members: one sixth of the human race), and that is testimony not to the cleverness of the Church’s leaders, but to the protection of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus’ Church is called catholic ("universal" in Greek) because it is his gift to all people. He told his apostles to go throughout the world and make disciples of "all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20). For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has carried out this mission, preaching the good news that Christ died for all men and that he wants all of us to be members of his universal family (Gal. 3:28). Nowadays the Catholic Church is found in every country of the world and is still sending out missionaries to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19). The Church Jesus established was known by its most common title, "the Catholic Church," at least as early as the year 107, when Ignatius of Antioch used that title to describe the one Church Jesus founded. The title apparently was old in Ignatius’s time, which means it went all the way back to the time of the apostles.

Answer 5

God cannot be divided with Himself but yet man seems to want to do this by his own authority, Christ warned the Apostles who formed the infant church that many false prophets would come in his name and we are seeing this today, One Lord, one church founded on St.Peter and the Apostles,it cannot be destroyed by the hoards of Hell or by false doctrines.

Answer 6

God is not divided. People get divided because we all seem to interpret the same thing a different way, in other words if you write something down and show it to 100 different people chances are you are going to get more than one interpretation.

Answer 7

Obviously they can't all be true. They are not unified. They actively strive against each other, and many of their teachings are contradictory, one church to the next. How can all this be "the true church".

No, either one of them is the true church, or they are all false together. That's the conclusion that Joseph Smith came to. When he prayed about it, the answer he received was, suprisingly enough, the latter of the two possibilities... But you'll have to read his own words if you want more detail than that. :-)

Answer 8

No "religious institution" of man has any thing to do with The True Church.

There is Only One Church and Jesus The Christ is The Head.

Answer 9

God its not divided. God is Love and love is the perfect bond of unity. And the reason why so many churches are divided is because they want to put their own beliefs on the bible and do there own thing instead of READING and OBEYING the word of GOD and not that of man.

Answer 10

There is only one true church . Whenever you're talking to a religious person , the church he goes to is the only true church . If you don't believe me , just ask him .

Answer 11

"God does not dwell in a house built with human hands" and "a house divided against itself cannot stand"

If anything, God is multiplied and added, many times over.