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Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church

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with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith

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and today how does your understanding of church history or perhaps the lack thereof shape what you

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believe about God and in part helps to shape your eternal destiny. This is an important but

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neglected area of teaching in the life of the church today. So many of our practices in the

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church are conditioned upon what we assume about church history. For example, that ours is the only

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true church because it disappeared soon after the apostles died and has only been restored recently.

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That's a common theme, isn't it? Or that we do not need a liturgy in our worship services because all

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that superstitious stuff crept into the church over its history. But does history always bear out

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these assumptions when history is studied closely? Well, today I want to speak to one audience in

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particular and that is the born-again evangelical Christian. You have much to benefit from an

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impartial close study of church history. We at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church are

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launching a one-year Bible study. We have done so already. We're one week into it, into the history

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of the church using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book, Church History in Plain Language. It will be

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the primary text that we will use in conjunction with other material that I will supply to illustrate

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and expand upon what Dr. Shelley teaches in his book. Now, our study has begun already at 7 p.m.

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in our church fellowship hall, but you don't have to be at the previous lesson to enjoy the lesson

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upcoming. So, I invite you to 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard on Wednesday evenings at

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7 p.m. If you've been curious about who and what we are as a church, New Geneva, well, this is an

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excellent time to check us out, meet our people, and me, Pastor Dave Bass. You can call us for more

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information at 523-0196. Now, today, I'd like to take some time to speak to one of the major trends

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in broad evangelicalism, and that is the conviction that we can leapfrog over the centuries of corrupt,

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error-laden church history and return to the pristine New Testament church and just do it the way

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they did it in the book of Acts. Perhaps one of the most self-conscious efforts and one of the most

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successful in terms of numbers in church growth is the Calvary Chapel movement, begun by Chuck Smith

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in California in the late 1960s. Typical of this perspective is this from Calvary Chapel website,

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and I quote from it now, Calvary Chapel looks to the New Testament book of Acts as the divine model

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for the church. We don't look simply to church history or movements, but rely rather on the Word of

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God, unquote. Now, Chuck Smith goes on. He fills this out a little bit more in a sermon on Acts,

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and I quote Chuck Smith directly now from that sermon. He says, in Calvary Chapel, we look to the

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book of Acts as the model for the church. We believe that church history, for the most part, has been a sad

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and tragic story of failure. Let me repeat that. That's a constant theme throughout the Calvary Chapel

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movement, that church history has been a sad and tragic story of failure. You can't look at

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church history, Smith says, and find a model for the church, just like you can't look at the history of

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mankind and find God's intention for mankind. Man has fallen, and so you can't see the divine ideal.

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The same is true of the church. You don't see the divine ideal for the church by looking at church

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history, unquote. This attitude towards church history is not unique to Calvary Chapel. It is shared,

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as well, by countless other modern evangelicals. Calvary Chapel is only an example. Other evangelicals,

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especially those without a denominational history, like independent Bible churches,

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fundamentalist Baptist churches, and independent community churches, often share this perspective

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on church history. Oh, yet there is a profound irony in all of this,

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in that if one were to study church history, he would see that many of the denominations now in

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existence were founded on this very same premise, that is, that they could leapfrog the centuries of

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church history and create the same pristine church of the New Testament. This includes the churches of

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Christ, the Seventh-day Adventist, and the Brethren movement. But the thing is, the very day, think about

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this. The very day after you decide to do this and begin to do it, you already have a church history,

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24 hours old already, and you thus become liable to the same corruption. And as Chuck Smith puts it,

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the sad and tragic failure about others in church history. So pervasive has this tendency been

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throughout church history, and it would be there for an available study if we only look at church

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history. Well, church historians have given this trend a name. It's called primitivism. Primitivism,

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I'm sorry, primitivism. Primitivism is that impulse to bypass the supposed errors and false practices of

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the church of the times and return to the pure practice of the original church as modeled in the

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book of Acts. Dear listener, as original and creative as you might think yourself to be

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in wishing to just go back to the book of Acts and do it like they did, without all the baggage of the

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churches around you. Oh, dear listener, it's all been done before. There is nothing new under the sun.

