A Short(ish) History of the Restoration Movement: Part 1

Coming to America.

That's our title today.

Oh, that's all right.

I guess we are changing classes today, aren't we?

Not us?

But I mean, you could go to a different class if you wanted to, it wouldn't hurt me much, all right.

Well, everything that I've done so far in this class has led up to what I want to start talking about today, my original.

Okay, so let's go back to, like December what I'm thinking about, or whenever it is.

I was thinking about what I want to do for class and I'm thinking you know, I would like to do something on the restoration movement.

Well, I've spent the last nine weeks on the Reformation without actually getting to the restoration, but I didn't know how to tell one without telling the other.

So here we are.

Well, ish, a couple of weeks from now we won't have class, which Woody will talk about today.

And there goes Mr Camden.

Uh-oh, you better hustle.

And he even shuts the door.

He's a good man, atta boy.

No, you're supposed to say Mommy, I want you to come with me.

Yeah, right, breaks Mommy's heart, like when the kid says I don't want to go to kindergarten.

When they go bye and walk right in, it's like oh, yeah, yeah.

I remember standing there when Andrew was graduating from there.

Sitting there when Andrew was graduating from the police academy, and he's sitting there, he's got his, got his full gear on everything from Monroe County, and he's sitting there, you know.

And then they stood up and took their, got their certificates and all that stuff, and, sitting there, looking at Jewel, and I said, my work is done, you know, he has, he has graduated, he's, he's a professional now and there's, you know, work is never done.

Well, then he bought the farm and I've been out there working, and so has everybody else, steve and everybody.

So, all right, let's coming to America.

That's our theme today, wasn't that?

Was that Eddie Murphy was in that movie, okay, where he played the African chief, or whatever.

It was All right.

Well, let's have a quiz first, huh?

See if you can get this.

What do these people have in common?

George Washington, andrew Jackson I just recycled that slide from last week.

Okay, I'm lazy.

What can I say?

I admit it.

Ty Cobb, one of the greatest, if not the greatest baseball player of all time, the Georgia Peach, jimi Hendrix.

Now, he was left handed.

He had a guitar, he strung it backwards and played left-handed.

Yes, he did.

Tom Selleck, that's not me, that's Selleck, just want to let you know.

And Pat Sajak oh, maybe a stumper.

That's just a true quest.

Yes, I wouldn't wait for George or Andrew Jackson, jimi Hendrix, that would be a little late.

I'd go ahead and serve the first course anyway.

What do they have in common, do you know?

No, jimi Hendrix from Seattle.

No, they didn't marry women from Virginia.

No, jimi Hendrix from Seattle, they all married women in Virginia.

No, they didn't marry women in Virginia.

Oh, a stumper.

Here's the answer.

They all served in the Army.

All of them served in the Army.

So you know, george Washington and Andrew Jackson were generals.

Here's Ty Cobb on the right with Christy Matthewson, maybe the greatest pitcher of all time.

They served in the same unit, same chemical warfare unit in the Army.

There's Jimi Hendrix private Jimi Hendrix, on the left.

He was a paratrooper.

True story, yep, true story.

There's Tom Selleck.

He was in the National Guard, army National Guard for a long time.

I mean not just like he did his hitch in two years and he was out, he stuck around for a long time in the Guard.

And Pat Sajak, who was?

He was on Saigon Armed Forces Radio in Saigon.

Did you ever hear him over there, jim, on the spinning the tunes or anything.

Okay, he was over there and served his that's.

Look how young he looks there on the left.

Of course he doesn't look that old on the right either, but yeah, all served in the Army.

How about that?

And now you know the rest of the story.

All right, let's talk about a couple of important people in the Restoration Movement, and the first one we're going to talk about is Thomas Campbell, 1763 to 1860, old guy when he finally passed away.

What's that?

Yeah, that is a signed.

They would call those carte de vistas, we would call them baseball cards.

Right, he signed the baseball card.

So who was Thomas Campbell?

