A Short(ish) History of the Restoration Movement: Part 3

Okay, so we are continuing on here.

And because my oldest son, jason, is getting married next week, next weekend, I had to redo, or I had to do another class for next week this weekend, so I was double.

I had two lessons.

I had to get together.

So if I get confused more than normal, forgive me in advance.

Yeah, just keep talking and ignoring me like you usually do.

Thank you, okay.

Yeah, go right ahead.

I see how this works.

Feel right at home.

Feel like, yeah, right, like you're back in school at home.

Feel like, yeah, right, like you're back in school, all right.

So we are going to continue on Lesson 12.

Everybody, get together.

Try to love one another.

Remember that song?

There it is Youngbloods.

Who has never heard that song before?

Look it up on YouTube, play it.

Great song.

In fact, I want it played at my funeral.

I'm hoping that's going to be a long time from now and they have different ways of playing stuff.

Great song, right, I think it is.

Anyways, one of my favorites.

1967, year I Was Born is when that came out.

It's Church Christ.

We don't play instrumental stuff in our Don't get me started.

We like things that are together, don't we?

United Airlines that's the old logo, united Dairy Farmers, udf, especially their ice cream.

If you listen to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio, the Reds are on the radio.

They talk about UDF ice cream all the time.

It's good, because there's not much else to talk about, because they're not a very good team.

But you know, Right, ross, they're good.

Okay, all right, I'd rather talk about ice cream than the Rez.

But all right, get on to Respex.

You can get some United Dairy Milk.

United Artists right, that's even in the church setting, right.

United Methodist Church.

What does that tell you Must have been more than one, but now there's just one.

One more than one, but now there's just one.

Church of the United Brethren in Christ, usa.

I like it's the United Brethren, not the United Church.

It's the Brethren that are united.

I think it's kind of a neat, kind of a neat thing.

United Church of Christ.

We'll briefly mention them.

It's the old logo on the left, the new logo on the right.

I don't know what that is.

Is that Shamu?

We went to SeaWorld when I was a kid, the one up in Geauga County.

I like Geauga County, I like Geauga Lake a lot better because there's rides and stuff.

Seaworld's like this much fish, whatever.

What's that Big fish?

But fish nonetheless, yes.

So let's talk about this uniting movement.

We talked a little bit last week about stone movement.

Now, if you're listening online, we did talk about this.

We really did.

You just don't know it.

The stone side of the restoration Movement and the Campbell side of the Restoration Movement 1832, those two branches got together and joined forces and this is a stained glass window.

If you go to the Cane Ridge Church in Kentucky, you will see this window.

It is Barton W Stone and Raccoon John Smith, who was representing Alexander Campbell, shaking hands as they united their causes together in 1832.

And I said that a couple of times to hopefully drive home the point that this didn't last, and it didn't last very long.

Becky and I have talked about why can't we just be Christians?

Why are there all these churches?

Why can't we all get together?

We'll talk about that Next week.

I'm going to talk about how this movement splintered into at least three and maybe more than that, and we start talking about subgroups, different groups that just could not get along and stay together, and then we'll talk about the way that our fellowship today is broken up and then the last couple of weeks of class because we've only got after today.

Four weeks, yes, and you're saying, yes, only four more weeks.

So we'll talk about where we are now and then I think I want to talk about where we're headed.

What comes next?

What issues do we have today that are potentially divisive, and how do you overcome that division?

Can we ever get back to a unified vision of what it means to be a Christian?

So there were some.

Between Stone's movement and Campbell's movement there were some areas of agreement, some very general areas of agreement.

They believe that the Bible alone is the only authoritative basis of Christian faith and unity.

Let's rely on the Bible.

They believe that doctrinal creeds, denominational statements, are not the true basis of Christian fellowship.

They can't be because they represent one man's opinion or a group of men's opinions about what the Bible says.

They agreed on baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins.

Campbell came to that conclusion first Stone it took a while before he came around to that as well, which we'll talk about in a little bit too and they also believed in the ultimate millennial unity of all believers.

