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We're doing something on the history of Christian gatherings, but this is an honor of Jerry Rushford and Jerry Rushford obviously can't be here, but he's here with a camera. We're all being filmed here and Jerry will look at it someday probably. Uh So uh you can

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call this. Uh Well, wait a minute. I uh there's where I live, South Berwick Maine and uh my email address, you're welcome to write me. You just put a dash in the middle of my first two names and it's comcast.net. Uh Now I want to point

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out that this is a tribute to Jerry Westford and I will say a few words about that and then we'll get on to looking at the background for the whole idea of large Christian gatherings. The Pepperdine is Jerry's 30th. All of you already know that I

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claimed some expertise on these 30 years because I attended or was involved in all of them except the first two. That's before I came to Pepperdine. And then the year I retired, I was making a presentation in Nashville at the disciples of Christ Historical Society. So

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I didn't come out. But every year Jerry twist my arm and I keep coming out and it's been great years, any of you who have experienced these lectureships down through the years, uh The, the, uh this is the 69th and I point out that Jerry has

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directed almost half of these and that might be a point worth noting on its own. Uh And as far as I know he's directed a college lectureship longer than anybody. Carl B Keane, I couldn't find the exact figures, but I think about 25 years at Evelyne

00:02:04.290 - 00:02:26.559

Christian. So he's senior by at least five years over Carl M. Keane. I don't know anybody else in any of the colleges that meets that kind of number of years. So I'm doing two lectures, one today, one at the same time tomorrow in the same room.

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I'm not sure where these are going to break. I'll present as far as I have today, time wise and then we'll start from there tomorrow. Uh We honor Jerry of course, not just for his longevity. So, uh at my age, I think longevity may be worth

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uh crediting, but I think more important is what he's done to the whole lectureship mode and he's done many things I, I experienced at least probably uh almost 30 years of AC U lectures and I go down to Ohio Valley uh where Car uh Gail Hopkins

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is. Uh and I've experienced probably 10 or 15 of theirs. I've been to uh the uh independent Christian church gathering and I've been to uh Ola and Christians uh Lubbock uh lips come, you name it. So it's not, I'm not exactly an innocent when it comes

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to what happens at lectureships. So maybe what I say and the uniqueness of this has some bearing because of this, I've been in lectureships at Frankfurt and Meriden. Me, Meriden, Meriden and Me uh Mexico and all over. Uh now one of the, I think Jerry really

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pioneered this. You look at AC U, you can get online. I have one later and see all the what the focus was on AC U lectures. And uh they started following Jerry and focusing on some portion of scripture, but that wasn't. So from the beginning. But

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if you look from the beginning, the first one of 30 Jerry starts with a scripture and we'll look at that as we wind this up, it'll probably be tomorrow and you'll see that uh he uses a scripture in every case. In fact, if you look in

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your lectureship book, there is a page where all of these are laid out. So number one, that's something that Jerry has almost introduced into all our college lectureships these days, which I think is quite important. Now, I especially was impressed compared with AC U and the

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number of classes that Jerry arranges uh I used to be at AC U lectures. And as Larry knows, the main speakers were back in the old days, you really listen to them. But rather than going to class, you went out to the Abilene public golf course

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and you played golf or you went off somewhere and, uh, ate, drink coffee with somebody and classes weren't, uh, too, too much attended. Maybe Jerry has a audience here that's, uh, built in because he puts you in these dorms up here and you don't wanna get

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out of here too far. So you feel compelled to go to class. But I suspect the answer is that he's brought some very good people. He doesn't put all the top people in the main speeching roles. He put some of the top people in the classes.

