Good, the bad, and the ugly. Lots of ugly, right? I mean, we think of the, and we'll talk about this later on in the class, is what is the mandate for the church? What is the church's calling? What's the nature of the church? And the nature of the church is what we'll talk about a little bit later, is part of the essence of the church is its oneness. that it is one church. Christ only has one body. So we run into trouble as we look at church history and we see so much division, right? And we rightfully weep, groan, and complaining will do no good but may in the end invoke God's judgment on us, so let's not do that. But there is, it's good to be disturbed by what we see as we look at the church and its history and the fact that we are always failing to manifest what we are. And that's the, there's the nature of the problem. It isn't that, you know, as you can look at this, that this means that the church of Jesus Christ isn't one. Christ can't, Paul says this, Christ cannot be divided. So, you know, one of the, I had a seminary professor who would say, when we confess the Nicene Creed or the Apostles' Creed, and we confess that we believe in one, holy, apostolic church, that's the hardest part of the creed to confess. Because our experience of the church isn't that, that it's one church and a holy church. But it can't be otherwise if it belongs to Christ. Christ is one. His body is one. And so what we're talking about is our difficulty with experiencing the truth that the body of Christ is one, but yet there's so much of this, right? And often what has happened as the church has thought about this in recent generations, I think is to conclude that labels, these are labels, right? What is that word? Oh, that's an H. That the labels are an evidence of the disunity, but if we took all the labels away, and there were no labels, right, it wouldn't fix the problem. I mean, and part of the way that the church has thought about this in recent generations is that it's denominations themselves that are the source of the disunity. I would submit to you that that's faulty, that's not correct. There's another, and the reason I think that we need to say that out loud is because if denominations are the problem, then what's the solution to abandoned denominations? Okay, well, we'll talk about the problem of doing that in a little bit. There's a bigger problem created by doing that. The problem is actually amplified by doing that. It's made worse. So if I would submit to you, and part of what I hope to do here is to show you that it's really not denominations in and of themselves that are the problem. The problem lies somewhere else. And then once we identify the problem, maybe we'll find a better solution, a solution that actually might tend in a good direction. Now, first of all, what is a denomination? Anybody, what do you think? What's a denomination? It's a name. To denominate something, it comes from the Latin word, the Latin verb that means to name. So, the idea of a denomination comes from what we're looking on the board here. There's groups of people that call themselves Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Roman Catholics. We could add Eastern Orthodox. We'll talk more about this as the class goes on. So, it's when we start talking about the church in terms of names that we get the concept of denomination, okay? But it's not just to, if that's all the denomination was, then again, the problem would be easy to solve. We would just say, quit doing that. Just rub the name out. Oh, we just erased denominations, they don't exist anymore. The church is one all of a sudden. No, okay, that's not gonna do it. What we are, what is graphically represented for you up here right now is the way the church organized, it was organized, outwardly speaking, institutionally speaking, as the nation of the United States of America was forming. And what we see is that, you know, did somebody add that up? Anybody that's excellent at math over here? Math, math key? You can do that real quick and tell us. This gets really close to 100%, right? This is pretty close. I see someone is going to add it up for us. There are other groups in here, like we could put the Quakers in here. We know they settled in Pennsylvania prior to 1776. They settled in Pennsylvania in the 1600s. It's just that they're at a number less than 1%, okay? That's a less than sign. Less than 1%. And so are the other groups that could be mentioned here. Apart from the Roman Catholics, what we're looking at though... All of these denominations here are positioning themselves particularly against the Roman Catholic Church, right? And against the Quaker Church, which is of a different tradition known as the Anabaptist Movement. We're not gonna talk about that. But what we are looking at here, this by the way is found in Mark Knoll's excellent book, The Church in the United States of America, in the United States and North America. It's a big, thick book that describes historically the development of the church from the founding of the United States of America. And this chart comes from his book. One of the things I would say about this chart is that it's far more complex than it looks just by, okay, these people didn't like these people, or they couldn't get along, or these people couldn't get along with those people, and so they couldn't, bring about an organic unity. I'm gonna use that word frequently, probably, organic unity. And what I mean by that is a, that coming together as one body to be, to bring about an organic unity. manifesting to the world the oneness that we have as the church. Again, you gotta keep that in your mind. The church can't be divided. So we can position ourselves as separated from one body to the next, but even if we do do that, we should do it recognizing that we're still one body of Christ. And these churches, I would submit to you, are doing that. In 1776, these churches are not hostile to one another in the same way that we'd say, you know, are the Presbyterians hostile to the Baptists? No. I mean, we have disagreements. There isn't a hostility here, there is, an inability to be organically united as an institution before the world. And there's reasons for that, obviously. But the differences that make that a reality, historically speaking, The differences aren't as big or as many as you might think that they are. Another, and I can represent that to you by the fact that these groups right here are all drawing their doctrinal standards from the Westminster Confession of Faith from the 1640s. the Episcopalians are drawing their doctrinal statement from the 39 Articles, which preceded the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Westminster Confession of Faith itself was an attempt to expand upon the 39 Articles. So, doctrinally speaking, there's differences in church government between, what separates these bodies really is church government. the Congregationalists are not Presbyterian in their form of government. Actually they were, they just weren't to the same degree. The Baptists were very similarly led in terms of church government, but tended to be more independent at the local level. So they aren't even experiencing connectedness beyond local churches in a institutional way where they're actually holding each other accountable. And we'll talk more about that a little bit later on. So my point being, Oh, I don't forget the Methodists. The Methodists are coming out of the Episcopalian Church. So doctrinally, they are confessing the same thing as the Episcopalians are, at least on paper, who are all confessing very similar things based on the relationship between the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 39 Articles. The Baptists modify a few sections of the Westminster Confession of Faith to come to what is known as the London Baptist Confession of 1689. The Congregationalists have the Savoy Declaration, which is a modification of the Westminster Confession of Faith on a couple of points. So they are coming to America as separate groups at separate times from separate places. You should know they're working together in many respects. And as the history plays out, Some of these groups are, you know, there's some suspicion on parts of the other groups on this list about the Episcopalians because of the war itself. The War for Independence is against the head of the Anglican Church, who happens to be George III, right? And the Anglican Church government of that time, the head of the church, institutionally speaking, is the King of England. So, that gets really dicey when you start talking about the war for independence, right? It affects the way that this any, it injects some suspicion about loyalty to the project of the United States of America. as a nation that declares its independence. But you see that the vast majority of, well, let's just start here. The vast majority of American Christians at the founding of the nation are confessing theologically that the scriptures teach. They're so close together, so close together. that most of the disunity is with church respect to how the church should be governed. And they're just not going, they don't come to the same conclusions. And the Methodists are born through the First Great Awakening, and they're kind of seeing themselves as a renewal movement inside the Anglican Church. But these groups are really very much reflecting unity, theologically speaking. And I would also point out, In terms of worship, their worship is almost identical across the board. They are, from the founding of the nation, all of these groups are all, their primary source for worship singing is the metrical psalms. In other words, the Psalms put to meter, Psalm. So, if you went from congregation to congregation, from one to the next, you're going to find a high level of sameness to a very high degree. And another factor involved in the disunity of the church at the founding of the nation is the fact that, as I said, the Congregationalists are coming they're coming from different areas of the English-speaking world. So when they come to the New World, and same for the Baptists, largely are Scotch-Irish. So what do you think they do when they come to the United States? They set up a community of Scotch-Irish that reflects their culture and heritage. The Congregationalists are largely coming from a portion of England and then from England via Holland, many of the Congregationalists are fleeing persecution at the hands of the king. going to Holland before they come to the New World. But when they come here, they're setting up communities that reflect something of the culture that they had when they lived in Europe, right? So the Dutch Reformed could be added to this time. The Dutch Reformed, by the way, are speaking Dutch. They're not English speakers, so they're a minority in that regard when they come to America. They settle in New York, the New York area, and their doctrine is almost identical to all the other groups. And what separates them truly from enjoying more unity, more sameness with each other, is language and culture. So isn't this true? I mean, we tend to, in our worship, in the expression of our church expression, we're looking to manifest or to enjoy that and engage in it in a way that is familiar to us. Now, I know multiculturalism and diversity is