Now, millennialism is something we don't talk about and I'm not don't talk about and I'm not going to talk about it much here either.

For one thing, it can be a very confusing subject, it can be a very divisive subject and it's something that we just don't talk about much.

I mean, we could have a whole class on that issue and I'm not going to do that today.

But they believed ultimately all Christians would be united in some fashion.

Okay, but they had lots of differences.

Even after they were united they still have lots of differences.

They disagree on what to call themselves.

Stone's group wanted to call themselves Christians.

Campbell's group said no, we're disciples.

So they arm wrestled.

They agreed to disagree on that one.

Okay, they just agreed to disagree.

They disagreed on the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion.

What's the Holy Spirit's role in you deciding that you want to become a Christian?

They disagreed about that, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.

They disagreed about the meaning of baptism.

What does it do and what does it mean for us as a fellowship?

They disagreed about the frequency of the Lord's Supper.

How often should you take it?

They disagreed about church government.

They disagreed about the meaning of atonement.

What does that mean for a Christian?

The Trinity you guys understand the Trinity, the idea of the Trinity.

They disagreed about that.

They disagreed.

This was a big one.

To us today it's kind of funny that this is a big disagreement.

Miracles was a huge disagreement between Stone and Campbell.

We'll talk about that in detail here in a few minutes.

Man's progress in the world Is the world getting better or is the world getting worse?

They had different opinions about that.

How should a Christian interact with the world?

Should a Christian be involved in politics?

Very different opinions about that.

And the usefulness of religious debate Does it do any good to debate people about their religious beliefs?

Stone said no, campbell said yes.

And yet, despite those differences, they managed to get their movements more or less on the same page.

My brother if my brother's listening to this, I'll give a shout out to him.

He turned me on to the Grateful Dead, their song Truckin', more or less in line.

That's kind of the way they are.

They're kind of more or less in line here.

You know, sometimes less.

And then there were some other matters that arose later that were the cause of immense trouble.

One was cooperative projects between churches.

The other was the use of instruments, musical instruments, in the assembly.

Those were the two that eventually drove the wedges.

The second one is the one everybody thinks of, but the first one was actually the more divisive at the beginning and the split that ended up happening between the different ideas on the restoration movement didn't happen all at once.

This took a long time, okay, and eventually and I can't give you dates for stuff, because they just kind of happened we just grew apart, right, we just grew apart, you know, and that's kind of the way it was with these churches they just kind of grew apart.

So let's talk about the differences that they had, because I think this is fascinating.

These guys, whether you agreed with Stone or whether you agreed with Campbell, these guys were deep thinkers.

They thought a lot about these issues and they wrote a lot about these issues and they read a lot about these issues and formed some very definite opinions.

If you'll remember, we talked about Stone before having been influenced by a felon named Magritte.

Remember that he went to a revival on the Kentucky-Tennessee border and was just absolutely blown away by the emotional response people had to the gospel Do you remember that?

And he went back to Cane Ridge and had the same thing happen there.

We talked about a revival breaking out at Cain Ridge.

That was Stone and he believed that a sinner's conversion was more emotional when he felt the Holy Spirit moving him in a certain direction and convicting his heart that he was a sinner.

That's what Stone believed, own believed.

He said that the Holy Spirit directly works on a person and it would take a long time in many instances it would take a long, long time before that person acknowledged that the Holy Spirit was moving him or her towards repentance, that the Holy Spirit was moving him or her towards repentance.

He thought that this happened before immersion, this happened before baptism and that baptism was an outward expression of an inward change.

That's what he said.

Okay, campbell didn't agree with that.

Campbell's a much more enlightened, age of enlightenment, age of reason type of guy.

To him, you heard the words, the facts, the arguments of the gospel, you reflect upon them and then you rationally make a decision I'm going to become a Christian, I'm a sinner, I need saved.

And he believed this would happen very quickly.

You heard it, you were immediately cut to the heart, just like on the day of Pentecost.

You didn't need an extended period of reflection, it happened very quickly.

