Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith, and today, how does your understanding of church history, or perhaps the lack thereof, shape what you believe about God, and in part, helps to shape your eternal destiny? This is an important but neglected area of teaching in the life of the church today. So many of our practices in the church are conditioned upon what we assume about church history.

For example, that ours is the only true church because it disappeared soon after the apostles died and has only been restored recently. That's a common theme, isn't it? Or that we do not need a liturgy in our worship services because all that superstitious stuff crept into the church over its history. But does history always bear out these assumptions when history is studied closely? Well, today, I want to speak to one audience in particular, and that is the born-again evangelical Christian.

You have much to benefit from an impartial, close study of church history. We at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church are launching a one-year Bible study. We have done so already, we're one week into it, into the history of the church, using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book, Church History in Plain Language. It will be the primary text that we will use in conjunction with other material that I will supply to illustrate and expand upon what Dr. Shelley teaches in his book. Now, our study's begun already, 7 p.m. in our church fellowship hall, but you don't have to be at the previous lesson to enjoy the lesson upcoming.

So, I invite you to 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard on Wednesday evenings at 7 p.m. If you've been curious about who and what we are as a church, New Geneva, well, this is an excellent time to check us out, meet our people, and meet Pastor Dave Bass. You can call us for more information at 523-0196. Now, today, I'd like to take some time to speak to one of the major trends in broad evangelicalism, and that is the conviction that we can leapfrog over the centuries of corrupt, error-laden church history and return to the pristine New Testament church and just do it the way they did it in the book of Acts.

Perhaps one of the most self-conscious efforts and one of the most successful in terms of numbers and church growth is the Calvary Chapel movement, begun by Chuck Smith in California in the late 1960s. Typical of this perspective is this from Calvary Chapel website, and I quote from it now, Calvary Chapel looks to the New Testament book of Acts as the divine model for the church. We don't look simply to church history or movements, but rely rather on the word of God. Now, Chuck Smith goes on, he fills this out a little bit more in a sermon on Acts, and I quote Chuck Smith directly now from that sermon.

He says, in Calvary Chapel, we look to the book of Acts as the model for the church. We believe that church history, for the most part, has been a sad and tragic story of failure. Let me repeat that. That's a constant theme throughout the Calvary Chapel movement, that church history has been a sad and tragic story of failure. You can't look at church history, Smith says, and find a model for the church, just like you can't look at the history of mankind and find God's intention for mankind.

Man has fallen, and so you can't see the divine ideal. The same is true of the church. You don't see the divine ideal for the church by looking at church history, unquote. This attitude towards church history is not unique to Calvary Chapel. It is shared, as well, by countless other modern evangelicals.

Calvary Chapel is only an example. Other evangelicals, especially those without a denominational history, like independent Bible churches, fundamentalist Baptist churches, and independent community churches, often share this perspective on church history. Oh, yet there is a profound irony in all of this, in that if one were to study church history, he would see that many of the denominations now in existence were founded on this very same premise, that is, that they could leapfrog the centuries of church history and create the same pristine church of the New Testament.

This includes the churches of Christ, the Seventh-day Adventist, and the Brethren movement. But the thing is, the very day, think about this, the very day after you decide to do this and begin to do it, you already have a church history, 24 hours old already, and you thus become liable to the same corruption, and as Chuck Smith puts it, the sad and tragic failure about others in church history. So pervasive has this tendency been throughout church history, and it would be there for an available study if we only look at church history. Well, church historians have given this trend a name. It's called primitivism.

Primitivism, I'm sorry, primitivism. Primitivism is that impulse to bypass the supposed errors and false practices of the church of the times and return to the pure practice of the original church as modeled in the book of Acts. Dear listener, as original and creative as you might think yourself to be in wishing to just go back to the book of Acts and do it like they did without all the baggage of the churches around you, oh, dear listener, it's all been done before. There is nothing new under the sun.

If one were to take time to study the history of the church so arrogantly dismissed and despised by most modern evangelicals and Calvary chapels in particular, well, you would be sobered by the consistent blind spots and pitfalls to which each and every one of these movements falls prey. And I'm afraid that Calvary chapel movement has fallen prey to as well. Let me list three of them for you here. First of all, the first of the three pitfalls to which those who follow a primitivist tendency fall prey. Number one, most evangelicals are blind to their own presuppositions.

Most evangelicals are blind to their own presuppositions. Don't be scared off by that word presupposition. A presupposition is a thought or set of thoughts that we assume without having to consciously think about them or test their truths anymore. I presupposed, for example, that my chair would hold me, that my desk would contain my Bible, and my lamp would click on as I sat down to look at the book of Acts today. I also came to the text with a prior understanding of many things before I even read it for the umpteenth time.

