One purpose of this treatise is to call Christians who are instructed in truth concerning New-Testament assemblies to commit themselves to this truth. The other purpose is to explain to those outside our fellowship why we meet as we do, and why we must insist so firmly on it. In the face of popular thinking as exposed below, we wish to point out that the way we meet and function as assemblies is not a matter of taste, in which everyone chooses what appeals to him or what he thinks suits his personality. Nor is it one opinion among many others, of which we can never be sure which is right or whether they're all equally good. Some Christians who fellowship with New-Testament assemblies, are happy there; but they would be equally happy in any evangelical church. They are committed to the evangelical faith, but not to the New-Testament pattern. Some who have come from other church backgrounds to New-Testament assemblies, have decided to return to the kind of church they came from because they "missed" something about the way such a church functioned. They evidently see the choice of a local church as being a matter of personal preference, rather than of following divine instructions. Others prefer to fellowship with a New-Testament assembly simply because they're accustomed to it. Such Christians are "doing the right thing for a wrong reason." Christians outside our circles sometimes exhort us not to be so conceited as to value our "opinion" above those of others. However, we maintain that the Scriptures teach us one pattern, and that every issue dealt with in this pattern is important to God, and ought to be important to us.

PURGING OUR MIND-SET

Much as we have no desire to address God's people in a harsh and unloving manner, we are obliged to begin this treatise with a solemn warning. The Christian, as a saint, set apart for God, ought to have a mind-set entirely different from that of this present world. The sad fact is, however, that notions from the world's thinking often infiltrate our mentality without our realizing it. We therefore need to begin our examination of this important subject by making sure we approach it with biblical thinking. Until we rid ourselves of worldly notions, we simply won't be on the same wave-length as God's Word, and God's Spirit will be hindered from communicating effectively with us.
A predominant claim of worldly philosophy is known as PLURALISM--that is, that ideas that flatly contradict one another can all be true and correct. This claim springs from the philosophy of Hegel (1770-1831). Before Hegel's time, it was generally held that, if a statement were true, its opposite must necessarily be false. The statement was technically called a thesis, and its opposite an antithesis. Hegel, doubtless unknowingly, ushered in a new world-wide mentality by claiming that a thesis and its antithesis could be combined in a synthesis, which made them both true. The effect of this philosophy on today's religious world has made ecumenism possible. Those who accept it, claim that people of different religions are climbing different sides of the same mountain, and that they'll arrive at the same summit.
While no bona fide evangelical would follow pluralism to that point, many are influenced by pluralism to a lesser degree. They think that God may send Christians into different systems of belief that flatly contradict one another's doctrines, provided that they agree on the fundamentals of the faith. Some even suggest that God would actually teach one Christian doctrines that flatly contradict the doctrines He teaches to another Christian. Yet the Scriptures consistently make it plain that there is only one way to God (John 14:6; Acts 4:12) and only one truth (John 8:32; I Corinthians 1:10).
We are well aware of paradoxes and antinomies in Christian doctrine; but they are very different from Hegel's idea of synthesis. A paradox is a pair of statements that appear to be contradictory on first sight, but that are readily found to harmonize. Usually one statement is true in one sense, while the other is true in another sense. Paradoxes are generally used as a figure of speech, to emphasize an idea. An example is, "having nothing, and yet possessing all things'' (II Corinthians 6:10). The statement means that, while the present world rejects us and wants to deprive us of everything, and often succeeds in robbing us of what it offers its followers, yet we rule over the world as part of Christ's Kingdom. This paradox emphasizes our triumph in Christ over the world.
An antinomy is a pair of ideas that appear to human sight to be contradictory, and for which it is beyond human understanding to find a full harmonization, though we may be able to give a partial explanation. Examples are the co-existence of divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or the doctrine of the Trinity- how three could be one. But no sound theologian has ever said that such pairs of ideas really were contradictory; he has simply said that our finite human understanding hasn't found how they harmonize. We remain confident that God knows how. Hegel's notion of synthesis is quite different, claiming that two ideas that really do flatly contradict each other, can both be true.
