Jesus seems to spend a lot of his ministry showing the Pharisees what a bunch of hypocrites they were. They were so certain they kept the whole of the law, but what they were doing was twisting the law, and making obedience to their own interpretation of the law more important than loving the Lord their God with all their heart, their soul and their mind. They were more concerned with outward form than inward state; they had focussed so much on trivial detail, they had missed the whole point - in focussing on the gnats they had swallowed camels.

Now it is easy to look in the scriptures and see where the Pharisees got it wrong, but I believe the church of Jesus Christ has got it just as wrong, if not worse. In being concerned about gnats, we too have swallowed camels. Our sin is not the same as the Pharisees; with certain exceptions such as casuistry in Roman Catholicism, twisting the rules has not been our main problem, rather in the Protestant churches it has been our insistence on orthodoxy and doctrinal purity.

This is not an easy issue for me to tackle, because I'm very definitely a conservative Evangelical, and as such totally committed to rightly dividing the Word of Truth (2 Tim 2:15), but I am concerned that we take our obsessions to such extremes where they do not really matter, but we treat them as if they do, and we end up neglecting the very heart of Jesus' desire for the church. The result of too much attention to detail is that we no longer see the whole picture, so we miss the whole point of what its supposed to be about - whilst seeking to sift out gnats, we end up swallowing camels.

What is Christ's desire for his body - Jn 17:11,21,23 - that they might be one. What is the result of them being one - Jn 17:21,23 - that the world might believe. What is the whole point of the church being here on earth - Mt 28:19 - to make disciples of all nations. If we're here to make disciples of all nations, and the world will believe when we are one, then why is the church divided. It is when brothers dwell in unity that the Lord commands a blessing (Ps 133). The world looks at the church and sees thousands of different denominations all claiming to offer the truth, and they can see that most of these different groups hate one another's guts! So what is the main reason we are divided, when it is clearly God's will for us to be united if we are to do what He has called us to? We are divided primarily because of our insistence on doctrinal purity. The view of much of the church over the years has been that unless you hold the correct understanding of scripture you cannot be saved, God will not bless you. What do our splits and disagreements say about our desire to save the world?

I believe that this is a deception of the enemy, that he has got the church so focussed on being spot on in doctrine, that they have lost touch with what the church is here for, and have replaced intellectual understanding for heart attitude. In focussing on gnats we have swallowed camels. So we write off one another -and I have heard all these as excuses why we should disregard the teaching or ministry of some parts of the body of Christ: - he's a Calvinist, he thinks Christians can have demons, they're into shepherding, they're into faith teaching, God cannot bless you if you remain within this denomination. How much do these things really matter to God? Now I'm probably one of the worst offenders in all this over the years, but I'm having to get myself used to the fact that most of the things I've worried about are only gnats, and that it is far more important to be concerned about the camels.

What I'm not saying is that anything goes - there are some standards, there are things the scriptures are perfectly clear on - but such things are rarely the cause of churches splitting. So some things are crucial, they are the heart of our faith - if I quote the song we sing so often:

We believe in You
That Your word is true
That You died and rose again
We believe Your blood covered all our sins
We believe You'll come again

I suppose the seeds of what I'm saying here was sown a couple of months back when I heard a sermon in my own church which said that the important thing was to be focussed on and hold to the minutiae of God's Word. That message really jarred with me; not because I believe that there is anything in the Word of God which is untrue - because I believe it all, but because I think camels are more important than gnats in spiritual terms, and that unless we are holding onto and running with the camels, we should never regard the gnats as being anything more than a minor problem -a side issue, a minor irritant, but never a reason for separation and division. As a church historian I have seen too many cases of people claiming that they had got it right, and that unless you believed exacltly what they did, you could not be saved. The most tragic thing is that each group that made such a claim held to different teaching to each other group - they can't all be right. They all use Jn 14:26, 16:13 to claim that the Bible proves that God would give them the whole truth. How precise do we really need to be before God will let us into heaven? What do the scriptures say, and what does church history really teach us about those on whom the blessing of God is seen? Is the blessing of God a sign that they have got their doctrine right - or is it more to do with their heart attitude?