No one comes to the Bible with a blank slate, in other words. At a very basic level, for example, I presupposed that in order to understand as God intended, well, I didn't need to read an original Greek manuscript of Acts, but that a faithful English translation of it was sufficient. And don't laugh at this because, for example, Muslims believe that the Quran can only be properly understood when read in the original Arabic. Not so the Bible. I also presupposed that I did not need to wear a tunic like Tabitha used to make to worship, right?

A suit or a slacks or jeans were sufficient to wear to worship services or to worship in an upper room like the apostles did. A church sanctuary, a worship center, or a rented facility was fine. Or that I needed to travel by ship like Paul did in Acts on a short-term missions project. I could fly or take a bus or train or a plane. Well, these examples I use to belabor the point and make clear what I mean by presupposing a thing.

But there are far more subtle ways in which presuppositions work in our hearts and minds that we are not entirely conscious of when we come to the text. Let me identify a few of these presuppositions, two of them for you. My first example would be, for example, Pentecostal brothers presuppose charismatic gifts for the church age, and lo and behold, they find it in the book of Acts. Oh, how wondrous the power of God was in the early church.

He did indeed confirm that a new eon had dawned in Christ, a new covenant had been cut, and he did so by healing the sick and the lame, bestowing miraculous insight and knowledge, and giving the gift of the ability to speak in known languages, the gift of tongues. Now, our Pentecostal and charismatic brethren presuppose this to be true for our age as well, because they have experienced it. They extrapolate that a one-for-one relationship exists. That is, that since they experienced it back in the book of Acts, then so should we.

Yet, I would argue that not everything described in narrative is meant to be prescribed in narrative for all times and places of the church. And this, I submit to you, is true of the charismatic gifts. Also, we see these kinds of gifts bestowed throughout redemptive history at periods of new revelation and at the inauguration of new covenants. When the period of covenant inauguration ceases, so do the charismatic gifts. When the time of new revelation ceases, like the Pentateuch with the death of Moses or the death is of the prophets, so the charismatic gifts die or cease, if you will.

And no amount of huffing and puffing and attempts to duplicate those charismatic gifts works. They are of God and only He can bestow them. Such is the case with the charismatic gifts of Acts. They are not meant to be for the entire church age. That's one example of a presupposition to which many of our brothers and sisters come to the text to the book of Acts.

The second one is, Baptist brothers presuppose a believer baptism model is held out in Acts. They come to the text with this presupposition. And for many of these, my brothers, since so many adults were baptized in Acts, and there is then, ostensibly, no explicit reference to children and infants being baptized, well, then, baptism must obviously be for adult believers only. But this is a presupposition, not necessarily warranted by the facts. First, let me, out of three reasons why this is not a warranted presupposition in the book of Acts, that is, that adult believers and adult believers only are to be baptized, first.

Baptism is a new covenant sacrament that corresponds directly to circumcision in the Old Testament, where infants were required to be circumcised. Therefore, Paul links them one to another. In the book of Colossians, for example, he says in Colossians chapter 2, verses 11 and 12, in him also, that is in Christ, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been baptized, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead, unquote.

God always has an initiatory sacrament with every covenant in which the subject of that sacrament does not necessarily give his consent and understanding. With the Old Covenant, it was circumcision, performed once upon an infant. In the New Covenant, it is baptism, likewise performed once upon an infant. Secondly, let me note for you, when we regard infants being baptized in the book of Acts, let me note for you, secondly, that in his excellent study, Baptism in the New Testament, the scholar Oscar Coleman observes that the word household, which is oikos in Greek, the word household refers by definition to homes with infants in them.

All through the Greek literature, and Dr. Coleman does an excellent job of tracking this word oikos, all through Greek literature, not just in the New Testament. When this word oikos appears, it means a household with infants and children. Therefore, when we read, for example, of Lydia in the book of Acts and her household being baptized, or the Philippian jailer and all his household being baptized the same night as as conversion, both found in Acts 16, well, then we can be confident that infants and children were the subjects of this covenant sacrament.

So, not all of the presuppositions of our evangelical brothers hold up to biblical and historical scrutiny, because thirdly, there is an unbroken link between infant baptism and the record of church history. Oh, this is where church history is so important, because infant baptism appears from the beginning in the church fathers and in Eusebius' church history, for example, a very illuminating volume of the early church history, and there's no dispute or there's no conflict in the church history record over infant baptism. There's no books or tracts arguing one side or another. There's no church councils called to decide the question. No.