a big force and player in modern culture, but that hasn't always been true. And people tend to settle down with people who are just like them, speak the same language, like the same kind of food. you know, wanna have the same kind of music. And so there's nothing atypical about this. There's nothing strange about this necessarily. So my argument here at the beginning of this discussion on denominations is that in early America, there is a high level of unity in the church in the Union prior to some further historical events that we'll get to here in a second. And I would point out to you that if this is a snapshot of early America, pre-1800, how many denominations could we list from it? Well, I mean, there's maybe some, I actually looked up some of the family trees. And Baptist groups, there may have been two groups of Baptists. In other words, like today there's the American Baptist, there's the Southern Baptist, there's the Free Will Baptist, there's the Primitive Baptist, there's all of these, and there's probably 20 to 22 Baptist denominations that exist in the United States of America today. And I'm saying that at the founding of our nation, there maybe were two, because the Baptists were Calvinistic as they come to the United States of America, And right around the end of the First Great Awakening, which is 1740, 1750s, there comes in a strain of Arminianism into the Baptist church and they split. So, because their belief about election and predestination, those kinds of things. where you stand on there, you know, it's kind of like it's hard to maintain a unity with that much of a theological difference. So, the Presbyterians are really one I'll say two at this point because there are a group that come very in the late 1600s known as the Covenanters and they're coming from Scotland and they believe in, they have a theological position that makes them somewhat isolated and isolating themselves from what eventually becomes known as the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. Prior to that it wasn't, there wasn't a United, they formed in 1703 and there was no United States of America in 1703 so they didn't call themselves that obviously. So it wasn't until 1789 at the same time that the Continental Congress was ratifying the Constitution, the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America was forming in Philadelphia just down the street. The Congregationalists are one body. There aren't a bunch of Congregationalist denominations, there's one. Presbyterians are probably two, Baptists probably two, Episcopalians, I don't know that history as well, but I seriously doubt there's anything other than one, right? And the Methodists, of course, are not even technically separate. They are a subset of Episcopalian, of the Anglican Church. All of this to say, again, if we were to say, count the denominations, we include the Roman Catholics, the Quakers, and the Dutch Reformed, which are, again, if you add those groups up, we're talking about less than 1% of the population. Josh, what was the number? Okay, 76.3, okay, I'm sorry. This is reflecting the population of the United States. So, you know, these are of, these are shares of citizens of the nation. So, obviously, not everybody's identifying with a church, with a church group. So, but if we add up the number of denominations, way to denominate yourself at the time of the War of Independence, we're probably at a number around eight. Okay, keep that in mind because part of the reason that we're even having a class like this and we see a problem is that by the year, we'll talk about changes that take place later, but by the year 1900, there are roughly 1,600 separate groups of Christians. that identify themselves distinctly. And if you want to know what that number is today, the scholarly works that I have read put the number between 35,000 and as high as 60,000. So somewhere in there, probably 45,000 different groups. Now, the reason that number is high, we'll talk about in just a little while. The question, what begs, I think the question that comes to our minds when we're thinking about this and looking at it is how? How in 100 years did the United States of America go from having eight denominations to 1,600? And back up, back up. If you go to the year... If you go to the year, let's start with the Westminster Confession of Faith in the 1640s. In that period of time, in Europe, there really were only three churches? Four? I mean, you've got the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church is outside of the Western Christian civilization. So we were talking about Western culture. Roman Catholic Church. The Lutheran churches, which are, you could divide them up between Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Any division that exists among them is merely cultural language and kingdom because their kings are assuming the position of headship in the Lutheran churches. So, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, the Reformed churches, which again are divided up by nationality, you've got the Swiss and the Dutch and the French and then eventually in the English speaking world, those Reformed the Reformed Christians as they go to England under the influence of men like John Knox are going to be called Presbyterians. It'll be much later before they're called Congregational and Baptists and they're beginning to split. And then there is the Church of England which in what, 1538? Does that sound right? 1538? That's when Henry VIII officially declares the act of supremacy, separating from the Roman Catholic Church, forming the Church of England. And so at that point, you've got Roman Catholicism the Church of England, which is largely doctrinally on paper, is reformed, and then the reformed churches of other nations, and the Lutherans. So most of the separation in the Protestant world is due to language. Just, I mean, and there's not a way, there's not a mechanism to actually bring about institutional unity and organization. It's more done at the local level. So, then for, if that's the 1600s, early 1600s, all the way to 1776, how much, how many denominations explode between then, four? We've seen four new groups. And the Congregationalists and the Baptists and the Presbyterians are all coming out of really the Church of England. And they're distinguishing themselves from the Church of England on the basis of church government. So, yes. They're largely still on the continent of Europe, concentrated in Germany, but not just Germany. By this time, you know, Lutheranism has spread to the kingdoms of, like I said, Denmark. Sweden, Norway, Finland, the, what we know as the Balkan region of what would later become the satellite nations of the Soviet Union on the eastern block of Europe, all of those are largely Lutheran. identifying Lutheran churches. And so there's, and they're not coming to America until the 1800s. You know, there's not mass immigration of Lutheran, well, Lutheran people, first the Germans are gonna come, but that won't be until quite a bit later. So, they're not in high enough concentration at this time. And the, again, the point is there's so much unity early on. How, what accounts for all the splintering? And I think the answer to that is wonderfully borne out in a book called the Democratization of American Christianity. This is one book in particular that has, there's other books that have been written on it, but Nathan Hatch wrote a book called The Democratization of American Christianity. And if you read it, it reads, what you're reading are really primary source, firsthand telling of the history of what changed in the United States of America from 1789. What happens in 1789? What's that? Yes, in connection to that is the Constitution is ratified and the United States of America officially becomes its own sovereign. I mean it is, prior to this, separated from from the King of England, from George III, because the Revolutionary War, the truce has already been signed, but the government had to be hammered out. And one of the ways that the nation is described at that time is, and this is the language of one thinker, and I forget who said it, but the Constitution was a roof that was built on no walls. The Constitution was the roof over the house of the United States of America, but the nation had never built any walls. There wasn't much unity among the states. There was no national identity. The United States of America, as the concept of a nation, did not exist. that the states didn't think about themselves as a nation until they realized we better band together and push back against the king or our rights are going to be taken away and then they agree to come together to fight the king. But as soon as the war is won, it doesn't mean that that war is an expression of some identity as a unified nation, not at all. And so the history that Hatch tells in the book was the struggle for the United States trying to find itself as a nation. And what are the forces that are at work in the formation of the United States of America? And I'm just gonna highlight some of the things that Hatch details in that work that tell us how the what is the general kind of feeling and sentiment among the citizens of the nation and some of the historical factors that are influencing the way Americans as Americans now are thinking of themselves. And he tells the story then, again, the book is mostly just recounting from primary sources, how this develops. And he tells the story of men and women who, after the revolution and the founding of the nation, one of the effects of the nation, of that war on the people, is a strong distrust in, what do you think? Authority. There is a widespread sentiment among the American people. This is one of the things that first begins to bind the nation together. It is, don't tread on me. We are not going to let another tyrant take over our freedoms and take our freedoms away from us. There is, if there's any, so think about, there's not much of a nation in terms of identity, not much, what are people patriotic about? They're patriotic about the fact that we collectively kicked this tyrant out of the land. out of, were not under the thumb of King George anymore. And part of the surge towards national, bringing about national unity, which people realize this needs to happen. We need to have a national identity or the union won't hold together. And one of the things that people are literally traveling around the colonies that are now states trying to drum up is to generate national unity and one of the things that they latch on to is the fact that were the nation that will never be tyrannized again by somebody in authority over us. And this message actually gets picked up in the church and preached as part of the church's, the church begins to see itself as needing to hold the union together, that part of its duty is to preach the gospel, but also to preach a message that helps hold the union together. There's a man named Herman Husband. He was a very influential pastor in Pennsylvania in the late 1780s and 90s. And Nathan Hatch talks about him saying that he, quote, decried the appearance of a national economic elite and the increasing power of merchants, lawyers, and land spectators. He wrote scathing pamphlets against the proposed federal constitution, so 1889. against