United we stand?

Today's scripture reading is about Phinehas, son of Eleazar, grandon of Aaron, the priest. God was pleased with him for his zealousness for God's honor and glory. Because he stood up and intervened... he was able to stope the plagues.

In Joshua 22, it also talked about him being sent to talk and possibily goto war to the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh. [RGM](Anyway, it's funny how the chinese translators translated the Reubenites as 流 便 人, I think the love of my wife wishes she's a Reubenite! Haha... ) Anyway, because the Jordan River runs thru the land, the RGMs wants to build a replica altar, not for sacrificial purposes, but as a rememberance or witness for their descendants that LORD is God! They were worried that this river might cause their future generations to split up... so they want this replica altar to serve as a reminder for their future generations...

This kinda reminded me of the Chinese and Taiwanese situation. Is it good to splite or to unite? Naturally we don't want to be under communist regime, but aren't we still Chinese? Is it really worthwhile to split up all of China's provinces so that each can join the UN under its own name? Since Singapore is so tiny, heck, why not let each city become independent? If Singapore can do it? Why can't the City of Taipei do it? ;) State of California also could be very powerful as a nation of its own. I'm sure a nation of Los Angeles would be pretty strong too! But why?

Anyway, this is a really tough topic... should churches be like Catholic church? One church for the whole earth with Pope as its singular leader? Or should we have a bunch of tiny little Protestant Churches each with our own denominations our own ideas... our own interpretation of the scripture?

What's right? Who's right? Hard to say...

Suffice to say that God is a God who'd like us to unite together in Him as one... and Satan's scheme from the beginning is to cause divisions amongst us... to have us turn against one
another... and then he slowly pick us off one by one...

May the LORD our God help us united together as one in Him!

(Psalms 106,Joshua 22:10-34)