A second worldly notion to rid ourselves of is ANTI-DOGMATISM-- that is, the condemnation of any claim to be absolutely sure that our beliefs are right. Anyone who insists that he is sure beyond a shadow of a doubt of knowing the truth, is reproached for being "narrow-minded," "bigoted," or "conceited." This popular attitude has intimidated many a Christian from taking a firm stand for what God's Word teaches. Yet our Lord assured us that it is possible to know the truth (John 7:17; 8:32). There is no more conceit in being sure we know how assemblies should function, than there is in being sure of our salvation!
Let us also beware of PRAGMATISM-- that is, that "whatever works is good," or that "you don't argue with success." This may be true in certain walks of life, but it is totally unacceptable in assembly life, or in any aspect of spiritual life. Many Christians are recommending unscriptural practices in today's assemblies because outward appearances give the impression that they "work" better than the Scriptural methods. Let us remember that God is not "utilitarian." If He tells us to do something in a manner that seems to us to be less "practical" or "workable," He has a spiritual reason for it that is more important to Him than "practicality." It was doubtless pragmatism that prompted David to transport the ark of the covenant on a cart instead of having the priests carry it as God had said to do (since transporting it on a cart was easier). The catastrophic result showed God's disapproval (II Samuel 6:3-10).
Yet another pernicious doctrine of the present world is EVOLUTION  OF  THOUGHT-- that everyone must allow his beliefs to evolve with the time in which he lives. In fact, it is because of this belief that modern educators don't want our young generations to have much understanding of history. They want to put "blinkers" on them, as on a horse, to make them forget the past and just learn what today's world thinks. Many Christians are unconsciously influenced by this idea without realizing that it stems from Darwin's theory of evolution. Thus they look around them to see what mentality is prevalent, and assume that it's the appropriate belief for their day. If we inform them of what old-timer saints taught, they respond in parrot-like fashion that "that belief belonged to another age." Yet God's Word insists that God never changes (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8) and that His Word is forever settled in Heaven (Psalm 119:89).
One more worldly notion we must expose is that of "HUMAN  RIGHTS," as this idea also is likely to be advanced as an objection to some of the teaching in this treatise. According to Scripture, the only right that any human being has, is the "right" to spend eternity in hell. That is what we all deserve as sinners. Anything that God gives us or does for us other than that, is granted to us by grace alone. This is no contradiction of the love of God, which our opposers are likely to remind us of as they spring to the defensive; it is because of His love that God is gracious toward us. But let us never forget that God owes us absolutely nothing. We owe Him EVERYTHING, including obedience to every word of what He has commanded us.
Unless the reader is willing to let the Holy Spirit rid him of these worldly notions, he will be wasting his time by reading any further in this treatise. He can only expect God to enlighten him if he is tuned to God's frequency. The sincere inquirer is therefore requested to pause at this point and ask the Lord to search his heart as to his willingness to be conformed to God's way of thinking. Let his mind be renewed so as to transform his mentality, that he may discern God's perfect will (Romans 12:2). He is urged to pray, like David:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way (Psalm 139:23, 24).

INDICATIONS OF COMMON THINKING

A group of assemblies organized a conference for the purpose of exhorting Christians to hold firmly to the biblical way to gather. During a prayer session at the beginning of the conference, a brother prayed: "May we not be defending a movement, but may we be defending Christ." He meant well, but he evidently thought that the biblical pattern was simply another man-made system. He saw it as being a distraction from Christ, rather than as being given to us by Christ. Once we have seen a pattern as being given to us by Christ, we will understand that defense of Christ must include defense of the plan He has given us.
A Christian got transferred by his employment to a distant city, where there is no assembly that meets as we do. A friend, on hearing the news, remarked, "That's hard. When you've been used to one style of meetings all your life, it's not easy to adjust to another." Is that all that the friend was concerned about- just the difficulty of adjusting to another style? Had this person no conviction about God's having given us a pattern to follow in His Word?