the Constitution on the grounds that it would centralize power and ensure the return in aristocracy." So, he was, you guys heard of the Whiskey Rebellion that took place in western Pennsylvania? Yeah, he, Herman Husband, was a part of the Whiskey Rebellion. He was one of the leaders of the Rehabilitative Rebellion and he saw it as part of his duty to prevent the rise of this ruling class in America which were seen as the, who were these people? Well, they're the people, they're the merchants, the lawyers, the doctors, and the ministers. They were the pastors of churches who at that time were still considered, they were honorifically, they were honored in the community as somebody to be trusted and somebody who we should look to for leadership. But we're seeing in the early part of the Union that people are turning against anything that, anyone or anything that smacks of authority that could then threaten a person's liberty, they have a target on their back. Samuel Eli, you might, if you remember your American or early American history, you might remember him. He was another Christian preacher of descent who championed the cause of what he would say are the back country folk in New England. Part of what they're doing is they're trying to stir up the, to a class of people who will be able to wield influence against the, what they see is the threatening ruling class of the merchants, the lawyers, the doctors, the elite as they would see them as the elite people. And so, what's happening early on is there's the back country folk are being pitted against the people who are in authority because the people in authority are considered a, not that they were a real threat, they're a potential threat. because we fear being under the tyrant. We don't want one tyrant 3,000 miles away in another country. We're not going to trade him in for an oligarchy of wealthy people. And so, the desire is to raise up a nation that can be populous in nature. As I describe this, you probably, you see that this is very much a part of the, of one of the main features of the United States of America that makes it so unique from other nations around the Earth. This is, it's very distinct. But Samuel Eli, Timothy Dwight, who I mentioned last week as one of the founders, one of the initial pastors of the Second Great Awakening, which anybody remember the Second Great Awakening when we said that started? 1800. right around 1800, Second Great Awakening. Timothy Dwight was the president of Yale and was one of the first preachers to see revival in his ministry that led to the Second Great Awakening. Timothy Dwight said of Samuel Eli that he was an unusually talented demagogue who everywhere declared himself the friend of suffering and oppressed and the champion of violated rights. Wherever he went, he industriously awakened the jealousy of the humble and ignorant against all men of superior reputation as haughty, insolent, and oppressive." And part of what Hatch is showing in his argument here is the assumption is if you're in a position of authority, if you have wealth, that you are necessarily a threat. And that's part of the populist movement. In other words, these preachers, what they're trading on in their preaching is it's anti-authoritarian. It's anti-authority is what my point is. That anybody that's in a position of authority is necessarily a threat and we've got to maintain power of the people. And by the way, I'm not I'm not, I'm just telling you the history. I'm not commenting on the, you know, the propriety of, or whether I agree or disagree with what these men were doing. I'm just telling you this is what they were doing, okay? So don't hear me saying, like, if I had been back there, I would have stood against it. I don't know. It's a very complicated history. Lorenzo Doe was another pastor in the early 1800s through the 1820s, part of the Second Great Awakening movement. Doe, though, was in the southern states, and he became a champion among the common folk. Doe was described as both a holy man who cultivated the image of John the Baptist and a radical Jeffersonian. who could begin a sermon by quoting Tom Paine, which is ironic if you know Tom Paine, who was about as anti-Christian as you could get. Dow sought the conversion of sinners at the same time that he railed at tyranny and priest craft and the professors of law and medicine. He openly claimed to be guided by dreams and visions and implied that he possessed visionary power to know the secrets of the heart and to foretell the fate of individuals. Now he wrote, he's famous, one of the things he's famous for is a pamphlet that he wrote that was widely distributed. It was called The Analects Upon the Rights of Man. And in it, Dow condemned any distinction of status between men. He wrote, but if all men are born equal and endowed with unalienable rights by their creator in the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then there can be no just reason as a cause why they may or should not think and judge and act for themselves in matters of religion, opinion, and private judgment." So, part of what we see coming about with Dow and those who were doing similar things is that they're arguing that the rights of individuals and individual freedom includes the judgment in all matters related to state and religion. And what's interesting about Dao is he's arguing for the equality of the common man, is that he claims that he receives this by visions and dreams. And what do you think that does for him? It elevates him, right? He's all of a sudden, because of these visions and dreams, he's not actually bringing himself down and trying to bring down the elitists with him. He's actually replacing them as the leader of a movement that is, and part of how he accomplishes that is by playing on, he quotes the Declaration of Independence. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Equality, all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with these inalienable rights. So he's playing on that populist idea of the American nation being a special place where freedom will be maintained, but to do it, we have to be against anybody who is in a position of authority. Oh, by the way, I'm the new authority. Okay, well, you can do that, I guess, if you get away with it, right? Another such man, L. Hannon Winchester, he was known in the late 1780s as a Baptist preacher in the colonies where he was considered at one time, for a period of time, one of the if not the best preacher, excuse me, one of the best preachers in the United States of America. He was a Baptist. And what he is most famously known for is as an influential Baptist that he became a universalist. So he had this very public shift in doctrine where he goes from preaching a Calvinistic predestination, God elects and saves God as sovereign and salvation, to preaching the message of universalism which is all people in the end will be saved. and the Universalist movement taking over large portions of New England, when he was forced by his Baptist, so he's a pastor of a Baptist church, says he's a Universalist, and so his church finally has enough of this, and they say, we're gonna give you some time, and then you're gonna come back and answer for this. You're gonna defend yourself, and if you stand on your Universalism, then out you go. And so, Winchester, he locked himself up in his house by his own admission. Well, I'll just read you his quote. He says, I shut myself up in my chamber read the scriptures and prayed to God to lead me into truth and not suffer me to embrace any error. And I think with an upright mind I laid myself open to believe whatsoever the Lord had revealed. It would be too long to tell all the teaching I had on this head. Let it suffice in short to say that I became so well persuaded of the truth of universal restoration that I determined never to deny it." I included this quote here because here's a guy who is, of course, preaching an anti-authoritarian message, but then one of the things that he does here in order to keep, to make this doctrinal shift, which is a massive doctrinal shift, and maintain his position of authority, is that basically he says, you know, I got alone with God and God told me it was okay. What does that sound like? And if you were here for the class last week, you might remember what's taking place in American history at this time is a turn in the church from looking at God and the way He relates to us as something that He objectively does from the Word of God, and everybody you know, can read God's Word and see quite plainly what God is getting at. But there's this massive shift at the beginning of the Second Great Awakening towards a subjective understanding of religion, that we relate to God not objectively through the proclamation of the Word of God to us, but subjectively in that I got alone with God and God told me this and God told me that, and now, boom, This guy, this pastor tells his congregation, I went and spoke to God in my bedchamber, and he told me everything I needed to know to defend universal restoration, and he expects that to defend him. He expects that people are gonna be like, oh, well, sounds good, you know, on to the next thing. And it connects very much with what the quote that I read to you from, which quote was that, the Dow quote? Yeah, the quote in his pamphlet, that there can be no just reason as a cause why man may or should not think and judge and act for himself in matters of religion, opinion, and private judgment. The turn that America is making at this time is, we argued largely from the class last week, was that Christianity is taking a massive inward subjective turn at this time. And another influential person at the same time during the Second Great Awakening was a woman named Lucy Mack Smith. She is the mother of Joseph Smith. And who's Joseph Smith? He is the founder of Mormonism and his mother, I told you last week, and father and grandparents were involved in the revivals of the Second Great Awakening and all claimed to have received visions and dreams from the Lord that confirmed doctrinal positions that they were coming to. Lucy Mack Smith, famously returned home from a church service she went to one night and wrote in her journal, quote, I said in my heart that there was not then upon the earth the religion which I sought. I therefore determined to examine the Bible and taking Jesus and the disciples as my guide to endeavor to obtain from God that which man could never give nor take away. The Bible, I intended, should be my guide to life and salvation. This is the argument that what you just heard from Mother Smith is the argument that Joseph Smith makes at the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is there's all this, all of the other churches that exist out here, they're not doing it. They're not bringing about the kingdom of God and in particular there is a kind of disunity in the church and therefore the solution is that God is proposing at this time is to start a whole brand new church with brand new revelation that is given exclusively to one man named Joseph Smith and then In other words, Mother Smith's dream for the church is realized in her son's experiences, claimed experiences just a short while later as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being founded. And another