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So people go to classes and, and you go to some of these classes, you know, you go to Mike Cubs class and you can't get in if you're not 20 minutes early. So that's something that Jerry, I don't know of any lectureship I've ever been to

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where classes are attended and the way these are here at Pepperdine. And, uh, he has 22 classes at the same time. I'm competing with 21 people. That's ok. And, uh, but in addition to, of course, the regular daytime classes, Jerry points out to me, he does

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those at night and other times, uh, so these classes focus on, uh, live topics. They're not, uh, talking about dead Irishmen. Normally, Shelly Jacobs talks about dead Canadians, JC Bailey and so forth. Wrote her thesis on them. Uh Those are important. I'd like to hear. Well,

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I read her thesis, uh, and I like that but, uh there are really some great front uh running topics that are really impending on us these days. So, uh those are very important and they're highly sought out. Uh So Jerry, as our speaker last night said,

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Jonathan, uh, he has, uh, prided himself in finding these younger guys who no one ever heard of. Uh Some of us are on a list and there's a man named Allen Hier who's sort of big and round Memphis and uh is one of the key people

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probably you'd want to meet if you went to the Fried Harman lectures. And he looked at this lecture at b and he said, I don't know anybody on it well, in some way, praise God. But don't tell Alan, I said that. But anyway, that just shows

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how much different, obviously from Fried Hardman. He'd know everybody on there and a lot of you, if you've been around the brotherhood long enough, you would know most of them too. But you can't count that when you look at what Jerry puts together an elector program.

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Uh He's also sought to get speakers from every state and believe me, he really tries because he always bends my ears about who's in Maine or New Hampshire Vermont or some of these esoteric places and other parts of the US, anybody in Nevada, you know, and,

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uh, he tries harder than that in a lectureship I know of. And, uh, he says, well, I only got 45 this year but Mike has some goal to head toward and maybe he can get all 50. Well, he built, Jerry would get those if it were

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feasible, but it's not always easy to do that, but maybe more than anybody else. AC U has picked up a little on this and invited foreign missionaries and so forth. But that wasn't so much the case. Way back though. They did sometimes use a Ako Kim

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who was a Japanese and some others, but you didn't get many foreign speakers there. But uh notice the lectureship this year, how many people on there. Uh And Jerry has been honoring a lot of people that's picked up in some lectures, I guess there were, there

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was some of that done. Um And he's given some special attention to American ethnic groups, blacks, Hispanics, uh around here, Koreans and whatever else. So he's really given a great focus that has uh been very important and he's exponentially. We learned that from the, from the,

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the uh people who putting the rockets in the sky. Uh the role of women in the Elector ch our friend I talked about, I want to mention his name again. Complain, how come all those women there? You let men hear those women. So uh that's, you

00:10:03.760 - 00:10:24.710

know, that's, that's very unusual but Jerry prides himself, I think he, I may have this number somewhere that the number of women this year is uh about is about uh two thirds of the men. So that's rather impressive. I've got 100 and 44 women I think

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are in the program making presentations. So these are some kind of things that Jerry has uh reinvented the lectureship, mold or genre and uh has certainly made a major impression with this and this has impacted other lectureships. Uh Now these late nights, some of us who

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are older where Jerry thinks the night is still young at nine, we say Jerry, you may not go to bed at till 3 a.m. but some of us hit the hay a bit earlier of these singing groups. Uh He has all these times available for luncheons

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and other things, para church groups, we might call them and all of this I think is a rather unique aura to the Pepperdine lectures. Uh It's, it's, it's nothing like it out there. Maybe some of the others are a bit similar, but uh it's just hard

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to find. So the result is uh Abilene Christian when I went there in 67 claimed to have 10,000 people at their lectureship and maybe they did. But about 6000 of those lived in Abilene. But uh you come to this lectureship and how many people do you

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run in here to hear who are from the Malibu church. We may have one carol. You're the only one in here from the Malibu church probably. Are you? So, see, that, that, that's my point that uh these 4000 people come from out of southern California. Now,

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we have to count a lot of Californians on the San Joaquin Valley. But uh this is mostly people from out and you go to Abilene, they might have some big crowd, but it's either they used to not have Abilene when Larry was a student. You can't,

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your students never went to lectureship because you were involved in sing song, right? I was a Friday sponsor and Larry was in it and those guys were zonked out after a month of practicing and they never went to lecture yet, but they actually have students going

