The Lessons Of History

by J.D. Terrell, Carlisle | Category: New Testament Churches Of God | Oct 1967

It is very clear from the New Testament that it was not within the divine purpose that the history of Christian witness generally should ever diverge from the pattern laid down in the New Testament concerning churches of God. It surely cannot be doubted that the divine will for all who received the word in faith was that they be baptized and added to a church of God (Acts 2.41-42). When the changes are reviewed which continuing declension brought about, culminating in the Roman apostasy, the impossibility of divine approval for them is painfully apparent. If the words of Jude about "the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints" have any meaning at all, a body of doctrine had been committed to a New Testament people of God which would require earnest contending for its continued expression.

And yet, as has been pointed out by an earlier contributor to this series, by about the year A.D. 95, when John, that old soldier of the Cross, recorded his Patmos vision, only seven churches of God appeared to carry divine acknowledgement in Asia. One of these was the church in Ephesus. It is suggested that the basic historical lessons about churches of God can be observed in the recorded Biblical history of that church. These may be seen as four basic requirements for the preservation and progress of churches of God:

(1)a foundation of personal love and devotion to the Lord, on the part of children of God;

(2)an unswerving adherence to the entire New Testament doctrine of the Lord;

(3)a constant vigilance against the perils of persons of unsound teaching, or undue personal prominence; and

(4)a truly pastoral care on the part of a godly, united leadership amongst a tender-hearted willing flock.

(1)Looking at the Ephesian church we observe the magnificent example of personal piety given by the devoted apostle in his pioneering days in Ephesus (Acts 19). Also with sorrow (and, we trust, with heart-searching) we regard the grievous charge against that church, "Thou didst leave thy first love" (Revelation 2.4).

(2)Then our second point takes us to Acts 20 and the moving last moments of Paul and the Ephesian elders together. With the "whole counsel of God" faithfully declared to them (v.27), they must take heed unto themselves and to all the flock, to feed the church of God with the right Spirit-given diet.

(3)Similarly, the impending hazards of men speaking perverse things (v.29,30) and of the "grievous wolves" must be faced resolutely- "Wherefore watch ye... "(v.31).

(4)Nowhere is the vital role of a united elderhood more poignantly indicated than in this same passage (v.28). Surely the precious benediction of v.32 could well be engraved on the very heart of every church of God:

"And now I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified."

We leave the Ephesian church there, sad to realize that the lampstand, whose light must have beamed the brighter from the precious beaten oil of Paul's wonderful epistle, must one day have been removed by the reluctant hand of the risen Lord.

Subsequent non-scriptural "church" history provides a sombre chronicle of the enemy's systematic erosion of all the great principles of church fellowship. All of our four suggested requirements outlined above were not always undermined together. But now one, now another, attack served the adversary's evil purpose of spoiling the great heritage. Who amongst us could stand beside those martyrs of towering spiritual nobility and godliness who joyfully yielded themselves to the horrors of the Roman arena; or who formed the human torches of Nero's garden? Yet many of these had lost the vision given to Ephesus of the buildings "fitly framed together", and growing into "a holy temple in the Lord". Which of us is not thrilled when we read of the aged Polycarp in A.D. 156 triumphantly going to his death with the words, "Six and eighty years have I served Him, and He has done me nothing but good; and how could I now revile Him, my Lord and Saviour?" Yet at this time Polycarp is described as the Bishop of Smyrna. No wonder Paul had been driven to tears as he admonished night and day (Acts 20.31). He measured unerringly the subtle strategy of the enemy, and in the face of it yielded nothing of the "whole counsel of God". From the second-century writings of Justin Martyr onwards, it is easy to trace the crumbling of all pillars of New Testament church truth. Though the Spirit saw even the "chief men" as "among the brethren" (Acts 15.22), now the presiding bishop conducts the worship, and the exercise of gifts divinely given to the saints for priestly service is gone.

The Remembrance has become a sacrifice; baptism a means of grace and administered to infants in gross distortion of New Testament teaching. Almost everything the Scripture writers had implored the saints to eschew had flooded in-the observance of feast days (Colossians 2.16); forbidding to marry (1 Timothy 4.3), and the rest. The final open setting-aside of the authority of Holy Scripture came with the substitution of human tradition for the "all authority" of the risen Christ. State patronage under Constantine in A.D. 313 sealed a volume of heresy in no uncertain manner. The wolves, and the "men from among your own selves", had done their work.