point to take from this is that, again, the Christians in America are more and more becoming inward. And what is the source of authority? Where is the source of authority coming from? Themselves. All of these people, all of these influencers are saying that it's all of these other people out there who claim to know this and to know that. They're the ones that are leading us down a bad road. And what's the solution? Well, my own private experience is somehow my own interaction with God and experience with God is going to chart the way forward. And if you read Hatch's book, he summarizes I would say his impressive research. This is the kind of book that's very, very difficult to write because you're telling the history through primary sources. You're quoting the people that you're talking about. You're using their own words and piecing it together in one seamless whole. This book is a classic because it's impressively difficult to write. He shows that the post-revolution American Christianity is taking on, and this is one of his main claims, it's taking on the spirit of the revolution itself. The championing the everyman, everyman for himself, personal freedom, personal liberty, which is then gets extended into, so the concept of democracy where we all, where each person's vote counts, right? That's the kind of Christianity we're seeing born out in the 19th century America, is everybody's vote counts. Okay, so here's the question, what's true? Well, we're going to go around the room and everybody gets a vote and we'll piece it together. And after we've pieced it together, maybe this group will be able to move forward together. Maybe this group will be able to move forward together. Maybe that group will be able to move forward together. If they can find enough from the scraps that they've woven together based on all these individuals' subjective experiences. And you really have to kind of remember, but we can't go far back into what we talked about last week and the subjectivism coming out of the Second Great Awakening. But that is the period of time that we're talking about. What happens between 1776 and the year 1900, where we go from eight denominations to 1600, And this, by the way, is if you read any histories, church histories of this period, this is the story that's getting told. It's the church is taking on the ethos, the mentality of the nation itself. which is a democratic view of Christianity, which is, hence the name, the democratization of American Christianity, which is, it's populous in its approach to Christianity, but the result of that is that you give everybody a vote to decide what the truth is, and they take it. And when they take it, what happens? Well, you know, let's take the doctrinal standards that are the foundation of this, and you see it's getting carved up. Denominations are splintering in every direction as they say, well, yeah, I don't hold to that interpretation of scripture, and they slice off another sentence or two. And then everybody that's with me, let's go, follow me, and they all run off and they start a new group. But the foundation of it isn't a let's search the scriptures together. and let's iron sharpen iron and see if we can determine together what the scriptures actually teach. That's what these groups were doing when they looked to the, like the Westminster Confession of Faith and the 39 articles. And they're saying, we got together as a church and we said, what do the scriptures teach? And we agreed. We came to a consensus. This is what the scriptures teach. But now, as the Second Great Awakening is taking off and rolling forward, the fuel driving that is subjectivism. It's every man for himself. Well, here's the summary that Hatch comes to connected to this. He says, these expressions of egalitarian, he calls it egalitarian Christianity. Now, what do you think of when you hear the word egalitarian? It's egalitarianism. And it's usually referred to the roles of men and women in the church, right? Well, the democracy itself is egalitarian in its essence. That's part of what his argument is. These expressions of egalitarian Christianity, however volatile and short-lived, remain striking evidence of the uncertainty of the times. of unexpected influences upon religious belief, and of the gravitation of common folk to forms of Christianity antagonistic to received authority. These religious leaders were fierce independents and localists, embodying the gospel and populist forms that went considerably beyond the sacred cause of the revolution as defined by established clergy. Their gospel of the back country resonated with powerful anti-federalists and Jeffersonian persuasions. It challenged the right of a natural elite to speak for the people and empowered those who could claim no real stake in the promise of America. That's his description of the movement of Christianity into the 19th century during the 1800s. And his argument is very persuasive if you read the history that what's happening to the church is the church, the principles of revolution and democracy are being superimposed on the scriptures. There's the big problem, on the scriptures themselves. And it breeds then not only a suspicion and an animus even towards authority, but it is propagating a form of institutional rebellion. It's institutionalizing in a sense rebellion against authority. Which is fine as long as it's not the authority of the word of God, right? I mean, and ultimately that's what the church is calling is, is to declare what thus sayeth the Lord, declare what the scriptures teach. But here we see a, now this is useful in terms of numbers because of the big shift that you can see. The Congregationalists go from number one to almost dead last. among these groups. The biggest gain are the Methodists and the Baptists. Well, the Roman Catholics, but that's largely immigration, mass immigration of Roman Catholics in the 1800s. But the Congregationalists are just withering on the vine, partly because universalism afflicts the church, the Congregationalist church first. The Presbyterians are seeing a sharp decline. The Baptists and the Episcopalians, a sharp decline as well. But the Methodists are taking over from what, as a subgroup of the Anglican Church, really take over as something separate and distinct. And the revivals of the Second Great Awakening and the movements that we talked about last week, the Holiness Movement, the Second Blessing Movement, and the movement towards Pentecostalism, is that is taking place, those revivals are taking place inside largely the Methodist and the Baptist groups. So, in other words, the churches that are gaining the most are the churches that tend to be revivalistic, and the revivalistic churches are, as we saw last week, emphasizing subjective human experience over the objective truth of the word of God. Right? So, there is, in that, a splintering effect. Necessarily, wouldn't you say? Necessarily? Yeah. I mean, it can't go any other way. If it is, you know, me, myself, and my Bible alone, if that's the emphasis, the result of that is, well, hey, look what God said to me. Oh, he didn't say that to you? Oh, you don't, wait. No, but God told me this. God didn't tell me that. What are you talking about? Well, I guess, you know, I guess I got my group, you got your group, and off we go. The subjectivism, again, it necessarily leads to a splintering of the church. And that's exactly what it does. We go from, in the course of 100 years, we go from eight, eight, probably a pretty solid number, to 1,600, 1,600. And not only that, we see really for the first time a movement inside the church where, I'm going to skip that section actually. We just, we got to make better time here. So, the splintering of the church largely is, my first point really is the democratization of American Christianity. And connected to that at the same time is the subjectivism of the second great awakening and the revival movement. then if you recall what happened at the turn of the, from the 19th century into the 20th century. For those of you that were here, anybody help me out? 1900, what is taking place as it related to the church that is bringing about, it's accelerating the subjectivism. You guys remember anybody? From 1900, what did I do with the marker? From 1900 to, really up through, I can't put an end on it, I probably, I really, I'd say to the present, but There's a great deal of optimism, we talked about this last week, in the American Christianity, despite the splintering of the churches. One thing is holding them all together, and that is largely the cause of America itself. That we're going to, America itself, in its manifest destiny, is going to bring about widespread social reform that will lead to the end of hostility across the whole globe in a sense. I mean, you know, at least here, we talked about World War I being the war to end all wars as it was labeled popularly, the war to end all wars, which then is followed by what? Oh, another world war on a larger scale. So not only did we not fix the problem, the problem got worse. And the widespread movement in the culture that is really affected by the bombshell of these two events, I mean, just, this explodes in the mind of popular culture. And it breathes into it a pessimism about, again, anti-authoritarian pessimism because who, after all, told us that this is going to be the war to end all wars? It was the older generation who had the power and authority. They were the leaders of the past who told us, follow me and we're going to get this done. And guess what? They were wrong in a bad way. I mean, think about it. What is it, 61 million people dead worldwide at World War II? And what happens at this event is not just pessimism, it's not just widespread pessimism about the future, it is the dissolving in the mind of young people in particular among the popular culture that there is ever going to be any hope of a unifying of a unifying movement. In fact, the philosophy that flows from the post-World War II thinkers is subjectivism of the Second Great Awakening on steroids. That we have lost the meta-narrative. if you've ever heard that phrase before. The metanarrative that there is a great purpose unifying all of human history. There's one grand story that's being told. Human history is the story of God and we're all a part of it, and the story of God holds us all together, and we're holding on to that together, and our forefathers are leading us into this hope, into this history. There are guides leading us forward in the future, but as soon as that pessimism spreads, the failure of that project, the philosophers, the thinkers are saying, yeah, there's no metanarrative. There is no purpose to history. Why? Well, because the God that all of that was predicated on is gone. He doesn't exist. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and the interesting. Yeah, and I agree with you. All the people that you named, Marx and Darwin, not that they weren't in, now think about their time. Their time was actually in the 1800s. Right, Darwin is mid-1800s, Marx clipping on his heels. 