Well, he was from Scotland.

Remember, we talked about Scotland a little bit a few weeks ago and the Scottish Presbyterian Church, and you might have been wondering why we're talking about the Scottish Presbyterian Church.

Well, because one of the leaders of the Restoration Movement came out of that church.

He was Scotland.

He was trained as a Presbyterian minister.

He was born in Scotland.

No, he was born in Scotland and trained in Edinburgh, scotland.

What, oh, got you Born in Scotland first?

Okay, yeah, I guess I shouldn't have thrown that in there.

Well, he was born again later, okay, so throw that in there.

Right, born in Scotland?

Okay, eliminate the first from there.

You know, one of the great things about doing this class is that I get all my errors pointed out to me.

You better have a tough skin if you're going to do this class.

A hard shell, because they're going to.

You guys are the best nitpickers I've ever seen.

I'm just teasing, I don't mind.

You know.

It's funny, though when you, when you do this stuff, as I'm sitting there, I do my outline first and then take that and put it on the PowerPoint and you're typing it up and then something looks really good and then you get in here and it's later that you say how did I miss that?

So, yes, born in Scotland only.

Okay, we'll start.

Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh.

Now, he was an anti-burger.

Presbyterian church had all these divisions within it.

That's right.

He only liked hot dogs.

He would not eat burgers.

These are also known as seceders.

Lots of divisions in the Presbyterian church, which wasn't even really that old, but they already had a bunch of divisions, and he chose the particular faction he was going to be associated with, and so that's what he was known as.

He eventually left Scotland, left his family in Scotland.

He didn't have enough money for everybody to go to America, so he went by himself, left the rest of the family in Scotland and came to America in 1807.

So very early in the history of our country he goes to Philadelphia and he presents his credentials as a minister to the Presbyterian church in Philadelphia and they appoint him as a minister in this Presbytery of Chartiers.

Where is that at?

Well, it's close to Pittsburgh, so he's probably a Steelers fan, I imagine.

So that's where he goes.

They say, okay, we'll use you, and they send him out to preach.

But he didn't fit in real well, because he had some ideas that the Presbyterian church frowned upon.

He had already developed through his education in Scotland.

He had been exposed to a lot of folks who were questioners, folks who didn't understand why the Protestant Reformation had ended up the way that it had, and so he was more accepting of people who were not exactly Presbyterians, if you will.

He was willing to accept people into his particular church who the Presbyterian church said we can't have fellowship with them.

Now, to us today, that doesn't mean a whole lot.

To them it meant a lot.

You couldn't take communion unless you were part of the church, just like the Catholic Church.

You're not going to take communion in the Catholic Church unless you're a Catholic in good standing.

The same is true of the Presbyterian Church or of a lot of the other denominations, fellowships.

They will not allow you to do that or do a lot of other stuff unless you are Presbyterian in good standing.

He didn't draw those lines.

He allowed people to come into his church and do stuff that the Presbyterian didn't like him to do.

So what's going to happen?

Do you think Trouble, trouble conflict?

Yes, there's going to happen.

Do you think Trouble, trouble conflict?

Yes, there's going to be trouble.

There's going to be conflict.

All right, now he developed this idea that all denominations, no matter what they called themselves, should enjoy fellowship with each other as Christians, not as Presbyterians, methodists, baptists, congregationalists, whatever he says, regardless of what denomination you're in, regardless of which confession of faith you subscribe to.

Now that again to us, we don't understand confession of faith.

Okay, each of these particular denominations had their own particular confession Meaning.

Here's basically, think of it as this is what our church believes, and if you want to join us, you've got to sign on to this.

Okay, and each of them took the gospel and put their own twist on it and said here's what we think.

And he said none of that matters, we should just be Christians.

That's the idea, right?

Becky and I have been talking about this back and forth.

So what?

Yeah, no, go ahead.

Yeah, what do you think that'll teach you to ask a question?

They were the truth.

Well, what do you think That'll teach you to ask a question?