A Christian to whom certain principles of New-Testament gathering had been explained, responded with, "that's not for me." In other words, according to such a person, God leaves each of us free to choose the path that "suits" him, one being as good as another.
Serious pondering will soon reveal how these statements reflect the worldly notions exposed above.

THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN HURT

Another audience we must address consists of Christians who have been fully taught in the New-Testament way to meet, but who have been hurt by pharisaical administration of the truth. We must frankly admit that this exists. Human administration of any system necessarily has its faults and failures. In fact, to realize that God has shown us certain truths that other Christians haven't seen, has often been used of Satan to induce God's people into a pharisaical attitude. They then pride themselves in having all the outward form just right, while there is no spiritual reality beneath it. Those of us who have had the privilege of knowing the New-Testament assembly pattern, need to be ever mindful that we are better off, not better than.
Frequently those who have been hurt by pharisaism react by completely throwing the New-Testament pattern, or part of it, overboard. In reality, they have "thrown the baby out with the bath water." Christ foresaw that danger when He was denouncing the Pharisees of His day in Matthew 23. He scathingly rebuked them in verse 23 for self-exaltation over paying their tithes of mint, anise, and cummin (outward form), while they neglected the weightier matters of justice, mercy, and faith (spirituality that should fill the outer form). Thus He rejected pharisaism by saying, "these you ought to have done." But lest anyone should consequently "throw the baby out with the bath water" by discontinuing to pay the above-mentioned tithes, Christ added the words "and not to leave the other undone." Furthermore, at the opening of the chapter He told His hearers to observe and do what the Pharisees taught them from the law, but simply not to follow their hypocritical example. The hypocrisy of the Pharisees was not to be seen as an excuse for rejecting the part of their teaching that was right.
To any who have rejected New-Testament gathering after being hurt by pharisaism, we would ask, "Do you think an unconverted person who has been hurt by the bad testimony of some Christians, would be justified in consequently rejecting Christ? Does the presence of 'hypocrites in the Church' make it right for him to turn his back on Christ, who loved him and gave Himself for him? Yet if you were to follow the reasoning behind the way you have acted, to its logical conclusion, that's what the conclusion would be. Think seriously about it."
We would also caution all Christians not to form an exaggerated notion of the frequency of pharisaical administration in our assemblies. The amount of talk one hears about it only shows the truth of Shakespeare's words, "the evil that men do lives after them, and the good they wrought is oft interred with their bones." In reality, thousands of Christians have enjoyed a life-time of fellowship in New-Testament assemblies without ever encountering pharisaism.

EXPLANATIONS FROM HISTORY

At this point we judge it profitable to scan the history of Christianity, not in order to give human experience the authority that belongs only to God's Word, but in order to meet certain objectors on the ground where they stand. Many are asking, "If it is possible to be absolutely sure of the truth, why are there so many divisions among Christians?"
The basic answer is found in the way biblical truth was rediscovered after Christendom on the whole had lost it during the "Dark Ages." Notice that I say "on the whole," for there has never been a moment in history since New-Testament times, without at least a few Christians gathering on New-Testament ground somewhere on earth. E. H. Broadbent has very ably shown that in his book The Pilgrim Church, published by Pickering and Inglis Ltd. We know relatively little about many of those Christians, since any extant writings about them were written by their persecutors. But, through all the false representations and accusations of their persecutors, one can see indications that these little companies of Christians met according to what the Scriptures teach.
A particularly notable example is the Waldenses, who first heard the Gospel from the apostle Paul. When persecution overtook them, they fled to the Alps in northern Italy, where they always continued to meet in the Scriptural manner. A handful of their assemblies are still there today, meeting in the same manner, never having been touched by Romanist heresies. The only error they are known to have made was to think that all preachers should take Paul for an example in staying single and supporting themselves with secular employment. When William Farel, the Reformer, showed them from the Scriptures that Paul didn't intend his practice to be taken as a universal model, they adjusted accordingly.