If we look back at the early church, most of the major doctrinal problems were regarding elephants. The Docetists claimed that Jesus only appeared to be a man, the Arians believed that He wasn't God but some sort of lesser being, the Marcionites rejected a large proportion of the New Testament, the Gnostics welded some Christian ideas onto some way-out spiritual teaching. I'm obviously simplifying the issues a lot, but they were all elephants; the early church was right to keep a hold of its camels and reject them. What followed though was a shift in focus from the elephants to the gnats, so that having disposed of clearly unchristian teaching the church began to more and more precisely to define the Christian faith in ways which went beyond the clear teaching of scripture.

The rot set in by the beginning of the fifth century. Christianity had become the official religion of the Roman empire, and the church found itself lumbered with large masses of people who weren't saved, but believed themselves to be Christians. They accepted the doctrines of the church but many had not been born again, it was socially advantageous to be a Christian. People were becoming priests as a profession. The Church Councils of the previous century had been important in affirming scriptural truths and rejecting heresies; Nicea agreed that Christ was fully man and fully God, of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father, Constantinople reaffirmed this and taught a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The creed of Constantinople is still read in many churches today - confusingly it is usually known as the Nicene creed. The theologians did not stop at this point, but wanted to explore more deeply the mechanics of the incarnation, how Christ could be both fully God and fully man, and how the divine and human in Him interacted. This is where the problems came, because Scripture does not clearly explain these details.

There were two main schools of thought, based appropriately in the two main theological schools: Alexandria and Antioch. Their scholars looked into these matters and came to what seemed to be slightly different conclusions. All well and good, but they each then began to denounce the viewpoint of the other theological school and declare it heresy. Each side issued pamphlets and treatises - mainly for their own supporters, ridiculing and exaggerating the views of the other side. In reality the difference between the schools was minimal; the problem came because they used different terminology, often with the same words having different meaning depending on whether it was from the school of Alexandria or of Antioch. So they each thought the other was teaching something different to what they were, but they wouldn't come together to sit down and discuss the matter rationally, they just denounced and shouted at one another. Who won in a theological meeting depended not on appeal to Scriptures, but on which side could shout the loudest. What started with learned theologians trying to find truth degenerated into mob-rule, kidnapping and even murder. In 431 a council was held at Ephesus, at which the teaching of the school of Antioch was declared heretical, and those who held to it were anathematized - it was declared they were cursed and as such not saved. They were characterised as saying that the divine and human in the incarnate Christ were distinct. Many of the leading figures from the Antioch school managed to escape condemnation by themselves anathematizing the position they were accused of holding. Twenty years later they got their own back at the council of Chalcedon where the position of the school of Alexandria was condemned and its adherents anathematized. They were characterised as saying that in the incarnate Christ there was a single, divine nature. The whole thing was a bit of a farce - some people from each party did even end up holding views similar to those which were condemned, having been pushed to extremes by the controversy. The viewpoint of most of the church since that time has been that the teaching of the council of Chalcedon is the touchstone of Orthodoxy, and that any other view is heresy. In reality very few people even at the time understood the Chalcedonian definition - most took sides according to the position their bishop took, and even many of the bishops didn't understand the issues. The result was that large numbers of people from both camps were effectively declared without salvation, even though they could all assent to the Nicene creed.