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If one were to take the time to study the history of the church so arrogantly dismissed and despised by

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most modern evangelicals and Calvary chapels in particular, well, you would be sobered by the

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consistent blind spots and pitfalls to which each and every one of these movements falls prey.

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And I'm afraid that Calvary chapel movement has fallen prey to as well. Let me list three of them

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for you here. First of all, the first of the three pitfalls to which those who follow a primitivist

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tendency fall prey. Number one, most evangelicals are blind to their own presuppositions. Most evangelicals

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are blind to their own presuppositions. Don't be scared off by that word presupposition.

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A presupposition is a thought or set of thoughts that we assume without having to consciously think about them

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or test their truths anymore. I presupposed, for example, that my chair would hold me, that my desk would

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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

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text with a prior understanding of many things before I even read it for the umpteenth time. No one comes to the

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Bible with a blank slate, in other words. At a very basic level, for example, I presupposed that in order

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to understand as God intended, well, I didn't need to read an original Greek manuscript of Acts, but that

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a faithful English translation of it was sufficient. And don't laugh at this because, for example, Muslims

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believe that the Quran can only be properly understood when read in the original Arabic. Not so the Bible.

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I also presupposed that I did not need to wear a tunic like Tabitha used to make to worship, right?

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A suit or a slacks or jeans were sufficient to wear to worship services or to worship in an upper room

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like the apostles did. A church sanctuary, a worship center, a rented facility was fine. Or that I needed

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to travel by ship like Paul did in Acts on a short-term missions project. I could fly or take a bus or a train

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or a plane. Well, these examples I used to belabor the point and make clear what I mean by presupposing

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a thing. But there are far more subtle ways in which presuppositions work in our hearts and minds

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that we are not entirely conscious of when we come to the text. Let me identify a few of these

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presuppositions, two of them for you. My first example would be, for example, Pentecostal brothers

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presuppose charismatic gifts for the church age, and lo and behold, they find it in the book of Acts.

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Oh, how wondrous the power of God was in the early church. He did indeed confirm that a new

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eon had dawned in Christ, a new covenant had been cut, and he did so by healing the sick and the lame,

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bestowing miraculous insight and knowledge, and giving the gift of the ability to speak in known

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languages, the gift of tongues. Now, our Pentecostal and charismatic brethren presuppose this to be true

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for our age as well, because they have experienced it. They extrapolate that a one-for-one relationship

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exists. That is, that since they experienced it back in the book of Acts, then so should we.

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Yet, I would argue that not everything described in narrative is meant to be prescribed in narrative

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for all times and places of the church. And this, I submit to you, is true of the charismatic gifts.

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Also, we see these kinds of gifts bestowed throughout redemptive history at periods of new revelation

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and at the inauguration of new covenants. When the period of covenant inauguration ceases,

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so do the charismatic gifts. When the time of new revelation ceases, like the Pentateuch with the death of

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Moses or the death is of the prophets, so the charismatic gifts die, or cease, if you will.

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And no amount of huffing and puffing and attempts to duplicate those charismatic gifts works.

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They are of God and only He can bestow them. Such is the case with the charismatic gifts of Acts.

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They are not meant to be for the entire church age. That's one example of a presupposition to which

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many of our brothers and sisters come to the text, to the book of Acts. The second one is,

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Baptist brothers presuppose a believer baptism model is held out in Acts. They come to the text

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with this presupposition. And for many of these, my brothers, since so many adults were baptized in Acts,

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and there is, then ostensibly, no explicit reference to children and infants being baptized,

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well, then, baptism must obviously be for adult believers only. But this is a presupposition.

