We’re going to begin winding up this study tonight, but I still have a few things that I think are important that we need to consider. I want to leave with you four reasons why we know this principle is valid, that is, “Where the Bible is silent, we…are…silent.”

Let me say, first of all, that it’s not valid because a man by the name of Thomas Campbell stated the principle. That’s not why it is valid. Campbell stated the principle because he discovered its validity in the New Testament. Now, there’s the Truth of the matter. But upon what basis can we say (besides what we’ve already said) that this principle is a valid hermeneutical principle?

Well, I suggest to you, first of all, because it is a reasonable principle. It is unreasonable and requires the impossible to expect every prohibition that God might have to be explicitly stated. We saw the irrationality of it in commercial matters. It can be illustrated in a hundred ways.

You go to your doctor and he gives you a prescription; you take it to your pharmacist; and your pharmacist gives you 500 kinds of medicines. And you say, “What are you doing?” Your pharmacist says, “Your doctor didn’t say NOT to give you these.” You see, it’s just that simple—you can apply it just over and over and OVER in our daily activities.

The song leader could not have known every song to name and say, “We’re not going to these,” because he doesn’t know all the songs that have ever been written. No man knows all the songs that have ever been written. And I might not be preaching yet if he were still just saying the songs in this book that we’re not going to sing if he enumerated them one by one! You see, we just don’t operate like that. This is a reasonable principle!

Someone says, “Are you questioning God’s ability to list every prohibition of our behavior?” No, I don’t question it at all. It’s a mark of wisdom that God did NOT so do. Who would be strong enough to carry the book around? Who could live long enough to read all of them? God has made it simple! We don’t have to have all of those prohibitions stated in black and white! We just follow this simple principle of “where He’s authorized, He’s authorized; where He’s silent, there’s no authority for it. This is a valid principle because it is rational; it is reasonable.

In the second place, I suggest to you it’s valid because it’s disastrous to ignore this principle. We saw it with Cain; we saw it with Nadab and Abihu; we could have illustrated it with others in the Bible. But then, think of the more recent years, the folly wrought in the church when brethren began to disrespect this principle a hundred and fifty years ago. It brought about the terrible division in the church; the Pandora’s Box was opened and the lid has not been shut on it—never will be shut on it—for those folk. It resulted in that disastrous, heart-breaking division, with families torn asunder, with churches totally divided, with churches stolen, schools taken away from those who were faithful. It resulted in two new denominations, both calling themselves “the Christian church.” And now, we are feeling the pressures of the same…sort…of disrespect for the Scriptures.

Those of you who stay apprised of goings-on in our brotherhood know that there are serious doctrinal crises. Many churches have already divided over whether we shall continue in the old paths of the Gospel, or whether we shall “go out and graze on the hills of the Gentiles.” Many churches have already been captured. In many, many cases—in fact, for the most part—it is the large, metropolitan area churches. There are many, many of these that have been so captured by liberal elements—they want the church to be accepted among the denominations as an equal among them—that I do not believe they will ever be turned back.

Some of our schools have fallen into the very same terrible change-agent mentality. And I do not think those schools can be reclaimed. History does not show instances of their being reclaimed when they go as far as some have gone today.

I do not intend to be an alarmist. I do not think I am one. But brethren, if we hide our heads in the sand, and we do not understand what is going on and what the currents and the issues moving among so many prominent brethren today are—among those who preach, among those who are professors and administrators in many of our schools, among those who edit some of the papers—if we do not comprehend the direction they’re trying to take the church, and have TAKEN some churches and some schools, we are simply not living in a real world, because it’s happening right now, just about on the hundredth anniversary of when the division was finalized earlier.

These things did not start yesterday among us. You can date them back to at least the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when these pressures began to sort of subtly begin building, and then they have continued and continued and continued until, instead of an 85% - 15% ratio, it will be a 90% - 10% ration. I pray to God, as I know you do, that it will not be so. Brethren, if we abandon this principle, there is no way to keep the church from becoming a denomination. This is really the battleground—the silence of Scripture is the battleground—it is the distinctiveness maker between US and every other religious group. And so, it is disastrous to ignore the silence of Scripture.