I would say with almost 100% certainty.

They thought they had arrived.

Absolutely, they did.

Yes.

Why would you say this is the truth if you don't think this is the truth?

Right, this is it.

And the Baptists said we have the truth.

You Presbyterians got it all wrong.

And you Methodists got it all wrong.

And you Methodists got it all wrong.

And the Methodists said oh, no, no, no, no.

You backsliding Baptists got it all wrong, right, you backsliding black sheep Baptists, you got it all wrong.

They all had their own particular confession and they all said if you want to join our particular group, then you have to say yes, we agree that that is, in fact, the truth.

This is the way it is.

Okay, he didn't believe that, which made it very difficult to continue as a Presbyterian, as you can imagine, right?

So what happened, do you think?

Well, what does it say?

They basically kicked him out.

That's a good way to put it.

They revoked his license.

They said no, you can't preach in our churches anymore.

He seceded from the yeah, it's true, he seceded from the seceders, which is a true statement, but he continued to preach.

He became an independent preacher.

Wherever he can find a pulpit to preach from, wherever he can find people who will listen, he's preaching, he continues to preach and he continues to preach this message that we ought to all just be Christians.

Okay, now remember we talked about this earlier and you might have wondered why we were even talking about it.

The two colonies in which you could have the most religious freedom were Rhode Island and Pennsylvania.

Right, you had free exercise of religion in both of those colonies, so naturally, people who wanted to exercise their freedom of religion would go to those colonies.

Pennsylvania had lots of folks with lots of different religious ideas, so when Thomas Campbell starts talking about this stuff, there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who say, hey, I like that.

They're already pretty independent people and at least partially free thinkers.

I'm not going to be constrained by what some particular denomination tells me to do.

And remember, where else are they?

Not just Pennsylvania, they're on the frontier in Pennsylvania, and we talked about this as well, which is why we talked about it.

You've got to make up your own stuff on the frontier, so they have a very fertile ground in which this movement can grow.

This is his son, alexander.

Ever heard of Alexander Campbell before?

This is his son.

He also went to college, trained in different languages.

I don't know if Alexander Campbell would classify as a genius, but this guy was extremely intelligent, very intelligent guy.

He knew how to do lots of stuff, lots of stuff, lots of stuff, was not afraid to try different things.

Very adventurous spirit and not just religious stuff, I mean, he liked to read all sorts of things.

He had an extensive library.

He was a guy who was very, very curious about the world and of an independent mind as well.

So after a relatively brief time, thomas got enough money together to bring his family over from Scotland.

This is a terrible story.

They get passage on a ship leaving Scotland and they had not been gone very long.

I mean, they had just set sail and there was a storm came up and the ship was wrecked on the coast.

Okay, now it's not like today, where you've got the Coast Guard right, the Red Cross shows up.

None of that happens.

You're on your own, the ship is wrecked, they lose most of their baggage, most of their possessions and they're shipwrecked on the coast in Scotland.

Okay, what are you going to do?

Well, fortunately, because of the friendships that Thomas and Alexander had developed in Scotland, they were able to find some folks who took them in.

Thomas begins teaching school, tutoring folks, some, actually some fairly well-to-do folks, and they stay there for a while till they can get enough money together to finally leave again.

What a tough.

We don't think about that much today, you know.

But we don't think about that much today, you know.

But people, back in the day they had pretty rough skin, you know.

They had a hard bark on them.

Life was tough and you either made it or you didn't.

So finally, everybody heads back to America.

That's where they're going to go and they're going to meet up with Thomas here, okay, so while they're separated, thomas is writing letters back and forth to his family very regularly.

Again, we don't do that today, do we?

When's the last time you wrote a letter to somebody, right?

You send texts, right, and that's what everybody does.

You either call them or text them.

Well, they didn't do that, obviously.

They wrote letters and he wrote constantly to his family and his family wrote back to him.

He had his doubts, as we just talked about.