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Not necessarily warranted by the facts. First, let me, out of three reasons why this is not a

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warranted presupposition in the book of Acts, that is, that adult believers and adult believers

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only are to be baptized. First, baptism is a new covenant sacrament that corresponds directly to

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circumcision in the Old Testament, where infants were required to be circumcised. Therefore, Paul

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links them one to another. In the book of Colossians, for example, he says in Colossians

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chapter 2, verses 11 and 12, in him also, that is in Christ, you were circumcised with a circumcision

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made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been

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baptized, buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the

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powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. Unquote. God always has an initiatory sacrament

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with every covenant in which the subject of that sacrament does not necessarily give his consent

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and understanding. With the Old Covenant, it was circumcision, performed once upon an infant. In the

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New Covenant, it is baptism, likewise performed once upon an infant. Secondly, let me note for you,

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when we regard infants being baptized in the book of Acts, let me note for you, secondly,

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that in his excellent study, Baptism in the New Testament, the scholar Oscar Coleman observes that

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the word household, which is oikos in Greek, the word household refers by definition to homes with

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infants in them all through the Greek literature. And Dr. Coleman does an excellent job of tracking

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this word oikos all through Greek literature, not just in the New Testament. When this word oikos

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disappears, it means a household with infants and children. Therefore, when we read, for example,

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of Lydia in the book of Acts and her household being baptized, or the Philippian jailer and all his

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household being baptized the same night as his conversion, both found in Acts 16, well then,

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we can be confident that infants and children were the subjects of this covenant sacrament.

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So, not all of the presuppositions of our evangelical brothers hold up to biblical and historical

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scrutiny, because thirdly, there is an unbroken link between infant baptism and the record of

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church history. Oh, this is where church history is so important, because infant baptism appears from

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the beginning in the church fathers and in Eusebius' church history, for example, a very illuminating

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volume of the early church history. And there's no dispute, or there's no conflict in the church

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history record over infant baptism. There's no books or tracts arguing one side or another. There's no

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church councils called to decide the question. No. Infant baptism appears seamlessly in the life of the

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church very early, as if it had always been there, inherited from Christ and the apostles. And, of course,

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my Baptist brethren would merely say, well, the church fell into error very early. But the burden

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of proof is upon you, dear Baptist brother. The burden of proof is upon you to show where and when it

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happened, and also to demonstrate the circumstances and the supposed false teachers who introduced infant

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baptism, because it isn't there. No one has been able to do this. So, just in this one question of

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baptism, for example, we discover the importance of the study of church history and the role played

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by our presuppositions when we think of the church and the church in history. To think that we can

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simply leapfrog over 2,000 years of church history and look at the way the New Testament did it and then

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copy it and be faithful and right in doing so is simply naive. We bring a pre-understanding to the

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book of Acts. We bring presuppositions to our reading of the book of Acts. And one way to help minimize

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those presuppositions from leading us into error is to examine our presuppositions closely, be aware of

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our presuppositions, and then compare how other saints throughout church history have handled those

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same presuppositions. This is a necessity, dear brother. You have much to benefit from an impartial

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close study of church history, dear listener. We at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church were doing a

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one-year Bible study into church history using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book, Church History in Plain

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Language. Now, our study began on October 7th at 7 p.m. in our church fellowship hall. We invite you to

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join us every Wednesday night at 7 p.m., and you can pick up and continue with us. If you've been curious about

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who and what we are as a church, it's an excellent time to check us out and meet our people and me,

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Pastor Dave Bass, 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights. Call us at 523-0196 for further information.

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Well, for the second thing, pitfall into which our modern evangelical brothers fall when it comes to

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church history is indeed the modern evangelical demonstrates a lack of humility towards and

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appreciation for the experience of saints who preceded us in church history. Yes, the modern

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evangelical demonstrates a lack of humility towards and appreciation for the experience of saints who

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preceded us in church history. There is a we-are-the-people attitude implicit in the one who

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thinks that he can do what other saints perhaps more gifted than himself have not been able to do in

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church history, and historians call this phenomenon cultural arrogance. That Chuck Smith was able to

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preach on the beaches of California, to assemble believers, to meet and worship as a church, and to

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learn freely from other Christian teachers and books and recordings is due in no small part to hard-won

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religious freedom, but at a dear price by Christians that he so blithely dismisses as sad and tragic

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failures. Oh, cultural arrogance. Church history is nothing but a record of sad and tragic failure.