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to lecture. Well, they call it summit these days as you may know. So that's a big difference too about how many people come from over the world to attend the Pepperdine lectureship. Uh So that's more I think than any other uh lectureship. I know of. Even

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the Tulsa workshop sometimes claims big numbers, but a lot of those are okies or they're pretty regional. Uh Yeah. Well, there are few okies we have to forgive here. So, uh this then is a salute to Jerry Rus Ford. Uh But I said enough about him

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for now and again by saying something about him, but we mostly want to see how this fits in a larger picture. Does God intend large gatherings of His people to be addressed? And I would say biblically, the answer is yes. Down through the history of Christendom,

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have there been large gatherings? And yes, but the purpose is differ and we might, I think, consider that and see what the uniqueness of a lectureship such as this might be. Uh Now Jerry, uh if you know Jerry, he worries a month ahead of time and

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he, I bet Jerry can tell you where every chair is located at this lectureship. He's a Yeah, Sue Sue has Sueann who runs our religion division has to follow Jerry around to make sure that Jerry thinks he has all this in his head. I don't always

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believe that it's an exact count but it's pretty close to it in the. So he really fine tunes this and spends just hours making sure that everything's in place. No, you, you don't know any crack, anything has slipped through, do you? Uh So it's uh pretty

00:14:35.119 - 00:14:55.750

much like a oil well, oil machine. Nothing happens very uh often anyway, that is a surprise much to anyone, maybe especially to Jerry. So, uh he's, he's already telling. Well, he went this year, but he already tells me about a week after the lecture check to

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this is what we're going to do next year. Uh You have any suggestions on who does what? So he begins almost right after the lectureship planning the one for next year. So as far as I know, no one has ever done more to see that this

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lectureship is an impressive one and a glory to God. And that's the reason then for this tribute to him this morning. All right. This is our project. Then aside from focusing on Jerry, number one, I want to notice in the scripture, large gatherings, there's maybe more

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than you would think if you just sat and I said, all right. Oh, you name one. And we'll look at that briefly. Uh And, but we want to notice what was going on in these gatherings. Who was it doing the addressing? Uh And I think this

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is different maybe from a lectureship for important reasons. Uh So then we'll look uh briefly through some things in history. Nice. It was a large gathering of Christian leaders, but uh they were trying to write a creed. Jerry never asked us to help him write a

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creed, does he? So at least it differs in that regard. But way back in the our movement from the beginning, uh we had a lot of, we were schizophrenic about whether people larger than congregations should get together. And I want to talk some about that. There

00:16:36.419 - 00:16:56.049

were always, uh they were always dissolving, you know, the last will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery was uh qualms about whether or not a people from various congregations should get together and meet and they said we're going to dissolve the prey and sink into the

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body of Christ at large, you know, that line. So we want to think a little about the implications of that. And then number four, from the beginning, you can find large gatherings, sort of lectureships from 1906 and churches of Christ. And we'll consider that a bit.

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I have some date on that. And then finally, once again, I want to come back and say, OK, we've sort of gone down through these parts of history and uh what does Jerry do look like in light of that, its purpose and scope and various features

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of it. So, all right, we start, then our first project, I'll number these. So if you're trying to take some notes, you hopefully will know where we are in scripture. Uh You can think of Moses addressing without a P A system. All the people of Israel,

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at least they were supposed to be gathered. Whether they could all hear is another question. But uh God had a lot of people hearing on pente cause so we don't know. But that then there's Joshua who follows in the footsteps of Moses who address his large

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number of people. Then there's Josiah who when the scroll was found in the temple gathers all the Israel together or the officials together, he can address, he has this read and then he makes comments. But Jesus is especially famous for the sermon on the Mount. Uh

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we tried to go to Israel three times and there were always scud missiles or we were going right after 911, the State Department said, don't go, but we finally made it in 2010. Our daughter took us there and we were up there where the side of

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the sermon on the Mount is, it's not much of a mound. It's probably sort of a plateau, but it is high above the uh sea of Galilee, maybe 5 to 800 ft. So, you know, you're elevated. Uh And uh well, I was like this when this

