History Of The Church
Lesson 14 Part 1: The Restoration Movement
The Latter Part Of The 18^th Century And The 19^th Century

Speaker: John Phillis
Date: December 15^th, 22^nd, 29^th, 2004 and January 5^th, 12^th, 19^th, 26^th, 2005, Wednesday Evening Adult Bible Class

We are continuing our look at the church, what has happened to the church throughout the ages. We are coming up to the point in time in the latter part of the 18^th Century and the 19^th Century, when we are going to be looking at attempts to restore New Testament Christianity, not to reform a broken church, not to restore some that has already apostatized, but, rather, to RESTORE Christianity, going back to the Bible.

In the last two lessons, we have spent some time sort of setting the stage for this period of time and for this activity that we’re going to be talking about. We have noticed that America, during the period of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, was replete with many denominational groups, some of which have been exported from the old country, Europe, and some of which had begun here in America and were at that time unique to America. So, there was not a shortage of “churches,” so to speak.

Also, in our last lesson, we looked at sort of the social, the political, landscape during this period of time to remind ourselves of what people might have been thinking, what people might have been experiencing, in those days. We noticed that there were some ideologies that were afoot in those days, which affected the thinking of people, which affected the lives of the people. Some we might not think about, necessarily, associated with that period of time, but people of that age were affected by urbanization, the Industrial Revolution; they were affected by organic evolution—Darwin’s theory of organic evolution. Also, Biblical criticism was afoot in those days, people looking for ways to discredit, even to destroy, the Word of God. Secularism had come about, basically attempting to replace the values, the moral judgments, and so on, that people had lived by from the Bible for generations, with human thought and direction.

We also saw that there was the issue of slavery here in America. This, of course, would influence the thought and the actions of people, not only in the government, not only in the military, not only those who were slave owners, but there was also a profound effect among the people, religiously speaking.

But, there was also going on during that period of time something that was called “Revivalism.” There were attempts being made by a number of different people, clergymen, leaders in different denominational groups, to revive the spirit of enthusiasm, to get people to return. And, once again, thinking about the effects of some of the things that we have talked about—secularism, the Industrial Revolution, etc.—all of these kinds of things affected the behavior and the lives of people. And so, there were religious leaders trying to bring a reawakening of a more spiritual way of thinking. It is with that framework, then, that we see something begin to take place, something that would eventually be titled, referred to as, the Restoration Movement.

I want to be perfectly clear about this, as we look at this. To be honest with you, I’m not really sure right now how much detail we’re going to go into. We’re in a little bit of a crossroads here in this study that we’ve undertaken. We’ve engaged in this study since May of this year [of 2004]. That’s a long time to be looking at the same subject, although I think you’d agree with me, it has been a varied look. We haven’t been just concentrating on one thing. We’ve been looking at history, and many of you said that you’ve enjoyed this very much, but we could just do a fairly cursory look at the Restoration Movement, look at some of the key characters, and do that over the next couple of weeks or so, and then suspend this study maybe to a later time when we could take up a more detailed discussion, get into more detail about the lives and the actions of some of these ones who are associated with this Movement, and then carry it through to our day. We may do that. It may time for us to sort of shift gears and to move back into a textual study for a while in this class, and then pick this up some time in the future. Or, we could continue on with what we’re doing and take this more detailed look, even after the New Year. Tell me what you think about that, and we’ll see how that goes. [We continued in the study.]

But, what I wanted to say was this: Regardless of what we end up doing with the study and far we go with it, we are not, the church of Christ is not, the church of Alexander Campbell or of Thomas Campbell, or of Barton W. Stone. We are not Campbellites. They didn’t start the church of Christ. The church of Christ began on the Day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem. And so, those who have a misunderstanding, and those who are often critical, of the churches of Christ are just simply wrong about that. We have nothing to be ashamed about; we, of course, are sometimes put in the position of defending ourselves. But, I just want us to be clear upon that particular point. Yes, we have seen the church of our Lord go in to apostasy. We have seen His church changed beyond being able to be recognized as the church the Lord established, His church which was established on the Day of Pentecost, as read about on the pages of the New Testament.

But this doesn’t mean that the church went out of existence. It doesn’t mean that there have not always been faithful brethren. That’s the nature of the Lord’s church. I believe that is one of the reasons that He organized it, that He made it the way that He did. It is not dependent upon a line of succession. In other words, in order to establish our credibility as the Lord’s church, we don’t have to be able to establish a line of succession all the way back to Jerusalem and the Day of Pentecost. It isn’t necessary.