He had his doubts about the Presbyterian church and what they believed and he had become, as we said.

He began to think we ought to just be Christians and forget about all this denominational stuff.

Well, interestingly, his son, alexander, had developed the same ideas independently of his dad, but he was afraid to say anything to his dad about it.

Okay, do you understand that?

I mean, what's dad's job?

He's a minister in the Presbyterian church.

Now you're the son and you're saying I'm not sure about this.

You don't want to disappoint the old man, do you, neil?

Would you do anything?

Would you write to your dad and say you know, I'm really starting to wonder about this whole restoring an old truck sort of thing.

I think this is a good idea.

Of course not, you wouldn't do that.

Finally, his dad, in one of the letters, started to talk about these doubts he was having, and Alexander wrote him back and said guess what, dad, I'm having the same ideas you're having.

You know, that's a load off my chest, right, so I know it's an interesting, interesting story.

So in 1808, so not long after, didn't take them long to get there, remember, thomas arrived in 1807.

In 1808, the family arrives as well and they join the dad in western Pennsylvania and they build a church building.

Remember, he's not in the Presbyterian church anymore, so they build their own building called Brush Run Church, not far from Washington, pa.

You guys have been to Washington, I'm sure, right, they got the outlet mall over there, right?

Washington Wild Things.

Julie and I go over there and watch them every so often.

You gotta go.

If you like baseball, go watch the Wild Things.

It's wild, best mascot in the business as far as I'm concerned.

And cheap tickets.

If you're over 55, which I am you can get in for five bucks, I think.

Is that right, julie?

Five bucks?

I don't know, she's standing by, I'm paying the bill, she's just standing by.

Any attention?

There's a picture, a painting, of the church at Brush Run.

Doesn't look like much, it's just a log building, right, remember we're?

Of the church at Brush Run.

Doesn't look like much, it's just a log building, right?

Remember, we're on the frontier, you know.

So this is what you got.

Now, those of you who complain it's too hot in here, too cold in here, try sitting in this church for a while.

Right, you know what?

One window maybe, maybe, yikes, it's the church at Brush Run.

Now, in 1809,.

So again, not long after he arrives there, not long after Alexander joins him, he forms what's called Thomas, forms what's called the Christian Association of Washington, and he issues a document called his Declaration and Address, in which he lays out what he believes about Christianity and he says we're going to be associated together solely on the basis of what the Bible says about Christianity no creeds, no confessions of faith, just the Bible.

That's it.

He thought that human creeds were A, because they're human, are fallible, right, and not nearly as good as the Bible.

And as he had seen very divisive between denominations, right, he had seen very divisive between denominations, right.

And again, I've got to give up those unfiltered Chesterfields.

My grandpa used to roll his own cigarettes, you know, in fact, I still have his cigarette roller at home.

I thought it was the coolest little thing.

You put the tobacco in, put the paper in and roll it up.

They still have them today, but they call them something else.

Anyways, I digress.

Where was I oh yes, divisiveness, we can't understand it.

Mark's back there going.

We don't understand this today so much.

But I mean, it was literal warfare between denominations Baptists, presbyterians, methodists, all these groups hated each other and within the groups they hated each other.

The seceder Presbyterians hated the non-seceders, the burghers hated the anti-burgers.

I mean, you talk about knock-down, drag-out fights In church.

Okay, these are supposed to be Christians, right?

Can't we all get along?

No, we can't.

And this is the sort of thing that Thomas Campbell hated.

He absolutely hated it.

He hated the hatred.

Haters are going to hate, but that don't mean you've got to hate with them.

This is a copy of his declaration and address, edition Deluxe.

So you know, it's got French lingo in there.

It's got to be really good, right?

Give it to your preacher, give it to your teacher.

This was a groundbreaking thing.

I don't know that anybody had ever done this before.

You can still get a copy of it if you want.

Notice $2 each prepaid.

We want you to have the truth, but we don't trust you that you'll actually pay us.

Send it first, right?

No COD here.

