DISCIPLE

 the following is an excerpt from chapter 1 of W.E. Vine's excellent book THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES. It is available freely on the Internet, and also in printed form from various sources. Unauthorized Systems Events at Jerusalem, therefore, provide no support for the establishment of a controlling centre for the organization of churches. One will search in vain in the Acts and the Epistles for even an intimation of the establishment of such an institution. Apart from such matters as the supply, by churches in a district, of the needs of poor saints in another region, the only bond binding churches together was spiritual, that of a common life in Christ and the indwelling of the same Holy Spirit. There was no such thing as external unity by way of federation, affiliation or amalgamation, either of churches in any given locality or of all the churches together. Apostolic testimony is, indeed, against the organization of churches into an ecclesiastical system. There is...

W. E. Vine, respected author of the well-known Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words , exposes the pagan origins of the Christmas celebration in his little-known but equally scholarly work, The Origin and Rise of Ecclesiasticism. Excerpt from Chapter 4, Further Developments Towards The Papal System "...We have noticed the combined effect upon the churches, in the third century, of the desire for worldly aggrandizement on the part of the Church leaders, and of the patronage of the Emperors, who on their part saw possibilities of unifying the elements of the State through the instrumentality of the Church. With a view to establishing his throne on a secure basis, the Emperor Constantine the Great reconstructed the official arrangements of the Imperial Government, and adjusted the constitution of the Church so as to model it approximately to that of the State. The ecclesiastical organization of the churches, by this time so vastly different from the New Testament ...