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Originally Posted by Steve Epley
Concerning this supposed restoration was it God did NOT have the power to maintain what He began or did NOT have the will?
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I think a brief look at ancient Israel would serve as an excellent example. Israel was God’s people. Yet we see throughout their history how the nation descended into apostasy time and time again until God sent a prophet or man of God to turn the people back to Torah (God’s Law). We see how Jerusalem was even devastated and the Temple had to be rebuilt and the God ordained pattern of worship and atonement had to be revisited. We also see how kings and prophets searched the Scriptures and found how the people and the religious leaders had neglected the issues of God’s commands such as the Sabbath and tithe. In Israel we see the human tendency to drift into tradition and apostasy…but we also see something else…God had much mercy on his people and restored them with REVIVAL time and time again.
I now ask YOU…did God NOT have the power to maintain the Israel He began…or did He NOT have the will?
It’s not that God doesn’t have the power or the will…it’s simply that fallen human beings distort, traditionalize, and apostatize over a period of time. This is why REVIVAL is so important. Revival isn’t an option….revival is our SURVIVAL.
Carry what we see in ancient Israel into the Church Age. We see the church become popular and eventually she’s coopted by the state. The offices of bishop become very powerful political posts and soon the church is just another political social entity. In the process she traditionalizes, forms liturgies, institutes a professional priesthood, builds massive edifices to demonstrate her power and herd the masses to hear her teachings, the priests adopt icons, and idols. Converted pagans void of true spiritual revelation bring in pagan terms and traditions, only to Christianize them. God sends a revival…a man begins to read the Bible and he is burned at the stake for challenging the priesthood. Soon there are periods of revival throughout history and they are met with extreme persecution. Eventually the Catholic Church chains the Bible to her altars and forbids the common man to read it. Repentance is hindered with the false doctrines of penance and indulgences, water baptism is ceremonialized into sprinkling and titles are spoken instead of the name, many experience the Holy Ghost in what was called “spiritual ecstasy” and these are often denounced as heretics and embraced as monastic mystics after their deaths. It seems Hell is conqured…but then a man named Martin Luther begins to actually read his Bible and God’s Spirit moves upon his tradition laden heart and begins to show him truths that challenge the Roman Catholic Church. He nails his 95 thesis to the wall of his church and the Reformation begins. The Reformation brought waves of revival as men began to turn toward God’s Word. Various reformers (such as Knox and Huss) begin to press deeper into the Word as scholarship begins to uncover truths that had been hidden for nearly a 1,000 years. Soon Revivalists Wesley, Whitfield, and others set the world aflame with messages of true repentance and obedience, however their understanding is still limited. Fundamentalist Churches break forth and denominations are formed around truths discovered in Scripture. Yet God has more. When the time was right those who had repented of sin cried out in hunger for God’s next restoration…a revival. The time was right…God poured out the Holy Ghost in massive power at Stone’s Folley, Azuza, and in Wales. It sets the Christian world on fire. Of course Jesus promised something…the Holy Ghost would lead us into all truth. With the fullness of Holy Ghost baptism in operation again God reveals to those students of the Word that He is manifest in Christ alone….and the doctrine of Oneness breaks forth among the Pentecostals. Soon Jesus name baptism is restored.
Bro…anyone who knows Israel can see how God has a consistent record with restoring his people from their traditions and apostasies. Certainly it’s a possibility that this is also seen in the Church.
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Many historians have given evidence of a truth preaching Apostolic church through the ages.(Marvin, Chalfant, Wiesser, etc.)
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I’ve read Marvin, Chalfant, and Wiesser’s work. For example Marvin and Chalfant state that the Cathars were early Apostolics. Bro…patchworks of the Cathar’s writings still exist. They were Gnostic duelists who also embraced polygamy and reincarnation. Marvin even proposed that Arians and Apostolics are of the same cloth…bro…that’s far, far, far from the Truth. Marvin Arnold proposed that the Gothic Bible was widely distributed among early Apostolics and was indeed the Apostolic Bible…again Gothic Christianity inherited the errors of the Arians. The Gothic Bible is Arian...it's not even Modalist! Marvin Arnold also claims that the Nestorians were early Apostolics…bro…we have plenty of Nestorian writings and we can even travel to Asia and visit Nestorian churches and shrines…they were NOT Apostolics. The only thing things groups have in common is that they denied the Trinity. Some were Modalists, some Manachian, some Duelists, some Arian. Is God a God of confusion????????????????? Is this were you trace YOUR spiritual heritage?
I firmly believe that the bitterness against the Trinitarian Church’s rejection of our truth lead many men to produce a form of Apostolic Historical Revisionism that has distorted the truth of many of these early groups. Please note…Christadelphians, JW’s, and Sabbatarians also trace their supposed history to these groups. Why? The rank and file Christian knows so little about them it can be made to appear that there has always been a consistent church. But in-depth research will reveal otherwise. Most of these anti-Trinitarian groups didn’t baptize in Jesus name. I believe it was the Bogomils or the Cathars who regarded “baptism” as a meditative experience of confession…there wasn’t even water involved. LOL
I’m sincerely looking for TRUTH on the matter. Can you PROVE to me that I can trace my history to these Gnostic groups? Can you prove they weren’t polygamists, duelists, Gnostics, and seditionists? I’ve tried and tried and tried. Why? Because truth matters to me. It’s not enough for me to merely pass the buck to Marvin, Chalfant, or Wiesser if I’m incorrect and found to be lying on history. If God could have mercy on the extreme error in these groups, errors exhibited in what we have of their own works…certainly God could have mercy on Martin Luther, John Huss, John Knox, Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Wesley, Whitfield, leading up to Parham, McAlister, Urshan, Haywood, and others…who by the way saw themselves as a RESTORATION of the church without even referencing these obscure cults we find down through history. Did these groups suddenly VANISH in 1890? Where are their decedents today? They melted into obscurity as more and more Biblical light was revealed and there errors were increasingly rejected.
Can you help me with this bro? I’ll gladly reverse my position.