No one can find the Universal Church for real help in a time of need. No one can go to it for baptism, communion, counsel or consolation. It has no sermons, worship services, music or fellowship, no deacons pastors or teachers; no Sunday Schools or Youth activities. It blurs many New Testament verses dealing with real churches. It confuses many verses. Which is meant? Real or Universal? The Universal Church is NEVER together on earth. It never does anything. Would Christ build a church that lacks 95% of real church factors? The Universal Church encourages mavericks, floater, irresponsible, unattached people. It excuses some people from joining and attending real churches. It tends to deny support for real church work and its missions. It invites proselytizers and cultists to seduce non-church members, for it has no shepherd to guard against “grievous wolves” (Acts 20:29). 

The Universal Church fantasy tends toward doctrinal heterodoxy and divisions. Scriptures urging real church unity are misapplied and weakened. It violates the words of Revelation 1:3 & 22:16. It renders many New Testament verses powerless in their practical meanings. It destroys the metaphors of real churches. In no way is the Universal Church like a body, building or flock; it cannot be disciplined. It must tolerate heresy. It undermines and weakens the work and influence of real churches. It breaks the force of many New Testament verses on church work. It has no reason or practice to support it. This fantasy is not mentioned in the Bible or in early Christian writings.

The Roman Catholics invented the Universal Church which is also called invisible by others. It is admittedly ecumenical—a badly mixed multitude. The Universal Church people insist that no church began before Pentecost. This makes Christ a falsifier. He said He (not the Spirit) would build it. The Universal Church usurps the place of the Family of God and the Kingdom of God. Why are these in the Bible at all if the Universal Church means the same people? It weakens organization and discipline of real churches. If Ecclesia which means assembly can be changed to mean Universal Church then anyone can alter other New Testament words.

The Universal Church idea distorts 1^st Corinthians 12:13 which says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body...” and that body was the Corinthian church. Acts 18:8; 1^st Corinthians 12:24,27. The Universal Church has caused disregard and disparagement of real churches. It promotes compromise with error, doctrinal laxity so as not to embarrass others, and irresponsibility to real churches.

The Universal Church condones non-resident membership of millions, giving tithes to non-church causes, all of which weakens real churches. The Universal Church has no framework, structure, plan or anything else to build. The Universal Church needs no pastors or musicians or teachers—so why have expensive schools for them—asking real churches to support them? The church at Ephesus was “fitly framed together” and “fitly joined together and compacted” (Ephesians 2:21; 4:16). The Colossian church was “knit together” (Colossians 2:2,19). There is no universalism taught in these two good real-church books. “This is my local wife” is like “this is my local church” (Ephesians 5:23-33). The rapture of the church is not in any Bible, anywhere. The Universal Church is headed by nothing, since Christ is the Head only of real churches as He is “the Head of every man” (1st Corinthians 11:3).

People who never meet together on earth have no right to call themselves a body of any kind. To call the Universal Church “The True Church” implies real churches are untrue.

—Adapted from the works of S. E. Anderson, now with the Lord.