What true and faithful witness, we may wonder, did the Master preserve in the dark centuries which followed? Certainly godly individuals and groups were enlightened from above, but the Bible was kept from the masses of the peoples. There were glimpses of fine Christian testimony in Armenia in the sixth and subsequent centuries, noble resistance to the Roman Inquisition in the thirteenth century, the Waldenses in Europe at this period also, monks crossing from Ireland to Scotland with a message certainly a great deal purer than anything Rome had to offer, men and women whose hearts God had touched and who resolutely preserved or recovered many of the precious New Testament truths.

But the renewed vision of New Testament churches of God had to await men with an open Bible in their hands. The next great chapter of the story is the thrilling history of the English Bible, and the Reformation heroes associated with its production. For in the midst of all Rome's darkness God ensured the preservation of the necessary Bible manuscripts and documents. Jerome's fourth-century work in the production of the Vulgate was monumental. God was preparing spiritual Davids to tackle the Goliath of Rome in the name of the God of the Word. As the fifteenth century gave way to the sixteenth, God was bringing forth strong men of faith in Europe. We cannot stay to speak of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and others; or of their noble English counterparts in Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, Latimer, and a host of dedicated kindred spirits. Then the Wesleys and Whitefield lead us into relatively modern times. Still, it is sobering to remember that when C. H. Spurgeon died in 1892, he had devoted much of his latter years to combating an already mounting threat to truly evangelical witness which had been so dearly bought.

Yet it was also just at this time that certain men were beginning to glimpse in the New Testament, truths which their illustrious predecessors had not perceived. The early Dublin, Plymouth and Bristol days of what has come to be known as the Brethren movement were full of promise of a much fuller recovery than hitherto of New Testament church truth. Separation, in degree only, from various "church" associations was based on a common spiritual life in Christ. Before the clear enunciation of the principles of churches of God composed of baptized and added believers, was made by such men as F. A. Banks, there was the sad division of Brethren into the so-called Open and Exclusive companies. Here, as in Ephesus of old, the same enemy was using some strong and able individuals to lead a following into spiritual byways. Again, in the absence of due recourse to the word of Scripture, many vital truths were obscured or distorted, e.g. baptism in the Exclusive movement. We refer readers back for a moment to our initially suggested four criteria for retention or recovery of divine truth.

While many trod these by-ways, however, we believe God was preparing hearts for the "highways to Zion". There were men and women earnestly seeking God's face in a deepening exercise about the Scriptural basis of the gathering of the people of God. Vital to this also were such matters as the Biblical pattern of church leadership and government-indeed, all of the principles which have been systematically re-stated in this magazine this year. The first number of Needed Truth appeared in 1888 and by the mid1 890s churches of God in united fellowship, as we see them today, were in existence.

Only a decade passed, however, before the same deadly perils beset the churches of God as had undermined the original New Testament churches. Deep division in the leadership of a Scottish church led to the breaking off of certain churches- a tragedy which a Scriptural approach to consultation and subjection amongst overseers, could have averted. Our adversary needed no new weapons of destruction; the earlier historical ones had lost none of their effectiveness.

It was a long haul back from lost truth, as we have seen, to the restoration of churches of God. If this church truth recovered in our day is again submerged, is it conceivable that it would be any easier to recover in yet another historical cycle? Surely more difficult indeed, and a longer road. The risen One in the midst of the golden lampstands began His Revelation with solemn words to the churches. He closed it with the equally solemn, though thrilling promise, "I come quickly." Will the frontier of spiritual progress in churches of God be held firm till then? In the face of "unity" movements in the wide field of "church" life, believers naturally draw together in an urgent need for a truly Biblical unity in Christian life and service. We ask fellow-Christians not in churches of God, most seriously, whether this can possibly be done in faithfulness to God and His word, and in the face of history, unless founded on clear New Testament principles of a people of God and a house of God. Those of us favoured today with a place in a church of God would do well to recognize that the frontier we speak of will not be successfully held in any inward-looking spirit of self-satisfaction. Rather does the challenge demand a people characterized by personal grace and godliness; humbly subject to our Lord's word and to one another in His fear, and pressing out into the world in the power of the Spirit, with the "whole counsel of God".

J.D. Terrell, Carlisle | Oct 1967
New Testament Churches Of God