You can see church history in the book of 1 Samuel. Eli and his sons were corrupt. They were involved in fornication, adultery, and they were taking the Lord's offerings for themselves. This was known as the indulgences and other forms of corruption of the Catholic church. They then went to war with the Philistines and brought out the ark of the covenant and were defeated and the Philistines took the ark. The crusades went from a little after 1,000 AD to 1300 AD, they went forth with the cross of Christ and the name of Christ and they were defeated. This defeat resulted in a great loss of prestige and a widening split in the Catholic church, and in the story of Eli he is depicted as an old man who falls from his chair and breaks his neck. His two sons both die in this battle. This is when Ichabod was born, meaning "the glory has departed". The ark of the covenant was returned to Israel on a cart pulled by two oxen. This could be seen as a reference to Martin Luther, his 95 thesis that expose the illegitimacy of indulgences. It was men from a city called "The city of the forests" which sounds like Germany, and they put it in the house of Abinadab, "my father is willing" and Eleazar was the priest "God has helped". They demanded a king from Samuel after this and he anointed Saul. This was the beginning of the State churches like the church of England. Many of these denominations were defacto state churches.
But then they wanted to bring the ark up and Uzzah put up his hand to keep it from falling and God struck him dead. The ark is the testimony of God. The testimony of God is to be carried on the shoulders of priests, not on an ox cart used to transport goods to market. This is the issue with much of organized religion, they think that using the things they have learned from business and commerce will help with the move of the Lord. One problem is that the ark could topple and fall. You can have phony believers who were not genuinely saved taking the table. Uzzah keeping the ark from falling was similar to the denominations having a closed table and requiring people to be baptized into the name of their denomination. Paul said that we are to examine ourselves, he never examined others to see if they were worthy nor did he ever instruct pastors to examine others. Yes, if the denominations had tried to bring the ark to Jerusalem on an ox cart it would have toppled to the ground. The solution is not putting your hand up to keep it from falling the answer is to obey God's ordination that the ark is to be carried on the shoulders of the priests. Because of this the ark was placed in a weird house. The guy's name means "servant of Edom", not servant of God, or of Israel. He was a Gittite, that means a resident of Gath. That is a Philistine city. This is the non denominational churches and the Jesus movement. They are often a weird collection of people that it is hard to believe they are Christians. But, God blessed them. That is what has happened recently with the denominational churches being struck dead for the arrogance that they are to protect the ark from falling while these weird people become the ones to keep the ark of testimony, the ark of the covenant.
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