How to explain organic, ancient, physical Church?

(Bible as source) I have learned that Jesus Christ established His Church on earth by training 12 disciples/apostles. I have also learned that these 12 disciples licensed other disciples (Paul's letters to these disciples he trained).


(Early Church fathers as source) I have learned that His Church has always contained the Truth and the Tradition Christ established through these apostles. Groups of dissenters would pop up once in awhile and Christ's apostolic Church would be sure to clarify that they were heretics and note that they were not truly Christians. The ancient Christian Church was 1st divided by disagreement over the filoque and then there was a new church called Orthodox. In the 1500s, Luther accidentally inspired another new church to be started. Then it got out of control and many new churches started. My Evangelical friend says she is inspired by the Holy Spirit when she reads the Bible and she extracts that there is only one church. Why can't I get her to face reality?|||You should be aware that, from the Orthodox Church's perspective, it was the Roman Catholic Church which broke away from Orthodoxy. After all, the original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed did not have a "filioque" clause, nor did the whole ecumenical Church ever agree in council to include the "filioque" in the creed. Rather, the "filioque" was a Roman innovation which the rest of Orthodoxy rejected on account of its theological impact on the equality of the Holy Spirit with the other two persons of the divine Trinity.|||if the church started now not 2000 years ago it will be clased as a cult now run by 12 nutters|||The reality is that the Church is like a Tree.





The Tree started in the Old Testament growing up all the way to the day of Pentecost where the Fruits were manifested.


Then there was a period of darkness which was the Dark Ages. That was when the Seed was planted into the ground again and began to grow up through Polycarp, St. Patrick, Martin Luter, John Wesley, and many early Pentecostal preachers too. The Tree has been growing in knowledge and grace and the Fruits of the Spirit are just about ready to be picked again at the Top of the Tree in another original restoration of the Original gifts that were given at the Upper Room.





It's one Church that God has been building up in various ways and degrees throughout various places in the world.





It started in the east on the eastern people in Jerusalem, came down through Germany with Martin Luter, through England with John Wesley, and


finally here at the western hemisphere of the USA.





"There shall be Light in the evening time"





He doesn't come for a literal building "church"





The one Church is the people themselves who have made themselves ready to be One with Him in His Word.|||Your friend is believing that there is only one church because there is only one church, the people that believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and the original teachings of Jesus Christ.|||As I see it, Christ was into "theonomization" and shared fellowship with in the "body of God's church" on Earth. I don't reall him saying that "Verily,verily I say unot you, Ye all must create a theocracy that rules with an iron fist, in My Name - despite the fact that you all are fallible and veritable goofballs!" Your friend may just be trying to get back to the times of the early Christians predating the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine|||Stop putting so much effort into trying to change your friend's point of view.|||I think we as people should stop obsessing about how other people practice their beliefs or what denomination they belong to, or how the church was in the past, and look at our own lives as believers.





What it comes down to is this: do we accept or reject Jesus Christ as Lord, fully God and fully human, as the One who died a horrible, brutal death for our sins past, present, and future for all mankind so we could go to heaven...and not hell.|||As the church grew throughout the known world many Local Churches popped up. Paul was commissioned to preach by the church in Epeiphes. The apostles didn't even send him out. The idea that the church has central control outside of Christ himself is in error. A believer is a King and a priest to God. What more authority does one need than that?|||When you consider that "The Church" is the body of Christ, then it is simple. There is one church, one God, one way.