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Viewpoint Brief Bible Study #007

JESUS calls US to be
members of His church
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The Christian religion is the worship and service of Jesus Christ. It’s not Mary we worship, but her Son. We worship neither saints, angels, a law code, nor even God’s Spirit. It’s JESUS who is to be honored. The Bible is our guide.

Is Restoration Finished?

I note in the CHRISTIAN STANDARD for 5/25/97 an article by ROD HURON that I believe everyone interested in serving Christ should make any necessary effort to read and ponder. His subject is, "What Remains to Be Restored?"
    He suggests that restoring selected specific details we like from God's revelation about the church in its early days may not totally answer our need to find how to please God in our generation. He suggests that our thinking must become Godlike for us really to become like God, that our hearts must be changed to become like God's heart before we can properly claim to have restored "the N.T. church."

    I hope YOU will read and ponder this particular article! Thanks.
pretty line What Remains To Be Restored? pretty line
by Rod Huron, edited by Ray Downen

    For someone who grew up in the Restoration Movement [Ray's note: he refers to the Stone-Campbell Reformation which has produced congregations generally calling themselves Churches of Christ/Christian Churches or Disciples of Christ], this is an intimidating question. As you have, I've seen church signs bragging, "Where you may worship as it was done in the New Testament." Or the claim, "We are a N.T. church."

    I'd feel more comfortable if we could make the wording "trying to be" rather than "we've done it." It's not only the topic which intimidates me. As I write this, I ask myself, "As others read this, what will they think?"

    In our fellowship [Stone-Campbell Reformation of Christ's Church], we don't always handle well differences of opinion. I'm embarrassed to have to ask this, but please don't think me a liberal for what I'm going to write. I'm a Goldwater Republican (if you're my age [or know political history of this century] you'll understand), I take the NATIONAL REVIEW (and read it!), believe and preach F/R/C/ and B/, and earned A's in Restoration History at a loyal Bible College.

    I also cherish the slogan, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." Please extend to me a little charity for what follows.

The Concept

    Am I off the mark in thinking that RESTORATION of the Christian church is a human concept?

        In preparing for a speech I recently gave on this subject, I went through the N.T. again to see what it said about restoration.

    I found no verse saying, "Restore the church." Where did our Lord instruct us to hunt for His lost church and, in our time, rebuild it?

    Yes, I've used our charts showing the apostasy and the church in the wilderness, and I've read Revelation. I'm not trying to minimize the predictions God made about His church falling away from its early purity and beauty and simplicity.

    But even so I find no word of our Lord saying, "Please restore my church," nor any apostle teaching, "Restore the church, and here's how to do it." [Ray's note: Rod speaks of the purity, beauty, and simplicity of the early church. That's the IDEAL church. The actual early church was very like the present church, as is made clear by every reading of the inspired text!].

    Rather, I find a startling idea, stunning and revolutionary. Across the N.T. I hear God's voice calling, "You don't have to be the way you are! I've come for you. I'll take your badness and your hurts and your dying, and as a free gift replace these realities with life and joy and peace. Here's how you can have life. This is the Way!"

    No wonder they called His invitation GOOD news!!!

    What remains to be restored? Surely this: the soaring JOY of ransom and release!     Sinners are saved, justified, made new. These gloriously happy words leap from the pages of God's book, and are overlooked by ones who seek only a law code by which men might seek to save themselves!

    The old has gone. The new has come... Our word, "hope" may be too weak to describe the realities of the gospel. Surely we are justified to use the word "assurance" to describe what has been so freely offered to us by that Supreme Power who so loves us!

    We can be SAVED. We can be welcomed within the circle of God's family. We can belong! We can, despite our unworthiness, become a Christ-person... People want joy. We WANT assurance...

    In calling us to Himself, Christ didn't present a POSITION. He entered our lives as a PERSON.

    I was hurrying toward chapel at Dallas Christian College one day before the 1996 North American Christian Convention, but arrived too late. So I stood out in the hallway and listened.

    And what a sermon I heard! JUDD WILHITE was describing what it means to be a Christian. Overwhelming joy flooded my whole being. I had to find an empty classroom where I could thank God for the joy I had in being saved!

The Process
    We want to recapture the simplicity and purity and beauty of the church as it was in the earliest time, as close to the source as possible, when it came fresh from God and "turned the world upside down."

    But how will we know when we've done this restoration? Is faith, repentance, and baptism "restoring the church"? Is MORE needed? If so, WHAT is needed? ...

