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Post Restorationism?By James Baird |
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Thousands of us have believed the most biblical, common-sense approach to Christianity is restoration, i.e. a current restoration of the church as revealed from the mind of God in the New Testament. However, we are now facing charges which can best be labeled "post-restorationism." The salvos come from a wide variety of sources and include: (1) The hermeneutics of restoration is fundamentally flawed. (2) Restoration is too divisive, separating the church from the denominational world in an ecumenically minded age. (3) Restoration is much too simplistic, not leading to serious scholarship. (4) Restoration is too provincial, lacking the internal machinery for world-wide evangelism or the training of preachers. (5) Restoration originally spoke to the religious culture of its day, but history brings change and today restoration is no longer the best ideal. It is time to change. Post-restorationism has some appeal but should be whole-heartedly rejected. When we buy into it, we turn our backs on certain convictions which are fundamental including the following: (1) The Bible is a complete and authoritative revelation of the will of God. (2) The reality of the church has existed in the mind of God from all eternity (Eph. 3:10). He purposed that the church be the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), make known his wisdom (Eph. 3:10), and bring glory to him (Eph. 3:21). (3) The New Testament reveals terms of entrance into the church, its work, worship, organization and the Christ-like life God desires his people to live. (4) By following the Bible's teaching the church which God purposed can exist today. These convictions are a package. As the history of the Disciples' Movement clearly proves, to reject one, in principle, leads to a rejection of all. Weighed in the light of the consequences, the price of post-restorationism is much too great. To quote Benjamin Franklin, "We will have paid too much for the whistle."
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