Infant baptism appears seamlessly in the life of the church very early, as if it had always been there, inherited from Christ and the apostles. And, of course, my Baptist brethren would merely say, well, the church fell into error very early. But the burden of proof is upon you, dear Baptist brother. The burden of proof is upon you to show where and when it happened, and also to demonstrate the circumstances and the supposed false teachers who introduced infant baptism, because it isn't there. No one has been able to do this.

So, just in this one question of baptism, for example, we discover the importance of the study of church history and the role played by our presuppositions when we think of the church and the church in history, to think that we can simply leapfrog over 2,000 years of church history and look at the way the New Testament did it and then copy it and be faithful and right in doing so, is simply naive. We bring a pre-understanding to the book of Acts. We bring presuppositions to our reading of the book of Acts.

And one way to help minimize those presuppositions from leading us into error is to examine our presuppositions closely, be aware of our presuppositions, and then compare how other saints throughout church history have handled those same presuppositions. This is a necessity, dear brother. You have much to benefit from an impartial, close study of church history, dear listener. We at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church, we're doing a one-year Bible study into church history using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book, Church History in Plain Language. Now, our study began on October 7th at 7 p.m. in our church fellowship hall.

We invite you to join us every Wednesday night at 7 p.m., and you can pick up and continue with us. If you've been curious about who and what we are as a church, it's an excellent time to check us out and meet our people and me, Pastor Dave Bass, 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights. Call us at 523-0196 for further information. Well, for the second pitfall into which our modern evangelical brothers fall when it comes to church history is indeed the modern evangelical demonstrates a lack of humility towards and appreciation for the experience of saints who preceded us in church history.

Yes, the modern evangelical demonstrates a lack of humility towards and appreciation for the experience of saints who preceded us in church history. There is a we-are-the-people attitude implicit in the one who thinks that he can do what other saints perhaps more gifted than himself have not been able to do in church history, and historians call this phenomenon cultural arrogance.

That Chuck Smith was able to preach on the beaches of California to assemble believers, to meet and worship as a church, and to learn freely from other Christian teachers and books and recordings is due in no small part to hard-won religious freedom, but at a dear price by Christians that he so blithely dismisses as sad and tragic failures. Oh, cultural arrogance. Church history is nothing but a record of sad and tragic failure. Oh, dear listener was dear Athanasius. Dear Athanasius, who was bishop of Alexandria, and Athanasius lived from AD 296 to 373.

Was dear Athanasius a sad and tragic failure for standing for language in the Nicene Creed that expressed the divine nature of Christ? Oh, most moderate evangelicals are ignorant of the fact that early in the life of the church, pagan notions of Christ almost swept the Christian faith into obscurity. A man named Arius taught that Christ was not the eternal son of God, but rather a subordinate being created by the Father. If this view had prevailed, Christianity would have become just another of the pagan religions of gods and goddesses that proliferated in the world at that time.

But Athanasius, in his writings, his sermons, and his defense at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, Athanasius fought for the full divinity of Christ with the Father, expressed in scriptures like this found in John chapter 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, Athanasius was persecuted severely by Arian princes and bishops who flourished in the decades after the Council of Nicaea. Athanasius was exiled several times, deposed from his office as bishop, scorned and beaten for his refusal to recant from his views.

Yet, he held firm, and his views eventually held sway and formed the doctrinal structure for our understanding of the Trinity, dear listener. One historian puts it this way, almost single-handedly, Athanasius saved the church from pagan intellectualism. By Athanasius' tenacity and vision in preaching one God and Savior, he had preserved from dissolution the unity and integrity of the Christian faith, unquote.

Now, Calvary Chapel has a doctrinal statement that says, we believe that there is one living and true God eternally existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory, and this triune God created all, upholds all, and governs all things, unquote, from the Calvary Chapel website. But Chuck Smith and most Calvary pastors and believers are clueless as to the dear price paid by forbearers like Bishop Athanasius for language that they themselves use in their own doctrinal statement to articulate the Trinity.

Instead, they dismiss the man who succeeded in preserving from dissolution the unity and integrity of the Christian faith. They dismiss him as a sad and tragic failure. We could cite numerous other examples, dear listener. Was Martin Luther a sad and tragic failure for reforming what was in his day a corrupt and dissolute Roman Catholic Church? In teaching the Book of Romans as a professor at Wittenberg, Luther rediscovered that, as Paul says, a man is justified by faith and not by works of the law.

And for this, Luther paid a tremendous price. The Roman Catholic Church had an intricate, extensive network of works-based righteousness in order to be saved. And Luther's rediscovery of and stubborn insistence upon salvation by grace through faith transformed the church as we know it. And once more, Calvary Chapel has in its doctrinal statement, and I quote from it, God saves and gives new life to all who come to him in repentance and faith, trusting in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Dear listener, this is a Protestant language of faith and Christian soteriology, and it was bought at a dear price by reformers like Luther and Calvin and Knox. Those who followed the reformers in subsequent generations, they also suffered and bled and died to seal the gains of the Reformation. And evangelicals like Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel pastors and believers are living off of the capital invested by saints like the reformers. And yet they dismiss them as sad and tragic failures. Oh, dear listener, ignorance breeds arrogance since it fails to see and appreciate what has come before.