    I believe it's proper to search for the ancient forms and to practice them...adult baptism...gives the baptized person a time and place where he or she can say, "There I crossed the line; there I gave myself to Him." And the Supper, available to all rather than restricted to clergy, uncomplicated rather than mystical...surely this is proper. And scriptural.

    But what else? What else remains to be restored? A second characteristic of the early church was their wonder at the privilege of service.

    I never use the word, "eldership." The present-day meaning of this word is absolutely foreign to the Scripture. N.T. elders were not BOSSES (overseers) in our current sense. They were caretakers. Not governors. Not enforcers. They were shepherds, caregivers, guides, mentors [leaders, never drivers].

    Deacons were not assistant elders, apprentice bosses learning how to make all the decisions for the flock of God. As were elders, they were simply servants...

    And THE minister? Pastor? Evangelist? Doctor? Brother? Reverend? I thought we had given up clerical distinctions!

    Elders. Deacons. Ministers. I find these acceptable, permissible. But I have a little problem affirming that our present system, with its 60-day notice and resumes and pulpit committees and disposable ministers... [is what the Lord planned for us].

    Is what we're doing the divine pattern??? It's A way to conduct the Lord's business, yes. But is it the only [or the best] way?

The Spirit
    What else needs to be restored for us to truly be the Lord's church? Let me crawl a little farther out on this limb.

    As civility and good manners and ordinary kindness disappear from our Bevis and Butthead culture, we Christians can restore genuine caring, relentless good will, or -- to put it another way, love. ...

    I mentioned earlier that we have problems accepting people who differ with us. This isn't new. God had to send a vision to Simon Peter before he would go to Cornelius with the gospel. He had to strike down Saul to get his attention and put him on a different road...

    If I'm a Christian, then I have an unqualified commitment to the people of God -- all of them. At least as many as I can touch and encourage. ...

    We need to permit God to do what He will with our religious neighbors -- and while He is doing it, at least we can be COURTEOUS to them [have we not sometimes been disrespectful and discourteous to anyone who didn't yet see the Scriptures exactly as WE do?].

    It seems to me that we have been saying, "WE have found the way. Come with us, and we'll go back to the beginning together." [WE know it all, and will teach you all you're able to grasp! All too often, we've thought so even if we were too polite to exactly SAY it.].

    In contrast, I hear Campbell, Stone, and Scott saying, "Let's make visible the oneness we already have in Christ, then in our united strength go forward to reach the lost."

    The early church was intent on going to Heaven, and satisfied to get by here on earth. Sometimes we seem to be satisfied with earth and hope to get by for Heaven. Our public prayers in many assemblies seem to focus on someone's belly or backache or the bus fund. Contrast this organ recital with Paul's prayers in Ephesians, or the marvelous benedictions in Hebrews or Jude.

    What remains to be restored? MOST of it! It appears that WE'VE hardly begun!!!

Restoring the
New Testament Church

On June 6th, 2000 I sent the remarks below to the Viewpoint Discussion Group of e-mail friends.

I've been reading the College Press book by Walt Yancey, "Endangered Heritage." He writes about a unity movement of Christians which began in the early 1800's. Three distinct denominations trace their origins to the Stone-Campbell reformation which is by us often called, "The Restoration Movement."

After extensive study of writings of well-known early leaders in the Stone-Campbell Movement of reformation and restoration of Christian churches in the early 1800's, one brother summarized what he thought they were generally agreed was Christian doctrine. He was not seeking to write a creedal statement to which each would have subscribed. He was seeking to learn and explain what around 1850 they generally all seemed agreed on in their public teachings.

He wrote a book about this Restoration Movement, published by College Press of Joplin, Missouri. The author is Walt Yancey. The book is "Endangered Heritage." The beliefs are --

<< For clarity of thought I've edited slightly what Walt Yancey wrote, but this generally is what he felt he was finding in the writings of men now long dead who in early years of the Stone-Campbell Movement left various denominational fellowships in order to be part of a unity movement which attempted to unite all Christians as we were originally, in one body with no denominational divisions.

<< Do you agree that Stone and Campbell and Scott and other first-generation men generally thought and taught as is here suggested? >>

Brief Bible Study #7 from Ray Downen. To go back to
Viewpoint's first page, click < here.   Or here to go on to Viewpoint Study 8. For Ray's concluding remarks, click HERE.