What was that?

Oh, wr, warren Centeno, obviously an erudite individual, right?

Just one of your relatives, maybe Gouverneur Warren's cousin or something, perhaps.

Okay, is there an example of something that they were not agreeing on, For example, yeah, like, from denomination to denomination, what were some of these things?

Oh, you name it.

One of the big ones, and one of the ones we're going to talk about here, was baptism, and particularly infant baptism was a huge divider, a huge divider, and the purpose of baptism was a huge divider, and who is able to be baptized was a huge divider, and we'll talk about this a little bit next week.

I'll give you a little preview here.

For example, the Baptists believed in full-body immersion, but they wouldn't baptize you until you had had a revealing event, a revealing experience that would tell you that you were among the elect.

Thomas Campbell said that's ridiculous.

No, absolutely not.

That's the whole thing too.

You had to go before a group of men in the particular Baptist church you wanted to join and explain to them what had happened to you, and they would decide whether that was a sufficient evidence.

If they didn't, they would say sorry, try again.

I'm not making this up.

I'm telling you this is what happened, and this is the sort of thing that drove people crazy Drove them nuts.

We're going to talk about Raccoon John Smith next week a little bit.

This is the thing that pushed him out of the Baptist church Because, no matter what he told them, they would always say, well, your experience is not good enough, what do you mean?

My experience is not good enough.

And he didn't.

Obviously he disagreed with them, but he began to then listen, I can't have fellowship with the people I want to have fellowship with.

What am I going to do?

Well, obviously he's attracted to somebody like the Campbells, right?

So we'll talk about that as well.

Alexander, powerful orator, this guy could talk Now.

Remember back then.

There's no microphone, right?

None of that stuff.

And a church building, like we saw a brush around.

The buildings were not very big.

On the frontier, Of necessity, they couldn't be very big.

They didn't have the materials.

He also didn't have any ability to ventilate them or light them like we do today.

So a lot of times when he's preaching and teaching, he's outdoors.

All right, now how far is your voice going to carry outdoors?

So, back in the day again, this is maybe Gene's time, I don't know.

Poor Gene, he's just.

I mean, he suffers through my slings and arrows very well.

These guys knew how to project their voice, you know, and they had a certain way.

They would stand a certain way and they would speak from their diaphragm and they would project their voice so that thousands of people could hear them.

You try doing that.

It's very tiring, but these guys would speak for hours, for hours, outdoors, blazing sun, rain, cold didn't matter.

They're out there speaking, and Alexander Campbell's very, very good at that.

The problem with being an independent is you don't have a lot of contacts.

So in order to help them with their structure, in order to help them with some of their contacts, they joined what was called the Redstone Baptist Association in 1813, and the Campbells became Baptists.

But there was an asterisk beside the Baptist thing, because they did not ascribe to all the Baptist theology.

They disagreed with some of it.

So they're sort of proto-Baptists, pseudo-baptists, quasi-baptists.

But now, because they have joined this Redstone Association, this Baptist Association, now we can go to their churches and we can preach our message of Christian unity from their pulpits.

Okay, interesting stuff.

Now this Brush Run Church did not ascribe to which is.

You know.

They say, okay, we're going to be part of this association, but we are not going to subscribe to this Philadelphia Confession of Faith.

We don't believe some of the stuff that you believe.

So we want to join your association, but we're not going to agree to this confession.

So what do you think happens in their church?

Of course, now you've got some people who say no, wait a minute.

And in the Redstone Association there are Baptists who say wait a minute, are you a Baptist or are you not a Baptist?

So again, division, division, division, division.

Lots of people are unhappy.

Now some of the Baptist leaders said hey, you're trying to start your own church.

That's what this is.

You want a new denomination.

That's what you're trying to do.

And they were labeled.

Now I think Johnny Powers told me that he had been called a.

Is that right, johnny?

He had been called a Campbellite before, right, a Campbellite, and that's what they called them.

Well, you people that adhere to what the Campbells say, you're Campbellites.