1848, okay, is that the origin of species? And then after Marx, you have, I won't, Nietzsche. and Ingalls. I can never spell Nietzsche's name very well. But the thinkers are those atheistic-leaning thinkers They are back here in time. It wasn't until the late 1940s and 50s that in the Christian West, the young people, the young thinkers in particular, they reach back in time and grab a hold of these ideas and say, this is what we need to run with. And that's the, yeah. This is, modernism is the, we talked about this last week, was the, modernism really is born with Descartes. Descartes thinking, you know, man, apart from God's revelation, using his reason and his observation of the world and manipulation of the world through that observation, can, man can bring about the kingdom of God on earth. And so, it's modernism is very optimistic about man's abilities. Modernism is going to and that's what really the hope of the leading up to World War I is an expression of that modernism. We're going to solve hunger. We're going to fix poverty. We're going to cure diseases. Science is here. Praise God for science, and we do. Oh, forgot about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We'll have to take those out of the equation. Actually, that's part of this story, right, is there's even a despairing about science in a sense, and look what science has done to us. But this movement is not only pessimistic and lacks any hope of a unifying movement for the future, It disdains anybody past, present, or future who made any claim to the metanarrative that modernism was something that we should get on board with, that there was hope in humanity. That's just our forefathers putting a chain around our neck. because there's no such thing. And we talked about this last week, but this movement of which gets really expressed through existentialism. Existentialism, what's rule number one of existentialism? You guys remember? Yeah, rebel, there are no rules. In other words, it is subjectivism on steroids, right? It is the philosophical justification for subjectivism is what existentialism in part is. Yes, yeah. and it's essentially human beings can are the most superior and all of the universe yeah human beings can solve their problems they just all need to get along together and there's a group of elites that stand up at the top of the whole pyramid and run the show Yeah, and what's ironic about that movement, the progressive movement, politically speaking, is that the rebels of the 50s and 60s and 70s who were anti-authoritarian by rule in the 80s and 90s become the actual elite power brokers over everything, which is kind of the irony. They become the man, right? They were against the man until they became the man, and then they're for the man. But the point here is part of the splintering of the church is that from this period of time is we have the subjectivism of the Second Great Awakening splintering it, but think about, okay, we gained 1,592 denominations in 100 years, but we have since then gained about 43,000 denominations. 300 and something, I don't know, whatever the math is, Josh can do it. There is, like I said, subjectivism on steroids is this. Because it is, again, the subjectivism of the Second Great Awakening, the undertones of it, I try to prove to you, were anti-authoritarian, were rebellious, but they were always, Like, it was more like, yeah, it's just, it's those guys. It's not authority in general. It's just those guys in authority will do better this time, and then movements are born. When we come to this, it's more, you know, of course, that's still taking place, but it is... It's programmatic rebellion, right? The program itself is rebellion. What's rule number one? Rebellion. What's rule number two? Rebellion. Rinse and repeat, right? Right. What's interesting, too, about this movement is the expression that programmatic rebellion takes in the popular culture gets driven, interestingly, and we don't have enough time to talk about this, but it's interestingly driven by the marketing of corporations who are tripping over themselves to sell their products to the sovereign individual, right? So pop culture, like popular music, if you read this history of the birth of popular music, as a movement over and against classical or folk music that was intentionally trying to pass down the forms of their forefathers, Well, poo-poo that, right? Anything our forefathers did is bad by definition, right? And I'm exaggerating here, but this is, I'm exaggerating because that's kind of, that's what's underneath it. That is the rebellion. It's hard to live consistently like that, but we're trying. We're trying really hard. And so we're going to take, maybe we'll adopt some of the forms our parents had, musically speaking, and we're just going to make them our own. We're going to reinvent it and give it an edge to it so that it's letting them know that we're sticking it to them, right? You can hear just enough of your music in here to know that what we're doing is really, you know, giving you the middle finger as we reshape it into something that is radically new, right? And then, but if rebelling is the program, you know, how long do you wait to rebel against the new form that just has taken over? Well, consumerism in corporate America just knows how to work this. And really, if you, there's books that have been written on this you can read, it's fascinating. How the messaging in the pop culture, in the advertising is, you can just put it on the map, you can put it on the calendar when they start doing this. It is really trying to not help people fit into society, but to rebel against society, rebel against their parents, and our products are gonna help you do that. and UBU kind of thing. But the church kind of picks up on the wave here. And really, one of the parts of the story is what some have called entrepreneurial Christianity, that is, you know, the best way to reach people is to market and target them, just like the corporation would. And so, we're going to find out what the sovereign individual, the audience is sovereign now, right? The people you want to reach, they're sovereign. We got to find out what it is their interests are in. And then as the church, we will co-opt their forms of culture, we'll co-opt it to bring them in. Well, The problem with that is it doesn't lend itself to any form of unity because you gotta do, you gotta hit your niche group, we're gonna hit our niche group, and my niche group is slightly different than your niche group, so you've gotta spin on your gospel presentation that this group over here just isn't quite, it doesn't quite resonate with them, it's not quite relevant enough, so we've got to have another offering of it. and it can have a slightly different twist, and all of a sudden, what this begins, this happens inside of Christian denominations, of course, but it really develops into a new phenomena, which really begins in the late 1960s, which is this idea of non-denominational, non-dom, or denom, non-denom, right? That's a new idea. Somebody call him the lying Baptist. Lying Baptist. Oh, man. Well, we don't want to slander our brothers. But we do have this new movement. The point being is that this idea of non-denominational church is crafting itself, necessarily crafting itself, a church has to cast its own die and the die is set by the target group that you're trying to reach. And the baggage of being associated to a Baptist church, well, when did they start? Oh, they're how old did you say? 150 years old? Well, it's a liability because in programmatic rebellion, anything that is connected to our forefathers is suspicious. and is necessarily to be called into question, because these denominational structures are long-lived, and they will impose upon you the way that your forefathers have always done it, and that doesn't fit the mold, it doesn't fit the paradigm. And so necessarily, churches have to start disassociating themselves with their forefathers, and the church that they, grew up in. Now, when I say church, I mean denominationally the church, the big. This is the moment in history when the idea of denomination comes to be a dirty word, right? Like, the word itself is a dirty concept. It's a bad idea, okay? So, entrepreneurial Christianity, birth of non-denominational churches, connected to programmatic rebellion, connected to the all the other movements that I've been talking about here. We need to move to Part 3 which is a crazy claim that I make here that denominations are actually a path or maybe the path to unity. And let me explain to you what I mean by that. First by again returning to the fact that the mandate, the scriptural mandate that we've been given is unity, right? That's our mandate as a church, is for the church of Jesus Christ not just to be one. Think about Jesus's prayer in John 17, right? His prayer for his church in John 17 is that not only that they would be one Father as we are one, but in their oneness, the world would see it. and that there would be an apologetic effect of the church being seen in its unity by the world. So it's not just that we need to all confess that we are one body, metaphysically speaking, like universally speaking, that's important, right? We are one body. Romans 12, Paul says, for we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we being many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. That's Romans 12, 4-5. If you want to look at 1 Corinthians 12, verses 13 and following you can see Paul say a similar thing. There's one body, Ephesians 4, 4-6 is another place where you can look for this. where Paul says, there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. So the obvious repetition of the word one, Paul is stressing his point. The church is not just to be one in some abstract mystical sense, but actually to be seen by the world as one. So there's the mandate. The question is how if ever could we get there? And I would submit to you that we have to think more deeply than the mantra that has been given to us for many, many moons, and that is that it's doctrine that what? That divides. I mean, you could pose an alternate history to the one that I just gave to you and have been presenting to you, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to establish from the historical facts that what I just described hasn't happened. And the history will force us to realize that what has happened in the church is a widespread lack of confidence in the objective truth of the Word of God that has been replaced by confidence in our own subjective experiences. And I submit to you that it is not doctrine that divides, it's subjectivism that divides. It is when the self becomes sovereign that there we have lost our basis for unity. And that this is, in fact, what has fueled the splintering of the church is the concept of every man, woman, and child for themselves when it comes to reading the Scriptures and understanding the Scriptures. And that the drive behind the splintering of denominations is the basic belief that is common to most of popular Christianity for almost 200 years, which is that our feelings come first when it comes to God and how we feel about things. And you can listen to that class that we did last week on that. But I would say that this is the target. If we want to overcome what divides us, we have to start talking as a church and to churches about the objective truth of the word of God. One of the things I've learned, I've been to about 10 churches and known in the hundreds if not thousands