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Oh, dear listener, was dear Athanasius, dear Athanasius, who was bishop of Alexandria, and Athanasius lived from

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AD 296 to 373, was dear Athanasius a sad and tragic failure for standing for language in the Nicene Creed

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that expressed the divine nature of Christ? Oh, most moderate evangelicals are ignorant of the fact that

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early in the life of the church, pagan notions of Christ almost swept the Christian faith into

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obscurity. A man named Arius taught that Christ was not the eternal son of God, but rather a subordinate

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being created by the Father. If this view had prevailed, Christianity would have become just another of the

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pagan religions of gods and goddesses that proliferated in the world at that time. But Athanasius,

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in his writings, his sermons, and his defense at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, Athanasius fought for

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the full divinity of Christ with the Father, expressed in scriptures like this found in John chapter 1,

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in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, Athanasius was

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persecuted severely by Aryan princes and bishops who flourished in the decades after the Council of Nicaea.

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Athanasius was exiled several times, deposed from his office as bishop, scorned and beaten for his refusal

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to recant from his views. Yet he held firm, and his views eventually held sway and formed the doctrinal

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structure for our understanding of the Trinity, dear listener. One historian puts it this way, almost

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single-handedly, Athanasius saved the church from pagan intellectualism. By Athanasius' tenacity and vision in

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preaching one God and Savior, he had preserved from dissolution the unity and integrity of the Christian

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faith, unquote. Now, Calvary Chapel has a doctrinal statement that says, we believe that there is one

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living and true God eternally existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

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equal in power and glory, and this triune God created all, upholds all, and governs all things,

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unquote, from the Calvary Chapel website. But Chuck Smith and most Calvary pastors and believers are

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clueless as to the dear price paid by forbearers like Bishop Athanasius for language that they

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themselves use in their own doctrinal statement to articulate the Trinity. Instead, they dismiss the

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man who succeeded in preserving from dissolution the unity and integrity of the Christian faith.

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They dismiss him as a sad and tragic failure. We could cite numerous other examples, dear listener.

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Was Martin Luther a sad and tragic failure for reforming what was in his day a corrupt and

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dissolute Roman Catholic Church? In teaching the Book of Romans as a professor at Wittenberg,

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Luther rediscovered that, as Paul says, a man is justified by faith and not by works of the law.

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And for this, Luther paid a tremendous price. The Roman Catholic Church had an intricate,

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extensive network of works-based righteousness in order to be saved, and Luther's rediscovery of

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and stubborn insistence upon salvation by grace through faith transformed the church as we know

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it. And once more, Calvary Chapel has in its doctrinal statement, and I quote from it,

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God saves and gives new life to all who come to him in repentance and faith, trusting in the person

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and work of Jesus Christ. Dear listener, this is a Protestant language of faith and Christian

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soteriology, and it was bought at a dear price by reformers like Luther and Calvin and Knox. Those

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who followed the reformers in subsequent generations, they also suffered and bled and died to seal the

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gains of the Reformation. And evangelicals like Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel pastors and believers

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are living off of the capital invested by saints like the reformers, and yet they dismiss them as

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sad and tragic failures. Oh, dear listener, ignorance breeds arrogance since it fails to see

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and appreciate what has come before. Ignorance of church history breeds arrogance. Modern evangelicals

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in America are generally ignorant of their history, and they enjoy their religious freedom to look to the

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book of Acts for the model of the church, as Chuck Smith says, while at the same time despising the price

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paid by pilgrims, Puritans, and Presbyterians, for example, to give them that freedom. They wouldn't enjoy

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that freedom in China or Saudi Arabia or Iran, yet these pilgrims, Puritans, and Presbyterians are, in their

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eyes, a sad and tragic failure and are in no wise to be consulted, as Chuck Smith says, for the divine ideal

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for the church. Well, third blind spot to which many modern evangelicals fall prey is indeed the modern

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evangelical manifests an inability to learn from the mistakes of others and then will be doomed to

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repeat those mistakes. Yes, the modern evangelical manifests an inability to learn from the mistakes

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of others in church history and will thus be doomed to repeat those mistakes. As Chuck Smith is fond of

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pointing out, that church history is indeed filled with atrocities, error, and heresy, as he says.

