2 . THE EXCLUSIVE CHARACTER OF THE GROUND OF GATHERING

Blackheath, August, 1876.

My Dear Brother,

I next must indicate on what ground the Lord would have His people gathered in assembly, for I have already shown you why we cannot meet with other believers. You rightfully could say to me, ‘You have given me strong reasons why I should not go to a denominational church or chapel, and therefore I think you ought to go a step further and direct me where to go’. It is in anticipation of this that I propose to point out some marks whereby the assembly of God may be known locally.

1. Christ the Centre of Gathering

The first essential is, that Christ alone should be the centre of gathering. The Lord himself teaches us this when He says, “Where two or three are gathered together in” unto ‘eis’ “My name, there am I in the midst of them”, Matthew 18: 20. I must point out that the Lord does not say He is in the midst of every gathering of His professed people. He is only in the midst of those gathered unto His name. Unto His name! Not unto His name and something else besides, like some truth, doctrine or form of ecclesiastical government, but unto His name alone, outside of and apart from every human system and arrangement, gathered round about and unto the Person of a risen and glorified Lord! It was not possible to be thus gathered until after the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, for it is the Holy Spirit who gathers and He gathers only to a risen Christ.

But you will say, ‘Surely all believers of whatever name are thus gathered’, for I have met repeatedly with the same assertion. It would be easy to refute it, but I prefer to apply a test. Ask a true ‘churchman’ to go to a dissenter’s chapel, and he will decline. In like manner ask a zealous dissenter to go to ‘church’, and he will at once refuse. In both cases they have conscientious objections to the course proposed. This could not be if they were both respectively gathered only to the name of Christ, for they both profess to love that name, and how could they refuse to go where His name was the only centre of the gathering?

The fact is, the dissenter adds to the name of Christ certain ideas of his own - drawn, as he thinks, from the Scriptures - on church organisation and government; and the churchman, in like manner, has surrounded the name of Christ with his traditions. I grant you that both are generally willing to receive all Christians - this is not universally true, for the largest ‘church’ in your own denomination makes baptism by immersion a condition of membership - but it is on their own foundation that they are willing to receive them. Thus, if you go to the ‘church’, you must of necessity agree in all their plans and modes; and so also if you go to a chapel.

You will therefore see that it is not true that denominational Christians are gathered to the name of Christ alone. If they were, they would repudiate all human names, glorifying only in the name of Christ. In fact, a denomination does not appeal to all believers, but only to those of like doctrines and views. Thereby, they practically confess that Christ alone is not their centre.

Let me then earnestly warn you that no gathering can be according to God’s mind if the name of Christ alone is not the centre of attraction. Well might the Spirit of God exhort us through His servant, “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach”, Heb 13: 13. These huge busy religious organisations round about us truly form the camp, and hence it can only be outside of all these that gathering to the name of Christ is possible. Don’t be content until you have found such a gathering, for finding it, you can enter upon the enjoyment of all the untold blessing which is summed up in the words, “There am I” [not, ‘there will I be’] “in the midst of them”.

2. The Ground of the One Body

A second essential is, that the gathering shall be on the ground of the Church - on the ground of the body of Christ - and hence it will be around the table of the Lord. I will explain this more fully. That Christ is the Head of the Church we have already seen; and since He is the Head, believers during this dispensation are members of His body. “By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body”, 1 Cor 12: 13, and consequently we are said to be “members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones”, Eph 5: 30. We are therefore united by the Spirit to Christ in heaven, for “he who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”, 1 Cor 6: 17. As a consequence we are also “members one of another”, Rom 12: 5. There is the closest possible bond - a vital bond - on the one hand, between Christ and His people, and on the other, between all believers. This is the unity which the Spirit of God has formed, the unity of the body of Christ. 1 Cor 12: 12-13. We are exhorted to be diligent to keep “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”, Eph 4: 3.

This being so, the ground of the gathering of the saints should express this truth, owning thereby (if I may so speak) the unity of the body. That is, we must be gathered as members of the body of Christ, not as Anglicans, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Independents, or Baptists, but solely as being members of the body of Christ. Any ground of meeting, therefore, which is wider or narrower than this, is a denial of the truth of the body and thus cannot be God’s ground. The application of this principle destroys all denominationalism at one blow; and it ought to do so, because the foundation upon which denominations are based is utterly contrary to the Scriptures.

A further consequence of being gathered as members of the body of Christ is that it will be around the Lord’s table. The apostle teaches this truth when he says, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread” [or, one loaf] “and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread”, 1 Cor 10: 16-17. The loaf on the table in the midst of the assembled saints is thus the symbol of the oneness of the body of Christ; and inasmuch as all partake of it, it is the further symbol of common membership of that body.

How wonderful in its simplicity! Hence, in the early church the disciples always on the first day of the week came together to break bread. Acts 20: 7; 1 Cor 11: 20. They came together for this purpose - compare also Acts 2: 42. The object of their being gathered, was not to attend a ‘service’, to hear sermons, but to break bread, and thus to “show the Lord’s death till He comes”, 1 Cor 11: 26.

Search, dear brother, for these features of the Assembly of God in your own neighbourhood. Where will you find them in the manifold ‘places of worship’ around? Is it too much to say that your search will be in vain? It’s a sad sign of the church’s failure and of the utter confusion of this evil day!