of people now. You could start with the Bible and you could ask somebody, do you believe every word in this book, the Bible? And the answer would be, I've heard this countless times. Well, yes I do, but there's parts of the Bible I don't believe. Well, like what? Well, I don't believe that Jesus is an immaculate birth. I don't think there was a great flood. And if you didn't listen, pretty soon somebody will end up saying, so, I mean, there's parts of the Bible I believe, but there's lots of parts of it I don't. Where do you go from there? If you're not all in the scripture, where are you gonna go with it? You get a group of people together that say, yeah, we're not going to read this. Revelation's just a fairytale. And pretty soon, the Bible just becomes another book in your library, and you've lost it, objectivity or subjectivity. Grace and faith and all that stuff just goes out the window. And one denomination after the next. And then you find out in Phoenix, there's a group of people that believes in it. over in Oakland, California, another group that believes that, and they're all just saying, well, yeah, well, pretty soon, there's only 10% of the Bible that means anything. And here we are, there's churches now, I know, that have embraced this culture, and they bring in all these people, and it becomes a feel-good society that, yeah, sure, you can do that, no problem. How do you get everybody back to where you have people that say, yes, I believe every word? Yeah, and I think, in part, the answer to that question, and your point is well taken about what people, there's a cafeteria approach to the scriptures. I forget who, maybe J.C. Ryle that said, if we only believe those parts of the Bible that we like. It's not the Bible that we trust in. It's ourselves, right? I test people this way. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, do you believe that? Are you kidding? How could God do that? Yeah. No, I don't believe that. Yeah. Why do you want to go any further? Yeah. It's a huge problem. And I would submit to you, Phil, that the answer to the problem, we have to start at the place where it fell apart, which was with the ministers of the Word of God themselves. And it was a, it was in losing the church, in losing its sight on its responsibility to oversee the calling of men to the ministry in such a way that the men that come into the ministry have gifts that are evident, that have been tested, right? gifts that an understanding of the Scriptures that is consistent with what the Scriptures actually teach. Now part of the story that I didn't emphasize that I probably should have is that during the Second Great Awakening, Not only, it's complex history, the church is going to the frontier, the frontier is expanding, the westward expansion is happening at such a fast rate, there's an urgency to get pastors out there. Who do you send? If it takes three years to prepare a man for, traditionally, to enter into the ministry, it takes a lot of time, effort, and money. The churches, part of the story of why the Methodists and the Baptists explode in numbers is because they will literally ordain, if a man is converted on Tuesday, on Wednesday he might be on a horse headed to the frontier to pioneer and pastor a new church. I'm not joking. Real quick, there was a quote that ran in one of the papers, an editorial, back during the Second Great Awakening in which it was said that the Methodists will ordain any fool on a horse and the Baptists will ordain the horse. I mean, that was popular perception. I mean, that's not kind, but that's the way it was characterized in hyperbole. And it fits a model of Christianity in which subjective experience leads the way. If you had experienced a radical conversion to Christ and you have even a smidgen of ability to stand in front of other people and to proclaim, open up the scriptures and start preaching stuff, then that is, oh, the seal of the Holy Spirit's on you, brother. Off you go. I mean, there wasn't a testing of gifts, which I could easily defend from Scripture, needs to take place. Men must be tested. Paul said that to Timothy. And he said, do not lay your hands on a novice. Do not do that. That's clearly seen in Scripture, but the church in its subjective turn is putting an emphasis on personal testimony, right? The apostles were called what? Jesus said, you will be my Witnesses, right? And the word there could be translated testifiers, right? You're going to bring the testimony. When you hear the word testimony, what do you think of today? What's that? I mean, in the Christian... Conversion story, that's it. You know, that's what has happened. That fact alone, Christian witness, Christian testimony, biblically speaking, is not me telling my personal conversion story. It is proclaiming the life, death, and resurrection, and ascension, and the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the passage in Revelation 12 about the martyrs overcoming by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. that comes to be understood to mean their personal conversion story. So if someone has a radical conversion to Christianity and they can articulate it, all of a sudden that's what qualifies them to be a minister of the gospel, to proclaim the word of truth in life. And there's, again, it's an emphasis on subjectivism where personalities and dynamo communicators are going to get pride of place in the light, in the church's ministry going forward. I didn't spend much time on that, but I bring it in now because I think that the recovery of unity in the church is going, it must depend on the faithful proclamation of the Word of God. And here's the wonderful thing about Jesus' sheep. Jesus' sheep hear His voice and they follow Him. Jesus' sheep will feed on the Word of God. if they are taught unfaithful ideas from Scripture, and they don't know how to refute it, or they don't see the subtlety of it, they will follow that way, because it's what they know. But as soon as they hear a faithful proclamation of it, one that's tested by scripture and the historical interpretation of the church, I'll talk about that in a minute, they will turn. They will go. They will begin to feed on the word of God. And I think that we will That's my first point about unity. First, the mandate for unity is clear in Scripture. The path to unity I think begins with a return to a biblical understanding of ordination of laying hands on men and setting them apart for the ministry and what is required to do that so that the proclamation of the Word becomes faithfully consistent with what the Scriptures teach. What dies under this, and I'll tell you what dies when the church maintains this, subjectivism dies. Because you can't get in front of a body of men who are examining you and tell me what the Scriptures teach about the Trinity. Tell me what the Scriptures teach about justification by faith alone. And then you say, well, you know, let me tell you about my personal testimony with Jesus. And start spinning a subjective laced tale about what you believe the scriptures teach. That dies on the spot. when the church says, we will not lay hands on a novice. We're going to follow the scriptures. We will not lay hands on a novice. These men have to be tested. They have to be devoted to the apostles' doctrine. That's what's described in Acts 2 when we see the early church forming. They were devoted, they devoted themselves to the apostles' doctrine. says in Ephesians 2.20 that the Church is built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets with Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone. And it is, we heard it this morning in 1 Timothy 4 Paul says to Timothy, pay close attention to your doctrine for if you do you will save both yourself and those who hear you. The church has to maintain faithfully its doctrine. And when the church puts its emphasis back on the Word of God and the clear, faithful communication of the Word of God, I think we're on a way towards unity. Why? Well, because the second feature of biblical ordination And the faithful proclamation of the word of God is that it isn't just merely a local church matter. It's not local church alone because the church is accountable, and the church in scripture is accountable to one another. Churches are accountable to one another. And we don't have a lot of time to dip into this as much as I'd like to, but if you want to look at Deuteronomy 16 and 17. You'll see Exodus 18. You'll see in these places a biblical early foundation for the way the church is governed through elders and ministers of the word of God being, and how believers in one church, in one city, in Deuteronomy 16 and 17, and in Exodus 18. they have the right if they have a difficult case and can't have it sorted out locally by the elders in the city that they live in, they're at the gate, they have the right to appeal it to another place where there are more elders and teachers of the Word who can render a judgment. In other words, part of the defense that I would make right now in answer to solving this problem would be that we get rid of this idea that local churches are autonomous and that there should be organic accountability between churches Well, that begs the question, well, which churches? Which churches are we gonna be accountable to? Well, that's easy. We just go back to the ones of life, like faith and practice. We've gotta start there. Where else can we start? Right, where else can we start? That's a good point, Phil. We've lost something there. Yeah. Yeah. There's value in that. Yeah. Yeah. We've lost, we've lost something. We've gained some things. There's, there's, there's some things to be gained through other newer translations, but we've lost something significant. