MYTHS OF THE RESTORATION MOVEMENT (2)
By W. Carl Ketcherside

One definition of the word myth has always intrigued me. A myth is “a legend embodying the convictions of a people as to their own origin and early history and the heroes connected with it.” And since I am writing about myths of the restoration movement I might as well begin with the biggest one first. It would be a tragedy to get equipped to go out and hunt whales and end up seining minnows. But let me first clear away a little matter which might leave a false impression.

I am speaking about the restoration movement as if it were the only one ever hatched out in the fertile minds of men. Actually I should be speaking of a restoration movement. As any student of church history knows there have always been such movements from the third century on. Our own is but one of sixteen which were launched in the fifty years immediately following the American Revolution. Many of the others were German or Dutch in their origin. Ours was the only one of Scotch-Irish descent, which may have something to do with its popularity with us. We do not speak German. Some of them still survive; others have expired. All of them had as their goal the unity of all Christians by a return to the apostolic pattern for the church. And all of them had two other things in common. They all exploded into fragments and splinters and they all spoke of their own as the restoration movement.

Each movement was composed of those who thought that the blueprint for it originated in heaven. I well remember some of our old-time brethren who were high on prophecy. They would lecture on the Book of Revelation so graphically that your hair stood up like you had stuck your finger in an electric socket, and you were afraid to walk home from the meeting in the dark. If someone had yelled “Boo!” at you, you’d have been running yet. They always located the restoration movement in Revelation 14:6. It came after the origin of the Protestant sects. John said: I saw an angel fly in the midst of the heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth.” At first some of them designated Thomas Campbell as the angel until they found out that he dipped snuff all of his life. He quickly fell from heaven.

When I learned that all groups who thought they were the subject of divine prophecy—including the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Seventh Day Adventists—had their own angels, I wanted to sue them for fraud and for obtaining money under false pretense. Gradually, I came to see that all are caught in the same trap. That does not mean that all are equal in credibility. I am not talking about credibility. But it does mean that every movement started by men follow the same human tendency of reading that movement back into the sacred volume. But there has never been an indication that God is as interested in any movement as those who join it and become zealots for it.

As I view it, the greatest error in our history (and there have been three of major proportions), is the brainwashing of ourselves into believing that a movement which began in the early nineteenth century was suddenly and miraculously transmuted into the kingdom of heaven, to the utter exclusion of every other sincere believer in Jesus Christ who was not a member of such a movement. This did a number of things which severed us completely from thoughtful people who could not buy our thinking. Let us look at a few of them.

It wiped out seventeen hundred years of struggle as of no consequence at all. It negated other attempts at restoration which literally cost the lives of thousands of persons. Actually, it is questionable whether some members of “The Church of Christ” believe anyone was saved from the death of John the apostle to the birth of Thomas Campbell. I am thinking just now of Peter de Bruys of Provence, of whom it was said, “He made the most laudable attempts to reform the abuses and to remove the superstitions that disfigured the beautiful simplicity of the gospel.” That was in 1110. After preaching such reform for 20 years he was burnt at the stake at St. Giles’s in 1130.

Incidentally some of the things he urged upon his followers were: 1. That no persons whatever be baptized before they were come to the full use of their reason. 2. That it was an idle superstition to build churches for the service of God, who will accept of a sincere worship wherever it is offered. 3. That the crucifixes used as instruments of superstition deserved to be pulled down and destroyed. 4. That the real body and blood of Christ were not exhibited in the eucharist; but were merely represented in that holy ordinance, by their figures and symbols. 5. And lastly, that the oblations, prayers, and good works of the living, could be in no respect advantageous to the dead.

I call that pretty good thinking for one who preceded Martin Luther by 400 years and Thomas Campbell by 800 years, and who never attended one of our Christian colleges. I look forward to meeting Peter de Bruys in heaven along with a host of others such as Huss, Latimer, Ridley, and a whole catalog of those courageous souls who qualified for inclusion in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I think Jesus meant what he said when he declared, “He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” I will count myself honored to stand among those who watched their flesh shrivel to a blackened cinder because of their supreme faith in him. That is, if I make it!

Alexander Campbell wrote in 1837: “If there be no Christians among the Protestant sects, there are certainly none among the Romanists, none among the Jews, Turks, Pagans, and therefore no Christians in the world except ourselves, or such of us as keep, or strive to keep, all of the commandments of Jesus. Therefore, for many centuries there has been no church of Christ, no Christians in the world; and the promises concerning the everlasting kingdom of Messiah have failed; and the gates of hell have prevailed against his church. This cannot be; and therefore there are Christians among the sects.” I concur with this. We have confused “THE CHURCH OF CHRIST” with the body of Christ, the family of God. This is the very essence of sectarianism. If not, why not?

We know when the restoration movement began. We know who began it. And we know why it was begun. It is too young to be the church which Jesus built and too old to be the sect it has become. We have tried to make it identical with the church by resorting to childish and inane subterfuges. One of the most absurd and asinine is the chiseling on the cornerstones of modern church buildings, which were themselves unknown to the new covenant scriptures—Established 33 A.D. We have fooled no one but ourselves. Some of our religious neighbors have gnashed their teeth while others have laughed up their sleeves at such puerile effrontery.

In doing this we have not been thinking of the organism given life of the Spirit and set in motion upon the day of Pentecost. There is no proof of the fact that God ever started anything like we build upon such cornerstones. But we have sought to distinguish ourselves from every other believer in the neighborhood, all of which we conclude started later than we did. We have a direct chain leading back to the beginning, others have shorter chains tying them to some event in history which originated them. It is a travesty upon God’s blessed word to see the words engraved upon three cornerstones in the same town, where the members built upon those cornerstones have nothing to do with each other, and will not even speak to one another when they meet in the post office.

Do we not tend to confuse the world by such tactics? Do we not leave them thinking that Christ is divided? We send missionaries into towns where the good news has been preached for a century and the first thing they do is to call together a dozen people who share in their peculiarities and place upon the cornerstone where they meet—Established 33 A.D. As one old brother said, “What they represent may have been started then but this place was established last March after a big row in the Baptist Church.”