Here's an interesting question, just to get off topic why do we have to have a label for everything?

Isn't that an interesting question?

Why do you have to have a label for everything?

I have to know I'm right.

I have to know what I'm getting right.

I have to know that I'm.

Do you remember back?

I think this was in the maybe the late 70s, early 80s, when they had the generic products.

Do you remember those?

Remember those?

Okay.

So those of you who are not old enough to remember okay, kirk, are you old enough?

Probably not, you would have.

You would go to the grocery store and there would be a white bag with black letters that said potato chips.

Right, you remember that?

Okay, now, my family was always looking to save a buck, okay, so we bought a lot of this generic stuff.

All it says is potato.

I don't know what kind of potato chips they are, I don't know how good they are.

I just I said it says potato chips.

Now, at least, when you say Lay's potato chips, I have an idea what that is right.

If you say Kahn's potato chips, I have an idea.

Herr's, whatever, I have an idea.

This just says potato chips.

I don't know what that means.

So do?

We had a family of cheapskates.

So we, yes, potato chips is good enough for us.

So we label stuff.

Right, we label everything.

People are very uncomfortable if they say what are you?

And you say I'm a Christian.

Well, they want to know what.

What kind of Christian are you?

Right, well, can't I just be a Christian?

Well, no, my dad ran into this when he was in the army.

Now, my dad was a, I guess his family, they would go.

I mean, they were the Easter Christmas Christians.

You know they would show up every so often at the church down the street, you know.

So when he went in the army, you had to choose right.

When they were filling out your forms they had to choose Jewish Christian, no, jewish, protestant, catholic right, is that correct?

J, p or C?

And they're like well, what right Is that correct?

J, p or C?

And they're like well, what are you, my dad's like?

I don't know.

Well, you've got to be one of these.

Well, I know I'm not Jewish, I know I'm not Catholic, so I guess I'm Protestant.

They had to put a label on you.

People were very, very uncomfortable with somebody saying I'm just going to be a Christian.

So they had to label them.

They labeled them Campbellites because that told them something about them, I guess.

So Thomas and Alexander said no, we're not trying to establish a new denomination.

What we're trying to restore.

This is their term primitive Christianity.

Now, that makes it sound like we're all gonna be cavemen.

Right, you walk into church, you put your loin cloth on and get your gates your club right, grab your wife by the hair and drag her down the aisle.

Oh, my Primitive Christianity.

And they said we want to unite everybody under the banner of Christians.

That's all we want, what they meant in our terms.

Today, what you would hear is first century Christians.

That's what we want to be like when they started.

That's what day one Christians right after day of Pentecost.

That's what we want to be.

That's the kind of Christians we want to be.

That was the idea.

Okay, alexander kind of gradually eclipses his dad and becomes kind of the leader of this primitive Christianity movement.

And this is mostly western Pennsylvania.

This is where their influence is Western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio and the Virginia, not West Virginia, yet the Virginia, which is this area here.

That's where they are Now.

Alexander starts a periodical, a magazine, if you will, called the Christian Baptist, publishes it for about seven or eight years and he explains what he believes in this journal, widely read among the Baptist community, widely read among the Restoration community, very influential.

It is read even into Kentucky and Tennessee.

Some of the folks in this movement we'll talk about next week, such as Barton W Stone, these guys they read this stuff and they say, wow, I mean, we don't understand this today so much.

They read this magazine and just knocked their socks off assuming they're wearing socks or shoes, you know just it.

Just Campbell had the ability to put into words the things they were struggling with and they would say this is what I think.

I never knew how to say it before, but this guy says exactly what I think.

It was incredible, it was revolutionary, and this is an example of what sort of things he would have.

In the Christian Baptist, they were big on debates.

Okay, he would.

Campbell was a master.

He would get up on the stump and he would have people ask him questions and he would debate them.

He would have denominational preachers come and they would have debates about all sorts of stuff.

