Acts 17:10-13

Now leaving Timothy at Thessalonica to continue the meeting, Paul, Silas and Luke continue their journey southward, fifty-seven miles to Berea, also a prominent city, where there is a synagogue of the Jews. Paul invariably began his labors in the Jewish synagogues, always succeeding in the conversion of some of the members to the Christhood of Jesus, and thus dividing the church unless, by the grace of God, he succeeded in capturing it all, as in case of the large synagogue at Berea and the small one at Philippi. They have a glorious time at Berea, where the church unanimously fall in with Paul, receiving with delight his powerful preaching and irresistible prophetical proofs of the Christhood of Jesus. We hear a universal hue and cry against the holiness people for dividing the churches. That has been the case in all ages and will continue till Satan is cast out and the millennium ushers in. Jesus said: “I came not to send peace on earth, but division.” When Satan has a church [and he has many], there is no chance to save the people without separating them from the devil, and thus creating division. The hackneyed clamor, “no division,” just simply means for the devil to have them all. When we can do like Paul at Berea and Philippi, get all to receive our Christ in conversion and sanctification, then of course there is no division; but if we can not save all, let us do our best and save some, not letting the devil have all to avoid division, but rescuing every one we can. A wealthy Methodist congregation in a Southern city, early in the holiness movement, having erected a very costly church edifice, secured your humble servant to hold the first protracted meeting in it, having arranged with Sam Jones to immediately precede me with a number of lectures for the financial relief of the building. Brother Jones finished his work one evening and I began the next. Before the departure of Brother Jones, the official magnates wait on him, interviewing him with reference to the coming evangelist. “Brother Jones, tell us what you know about that man Godbey? Is he not one of those holiness fellows? We are awfully afraid he will split the church.” Brother Jones responds, “Brethren, if you have any idea he can split it, by all means have him come, stand by him and help him. Surely, the only hope for this old dead church is to split a piece off of it and take it to heaven; otherwise the devil will get it all. My great fear is that it is too far gone already, the devil's gum-log, and Godbey can't split it.” “The devil is the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4), with all of its fallen churches. Precisely as the apostles went about splitting the fallen Jewish churches; Luther, the Catholic churches; and Wesley, the Episcopal churches, so have the true preachers of the gospel in all ages been enabled, by the grace of God, to divide savable souls from the dead, worldly churches, get them saved and take them to heaven. It is only Satan's dead-beats that produce no divisions. The only hope of the world consists in plucking people out of the devil's black grip, whether in the wicked rabble or the fallen churches, thus producing divisions, separating them from the devil to God, and taking them to heaven. Though Paul got the whole Jewish church at Berea, leaving none for the devil to stir up a row, yet he sent them from Thessalonica to run them away from Berea.