Yet the general picture of history shows us Roman Catholicism corrupting biblical truth as it developed, and a gradual widespreading of ignorance until the Reformation. After the Reformation, men started from scratch and discovered the truth of God's Word a little at a time. And what happened over and over, was that a seeker after truth would find one or a few errors in the system he was following. Since the system refused to be corrected, he was forced to leave it and begin a group that followed his discoveries. But that man and his new group would continue to follow many errors that they were unaware of. Later on, one of their number would uncover one or a few more errors; but by that time the system had in its turn become so set in its ways that it refused correction. The man who had found those additional errors was therefore, in his turn, forced out to begin another group. And so the process continued, a new body of Christians being formed every time somebody realized one or a few more biblical truths that were not being followed, and wanted to follow them. Here are some specific examples.
Several men of God saw the light concerning the fundamentals of the faith, even before the Reformation. These include John Wycliffe in England, John Huss in Bohemia, and Jerome Savonarola in Italy. Their greatest concern was with the doctrines of transubstantiation (that the wafers and wine at the Romanist mass literally become the body and blood of Christ), and purgatory; and also with the use of graven images, and financial corrup-tion. These men realized that salvation was received on the basis of grace alone, through faith.
These discoveries were brought to a head through the work of Martin Luther (in Germany). Besides justification by grace, through faith, Luther realized a measure of the priesthood of all believers- at least, that all believers had the privilege of direct access to God, without the need of human priests as intermediaries. He also rejected the celi-bacy of the "clergy." But Luther continued to teach infant baptism, and a multitudinous state church- that is, a church composed of whole communities, saved and lost alike, governed by the state. And he only partially realized the error of transubstantiation. He taught consubstantia-tion- that is, that while the bread and wine of "commun-ion" don't become Christ's body and blood, Christ's body and blood are literally in them.
John Calvin (in France, and then Switzerland) held many of the same beliefs as Luther, with some well-known differences as well. But he made a major error in attempting to establish Christ's kingdom on earth by means of an earthly political system (John 18:36). He tried to make the city of Geneva a theocracy.
Another major error of the continental Reformers in general was to persecute those who disagreed with them. Luther publicly burned Zwingly's books because Zwingly didn't agree with his doctrine of consubstantiation. Calvin received a letter from Servetus, a Spanish physician who held most beliefs of the Reformers but denied the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin responded by inviting Servetus to visit him; and Servetus understood the invitation to mean that Calvin really desired brotherly fellowship with him. But as soon as Servetus got to Geneva, Calvin had him seized and burned at the stake for his denial of the Trinity. Yet we have every reason to believe that both Calvin and Servetus were genuinely born again. Before we denounce the Reformers for such conduct, let us remember that they had come out of Catholicism, which considered it normal to persecute one's opposers, even violently; and these men had to start from scratch in discovering the truth. They didn't get to the point of realizing that such persecu-tion was wrong.
The Anabaptists were a movement in existence for some time before the Reformation. Besides understanding that salvation was received by grace, through faith, they held to believers' baptism only, though they performed it by sprinkling or pouring, and not by immersion. They rejected the idea of a state or multitudinous church, but continued to have "clergy." Some disorder in both doctrine and practice temporarily corrupted the movement; but it was cleansed and revived when Menno Simons assumed the leadership of it, some time after the Reformation.
The British Reformers (Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, and others) formed a church that outwardly bore more resem-blance to Romanist formalism than the Protestant churches on the Continent. But on one issue they were a step ahead of the continental Reformers. They realized that the body and blood of Christ were not in any manner literally present in the elements of "communion," but that the elements were simply symbols. They continued, however, to maintain a state church (Anglican) with a hierarchy, liturgy, and belief in apostolic succession.