This was a particular debate here that they had him and this guy, the Reverend WL McCalla.

They had a debate about baptism.

As I said, this is the great divider among these groups.

They had a debate about baptism and each guy got to publish the minutes or the transcript of the debate and add their own particular commentary to it.

So each of them did that.

People ate this stuff up.

They loved reading this stuff.

They loved reading about these debates because it crystallized for them the answers to some of the questions that they had always had Fantastic stuff.

This is like reading your first blog post, you know.

It's like this is incredible.

I've never seen anything like this before.

Do you remember the first time you saw the internet?

I do.

It was like this is incredible.

I mean, I can click a button and I can see stuff.

And this is like look at this, watch, watch, I'll click this button, look at that stuff.

Come up there, isn't that cool?

That's what this was like.

Yes, yes, that is.

We'll talk about this maybe later too.

That's where the Campbell's ended up, was in Bethany.

He founded the college there, bethany College.

That was the Campbell's Still there and you can visit his house.

He couldn't find okay, he's on the frontier.

He couldn't find anybody to print his journal, so he became a printer.

Find, okay, he's on the frontier.

He couldn't find anybody to print his journal, so he became a printer.

He learned, he taught himself how to print, got his own machines, hired a guy to do it for him Once he got it all set up, I mean, just inventive guy.

Alright, now 1830, he says I'm going to change this journal.

I'm going to stop calling it the Christian Baptist, because that's too narrow.

I'm going to change this journal.

I'm going to stop calling it the Christian Baptist because that's too narrow.

I'm going to call it the Millennial Harbinger.

How about that?

That'd sell like hot cakes today, wouldn't it Now?

At that time, talk of the millennium, of the coming of Jesus, was all over the place.

These people were convinced Jesus is coming like tomorrow, and they talked about it constantly.

So he names his journal the Millennial Harbinger and it reaches a much wider audience than just Baptist.

Lots of other people start reading it too.

Here's a copy of what it would look like.

This is the first copy.

Monthly publication you get it in the mail.

Campbell has decided this is Alexander.

He has decided I'm going to leave the Baptists Because their views and mine do not.

We just do not match.

I want to get some independent churches that will be dedicated solely to being biblical Christians.

That's what this whole idea was about.

I want people to leave, whatever the denomination they're in, and let's just be Christians.

So this journal here, a little bit different than the one he had before, because he tries to de-emphasize some of the differences between believers and tries to emphasize what we have in common.

Where's Mark at?

Is he in here?

Okay, he went outside.

Thank you, april.

Glad somebody's keeping an eye on him for me.

And Mark says when he talks to folks with different beliefs he tries to emphasize here's what we have in common.

We're not that far apart.

There are things that we believe differently, but here's what we have in common and that's what Campbell tried to do.

But he did say there are certain doctrinal points on which we have to be in agreement.

There's some things we can disagree about, but there are some things that I think we have to absolutely be in agreement with.

Chief among them was and we just talked about this was baptism for the remission of sins, and he also.

I'm going to run out of time, it's okay, we'll pick this up next week.

We talked last week about some of these the first great awakening and the second great awakening.

Remember we talked about those and the emotional response people had to the message I told you they would roll on the ground, they'd foam at the mouth, they'd bark like dogs, they would do all sorts of stuff Swooning and feigning and laying for hours in the sun.

That repelled the Campbells.

They were revolted by that.

The Campbell's were very much men of the age of reason.

Okay, they were very much of the age of.

They rejected the emotional response to the gospel and said you can look at the gospel and come to a reasonable conclusion that I am lost and must be saved.

Okay, that's why when you come into a church of Christ, anywhere, you're going to see very little emotion and lots of preaching.

That is the centerpiece of what we do.

It goes back to this and lots of preaching.

That is the centerpiece of what we do.

It goes back to this.

They wanted to get as far away from that second great awakening, emotional response to the gospel as possible.

They believe that instead, your reason, your intellect, should rule your decision to become a Christian.