Ignorance of church history breeds arrogance. Modern evangelicals in America are generally ignorant of their history, and they enjoy their religious freedom to look to the book of Acts for the model of the church, as Chuck Smith says, while at the same time despising the price paid by pilgrims, Puritans, and Presbyterians, for example, to give them that freedom. They wouldn't enjoy that freedom in China or Saudi Arabia or Iran, yet these pilgrims, Puritans, and Presbyterians are, in their eyes, a sad and tragic failure and are in no wise to be consulted, as Chuck Smith says, for the divine ideal for the church.

Well, third blind spot to which many modern evangelicals fall prey is indeed the modern evangelical manifests an inability to learn from the mistakes of others and then will be doomed to repeat those mistakes. Yes, the modern evangelical manifests an inability to learn from the mistakes of others in church history and will thus be doomed to repeat those mistakes. As Chuck Smith is fond of pointing out, that church history is indeed filled with atrocities, error, and heresy, as he says. Atrocities, error, and heresy. Oh, that the church history is filled with these things is so obvious as to be painful and embarrassing.

Please, Pastor Smith, Pastor Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel, tell us something we don't know. Atrocity, error, and heresy flourished not only in church history, but in Jesus' own company of apostles. Peter no more than confessed true doctrine, for example, when Jesus had asked him, who do you say that I am? Peter answered by responding, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Indeed, true doctrine, wasn't it?

But moments later, Jesus turned around and rebuked him by exclaiming, get behind me, Satan, because Peter denied that Jesus must soon suffer and die. So error was in the very company of the apostles. Atrocity, error, and heresy have characterized the history of the church ever since, precisely as Jesus and the apostles predicted. They predicted these things. And these things also, Peter tells us, test, prune, and prove the church.

We see the church come shining out of this history as the true church, and to ignore her model in church history is to invite repeating the errors of the past. Ignoring the history of that church and the model of her emerges, that emerges from it, is to invite repeating the very atrocities, error, and heresy experienced by the church of history. For example, many evangelicals, many evangelicals, excuse me, risk repeating the errors of the past in regards to worship, for example.

One of the dangers of parachuting into the book of Acts, that is flying over all of church history to derive one's model for worship, is that there's no particular liturgy or complete model for a worship service in the book of Acts. This is because the church would already find a model ready to hand, and what she found in the temple liturgy, and the model already practiced in the synagogue, when the early church asked, what is worship that pleases God?

That early church found not only that the heart of the worshiper must be right, but that all of the elements of that worship must be acceptable to God, and that they be done decently and in order, as the Apostle Paul directs.

But many of my contemporary worship brothers and sisters seize on the very fact that there is no specific model or liturgy for worship laid out in Acts as proof that they can include, for example, drama skits or video individual soloists, and it will please God, or that they can exclude embarrassing, elements for them, like confession of sin or liturgical prayers recited by the congregation, or long sermons with complicated ideas like propitiation and justification, the wrath and justice of God, for example, and that excluding these will please God in his worship.

And on the surface, in a simplistic fashion, such a reading of Acts might justify so much of what we see in contemporary worship services. But a deeper look, and I invite you to do this, a deeper look at the Bible, and how the church has practiced worship and liturgy over the centuries that is church history paints a different picture. The early church, for example, took worship very seriously. I have an entire volume in my 32-volume Apostolic Church Fathers set that is dedicated to designing the early church worship service. It's called the Apostolic Constitutions.

Many of the prayers that we incorporate in our own worship service go back that far, dear listener. Well, my concern is that the contemporary church is indeed in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past in many other areas of the church, not only in worship, but they do so by ignoring the lessons of history in worship, but areas like the Trinity. Many are so ill-informed about the history of the Trinity that they fall prey to making the same errors, or church discipline as well. If there's no church membership, for example, there can be no church discipline, a woefully lacking thing in the life of the church today.

Well, you have much to benefit from an impartial, close study of church history, dear listener. We have launched a one-year Bible study. We've just begun into the history of the church using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book, Church History in Plain Language. Now, our study will continue at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evenings throughout the year, and we invite you to join us to drop in and begin with us wherever we are. We meet in our fellowship hall for this study at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

Now, New Geneva also meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. We invite you to join us for our worship service as well on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m., and you can call us for further information at 523-0196.