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Atrocities, error, and heresy. Oh, that the church history is filled with these things is so obvious as to

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be painful and embarrassing. Please, Pastor Smith, Pastor Chuck Smith, and Calvary Chapel, tell us something we

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don't know. Atrocity, error, and heresy flourished not only in church history, but in Jesus' own company of

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apostles. Peter no more than confessed true doctrine, for example, when Jesus had asked him,

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who do you say that I am? Peter answered by responding, you are the Christ, the son of a living, the son of the

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living God. Indeed, true doctrine, wasn't it? But moments later, Jesus turned around and rebuked him by

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exclaiming, get behind me, Satan, because Peter denied that Jesus must soon suffer and die. So error,

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was in the very company of the apostles. Atrocity, error, and heresy have characterized the history

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of the church ever since, precisely as Jesus and the apostles predicted. They predicted these things.

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And these things also, Peter tells us, test, prune, and prove the church. We see the church come shining

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out of this history as the true church, and to ignore her model in church history is to invite

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repeating the errors of the past. Ignoring the history of that church and the model of her

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emerges, that emerges from it, is to invite repeating the very atrocities, error, and heresy

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experienced by the church of history. For example, many evangelicals, many evangelicals, excuse me,

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risk repeating the errors of the past in regards to worship, for example. One of the dangers of

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parachuting into the book of Acts that is flying over all of church history to derive one's model

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for worship is that there's no particular liturgy or complete model for a worship service in the

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book of Acts. This is because the church would already find a model ready to hand. And what she

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found in the temple liturgy and the model already practiced in the synagogue, when the early church

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asked, what is worship that pleases God? That early church found not only that the heart of the

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worshiper must be right, but that all of the elements of that worship must be acceptable to

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God, and that they be done decently and in order, as the Apostle Paul directs. But many of my

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contemporary worship brothers and sisters sees on the very fact that there is no specific model

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or liturgy for worship laid out in Acts as proof that they can include, for example, drama skits or

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video individual soloists, and it will please God, or that they can exclude embarrassing elements for

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them, like confession of sin or liturgical prayers recited by the congregation, or long sermons with

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complicated ideas like propitiation and justification, the wrath and justice of God, for example, and that

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excluding these will please God in his worship. And on the surface, in a simplistic fashion, such a

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reading of Acts might justify so much of what we see in contemporary worship services. But a deeper

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look, and I invite you to do this, a deeper look at the Bible and how the church has practiced worship

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and liturgy over the centuries, that is, church history, paints a different picture. The early

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church, for example, took worship very seriously. I have an entire volume in my 32-volume Apostolic

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Church Fathers set that is dedicated to designing the early church worship service. It's called the

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Apostolic Constitutions. Many of the prayers that we incorporate in our own worship service go back

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that far, dear listener. Well, my concern is that the contemporary church is indeed in danger of

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repeating the mistakes of the past in many other areas of the church, not only in worship, but they

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do so by ignoring the lessons of history in worship, but areas like the Trinity. Many are so ill-informed

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about the history of the Trinity that they fall prey to making the same errors, or church discipline

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as well. If there's no church membership, for example, there can be no church discipline.

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A woefully lacking thing in the life of the church today. Well, you have much to benefit from an

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impartial, close study of church history, dear listener. We have launched a one-year Bible study.

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We've just begun into the history of the church using Dr. Bruce Shelley's excellent book,

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Church History in Plain Language. Now, our study will continue at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evenings

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throughout the year, and we invite you to join us to drop in and begin with us wherever we are.

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We meet in our fellowship hall for this study at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard.

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Now, New Geneva also meets for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner

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of 4th and Boulevard. We invite you to join us for our worship service as well on Sunday mornings

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at 10 a.m. and you can call us for further information at 523-0196.