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guy from West Texas said that, uh he always thought that Jesus and the sermon on the mount addressed the crowd from horseback, don't you like that one? Uh But it was uh something higher elevation and this supposedly was 5000 people. Plus, I guess that was just

00:19:35.829 - 00:20:01.040

men. Then there was on Pentecost where the 12 addressed the crowds and then Peter, uh it, well, on Pentecost addresses them and then there's this council in Jerusalem, which some uh denominations think is what denomination should do. But in our churches of Christ history, we've never

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been comfortable. That was them. Uh They were uh under God's order to do something like that and we aren't, well, I'll run through this quickly to say something. Then Paul, we know addresses the large crowd where he's been taken a prisoner. So, what about Moses? I'll

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just point out to you. That uh what uh God does through Moses, God, how does God create when God wants light? He speaks when He wants the water above divided from below. He speaks, God always creates by the word. How does God create a people? Israel?

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He creates by the word. And this is very important. That's why these lectureships are important. How do we create a, a vital brotherhood of people committed to the Lord? It's through the word and that's the importance of these gatherings. So we read in Deuteronomy. Now, Genesis

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five that God brought Abraham out and said, look at the stars. Uh uh And uh so shall your descendants be God is creating a people? And uh how is He doing it uh through his word? So it always struck me being an old teacher of philosophy

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that in the Bible, the principle, if we talk about the senses, the principal senses are hearing and speaking uh to get the truth, we hear the truth. We don't uh see that a for Aristotle, the principal ex uh sense experience we have is sight seeing, but

00:22:09.050 - 00:22:31.270

it's hearing. God speaks and his people hear or John Locke said that we had to get to what is most solid, what is most solid, this stuff? So touch is the most important of all the senses we have but clearly in scripture it's hearing. And uh

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that's why we spend all this time hearing and uh speaking to each other during these days, that's I think something behind why we can't do without lectureships as I think we can't. So speaking to large crowds is fundamental for Judaism and Christianity in its history, God

00:22:57.790 - 00:23:24.619

still creates through his word. We go away uh failed, inspired uh dedicated an new, may be reinvented in some cases through the power of the word. So uh in uh Deuteronomy, Moses sets the law, he speaks it. He doesn't uh say uh take out your ipod

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and all check. Uh I put this message on there because that's a bit AAA Aron stick in it. Uh But he speaks it and people here, we won't read the rest of that. So when Joshua and the people go throughout the land and uh push off

00:23:46.660 - 00:24:12.000

as much as they did, the tribes that were occupying the land, Joshua gathers all of them together. We read and he spoke especially to the elders head the judges and so forth. And Joshua said to all the people uh speaking and hearing now what we see

00:24:12.010 - 00:24:37.670

these, that these are special people. Uh They are the key spokespersons for God. They are very authority kind of figures in some of our lectureships, I won't mention names. The view is you shouldn't listen to just anybody coming down the pike. What does Bob Belleville over

00:24:37.680 - 00:24:57.280

here have to say we need to get the top people who really uh get the people up and going and they think they're the authority figures. But that's interesting. That's not the route necessarily, Jerry is gone. Is it? You look at these key speakers and you

00:24:57.290 - 00:25:16.630

probably haven't heard of half of them. Is that bad? Well, in some lectureships, it's thought that's very poor planning. We need to get the authority figures to speak to us. And that's true. As we go down through here, I talk about, uh, Josiah here, not as

00:25:16.640 - 00:25:37.219

he gathered to him, all these people and they went to the king's house and notice and all the people both small and great. He read in their hearing the words of the book of the covenant. So you hear and you are formed in God's image through

00:25:37.229 - 00:25:58.709

the hearing. Jesus. When he saw the crowds, what did he do? Jesus was a good one on one person, wasn't he? And Paul talks about you do your teaching one on one, Jesus sometimes uh addressed enormous groups out there and they heard him gladly, some of

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them on penny costs, uh Peter stud and raised his voice. So he spoke and they heard uh 37 you know this one? Well, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter, how is the heart cut? It's cut through the word.