He had very little use for the emotionalism of Stone's group.

Think about us here.

Which one of those two?

Do you think that Stop 9 reflects more closely?

I can't hear.

I'm sorry, mike, I think Campbell's, for whatever reason, that seems to be, and that's not just here, I mean, it's any place you go, at least around here, church of Christ-wise it's going to be very much that way very rational, very reasonable.

We're going to explain things intellectually and you come to a decision and you're right.

I mean just the way it is.

I'm not saying right or wrong, I'm just saying that's our history, that's where we come from.

I think it explains a lot as to why we are the way we are.

Oh, by the way, I think I had said early on that Campbell was educated in Edinburgh.

He was actually educated in Glasgow.

I figured that out when I was doing some stuff this past week.

I said, ooh, I messed that up.

So wrong town in Scotland.

Campbell believed the Holy Spirit's work began at baptism.

Campbell believed the Holy Spirit's work began at baptism and he viewed baptism as a transactional change of state between the sinner and God.

Somebody's got the lights.

Yeah, it's okay.

This is just like being in school, carrie, right, pretty much All right.

Let's go on to this one.

Let's move on to miracles here.

Do you guys think about miracles very much?

Yes, debbie does Say what.

We throw the word around a lot, hopefully not carelessly.

We don't want to break anything right?

Everything's a miracle, right?

The Browns won a game.

It's a miracle.

Browns finally got rid of the trading away all their draft picks.

Next week they get the pick of the first round.

It's a miracle, right?

Stone believed that the conversion process itself was a miracle.

That's what he believed, and he also.

Stone also allowed room for God to work miracles today.

And what he said was if God chooses not to work miracles today, it's not because he can't, it's because we don't believe that he can.

Not that he's withdrawn the gift of miracles, but because you don't believe that he can.

So why would he?

I found that fascinating.

You know it says Jesus couldn't do miracles in his hometown because nobody believed in him.

Okay, I don't know, maybe he's got a point, maybe he's got a point, maybe he's got a point.

Then he said he also said if you disbelieve in miracles, how do you believe in God's providence?

Why pray for God's intervention in some mysterious way if we don't believe he's going to do it Right?

Well, god will not work a miracle.

God's intervention in some mysterious way.

If we don't believe he's going to do it Right, well, god will not work a miracle.

I'll tell you what.

When my mom was dying of cancer.

I'm praying she's going to get healed.

I don't care whether the Bible says he's going to not perform a miracle or not.

By gosh, I'm praying for it.

Buddy Right.

He says if you don't believe in miracles, why do you believe in providence?

He also said if you disbelieve in miracles, then why pray?

It destroys the spirit of prayer.

It also destroys our thanksgiving to God.

If we don't believe that he acts on our behalf, what do I have to thank Him for?

I find that fascinating.

Tough question, isn't it?

I think it is.

Campbell did not believe that.

Campbell believed that the miracles described in the New Testament had ceased.

He said once the canon of Scripture, once the Bible had been written down and established, there was no need for miracles anymore.

And they went away.

That's very much Church of Christ, traditional thinking, is it not?

He also believed in divine providence, which he called the power of circumstances, that God will put you in a position where things will work out in some kind of an undefined way.

I don't know how this works, but somehow it did in some kind of an undefined way.

I don't know how this works, but somehow it did.

I think most of us probably believe in that, rather than the new miracles that Campbell didn't believe in.

What's that?

Being somehow put into position and reminded by God, that's a miracle.

It wouldn't normally happen unless he intervened and made it happen.

That's a miracle.

Okay, that's happen unless he intervened and made it happen.

That's a miracle.

Okay, okay, you're wrong, but you're not packing, are you?

I'm sorry, I'm just teasing.

Obviously, you know I have.

In many ways, this has been a very challenging class for me.

Yeah, it's been challenging to get down and sit down and do this.

Honestly, I cannot tell you how many hours I spend on this stuff, going through it, trying to figure stuff out, but it has challenged my thinking in a lot of areas and I think I can safely say that, if you are like me and I think you are we tend to have a lot of fuzzy thinking.

