And we have been spending the last several months following the apostasy and seeing how this apostasy took place. We saw the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, of Roman Catholicism, to be—no, not that New Testament church changed to be Roman Catholicism, but there was a morphing process (I guess that probably is not a 1 st Century word, but it’s a word in our day)—it was a morphing process that took place. The church that was prophesied about; the church that Jesus built; that was established on the Day of Pentecost was changed, and one of the discussions that we had was the fact that we believe that the Lord’s church never did disappear; but what was recorded, what was prominent, what we have the history about is primarily the Roman Catholic Church. That became the dominant, the predominant force in both religion and in the government, or in the state. We saw, too, the Catholic Church’s corruption and its abuse of power.

There were men who came along, men such as John Hus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli and a host of others, who, when comparing the Roman Catholic Church with God’s Word, determined that indeed what was being called the “church” was not the church at all, but that there had been a complete and a total departure from the New Testament concept. These men were part of the 16th Century European Reformation Movement, attempting to reform the Roman Catholic Church. They found, however, that their efforts were impossible. And thus, they would break away, either by choice or by being excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. And their followers—those who would follow these men—would themselves establish denominations; Protestant denominations in protest of what the Roman Catholic Church was doing. They would, of course, end up wearing the names of men; they would be governed by the creeds of men, and so on. While the aim of the reformers was a noble aim, the results fragmented the religious world. They would exchange the headship of the pope and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church for the headship and the doctrines of other men.

Well, in recent weeks, we’ve been studying the 19th Century American Restoration Movement. This Movement began a little bit more than two centuries ago. Leaders of that Movement, those who would come to the forefront, did not wish to establish a new church. They wanted, rather, to RESTORE the New Testament church. Among these leaders—and we have mentioned along the way most of these men; we won’t mention them all again—men like Elias Smith and Dr. Abner Jones, who were active in New England in the latter part of the 19th Century; James O’Kelly and Rice Haggard in Virginia; Martin W. Stone in Kentucky; and then, of course, the Campbells—Alexander and Thomas Campbell in Western Pennsyalvania and Virginia (what was Virginia at that time and is now West Virginia). And that plea; that plea that they adopted; that Movement that they attempted is the same plea that we have today.

There are those, though, who doubt that this can be done. There are people who would say, “You can’t take something is that old; you can’t take something that is that ancient and restore it.” There are those, also, who would say, “It isn’t necessary. What was then was then, and what’s now is now; and we need something that fits the time.” There are those—even some who have their roots in the Restoration Movement—who reject it altogether. That’s what the Disciples of Christ have done.

Well, although some may question, and others may even deny, the validity of the Restoration plea, there are numerous ways to demonstrate its validity. You know, we are all aware of and knowledgeable about restoring things. Some of us, perhaps, are involved in restoring old furniture, restoring old cars. There’s something that is quite different from restoring something than to remodeling, or making it over. Restoring has to do with bringing it back to its pristine, original condition.

On television, there is a program about old cars, and they were talking about the value of these cars. Some were not all that old, but some of them were from the early part of the 20th Century. The value of the cars was not so much that they were rare, that they were one-of-a-kind, but because they had been restored; the owners hadn’t cut them down in some way, or put a new engine in, or changed the standard transmission to an automatic transmission, or any of this sort of thing. No, they restored the vehicle to exactly the way it was when it rolled off the assembly line. And that’s what made those cars valuable.

And that is the attempt; that is the desire of what those who were involved in the Restoration Movement were doing. That’s why it is referred to as the RESTORation Movement. They were not trying to make over the Roman Catholic Church or a denomination; not desiring to be just another denomination among denominations, but rather restoring exactly what was established—what we read about on the pages of the New Testament.

And I shared this with you before. Some of you may not have been here, so I’ll just mention it briefly because I think it is an excellent analogy about the ability to restore something. I’m speaking of that baseball analogy that I gave you about how that if baseball went out of fashion for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or whatever, and someone dusted off the official rule book of Major League Baseball; and they set up a diamond, and they had nine players; and they had the equipment; and they followed all the rules in that rule book, then what would they have? Well, they’d have baseball again, wouldn’t they? And the same restoration process is true with the Lord’s church.

Speaking about the validity of the Restoration principle, we find a couple of examples of restoring what God desired in the Old Testament. You remember the story of Hezekiah and of Josiah, kings of Israel, and how that they would desire and be successful in restoring what God had commanded the children of Israel do in the way of worship.