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Of course, behind the word is what God does. It's an empowered word. It's sharper than any two edged sword as the Hebrew writer says. So they were cut to the heart and the call was to repent and be baptized. I said something about the Jerusalem Council.

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Uh They gathered all the key leaders, uh not just the apostles but uh the elders and lots of people in Jerusalem over the question of, do you have to be circumcised to be saved? There was a party in the early church that said now, uh All

00:27:04.439 - 00:27:25.989

right, gentiles are welcome. But uh you have to be circumcised if you're to be a part of us, not only of us, but in order to be saved, you must be circumcised. What did they do? Did they get a counsel and say, well, this fellowship, all

00:27:26.000 - 00:27:48.869

those people. That's very interesting. Have you ever thought of that? They let them hang on and Paul came back later and he was in deep trouble over that circumcision party, but they hung together and they kept proclaiming, uh they decide what needs to be done and

00:27:48.880 - 00:28:13.140

how do they get it out to the churches? They send out people who take out the conclusions that are being addressed. Well, we've resisted something like that. Maybe with good reason, our lectureships, I suppose some people decide things but we never uh publish the proceedings of

00:28:13.150 - 00:28:36.520

the lectureship, do we? Uh So everybody knows where we came out 2012. Uh We resist that for good reason, I think. Well, Paul was one time up in Athens and I'm proud to say I stood where uh Paul may have stood, the stones have worn away

00:28:36.530 - 00:28:53.410

a lot. And what impressed me was you could look up at the acropolis and you could see all this whole statuary up there and you could look down on the ar ar of the marketplace and you could see the statue in the marketplace and it made

00:28:53.420 - 00:29:11.459

no sense to me that Paul said I see in all things you are superstitious because you worship all the gods. Well, there's concrete evidence right there before you above and below you that Paul is standing there. So he's standing there and he says, I see you're

00:29:11.469 - 00:29:31.290

extremely religious. All the signs are about you. And he looked carefully and so he starts talking and he finally ends up talking about the resurrection which broke up the crowd. But some of them said, Paul, we've got to hear you more about this. The church had

00:29:31.300 - 00:29:57.599

a struggle in Athens never was very important and early, but uh Paul made some inroads even in Athens in his speaking and hearing. So first point was the conclusion, God brings people to himself by his word. These speakers and the scripture are all authority figures. And

00:29:57.609 - 00:30:22.689

I think that it's important to be key leaders and uh listen to what they think and say, maybe they've been through much, we haven't been through. But uh I'm with Jerry that uh we can't replicate that and we go with uh people who, whose authority is

00:30:22.699 - 00:30:47.189

in what they are capable of saying and doing, whether they uh meet the political strands of, among us or, or not, that's very important. Uh So those were key players in the kingdom to instruct and inspire in the ways of God. The exception is the council

00:30:47.199 - 00:31:08.339

in Jerusalem. So, is there any basis? WW will somebody say uh yeah, but uh electors aren't biblical? Well, I hope I've laid out something that would at least in your mind say, hey, how can you say that? Because you have all these large gatherings and speaking

00:31:08.349 - 00:31:27.000

and hearing and scripture you go through. All right. Number two. And uh we could, I'm something of a historian as Frank is here. He teaches up at Amarillo, what is it, college? And uh we could both of you fill the rest but you don't wanna hear

00:31:27.010 - 00:31:54.250

us. But so I'll do this rather quickly. Um uh For example, I did my doctoral dissertation on Basil, the great 1/4 century Greek preacher in the Lantern, which was 40 days time. Uh Basil spoke at uh about sunset every day and uh probably more people than

00:31:54.260 - 00:32:14.500

could hold in the, they had buildings by then in the fourth century that might see uh five or 600 1000. But he spoke out there every day. The famous Linton sermons were on uh creation in Genesis and they call them the Hexamer. And in Greek that

00:32:14.510 - 00:32:39.130

means the six days of creation. And he spoke every night and large crowds came now ordinarily, they didn't have gospel meetings in those days, but they did have this uh gathering where you spoke to large numbers. And that was one way of edifying and inspiring and