We tend to just kind of accept things as the way they are, without thinking through why things are the way they are.

And when I sit down and start to think about why things are the way they are.

I'm not really sure why things are the way they are, and I don't have a good answer for it, and that's a very uncomfortable feeling, which is why I think a class like this is very useful.

Let's talk about man's progress, or lack there thereof.

Stone said that mankind is regressing.

Okay, that's a big word.

What does that mean?

Going the wrong way, going backwards?

We're headed back to the caveman, right?

We're all beyond geico commercials pretty soon.

I don't know who thought of that.

Those are ingenious commercials.

Those are so good.

Is it Begego or Progressive?

Was it Progressive?

It must not work that well, because I can't even remember what the name of the company was.

I just remember the commercials.

He says the world's getting worse instead of getting better, and here's why he said you can try as hard as you want to reform yourself, but it's not possible because the sin that's in the world will keep you from progressing.

It's just not possible.

Only God's intervention can restore man to his right relationship with God and the way the earth is supposed to be, and he felt that would come when Jesus returned with God.

And the way the earth is supposed to be.

And he felt that would come when Jesus returned and it's no use trying to reform the world because it ain't going to happen.

That's what Stone believed.

Campbell said no, people are getting better.

Man's moral standing is improving.

That's what Campbell thought.

And he thought part of the process of the world getting better was the restoration of what he called primitive gospel.

You join that with all the scientific advances.

Now, remember, this is early 1800s and we talked before.

Remember all the scientific advances.

We talked about All the stuff going on.

There's this explosion of scientific advance that, with philosophical advances that were going on at that time, he thought that that would.

This is what he was foreseeing, and again, there's some fuzzy thinking here.

But the better mankind got and the more the primitive gospel is practiced in the Christian world, that would spur the coming of the millennium and Jesus would return.

Now I was always raised with the opposite view.

I was raised with the stone view.

Okay, mankind's getting worse and Jesus will return when things get so bad that he can't take it anymore.

Right, that's the view I was always raised with.

And yet, with a very heavily Campbell-influenced church, we did not take Campbell's view of progress.

I think that's interesting, again, heavily invested in the idea of the millennium.

And remember we talked before about he had this periodical he put out called the Christian Baptist, and then he changed the name of it to the Millennial Harbinger the idea of the millennium.

They're very invested in that idea.

Again, it's something we don't talk about hardly ever, but it's something that, to them, was just around the corner.

I mean, it is going to happen tomorrow.

You better be ready.

1832 is when these guys if you pay attention, debbie, I would.

What year was it?

Again, you got it okay.

How do you interact with the world, as a Christian?

Stone said, government this is what he believed.

Government was a rebellion against God's order.

You wouldn't need government if you people act the way you're supposed to act.

And because of that, he said, christians should not be involved in politics in any way and in fact, you shouldn't hold political office, you shouldn't vote and you shouldn't be in the military.

Those three things.

Stay out of it, completely disconnect yourself from the world.

That was Stone's view.

David Lipscomb also believed that.

By the way, he believed a lot of what Campbell believed, but on this particular subject, he adopted Stone's view.

Stay out.

Now we're talking 1830s, 1840s.

What are we leading up to?

The Civil War?

This is something that they're very interested in, because we're talking about primarily border states here Upper South Tennessee, kentucky, western Virginia.

The idea of what's going to happen next with the government.

What's going to happen?

Are we going to be at war with each other?

This is something that is a real issue.

This isn't theoretical Now.

Campbell didn't want people to fight in the Civil War.

This is several years later.

He didn't want them fighting in the Civil War, not because he thought war was wrong, but he didn't want Christian fighting Christian.

He thought that was wrong, but he thought political involvement was a good thing.

You should be involved in politics.

Your Christian beliefs will help purify.

Remember he's a guy who thinks that we're advancing as a society, right as a culture.

So this would help to advance if we get Christians involved in politics.