We're not gonna try to get you emotionally to respond.

We want you rationally to respond.

Does that make sense?

That's why you see what you see today.

We don't even recognize it, but that's what it goes back to Very little emotionalism, very little In fact.

You would say in many congregations cold, clammy, not very friendly.

What's that?

Dry as dirt?

Well, there's not much dry dirt.

Where I am today, I'll tell you that.

Lots of wet mud.

In fact, I got to mow my yard today.

That's going to be an interesting thing to do, since it's under three feet of water, but I digress.

I digress.

Does that make sense?

Did you ever know that before you ever thought of that?

That's exactly why we want to get away from the emotionalism.

Let's just be rational and reasonable about what we believe Absolutely.

Barton W Stone, who was in Kentucky, saw this stuff.

John Smith, who was a lay Baptist preacher, who became an important person in the movement.

Many, many others.

I'm not going to talk about everybody involved in this restoration movement because there are so many of them.

We just get bogged down and I'm going to skip some important people as well.

But I just want to try to focus on the folks that are most important to us here, and these are.

They're searching the scriptures, trying to find the truth, and they start reading this stuff that Campbell is writing and they say, wow, this is what I'm looking for.

Okay, this is what I'm looking for.

All right, so let's go through some points to ponder.

Here, tommy's, not here, tommy's the points to ponder, guy, and I do wanna talk about these in some depth later, but I'm just gonna set this out for you so you can think about it, ruminate on it, chew on it.

Do you even know what burgers and anti-burgers are?

Well, ross told us what.

They were right they reject hamburgers.

Or seceding Presbyterians.

Do you know what the seceding Presbyterians were seceding from?

Do you have any idea?

Does it matter?

Do you know what factions the Presbyterians were splitting into?

Does any of that matter to you matter?

Do you know what factions the Presbyterians were splitting into?

Does any of that matter to you?

What does that tell you about some of what we think are the burning issues in the church today?

Does it give you some perspective?

Maybe you know, sometimes the things that we are so worked up about, so angry about, so willing to go to the mat about, are stuff that literally, in a few years, don't even matter.

But I'll split the church over it, doggone it, because I've got to be right.

Here's an interesting question why didn't the Campbells implement their primitive Christianity ideas in Scotland?

They're Scottish, they're not American.

Why didn't they primitive Christianity ideas in Scotland?

They're Scottish, they're not American.

Why didn't they just do it in Scotland, coming to America or coming to Pennsylvania in particular?

How did that affect their religious thought?

How about being on the frontier?

How did that affect what they did?

You know.

If they hadn't been there at that particular time, when people were open to hearing this stuff, none of this would have ever happened.

What's that?

Tell you about God's providence.

You know what providence is?

Town in Rhode Island?

No Providence being the way God works, through circumstances, situations, he puts you in a spot and says, okay, what are you going to do?

He allows you to go somewhere, them to Pennsylvania, and they've got this vista there.

They've got this opportunity to do some stuff they never would have been able to do anywhere else.

And their ideas changed from the time that they came to America to the time that they died in the 1860s.

Their ideas changed about a lot of things.

So here's a question Were their early ideas wrong?

Were their later ideas right or more right?

And how right do you have to be?

And on what subjects do you have to be right?

And how right do you have to be and on what subjects do you have to be right?

You ever thought about that stuff?

Do our ideas about what it means to be a Christian change over time?

If they do, why?

And if they don't, why not?

Why not Think about those things?

Dennis Hopper says why?

And if they don't, why not Think about those things?

Dennis Hopper says adios, amoebas, think about that stuff.

We'll talk about it maybe some next week.

Because there are not good answers to some of those things.

There are some very uncomfortable answers to some of those things, which is why I think I, and probably you as well, kind of bury them and don't like to talk about them.

All right, we'll pick it up from there next week.

I want to talk about Martin W Stone and Raccoon John Smith next week and maybe talk about these questions.

Okay, you've been a very good class.

I thank you for your attention, adios.