00:32:39.140 - 00:33:01.569

keeping people faithful to the Lord. I talked about the council. You probably heard of these all. Nice tries to settle the question of the relationship of the father and the son. Uh Arias entered the picture here was uh Jesus was God or if he's God, is

00:33:01.579 - 00:33:21.969

he equal to God or is he uh a de deity that's less than God. Arias took the position that Jesus is a deity less than God. And he even goes so far as to say there was a time when he was not, in other words, God

00:33:21.979 - 00:33:43.479

has always been, but Jesus has not always been. Well, you have the Nicene creed that lays all this out. Did you know in the Nicene creed which Alexander Campbell knew. It says that baptism is for the remission of sins. And uh in some ways, people think

00:33:43.489 - 00:34:02.790

that Alexander Campbell discovered that for the first time. Well, all he needed to do was remember the creed that Thomas Campbell, his father made him memorize and it says, right in the creed that baptism is for the remission of sins. Well, then there's Chalcedon and I

00:34:02.800 - 00:34:22.489

was like Chalcedon. This is not the relation of the father and the son, but it's how do you understand the son and Chid and said that he's truly God and truly, man, you can't uh undermine either one. There are a lot of early Christians who said

00:34:22.500 - 00:34:42.749

he just appeared to be a man DCIS. But Nyus said for what was it? 15. And that's not exactly for something. 51 that strikes me. And I said that you have to finally come to. There's all these nestor in and Apollonian and so forth and we

00:34:42.759 - 00:35:05.310

can't bother with all that. But they finally said, which I think is a good statement myself that you understand Jesus as truly God and truly man. And this was very important. But we say, uh we don't do that. Uh I think we too readily reject what

00:35:05.320 - 00:35:28.659

they did. I think we can learn from it. But nevertheless, we say let's go back to scripture, but they had gatherings, something like our lectureships and they made decisions about these. Now, there was the Westminster Confession put together by the Scottish divines and uh Thomas Campbell,

00:35:28.669 - 00:35:50.000

a good Presbyterian made Alexander Campbell memorized the whole Westminster Confession. It is a fairly long document and Campbell complained that as the son that he could have memorized a third of the New Testament while he was memorizing the Westminster Creed. Now, was that a completely worthless

00:35:50.010 - 00:36:07.370

enterprise? I'd say not because both the Campbells agreed with about 90% of the Westminster Creed. If you don't believe it, go read it yourself, you'll probably agree with 90%. We think that we can, we, uh we think all these creeds are off the wall and they

00:36:07.379 - 00:36:24.219

have nothing for us, but they have a lot of things we embrace in them. But they said the problem is that people go by this to decide who's in the faith and who's not by the creed rather than the scripture. And that's what we objected to.

00:36:24.500 - 00:36:44.120

Thomas Campbell said that these creeds are very important, but please don't use it for cutting your sheep in and out of the flock. Uh You don't use these to decide who's in the faith and who isn't. You need to go by scripture. Well, I shouldn't preach

00:36:44.129 - 00:37:01.340

my little sermon here but then there's Trent and Trent is not Protestant as you may know what was Trent. Trent was a, was a Roman Catholic gathering to say, well, there's all these Protestants we got on our hand and we don't know about these people. And

00:37:01.350 - 00:37:22.510

so how are we going to react to them? So, the Roman Catholic Divis all gather at Trent and they try to decide on how the Catholics should go. So in history, there's always been these gatherings of people to try to think through and say, what should

00:37:22.520 - 00:37:40.530

we do as far as the Kingdom of God and our understanding of it. And then finally, probably the council I like best, but which I disagree with part of the council of do it. Uh it was in Dort Holland and there they were trying to cite

00:37:40.540 - 00:38:02.090

there were Ar Armenians in uh Holland that is who believed in freedom of the will. And there were the predestination and election Calvin held that you're elected both to heaven and to hell. It's called sometimes double election and some blamed on Calvin can't be blamed on