As long as you keep Christ's tenets in your heart and practice them, it's a good thing to get involved in politics.

That's what Campbell believed.

What about religious debates?

Stone said no, stay out of them, don't get involved in these debates.

Why they promote division, they promote partyism.

Now you know, in the age of television, radio and the internet, we can't understand how these debates work.

They would draw thousands of people to these debates and it was like big-time wrestling.

You know you would cheer for your guy wrestling, you know you would cheer for your guy, yay, yay, you'd hold up the sign.

You know Hulkamania, campbellmania, coming for you, brother, you know.

And they would have these debates and they would have them transcribed and they would put them in book form and sell them.

And they sold like hotcakes.

People loved this stuff, us versus them.

And I remember as a kid hearing this stuff about these debates that had gone on in relatively recent times oh, brother, so-and-so had a debate with that Baptist and he put him in his place, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Oh, he couldn't say anything about it.

And I heard this stuff, you know.

I remember at the time thinking I don't hear anything about Jesus, I hear about our guy, our team.

You know, wait a minute.

And that's what Stone said you should be talking about Christ, you should be promoting him.

Campbell, on the other hand, loved debates.

He was a great debater, Tremendous debater, and he thought that debates could clarify in your mind the issue that they were debating and you could then reach the and I put it in quotes the right conclusion about an issue.

The right conclusion Isn't that interesting.

Let's talk about baptism a little bit.

I hesitated to even put this stuff in here because again it's going to be a very emotional, very divisive issue, but it's kind of at the heart of everything.

Stone, as I said before, stone initially didn't believe baptism was necessary for the remission of sins.

He was not there.

That's not what he believed.

But he came to gradually adopt Campbell's position on that issue.

And yet even when he did, he didn't believe that someone's lack of baptism should be a basis to deny fellowship with them.

He still believed they were Christians, he said.

Now, this is what he said a professing believer is a Christian if he reflected the visible transformation of his life through the fruit of the Spirit, regardless of his baptismal status.

That's what he said, that's what Stone believed.

Are those two things inconsistent?

You can decide that Campbell first broached the subject of baptism for the remission of sins in 1823, during a debate, of course.

He said that the baptism described in the New Testament was performed for the remission of sins.

And he even went further later and said that an unbaptized person and this is his wording was not in the kingdom of Christ and stood worthy of condemnation.

That's Campbell.

That's quite a difference between him and Stone.

Quite a difference.

Remember, they're trying to unite their movement right Now.

This blew my mind.

Campbell gave his definition of a Christian in 1837.

Remember, he's got this periodical.

He published this here's what I believe a Christian is.

Now.

He says this in 1837.

Remember, these two movements were united in what year?

Debbie?

1832.

Very good, you know, I get it from this side, I get it from this side.

I'm sitting back by Justin.

He'll never cause me any trouble.

Here's what he says.

This is the quote.

Everyone that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, repents of his sins and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will.

You believe Jesus is the Christ.

You repent of his will.

You believe Jesus is the Christ.

You repent of your sins and you obey him as well as you know how to obey To the best of your knowledge.

You obey what he says.

You're a Christian.

People are shocked by this.

A lady wrote him a letter and said hey, what's going on with this, because I can't figure this out.

This does not sound like what you told me before.

In response, he says if you believe that none are Christians but the immersed.

You as greatly err as he who affirms that none are alive but those of clear and full vision.

This is Campbell.

This is the baptism for remission of sins guy that made my hair stand up.

That's not what I was taught at all.

You find it?

What's that?

I don't know.

What did he do?

You find it?

What's that I don't know?

What did he do?

Remember, these are guys who are like us.

What I think today I may not think tomorrow.

The conclusion I reach today may end up being a different conclusion tomorrow as I think through stuff.

I'm not saying I agree.

I'm not saying I disagree.

I'm saying this is something to think about and it makes me very uncomfortable to think about it, and I don't like to think about it, so I don't Until I teach this class.

And then I say, hmm, interesting, interesting Now these points to ponder that I've been giving you over the last several weeks.