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the, I mean, we've lost, because, oh, that, I would like to go down that rabbit trail, but I think we won't, but. Yeah, it's a sorry bar, but it's a point well taken. Yeah. I think, you know, we can only start where we're at, right? And if, you know, obviously we're a Presbyterian denomination, which means that we are organically united to other churches. And those other churches are organically connected to other churches for mutual accountability and submission. You could look at Acts chapter 15 where you see Paul and Barnabas are having trouble about a doctrine in the church in Antioch and their instinct is to go to Jerusalem. Why? That's where the apostles and the elders are at. go back to the apostles and the elders, in other words the rulers of the church and the ministers of the Word of God and to ask them to give us their collective wisdom. They give their collective wisdom. They write letters to the churches and they distribute those letters with the authoritative apostolic teaching to the churches. Why? Because They are united together. They're connected. That's been the biblical model for the church from the people of God first being a nation all the way to the present. And so they see the need for the church to be organically connected, local churches to other local churches, to larger bodies. And I read to you this morning in 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 4, 16, that was part of a larger reading, but there Paul reminds Timothy to stir up the gift that is in him by the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands by the presbytery, which the understanding, the Greek word there is presbytery in English, the King James renders it that way originally. The New King James says the eldership, but the word is presbytery and that That understanding of it comes from this, you know, it's this. The Presbytery are the elders of the churches in an area that are connected to each other and they are mutual, they're the, okay, if you, would you go to the doctor if your doctor was self-licensed? Yeah. Right. And who writes the curriculum and the standards and oversees the licensure of contractors? Nurses? Yeah. But it's going to be by people inside the industry, right? Yeah. So, I mean, point being that, you know, doctors license doctors, right? Elders ordain elders. Pastors ordain pastors. or pastors and elders ordain pastors. That is because they are the ones who have been called to the position to oversee the testing of these things in order to come to the conclusion, a biblically faithful conclusion that a man is in fact set apart by God and called to the ministry. So again, the nature of the problem leads us in a certain direction. It is to eliminate as much as possible the subjectivism inside the church which began with the ministers and will be healed by the ministers because it is their calling to faithfully proclaim the Word of God to the people of God which we trust the Spirit will use to lead them in a good direction, but it can't just be at the local level. It needs to be at a larger level, which, what do we call it when churches start, what happens when churches start uniting together organically, institutionally? Yeah, right. We need some more of that. Yeah. Sure. Right. Yeah. And one of the things that will happen as we seek to, if we've got to rediscover doctrinally what the scriptures are teaching, we might need to call something like that and churches come together and say, let's recapture what the Scriptures teach about this. But we have a lot of good historic documents that do that for us. And how useful are they to us today? Well, and as far as they teach what the Scriptures teach, they're very useful. But one of the things that that will come about when we are trying to get on the same page doctrinally, we have to, I think people are going to say, we need to be Bereans, right? You know what I mean by that, right? Be a Berean. Now, what do people mean by that? Search the scriptures for the truth. Yeah, we're hearing preaching from Paul, and we're looking into the scriptures to say, do the scriptures actually teach this? Is this consistent with what has been revealed? But one feature of Acts chapter 17 that we often, that's from Acts 17, by the way, that what the Bereans, they were more noble than the Thessalonicans because they did search the scriptures to validate the, to confirm that this preaching from Paul is consistent with what scripture teaches. But one of the features that we might overlook there is it doesn't say the Berean was more noble. It says the Bereans were more noble. In other words, the church of Berea collectively searching the scriptures to see if these things were true. I would say that we've had a subjective application of that long enough. I don't need to sit in judgment over the preaching all by myself of somebody else's preaching. I mean, I have a right to do that. I can do it. But on a big scale sense, what we need to recover as Christians is this thinking that I can read the scriptures on my own. And if I have the Spirit, I have a right to do that, but there is the benefit and the blessing and the safety in the church interpreting the Scriptures together. and not relying on, the other passage that I would point you to is 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21, where Peter says explicitly that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of individual or private interpretation. In other words, there is no such thing. The proper interpretation of scripture is singular. There's only one proper interpretation of Scripture. And no single individual possesses it. No single individual has come to it all by himself. The whole of Scripture? And we fail to recognize that one of the things that Jesus did when he ascended on high is he gave gifts to men. And in these gifts he gave, apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers and elders who are particularly gifted in their handling and rightly dividing the Word of Truth. That's the workmen who need not be ashamed that Paul is speaking of in 2 Timothy 2. Actually, there he's talking about the training of men for the ministry. He's not talking about individual believers being that, first of all. Of course we can apply it that wide and that broadly, but first of all, we are looking for the gifts. Everybody has a gift, and some people, we need to get back to acknowledging that some people have been particularly gifted to do that. And so my point being is we can't interpret the scripture according to this if we give everybody a vote, right? We're not gonna get there. What we're gonna end up with is count the number of Christians in the room and that's how many versions of the truth we're gonna walk away with, right? And the call for this is a kind of humility. where we're not exalting one man or one woman at all. We're looking to Christ to be at work through his church and expecting that when his church comes together to do this work of interpretation, iron sharpened iron, that the spirit of Christ in those, that there's gonna be contributions that are made And my contribution might be one little speck in the big picture. And someone else might have a speck. And there is a kind of Phil mentioned the Senate of Dort. You can mention the Westminster Confession of Faith. These were the church hammering out what this scripture teaches and trying to summarize it so it can be taught. In doing it, it wasn't one person locked up in a room. telling their own interpretation of Scripture, it took six years to write the Westminster Standards, with 120 official commissioners, and then about 30 plus other alternates who came in to help with that work. That was a tremendous, I look at it in my mind, like a recalibration of the dorks in that door. Yeah. And they reformed, and it has lasted for a long time, because there are reformed churches. But like here in Roseburg, I think our church right here is the only real genuine reformed church in Roseburg. And down in Santa Rosa, where Lenny and I came from, there was only one really reformed church there. It's still right there in the bull's-eye. It's so close to the correct interpretation of Scripture, I can't find Baldwin. That's our huge problem, because Lenny and I have been in churches where, I don't want to say it, but it's like stuff I saw going on there. So let's see if that is who it is. Yeah, well, okay, we've got to finish because we've gone on too long. But, you know, basically, the way I see this working is that if you have local churches that are looking to, you know, you got one here, you got one there, you got one over here, and they're all recognizing that in God's word, he wants us not just to be one abstractly and mystically, but one concretely, and that we need, the churches need one another for mutual accountability for the work of the ministry. And there is safety in that. There's wisdom in it. And then churches start connecting to churches. This is very complicated. I'm making it way more simple than it actually is. This is way more complicated than this. But what we will eventually see happening are what people from the outside at least would say are the formation of denominations, right? Where you have a structure taking place where there are the connectedness of churches has to take on a Well, it takes on necessarily a structure to it which is to be determined by scripture and the way that it functions. And when churches start uniting together like this, They don't have to have a name, right? Not to call them anything, but we tend to do that. And I think that denominations as a ultimate vision for the future falls short of what we ought to be. But when we're talking about 45,000 denominations, now this true number is what it is because of the number of non-denominational churches. Each non-denominational church is its own denomination in this figure. Why? Because it's it. It is autonomous. And it's doing its, it's seeing itself as all by itself, in a sense, fulfilling the Great Commission. And so when people count the numbers, they have to count those churches individually, because they're not organically connected to any other church. So how do they get counted? Do we not count them? No, we count them because they're brothers and sisters. But they're just getting counted as an individual denomination. And what would be, go ahead. Oh, there's probably a number for that, but when you're talking about denominations that are, how the church is perceived to exist, outwardly speaking, you look at a non-denominational church and From the outside, what you're looking at is a church that sees itself as sufficient all alone. I've always grown up in non-denominational churches, so it was always like, you know, definitely looking at denominations as a problem. Yeah, well, there's a thing. Are they really all believing the same? Yeah. And the truth is there's more that holds us together than the more than that which divides us. And the question that I think we should be asking ourselves if we were a non-denominational church is, are we in and of ourselves sufficient to meet the call that Scripture places upon us to fulfill the work that we've been called to? And I would say it's not. It's so clearly not. capable of being that. How many churches does it take to be united together to have enough accountability to do what Scripture describes needs to be done? I don't know. More than one is the answer, right? More than one. So, if it's going to be more than one, then why not Why not 10? Why not 20? Why not 5? Why not 45,000? And I think the point being is that we have to start somewhere in bringing about and I want to see and we should all want to see Organic, institutional, and I understand that word properly. Don't read into it anything nefarious or problematic. I think that the church should be as connected and accountable. Let me put it that way. organically accountable church to church, wouldn't it be wonderful if every church in this town was mutually accountable to each other? That would be awesome. I think that what a reflection of the oneness of Christ, the oneness of the gospel, the oneness of the faith, if we could actually achieve that. How are we going to do it is the question. And if we did it, what would we call it? I think we'd probably call it the Church of Roseburg, or the Churches of Roseburg. Oh, now you've got a denomination. You know what I say? I don't care. I don't care. Because the calling is to manifest to the world the unity that we actually have with each other. And if we use a name to do it, I don't care. And if you're telling me that there's a problem with that, I mean, I guess I don't care about that either. I just, I don't see how else it gets done. And one of the things that we can do once bodies start coming together like this, and they do come together, this is