Can salvation really be determined on accepting a formula which you are told is correct, even when you don't understand it? How intelligent do you need to be before God will let you into heaven? Is accepting the right formula a guarantee that God will bless you, and that He will curse those you have anathematised. The reality is quite different. What happened after the events I have outlined is important. Most of the so-called heretics were geographically on the fringes of the Roman empire, and within a couple of centuries they found themselves outside it - Rome wasn't interested in them, because they weren't considered Christians. The church within the empire remained secure and confident in its superiority and correct doctrine. - and generally that was about it - very little was done to take the gospel anywhere else apart from within the boundaries of the empire. Meanwhile the so-called heretics outside the empire got on with living under mainly anti-Christian governments and preached the gospel. By the eighth century the Nestorians, decendants of the Syrian Christians from the school of Antioch, had planted churches in China. The Nestorian churches in China lasted for several centuries - it was hundreds of years more before the supposedly orthodox western Christians made any attempt to bring the gospel to China. The Monophysite Coptic believers of Egypt took the gospel down into Sudan and Ethiopia. The blessing of God was seen to be upon those who undertook to spread the gospel - God appears to show no interest in the fact that the Western churches had declared these people heretics - it was their hearts desire which was important.

Salvation and the blessing of God do not depend on complex theological formulae. What does the scripture say:

If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Rom 10:9).
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life (Jn 3:16).
Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).

One of the things John Wimber used to say about power evangelism is that when God moved it bypassed the normal intellectual processes - that an encounter with the living God could achieve things which months of argument about the truth of the gospel couldn't. It is believing in your heart which Paul talks about in Romans 10:9, not believing in your mind - but when something happens in the heart, the mind will be convinced - it doesn't always work the other way. We have heard a lot in the present move of God about God offending the mind in order to reveal the heart. This is a mark of a move of God, which is quickly forgotten when situations settle down. In most churches in the generations following revival the mind becomes predominant again, arguments arise over often minor points of doctrine and splits occur - the Methodist Church is a case in point. Within 6 years of Wesley's death the first split took place; within 30 years there were: the Wesleyan Methodist Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Association, the Wesleyan Reformers, the Methodist New Connexion, the Primitive Methodist Church, the Free Methodists and the Bible Christians. Jesus prayed that we might all be one, but the body of Christ seems determined to pursue the opposite of our Saviour's will. One of my biggest problems with the way many divisions take place is the sheer arrogance of our certainty of having everything right. It's probably because of the amount of church history I've studied, and the number of times these claims have been made by people with quite different theologies that I would be very wary of thinking I had everything right. I'm sure if I claimed I had and started showing other churches the faults in their teachings that they would be quick to show me there was a great plank sticking out of my eye. That's always the trouble, we can see the specks in the eyes of our brother's doctrine, but we're blind to the planks in our own. Calvinists are very good at seeing the problem with Arminianist teaching, Arminianists will tell you all the faults with Calvinism - but they're both blind to the weaknesses of their own beliefs, they're convinced they don't have any. We need to learn humility and be prepared to confess our ignorance in the light of God's wisdom - because we can't understand all that God is doing.

The blessing of God is never a confirmation that our teaching or structures are right, rather an indication of the openness of our hearts. It isn't our doctrine which brings about the change in our lives, it is the power of God. I think many of the things God has done in the lives of many of those whose testimonies we have heard recently probably happened in spite of their doctrine, not because of it. The change though is real, God has sovereignly broken through all our intellectual arguments as to why we couldn't do something, and He has done it anyway. The change in society which results from revival is something which could not have been achieved by intellectual processes. You can argue with someone for ages about why crime is wrong and not change them, but the power of God can change them in an instant. Here's a local example. When the Salvation Army opened their first branch in Gateshead in 1879, a reporter from the Newcastle Chronicle went to one of the early meetings. He complained about the hysterical singing and shouting, mentions having to step over a man in a fit to get to the door, but then he spoke to a policeman outside. The policeman said the behaviour the journalist had seen was common there, but that it had made a change - it had reduced their charge sheet, he hadn't had a single case for 2 months (Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 21.5.1879). The power of God - crime disappeared when revival took place. We need to get in touch with what God thinks is important, not what we've always regarded as important, then we will see God moving.