I'm going to go back to these at the end of maybe the last day we have class.

I'm going to run through some of this stuff and talk about it because I don't give you much time to speak, some of you for good reason, but think about the great number of?

We just went through a whole two slides worth of differences between Stone's side and Campbell's side.

Does it seem possible that you can unite those two groups to you?

And yet they did it, at least for a while.

So how could they do that?

How could you unite these two groups?

And what would they have to agree on to be united?

What do you think?

They agree?

That Jesus is the Messiah.

Well, that's interesting, because the Baptists believe that, and the Methodists, congregationalists, episcopalians.

Why aren't they united with them?

Why was it just this small group of people?

Huh, well, yeah, but they don't even agree on that to a degree.

Well, what does the Bible say?

We're going to get into that here next week.

How would you do this?

How could you get these two groups together?

I'll tell you one thing you're going to have to do.

You're going to have to overlook some differences.

You're going to have to let, as Paul talked about, let people exercise their liberty in Christ, which makes us extremely uncomfortable, extremely.

If I even start to talk about it, some of you are going to start foaming at the mouth and going into convulsions.

Now, less than if you think he's talking about making changes.

I'm not talking about doing anything.

All I want you to do is think about some stuff.

All I want you to do is think about some stuff.

All I want you to do is think about some stuff that we don't think about hardly ever.

So what areas of disagreement would you be willing to overlook for the sake of uniting with another group?

What differences would you be unwilling to overlook?

We help the church at Birds Run.

You know what I'm talking about.

We've been involved with them for a couple of years now.

They believe Jesus is the Messiah.

They don't do things the way we do.

In some ways, this got real for us when we started talking about how can we help this church, how can we perform a church rescue?

How can we help these folks?

The church was dying.

How can we help them build their church?

What things do we have to agree on?

What things do we not have to agree on?

And one of the reasons I want to raise this is if I went around the room here and told you to write down ten things that you believe about church any ten things write them down legibly, hopefully, so I can read them.

I guarantee you I would get all sorts of things from you people.

You would be shocked with the guy sitting beside you.

Well, there's no guy sitting beside you.

What the guy?

What the person?

I don't think there's a guy sitting, but I don't care.

You would be shocked what the person sitting in front of you believes.

What Are you serious?

You don't believe that?

Oh yeah, I'll give you a book, chapter and verse.

That's not what I understand.

And how unified do we have to be to say we're together?

What do we have to agree on to be together?

These two guys didn't get it all right, I'll guarantee you.

When they put those two movements together and maybe it wasn't Becky, maybe it was an impossible task because it broke down within about ten years it started coming apart.

But they tried, they did the best they could to try to take two groups of Christians and say let's get along and get together and worship Jesus together, let's do community together, let's make disciples together.

But their humanness kept them from allowing each other the liberty that Paul talked about to not judge each other.

And it broke down.

And that's a lesson to me.

See, I was raised.

I grew up saying we're the only ones going, and in fact, not only are we the only ones going.

There's even some in this room, I'm not sure, are going.

At least the folks on this side of the aisle were probably going.

The folks on this side I don't know about a lot of goats over there, I'm not sure going.

At least the folks on this side of the aisle were probably going.

The folks on this side I don't know about a lot of goats over there, I'm not sure they're going.

I grew up with good people, loving people, who loved God, loved Jesus, loved his church.

But, just like me, they're people.

We get caught up doing people things and thinking people, thoughts that keep us from being unified.

Next week we're going to talk about what happened, how it broke down and how we ended up.

Even within this tiny movement and I'm telling you numbers-wise this is tiny, this is a small group of people Even within this tiny movement, it starts breaking apart.

This is tiny, this is a small group of people Even within this tiny movement, it starts breaking apart and we end up with a whole bunch of different churches that don't have any fellowship with each other.

To me, it's a sad story, something we can learn from.

All right, do you have any questions?

Comments Very quickly.

What year?

Debbie 1832,.

Very good, all right, remember that.

Will we quiz next week?

Oh, all right, we will see you then.