happening. you know, is we start interacting with other bodies and saying, and our denomination does this. We interact with other denominations and say, can we work together to not on, you know, maybe project A, Y, X, Y, and Z, OK, that's one thing. But what we're aiming for is let's see if we can't begin to confess one thing together that the Scriptures actually teach. And we actually meet and say, you know, we believe the Scriptures teach this, you believe it teaches that. How can we sharpen one another to actually confess that, you know, 2 Peter 1, 20 and 21, that there's only one. There are no private interpretations of scripture. There's only the meaning of scripture is singular. And if we have a difference about this, let's see if we can help one another get to a place where we actually are confessing the same thing so that we can join together. And I think we ought to be doing that. And, you know, on the denominational level, we are. We do it and it's getting done. Could we do it better? Absolutely. Are we screwing it up? Maybe we are. I don't know. But we're trying. We're going for it. Why? Because crisis put a mandate on us. This is the mandate, is that we would be one and the world would see it. And the question is just how can we ever get there? And I'm trying to lay down somewhat of a a blueprint, but there's holes in it. I'm just throwing out ideas, but this is the way I see it, where we can go from here. So you're saying the answer is not to hire a director of design and culture, and boost your Instagram? Hey, are you offering? Is your idea happening at all within the ecumenical movement where doctrine is the focus, apart from just the denomination? You know, there's not a lot of, my involvement has been minimal. So, yeah, you can pray for me in that. I want to do it. I'm eager to do it. It's, you know, I put my priority inside first, and then, you know, the ministries that we have facing outward. I'm not trying to prioritize I guess I haven't risen that aspect of the work to a priority that's on par with the other things. So, you know, I think that that's a deficiency of mine that I could do better at. And so, yeah, pray for that. I think, Doug, your question, the answer to it is yes. We have one. If anybody needs to leave, please feel free. We have, in the reformed world, there is what's called, is this right? Okay. So North American Presbyterian and Reformed Churches is the acronym. And these are large bodies of churches. Some are smaller than others. And right now there are 10, we would call them denominations. There are 10 denominations that are a part of NAPARC. So what does this mean? Well, there are representatives from each denomination that are meeting regularly. And we look over each other's shoulder. And we had to remove a denomination just three years ago. from this body, oh no, no, no, not from NAPARC, from the international, there's another, there's a larger body that's, this is North American. The large one is International Council of Reformed Churches, I think, ICRC. From the ICRC, the church of one of the Reformed bodies in Holland was removed because their doctrine, they voted as a body to reject the scriptural teaching of ordination of men only to the ministry. And these churches, which there's probably 30 or 40 different bodies that are a part of this group, they sent delegates to their meetings, that church that was removed, and begged them not to do it and pleaded with them from scripture and sat down with them and said, You know, this is, we've seen this before. Why are we, how did we get here again? You know, another one of our churches. And they took a vote at their next general assembly to push ahead. And so, we were a part, you know, our denomination was a part of the vote of this body to send them a letter. telling them that they are no longer a part of that body and express, it was a beautiful letter. I read it. It was, you know, humble. It was pleading and just calling them to return and to return to the scriptures. And then so the work isn't just like, hey, can we can we help you with your bake sale? You know, it's not that it's it's like there's actually difficult doctrinal matters that are getting addressed. That body has reformed in common. So Yes. Yeah, that's a great point. It is not that. And the reason is, is because true, our unity begins with the gospel. It's, our unity is in the truth. So if we don't have, if we don't have unity in the truth, we don't have unity. It's fake, right? So the World Council of Churches was a colossal failure because it was a unity predicated not on doctrine but on the mission to the world which ended up being everything. I mean, literally, everything. Veganism, you know, feeding the hungry, and it was all the unity in mission. No, we can't have unity in mission if we don't have unity in message, right? How do you do that? You have to have one message in order to have a mission that works, so. Well, there's an example down in Medford, just happened this year, a church that was planted as a Calvary Chapel, which Calvary Chapel has historically identified themselves as non-denominational, more as a movement. Now, I used to be inside the movement, I used to be at Calvary Chapel. So I can tell you, because I was originally pursuing the ministry in Calvary Chapel, so I'm not saying this as somebody who's, you know, an outsider, I'm saying, looking at it, and this is one of the things that led me out of Calvary Chapel, is that there were, some would say, were a non-denominational denomination. Like, well, what the world, what does that mean? I don't know what that means, you know? And part of what, where it really hurt was there was a, there were a movement inside of Calvary Chapel influenced by the Emergent Church Movement. If you're not familiar with that, never mind. But a bunch of Calvary Chapels were going emergent, which is a soft peddling on doctrine in a lot of ways. the Calvary Chapel churches meet, and it's kind of like a convention kind of thing, but because there's no organic accountability between the churches, there's no, so basically, you know, they were left with the, when they called these churches to repentance, the only thing that they could do was say, will you please take Calvary Chapel out of your name? Like, there's no, they couldn't do anything else, right? There was no account, there really was no real accountability. And they were powerless. That was very instrumental happening in my own move towards searching the scriptures and discovering what I think is the biblical model of what, you know, has historically been called Presbyterianism. And, but the church down in Medford started out Calvary Chapel, And their pastor, who was there for 20 plus years, he started coming under a reformed understanding influences. And then they disassociated from Calvary Chapel. They were non-denominational for many, many years. But they just became a part of the, just within the past few weeks, became officially a part of the United Reformed Churches of North America, the URCNA. It'd have to. Yeah, it'd have to. And that's where local interaction between pastors, we see this actually happening. And that's just not, that's not, that's one example of how this can take place where, you know, through relationships between local churches, you know, our church and this church across town that we have a lot of doctrinal disagreement. where there can be, through those kinds of local relationships and influence, that can lead to a greater faithfulness to the scriptures, I think. It's long and hard work. It's hard. No, it is, they were known as, I don't know what their Calvary Chapel name was, but they have been known recently as Cornerstone Community Church. Yeah, they have quite the journey, 20 some years from going Calvary Chapel non-denominational to now part of a reformed federation of churches that are mutually accountable to one another. And just to go back to the denominational idea, I mean, what I mean by denomination is local churches that are self-governing, that are accountable to other churches, and that do the work of the mission together. So, you know, let's plant churches together. Let's send foreign missionaries together. Let's do the Great Commission together. Why? Well, because that's what we're called to, right? So, and we don't want to be exclusive Our denomination isn't built so that we can be exclusive and leave other people out. No. Our arms should be as open and wide as possible. It's going to mean though, I mean, we can't have unity together. Amos, right? Amos 3.3. How can two walk together unless they be agreed, right? And we have to agree on fundamental doctrines in order to walk together and to do the work of the mission together. So it takes work and patience and love. But it's happening. It is happening. You know, it's just not, it's not happening as fast as we'd like it to happen or on the scale that we would like it to happen. But, you know, look where we're starting from. I mean, we're starting from a very splintered place where subjectivism has reigned supreme. And again, subjectivism cannot be a foundation for unity. It's the recipe for disunity and that's where we find ourselves. So, you know, I think that we should be hopeful. I think we should be idealistic about it and not give it up, not give it up. We can't be, why? Because the mandate we have is to is to manifest the unity that we actually have with one another to the world, manifest it to the world. So it's a big calling. Tough, tough work. But yeah, we just engage with the church and hope with the truth. and then we'll die. And hopefully someone else will take it on and keep going. I don't know who said it. The Christian life is a long obedience in the same direction. So that's what we've got to do. And for the long haul. Anybody have any other thoughts or questions, something that left you wondering or seemed to? One thing I was curious about, you talked about how the denominations split and it had to do with the spirit of the revolution, I guess you'd say. What came to mind also was how that would be impacted by the Civil War. Good point. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, every denomination that existed at the time of the Civil War split because of the Civil War. I don't know of a church, like a denomination of churches, that didn't split because of the Civil War, if it was part of the United States of America. And not all of them came back together again after the war. In fact, the one you named is a classic example, the Northern Baptist Church and the Southern Baptist Church. And that's true of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. At the time that the Civil War broke out, all the churches in the South, they met as a general assembly and they formed the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America. It existed until after the war. And then there was that merger with the North and South churches, those two denominations didn't happen until 1982. Yeah. But by then, they were both so unfaithful to scripture. I mean, whatever. I mean, really, they're very, very liberal, very, very progressive. You know, the OPC left the PCUSA in 1936 because, I mean, the ultimate issue that led to that was the PCUSA was ordaining and sending missionaries who weren't even Christians. that had no.