The Restoration of the Headship of Christ in Church Meetings

Well then, there came, of course, you know, under Martin Luther, a real recovery of salvation. Justification by faith. That a man becomes saved, justified in the eyes of God, not by what he does, but by his faith in Christ. Well, brothers, that hit like fire all over that land. But Martin Luther dropped the priestly robe… no, that’s not true; he dropped celibacy. And all the priests were getting married by the thousands. The idols were torn down. But again, brothers, it’s in your bloodstream, and some things you do without ever even thinking about. The idea of tearing down the buildings never occurred to them. It would have been a marvelous idea. The idea of there being no difference between the priest and the others never occurred to them. They kept their robes, but they dropped the pageantry, and instead of the cup and the bread being central, the pulpit became central. The proclamation of the Scripture, not the Word of God, became central, but the ritual was retained, and the people sat in the audience, reading, praying, and following prayer books and forms.

At the same time this took place, beginning in Switzerland and spreading throughout Europe, other people were much more primitive and much simpler, who were going further. Do you know what they were called? Does anybody? Yeah, anybody who went back and said, “Nobody had a right to baptize me when I was an infant. I am now baptized because I personally confess Christ,” they were called re-baptizers. Those who rebaptized themselves or were rebaptized. And that word became the Ana…over again…the Anabaptists.

Now, they were not Baptists. Anything in the world that was not a Lutheran or a Calvinist or a Catholic and rebaptized itself got the brand “Anabaptist.” The principles that you saw in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 took over. Those people just barely got started. There had been no clear enunciation from them. There is just no clarity, even to this day, among historians about what they believed and what they did, because they were spread everywhere and believed different things and did different things. But it was primitive, and it was simple, and where it would have ended, oh, we’ll never know. But some of them, in a place called Munster, got off on signs and wonders, and it got so horrible and so wild that Luther denounced them and Calvin denounced them. Everybody else denounced them. Zwingli denounced them, the Catholics denounced them, and for the next 150 years, they were methodically annihilated.

When I lived in Europe, I was a student of history. I read some of the old records on this stuff and visited many of the places. There was a record that in one city in Amsterdam, a man wrote that on every tree, the body of an Anabaptist was nailed on every tree in that town in Amsterdam. In Holland alone, it is said, I believe, that a quarter of a million people were murdered, methodically annihilated. Well, a few remained; they came up in sprouts, in different ways, but they were so put down and so subjugated that the real blossoming of that was never seen. Then there came the Puritanists and the Separatists and all the others, but this was not the main line of the Lord’s work. The Lord’s work is always a hidden work.

Madame Guyon began to bring in her writings the idea that a person could directly and personally touch the Lord. Brother Lawrence said that all day long, he could fellowship with the Lord in unbroken fellowship. Little writings along the way.

I think we owe a little to the Quakers for the stand they took on what they called enlightenment. The Brethren, the great advance came under the brothers, The Brethren. They have since been called the Plymouth Brethren because they started in Plymouth. There was a group of, believe it or not, Church of England priests who began meeting for the Lord’s Supper together. They had disregarded their robes, and they began to fellowship around the Scripture.

John Darby came among them and began meeting with them, and out of the Plymouth Brethren, there came a clear, clear, clear recovery of what the New Testament church really was. They saw so much; I don’t want to go into what they saw, but when they came to the idea of the meeting, this is what they said. Some said, “It’s open.” Others said, “It’s under the elders.” Now, that is taken from a passage of Scripture, as best I can understand it, in Acts 20, which says Paul is speaking only to the elders. He said, “Many wolves will come in here in Ephesus and will try to lead you away and will lead away the flock, so take heed to protect yourselves from this and “feed” the flock. He was speaking to the elders. Brothers. If you have checked any better translation, you know that the word is “shepherd”, and there is a world of difference between shepherding and feeding.

In 1 Timothy, Paul is telling Timothy how to recognize an elder the Holy Spirit has raised up. Not how to raise up an elder, but how to recognize an elder the Holy Spirit has raised up. And he said, you will recognize an elder because he can rule his house. For how shall a man, who cannot rule his house, care for the house of God? It does not say, he who can rule his house rules the church of God. It says, “care for.” There is no question that the elder is, in the geographical, local meeting, assembly, church, he is the highest…you might say office…but there is no office. Brothers, it is not an office. It’s a living position. It is not an office. Those who are shepherds, those who go to the home and anoint the head with oil and pray for the sick, undoubtedly hold a great position in the church.

The Brethren said, according to 1 Corinthians, two or three should prophesy. Therefore, the Brethren ended up having meetings in which the people sang, prayed, and testified, but the elders got up and did the prophecy. Brothers and sisters, as far as I know, there is not a single place in Scripture where elders have anything to do with the meeting of the Lord’s people. I have never been able to find it. Never. Never. I think it’s so wonderful that when Paul commends the church in Corinth, he says, “I thank God that you follow the precepts.” At that time, they were the biggest mess on earth. I don’t think you can have any idea how messed up the church in Corinth was.

Did you know that the church in Corinth had people in it who did not believe that Jesus Christ rose from the grave? Did you know that there were people in it committing immorality? Did you know that there were people in it who were getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper? Did you know that there were people in it who were divisive? And then, I think that they must have been the noisiest people on earth. But it was still one church.

The brethren said, “The elders lead the meeting,” but in 1 Corinthians, never once is the word elder used. Never once did Paul say, “I blow the whistle, and the elders take over the meeting. He spoke to the whole church. There was one thing the Plymouth Brethren did not have. They did not have a clear understanding of deep spiritual matters. They had such a profound understanding of the Bible that they literally chopped one another to pieces with it. But they knew the scripture. I don’t think there’s ever been a people who understood the scriptures as the Brethren did. But they had no deep experience of the Lord; it was all a mental understanding. Now then, that matter of the Brethren and the eldership has stuck so hard in the restoration; it has really stuck so hard that the elders should be in charge of the meeting.

Well, I praise the Lord that in this century, through Jesse Penn-Lewis and Mrs. MacDonald, and through T. Austin Sparks and Brother Watchman Nee, there has come a real recovery of Christ as Life and living by the Lord, touching Him and knowing Him. Now we have come back to this hour. There has been a real understanding of Christ as Life. But we are plagued by the problem of Corinth. When the church is left to experience the Lord, problems begin to develop out of the freedom, and crazy things start happening; someone has invariably blown the whistle and reverted to elders leading the meeting. That’s where we stand; we stand in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. Tonight we stand in 1 Corinthians 11.