The Restoration of the Church: Why God’s Work Is Harder Now Than Ever (Part 1)

The restoration of the church. There’s no greater privilege we will ever have than that of being part of the restoration of the church. Restoration began in the Old Testament with the destruction of and the rebuilding of the temple. Then, when the day of Acts had come, the apostles came together to speak about the restoration of no less than the kingdom of God. We have had the beginning. We had the Reformation, which was actually a complete failure. We are now faced with a restoration in a day that is not conducive to restoration. Yet, restoration is, without question, more difficult than even the beginnings and more difficult than the reformation itself. Yet what a fate, what a purpose.

The end of the first-century church can be marked around 313 with the rise of the Roman emperor Constantine. Everything since then has moved further away from what had once been, but along the way, there have been those Christians who are in the footnotes of church history, and in every one of them, we see a pattern. A rise to restore, a laying hold of things never known in the institutional church, and then, after no more than a generation or two, the loss of all that was gained. Yet they left us… without exception… they left us such a legacy.

The first question I ever asked of a man who had left the institutional church in his youth was now an older man. I asked, “What good is there to restore when you know in a generation or two it will be lost?” And he answered, “You are responsible for the generation in which you live. Faithfulness to God in the generation you presently live.” I’ve never had a question since that time. Furthermore, just because restoration has never been restored for a long period of time does not mean it’s not possible. With every generation that has stood to say that what we have is not proper, and this was the way it was in the beginning; every one of those had to fight the surrounding mindset that they were in and face the enemies who are so determined to make sure they don’t rise, and if they do, not last very long. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. It’s a lack of imagination and of faith to look back on those stalwart Christians before us who tried so hard, yet we haven’t even begun to move toward a restoration even similar to what God had in His church in the beginning. Yes, there is still, regardless of what darkness or what horizon seems to never allow us a new sun to rise. Restore. Restore. Restore is the heart cry of every one of the faithful of God. In every generation, we get a little bit clearer about just how vast the task before us is.

I live in a nation that was actually born after the Reformation. There’s no record of us burning people at the stake. There are no dungeons. There are no great vilifications of any work that has been raised up in my country, America. The Europeans have the castles, the dungeons, and the history of the dissidents and radicals. We have had none of this. We have had the blessing and the curse of freedom of religion. That does not mean that this nation must forever remain void of the history of those who came before us. Nor does it mean there are not enough hearts to stand up today. Having seen the revelation of Jesus Christ, hearing their hearts cry, restore, restore.

One of our simplest problems is that we look around at what we see everywhere and assume that there have been men who have at least thought through how we arrived at the place we are. With the silence and unthought-of assumption that there must be at least some things that we’re doing today that men pondered over and sought to bring back that were of the first century. That’s pretty well where our non-thought is. The truth of the matter is, despite our devotion to Christ, despite our songs, our heroic efforts, what we are doing right now is we are living in a pond that has nothing to do with the great ocean that came before us. These are the things that we will and must awaken in the hearts of God’s people. What we have here today is not only far afield, but in a totally different field than the first motions, first days, the first century.

Another misgiving is that those people who were in the first centuries and those who were into restoration throughout the generations thereafter were somehow made out of a better stuff than we are. It makes for good negative preaching, but it is not true. We’re no better. We’re no worse. We have luxury. Those are people who left their luxuries. We have an easy life. There were many who had an easy life, but they gave it up. These are not matters of surroundings; these are matters of the heart. There have been, and always will be, those who, having seen something in a far distant vision, rise up out of the unction of the Holy Spirit and the devotions they have for Christ to join in that lineage of those who dare.

Look at the church today. We walk into a beautiful edifice. We see a stained-glass window, a pew, a pulpit, an oratorical platform, and we certainly see an oratorical demonstration. We have seminaries. We have almost completely lost church history on this continent. And there is something else. The Christianity that we hear from the pulpit has nothing in its thought of a corporate pursuit of Christ. It is always you, the individual. This is what you’re supposed to do. No thought of putting the work that a man has to the absolute and total ultimate acid test: community. Community is not tried in my world except for those who have tried it in extreme legalism, and there is no ministry today within the institutional church that could possibly survive the community unless it employs legalism. But that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.

Church history can be written, and the world can read what used to be and those who fought for a return to first-century principles. Those books had not been written, and they have certainly never been written by men outside the institutional church. Something can replace the everlasting oratorical sermon. There are better ideas and better ways to sing than with a choir. A mute congregation can be enlivened to share and share and share, and continue to share, once they have a vision of Christ and practical handles to touch Him. Seminaries can be exposed, and they can be replaced. Men will have to deal with that which ought to be, used to be, and the horrific evolution of the history of how the seminary came to be, where men will either have to compromise their conscience, or find a higher, better way, as revealed in scripture.

Community is the nightmare of every man and people who’ve ever tried it outside of legalism, but that doesn’t mean that if they had it in the first century, we cannot have it again. Not only is community possible, but it can also be lived out in freedom. But oh, there must be someone present who has known it before to help guide God’s people through both… in the words of Dante, the fearsome forest. Men who are born and raised in the freedom that can be in community can guide us through passages of both the problems and the glory of knowing one another as believers, close and personal. I say again, the institutional church is not fit for this. It has no armor for such dealings. It will either revert to legalism or crumble. That is because it lacks a spiritual basis or any practical understanding and application of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is possible to have community and have joy, and yes, it will be broken from time to time with disunity.

There is nothing clearer than this very fact revealed to us in the New Testament when we look at it from one end to the other. When we see the beginnings to the end of chronology, as the story moves from year to year, that’s part of the drama. That’s part of the story. It’s part of the heartache. It’s also part of the faith in God and the joy when He sees us through. There are some things that they had in the first century going for them that none of us have today. I think, above and beyond all else, they had no options. Somewhere, it has been said that you cannot get anywhere until all options have been removed. It is hard for a Christian today to think in terms of having no option. I will come here among you, and if I don’t like it, I will leave.

In the first century, there was one church in one city. The name of that church was named after that city. The church in Corinth, the church in Ephesus, the church in Jerusalem, the churches in Galatia, and the church in Antioch. One church, no place to go. Traveling mostly was contained within 10 miles of where a man or woman was born. This can be narrowed down when you become a Christian who has separated himself from the traditions and the practices of the institutional church, which are so far afield as I said, they’re not even in the same field. You are coming down to a small world where your options are extremely few, if not nonexistent. So we create a revelation, an environment in which God’s people throughout this country and any world at any place in any world can at least know that there is such a thing as a people who have left, separated themselves, and are only the greatest pilgrimage of them all, Christians out to see an advancement in the restoration work of God.