Obey Them that Rule???

Originally Posted by Michlow

Right. You make the determination. You decide if your spiritual authority is REAL authority in the REAL church.

No, GOD already made the determination. God has set up a particular leadership structure in the Church consisting of what is often called the "five-fold" or "four-fold" "ministry" as listed in Ephesians 4:11, i.e. apostles (missionaries - men who go to a place, preach the gospel to the lost, plant the local church made up of the converts, train and install the leadership of that local church, i.e. pastor and elders), prophets (Agabus in the book of Acts, the prophets in Acts 13), evangelists (they go out from the local church and evangelize, they are not apostles and they have no business preaching to believers), pastors (bishops or overseeing elders), and teachers (or, in the four-fold ministry, pastor-teachers, their job is to impart doctrine) and elders. Whether every church was to send out apostles (missionaries) or have prophets and evangelists is not entirely clear but every local church is supposed to have bishops and other elders. This is the authority that GOD has placed in the Church and, thus, is the real authority. We don't get to decide anything.