‘Grace be unto you and peace’ – that is a familiar greeting in the New Testament. But we are called to notice here something a little unusual.
Churches are all important in the Book of Revelation. The book says so over and over again. After each of the letters to the churches in chapters 2 and 3, we read: ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.’ God deals with us as individuals, but he also deals with churches. Each church in the Bible is an autonomous church, accountable directly to God, bound in obedience to him, guided and blessed by him. In the New Testament, there is no such thing as a denomination. There is no such thing as a private society. Today, some people, even well-known people; they don’t care to work for the Lord through a church, so they will found an organisation. It may be the Bill Smith Evangelistic Association. There is no warrant for that in the Scripture. If Bill Smith exists, his business is to obey God by being a member of a church, and working in and through a local church. He shouldn’t have his own thing, his own society. It has been said many years ago that the Lord Jesus Christ founded only one institution: the local church. He never founded a denomination; he never founded a private society which substituted for a church, and this book emphasises that.