3. Liberty of the Holy Spirit

Another characteristic is liberty for the Holy Spirit to minister by whom He will. I have already spoken of this in my first letter, and therefore need not add much here. I may remind you that this also springs out of the truth of the body of Christ. Read very carefully 1 Corinthians 12-14 where it is expounded. There you will see that “the body is not one member, but many”, and “that to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge”, etc.; that “the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of thee”, 1 Cor 12: 8-21. The apostle thus says, “When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation”, 1 Cor 14: 26-33. Here is the recognition that every distinct gift comes from the Head of the Church, and that there must be room for its use by the Spirit in the Assembly. If there is not, the coming together - meeting, church, service - is not according to God.

The evil of allowing no exercise of gift apart from the ‘minister’ has kept people in a state of ignorance of the truth, through the incapacity of their chosen minister, when there are often some in the congregation with more knowledge and more gift. There he is, Lord’s day after Lord’s day, repeating the barest doctrinal elements, and these distorted by the way they are presented. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to remove him from the office to which he has been appointed. But you have known cases of this kind yourself, and I will not therefore enlarge. I will ask you whether this evil should not convince you that such an arrangement cannot be according to the mind of the Lord?

4. Exercise of Godly Discipline

There must also be the godly exercise of discipline according to the Word. Satan frequently deludes souls now by the presentation of the counterfeit of the truth. On this account it is necessary to be on our guard. It is thus quite possible that you might apparently find the three preceding marks, where there is the absence of this fourth point. Be sure therefore to seek this also, or you may fail in your search.

Discipline has to be exercised in two directions: upon immoralities, specified in 1 Corinthians 5, and upon those who hold false doctrine, Gal 3 and 6; 2 John: 9-11; Rev 2 and 3. Most agree - although they may neglect it in practice - that evil walkers ought to be put away from the Lord’s table, but there is great opposition to the application of discipline to doctrine. Much is said about ‘liberty of conscience’, but I deny that we have any liberty of conscience against the Word of God, to which we must implicitly bow. “To the law and the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because they have no light in them”, Isaiah 8: 20. The plea is plausible, but one can at once detect in it the device of Satan. If he can undermine the foundations of definite truth, it is as if he had conquered by open opposition.

A professed believer who denies the value of the blood of Christ is as surely lost as an open infidel. To remember this will help you understand the difficulty which the carrying out of discipline for doctrine has met. It really comes to this in some instances: the reception of the enemies of Christ into so-called fellowship. You cannot find the assembly of God where there is no discipline for doctrine, for holiness ever becomes God’s house.

5. Subjection to the Word of God

In the assembly of God everything will be ordered in subjection to the Word. The Scriptures must be supreme because they are the expression of God’s will. Hence nothing can be tolerated which is either opposed to, or which is without the sanction of, His Word.

We are not left to our own judgment and device, but provision has been made in the epistles for the smallest details of the assembly. It is therefore no less disobedience to act without the authority of the Word, than it is to act contrary to it. It is exceedingly important to bear this in mind, for if you examine the matter closely, you will find there is not a denomination of Christians who have not ordered a number of things as they themselves have deemed best. To illustrate what I mean, I may mention a conversation I had last year with an old fellow-student. I said, ‘Have you the authority of Scripture for this and that and the other, specifying a variety of things in their ecclesiastical arrangements?’ ‘No’, he frankly replied, ‘we have not, but’, he added, ‘I contend that we are at liberty to adopt the plans and methods which our experience shows to be best’. And, stripped from all disguise, this is the common ground taken.

I contend that everything ordered in the assembly, every act and procedure, all the activities of the saints - prayer, praise and ministry - must be regulated by, and have the direct sanction of, Scripture. The Head directs all, and that Head is Christ; He has recorded His will for us in the written Word. Hence, He has put us in the place, not of devising and arranging, but of obedience.

Wherever you find the marks already mentioned in combination, you will find the place where God would have His saints gathered, because they are the marks of His own assembly. It is true you may find much weakness and imperfection in the saints so gathered, and these two things have always characterised the Church since the death of Stephen, and will characterise her until the Lord comes.

Cautions

On this very account, however, I may add a caution. It is sometimes said the saints at such a place are so earnest and active that surely it would be according to God’s will that I unite with them; or there are so many souls converted under the preaching of Mr. X, that it cannot be God’s will that I should be in separation from such an honoured servant of the Lord. Two remarks may be made upon this. First, to argue in this way is to substitute our own thoughts in the place of God’s, to follow our own reasonings instead of the written Word. Secondly, there is scarcely a form of Christianity, however corrupt, that might not be supported in this way. If I see ritualistic clergymen earnest and devout - and thank God there are such - am I to conclude that God would have me in association with them? Again, when God in His sovereign grace and mercy - in tender compassion to souls - mightily uses His preached Word for the conversion of sinners, whether in Catholicism, the church of England, or dissent, am I thereby to infer that these systems are after His own heart? Nothing could be more deceitful; and yet these illusive and deceptive reasonings are ensnaring souls on every hand.

Should I be afraid that you will be deluded in this way, dear brother? No, I am convinced the Lord has begun to show you the truth; and having begun the work, He will surely carry it on to completion. But I urge you onward and even remind you of your responsibility, and I am sure that when once you are found in the only place on earth where God would have His saints to be, not only will your gratitude and joy before God abound, but you will also wonder that for so many years your eyes were closed against a truth so plainly revealed in the Scriptures.

May the Lord alone lead you, so that no subtlety of the foe, no decoy which he is so ready to present to exercised hearts, may turn you aside. If your prayer be, ‘Make Thy way plain before my face’, you will soon discover that “unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness”, Ps 112: 4.

Yours affectionately in Christ,

E. D.

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