The Puritans were a movement who sought to purify the Anglican church of its resemblance to Romanism, particularly its pomp and formalism, liturgy, and ornamentation. They insisted on the importance of good preaching. Yet they continued to have a "clergy" and to baptize infants by sprinkling.
The Pietists were an offshoot from the Lutheran Church, which developed when Philip Jakob Spener, a German Lutheran minister, saw the need for more personal application of the Word of God to the lives of his parishoners. He therefore developed home Bible studies, at which his sermon of the preceding Sunday was discussed, and those present were free to ask any questions about it and have them clarified. The Pietists continued to baptize infants by sprinkling until some of them were put into a concentration camp, together with some Anabaptists. Those Anabaptists had come to see not only baptism of believers only, but also the practicing of it by immersion, as being the biblical way to baptize; and they taught that to those Pietists. When the Pietists were released, they put into practice what they had learned from the Anabaptists. They soon emigrated to America and formed the denomination known as the "Church of the Brethren."
The Wesley brothers and George Whitefield discovered the truth of salvation by grace, and realized that it wasn't being preached in the Anglican Church of their day (which had much deteriorated since the days of the Reformers). They therefore preached the Gospel, but continued to believe in apostolic succession. For that reason, John Wesley kept pleading with the archbishop to "ordain" some evangelicals as bishops so that his converts could attend evangelical churches. The archbishop, not being saved himself, refused. Still, the Wesleys taught their converts to be faithful to the Anglican Church, believing it to be the only true Church, ruled by successors of the apostles. A few years before his death, John Wesley finally saw that apostolic succession was a myth, while his brother, Charles, continued to believe in it. An unfortunate rift occurred between them when John began to "ordain" his own "clergymen."
Baptists claim New-Testament origin, but it is far-fetched to trace them back before the seventeenth century. From as early as we know anything about them, they have officially maintained the autonomy of the local church, besides believers' baptism by immersion, which is a step beyond what a great many denominations realized at the time. Any centralized organization among Baptists serves, at least officially, in an advisory capacity only. The earliest Baptists known rejected the use of the term "clergy," but for all practical purposes they had a clergy.
Quakers have always practiced the autonomy of the local church and the full priesthood of all believers, giving them equal opportunity to participate in ministry with no human ordination nor clergy. However, they reject any form of baptism and the Lord's Supper as belonging to a former dispensation.
Doubtless there is much that could be added to this brief review of church history; but this will suffice to illustrate what we are pointing out- that whenever somebody discovered one or a few more biblical truths that were not being followed, a new group would be formed that followed them. That explains the multiplicity of divisions among Christians. And what about the names of these divisions? In most cases, those who formed a new group to follow truths they had discovered, didn't want a name; but their persecutors gave them one. The names given often reflected the contempt with which their persecutors viewed them. Then, over the years the contempt faded away, and the groups themselves accepted the names. Perhaps the most striking example is the name "Quaker," which was coined by scoffers because the converts of early Quaker preachers always "quaked" (trembled) so violently under conviction of sin.
Now let us turn our attention to the nineteenth-century movement that produced a rapid multiplication of New-Testament assemblies. Notice that I have worded that sentence very carefully, and not said "the origin of New-Testament assemblies." Such assemblies did not begin with this movement- for, as we said earlier, there have been handfuls of Christians meeting this way ever since Pentecost. The nineteenth-century movement only gave a sudden, rapid multiplication to what had been practiced throughout the centuries.
No individual can be designated as the "founder" of this movement; those who have claimed to know of a founder have only proven their inadequate knowledge of history. In fact, the movement began spontaneously and simultaneously in at least eight countries at about the same time; and those it touched in one country knew nothing of its workings in the other countries until years later. It was obviously sent by God because His chosen time had come.
Several factors were used of God to bring about the movement. Memories of the revival that had occurred through the ministry of the Wesleys, stimulated Christians to search the Scriptures themselves. The wars of Napoleon awakened interest in prophecy about the end-times, when there would be "wars and rumours of wars." Consequent study