Schism
Schism (pronounced sizm) is a Greek word. It means split.
Modern man is extremely averse to schism; he will go to almost any length to get things in one column rather than in two or more. Right now he is agitated to get the difference between a man and a woman eliminated; unisex is to his liking, and if he had his way we would all be hermaphrodites, I guess.
This quirk of the modern mind is not from God. For God as He is revealed in the Bible is as much a putter-apart as a putter-together. He “divided light from darkness” and “water from water.” He made creatures “after their kind” on land, in the air, in the water. He put man in an enclosure all by himself. And then he put a fence around Abraham and his seed—having “not dealt so with any other nation.” “All flesh is not the same,” and “there are diversities of gifts.” Pentecost, far from exhibiting sameness, is motley, and its sounds a medley.
Verily the God of the Bible is not averse to “differentnesses”; non-sameness is to His liking. He puts things in columns. You can’t tell Him that “he that believeth” is in the same category with “him that believeth not.” This God’s final act with this world will be a final and lasting setting-apart.
Schism is splitting, putting apart that which belongs together. It is to divide where God does not divide.
Of course it is wicked. To do anything in a way that fights with God’s way of doing it is wicked. “What God hath joined together let not man put asunder” holds in many other ways than in regard to holy matrimony.
But it is no less wicked to run together that which in the mind of God is diverse. This is the sin to which modern man is extremely prone, by reason of the quirk-of-mind of which we spoke.
Antichrist will try for a world in which non-sameness will not be tolerated, not even the claim to non-sameness.
Is the quirk-of-mind of which we spoke Antichrist’s invention?
It can be made to serve his cause. Handsomely.
Leonard Verduin, “Schism,” The Banner 110.18 (May 2, 1975): 3.
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