Corinth was the powerful bustling and wicked trade center of the Roman province of Achaer.

When Paul wrote what we call first Corinthians to the members there, it wasn't his first letter to them.

That one is lost to us in time.

But this second letter that we call first was motivated in part by the concerns of a woman named Chloe and her household who had written him.

We'll tell you why.

Hello, we're Scott and Maureen Proctor and this is Meridian Magazine's Come Follow Me podcast.

These epistles that Paul wrote to the Corinthians were designed to regulate the church, clarify doctrine or ideas that had become misunderstood and reconvert the shaky.

You can imagine that when the Apostle left, people who were fairly new converts might try to inject their own thinking and ideas into the pure doctrine of Christ.

They didn't have years of understanding to build upon.

One of the main concerns that had arisen in Corinth was division among the members. Paul wrote in first Corinthians chapter 1.

Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

For it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

The Lord has a design for His people and for ultimately building Zion and that is that they be of one heart and one mind.

The Lord's people are marked by their unity. The Savior's Atonement which is at the center of our gospel is all about bringing us at onement with our Father.

Receiving the gift of the Atonement in our lives also brings us at one with our families, with our spouses and with each other.

When we are sealed as couples in the temple, we kneel across an altar that symbolizes Christ's sacrifice and Atonement. We are made at one through Him.

So of course the very essence of what Satan likes to do is divide us with anger, contention, hurt feelings, damage, pride.

One of Satan's names is Diablo, which in Greek is Diabolos, the one who divides. He is the great divider, and there is no more potent way to accomplish this than with anger and contention, put downs and contempt.

He is called the Great Divorce, where a busload of people from hell take a filter to heaven.

I have always been intrigued by his description of hell which he calls the Greytown. It is a drab and desolate place with miles and miles of abandoned and boarded up buildings. Why?

Because people can't get along with each other, so offended they move further and further away until someone like Napoleon was on the outskirts of town about 15,000 years of our time away.

Where he spends his time pacing back and forth in a huge house, muttering that his veiled life wasn't his fault. It's the picture of misery and isolation Satan would have us divided.

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