I am saying a lot against intellectualism and our belief in our doctrinal purity, but please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we don't need the Bible - we need it more than ever. It is the Bible which shows us what our priorities should be, what are the gnats and what are the camels; and it is in superimposing our own values and ideas upon the Bible that we lose our balance -it should be the other way round, the values and ideas of the Bible should change us. We need to let the Lord speak into our hearts through His Word, as well as to our minds. When we find we disagree with our brothers, yes explain to them why we believe the scripures teach our position - but unless the issue is truly major - an elephant rather than a gnat, we must be prepared to agree to disagree. We are unlikely ever to all be in the same church, but we must recognise that we are still all the church, pray for our brothers and seek God's blessing upon them and their work - not be suspicious of their motives, and feel threatened by them. Another favourite Wimber quote of mine is "your brother is never your enemy". Our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but the enemy would much rather we fight among ourselves than wage war against him, so it serves his purpose if we hate one another.

In what is happening at the moment God is uniting the most unlikely of people, Brethren, Pentecostals, Baptists, House Churches, Anglicans. Why I am laying this unity thing on so thick is that so often in the past what has begun as a work of God has been wrecked by splits. I've mentioned the division in the early Methodists, now I'll give you an example of something which went even further. In the 1830s a group of people from different traditions began meeting together for fellowship and Bible study. They called themselves Brethren, and one of their main emphases was the unity of all saints in Christ. They had no acknowledged no sectarian walls of division, and promoted the liberty of the Spirit of God to minister through those he anointed. One early writer comments that "the exercise of the varied ministry under the power of the Holy Spirit testified to the blessedness of the teaching of God's Word" and he says " The fruits of the Spirit were in evidence". What started as a work of God degenerated into one of the worst examples of human arrogance and intolerance. One of the leaders of the Brethren in Plymouth, J.N. Darby went away to Switzerland for seven years. When he came back he didn't like the way the fellowship had gone. He believed that one of the other leaders, Mr Newton was exercising too much power - he was doing such unacceptable things as planning who would speak on which Sunday, and of preparing his sermons in advance, rather than letting the Spirit move him to speak. He was also accused of wrong teaching on the second coming, though it was actually Darby who's teaching was new and differed from previous ideas. Darby accused Newton of sectarianism, rather than retaliate Newton left Plymouth and moved to London, though his former fellowship still supported him against Darby, so Darby disfellowshipped and excommunicated them. This is where things became extremely silly. A man from the Brethren fellowship in Plymouth moved to Bristol and joined the Brethren there. Darby declared that the church at Bristol was excommunicated because it had received someone from Plymouth, and declaring if any fellowship received anyone from the church in Bristol they too would be excommunicated. A man from Bristol who had been working as a missionary in India returned to Britain and attended a meeting at a Brethren assembly, which was promptly told that because he had been there they were considered excommunicated. It was all about guilt by association - even if your doctrine was right, you could be excommunicated by receiving someone who had been in a church which had receieved someone who had been in a church which had received someone who had been in a church where someone held views which were considered wrong! The Brethren split into two main groups, the Open and the Exclusives, and the exclusives split and split and split for years. Mr Darby held that because he excommunicated someone they were outside the Church of God on earth. What began with the slogan "The blood of the Lamb and the union of the saints" just became an embarrassment, which only pleased the enemy. Churches were so quick to point the finger at one another, and none considered that there could be the merest speck in their own eye. Darby had accused Newton of exercising too much power in a local fellowship, yet didn't see himself as exercising too much power in excommunicating a whole series of fellowships. How arrogant can we Christians become.

In what I've said I've focussed on just one particular gnat -doctrinal purity, and one camel - church unity. There are other gnats and other camels. In the midst of what God is doing at the moment we need to re-examine our priorities and make sure we have got things in the right perspective. We may find as we look afresh at the Word, that the things God considers important are not what we thought they were. Don't get hung up on drinking the odd gnat, God would much rather we didn't swallow any camels!