The Bible speaks of churches of God in Galatia, in Achaia, in Asia, etc., but we do not read of any northern, southern, eastern or western Galatian, Achaian, or Asiatic Elderships of the church of God. You see this thing--Northern Indiana Eldership of the Church of God--is too long for any use, so we just take the broad-ax of God's Word and chop it in two between "of" and "the" and throw the first part to the moles and bats, according to the sayings of the prophet. Then we have the church of God left, which is the body of Christ, "the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Glory to God and the Lamb, "we are complete in him"! If some more would suffer the excision of this useless appendage, there would be quite a vacuum made for the reception of this "fulness." The term "Eldership" as used in this case, is both contradictory in itself and a perversion of God's Word. Where the apostle Paul speaks of "laying on of the hands of the presbytery," the Bible Union and some other versions render "hands of the eldership," and I think correctly, too. So I accept the word "eldership" as a Biblical term. But what is its obvious meaning? Simply the elders of the church in one locality, or in a district, or country, as the case may be. To apply it therefore to an organized corporation is a misapplication, a perversion of one of the words of God's Holy Book. It is contradictory, and asserts a falsehood, because the corporate "body" to which it is applied is not composed of elders, but of brothers and sisters, a few elders, and without doubt some sinners and backsliders; so this use of the word changes the truth of God into a lie. Like every other body that is not identical with the body of Christ, this "new Eldership," as it is often called, is a rival of the body of Christ, and is used by the devil to generate party spirit and sectish bigotry. Nothing is more natural than the disposition of carnality to want to get up something besides the glorious church of the Firstborn.