00:38:02.100 - 00:38:23.870

Calvin. The Council of do. It really spells out what might be called a Calvinistic Theological Program. Uh And uh the acronym for this is Tulip. Have any of you heard that total depravity? And you go on down the UL IP preservation at the end. So, uh

00:38:23.879 - 00:38:45.659

if you really follow, do you believe in uh predestination both to heaven and to perdition? You believe in irresistible grace? That's what the eye stands for and so forth. So this is to say that God's people, I'll put that in quotes if you have a problem

00:38:45.669 - 00:39:13.449

with that down through the ages, have invested a lot of hours of their life and uh listening and speaking and getting together and making major decisions. But as I said, we've uh resisted that and we have not gone along with this idea. So this lectureship, whatever

00:39:13.459 - 00:39:38.600

it is is not an effort to make major decisions. Maybe you come to some conclusions of some kind here. Uh And now another uh idea of these gatherings was that you organize the churches, like the Methodists have annual conferences and uh gale uh uh rub shoulders.

00:39:38.610 - 00:39:57.649

Do you really do that? Gay with the Methodists? And they have an annual conference and uh they, they decide where you're going to preach next year in the annual conference. There's these uh organizational kind of gatherings, but Gail isn't putting, I mean, gay, uh Jerry isn't

00:39:57.659 - 00:40:18.050

putting together any organizational kind of conference either. So that uh we, that when they appointed Mike and Rick to run this next year, uh they didn't ask any of us much, did they? And we never got together and decided who could run it. Uh I know

00:40:18.060 - 00:40:34.149

a bit about that, but I wasn't even asked what I thought, which is fine. Uh I have enough problems that I'm, I don't try to get my nose into things that, that I don't need to be in. But anyway, that's not what we have these lectureships

00:40:34.159 - 00:40:54.689

for. Well, that gives you a little perspective about the idea of lectureship. So we've done two of our three tasks. Now, I'm gonna go on and talk a little about number three and uh I'm going to quit here. I think in about five minutes and see

00:40:54.699 - 00:41:15.399

what comments any of you might like to make or questions you have. Uh This is uh simple stuff for most of you, Shelley could do this off the top of her head, the four wings of our movement Ways. O Kelly, uh 1794 they were a bunch

00:41:15.409 - 00:41:35.469

of Methodists as you may know. And precisely what O Kelly and his group objected to was that the bishops appointed, where people should preach. And uh O Kelly's group said no way and they almost got the vote. But uh they voted for the Bishop Francis Asbury

00:41:35.479 - 00:41:54.540

instead of the O Kelly group. So they went out and became Republican Methodists. And then, uh the, this guy came along and suggested R Haggard that they should drop that name and just call themselves Christians. The second one are the people from my country. I know

00:41:54.550 - 00:42:15.129

a lot more than you want to know about Abner Jones and Elias Smith. And they thought the name to wear was Christian. And all these groups heard about each other by about uh 18 9, at least when the Herald of Gospel Liberty was published by Eli

00:42:15.229 - 00:42:35.520

Smith. And then there was Barton W Stone and we'll start saying a few words about them. Whoever came up with the Stone Campbell movement, I think missed it. Uh, in a big way, our movement really became a force. Not because of what those guys thought be

00:42:35.530 - 00:42:55.350

because the people who went around bringing people to Jesus Christ through their preaching and who did that chiefly that was Walter Scott. So at minimum, we have to be the Stone Campbell Scott movement. And, uh I think it's totally unjust to Walter Scott because if it

00:42:55.360 - 00:43:14.199

hadn't been for Walter Scott and his leadership and evangelism, we would be about the size of the Amish in Lan Lancaster, Pennsylvania or something. Uh, he's the one who spread the word about or his way of doing it. Not, he himself, personally, he even persuaded Alexander

00:43:14.209 - 00:43:44.760

Campbell to do this. All right. Well, our forefathers from the beginning considered that if you truly are independent as churches, uh, you just don't get together as representatives of individual congregations to decide what the larger brotherhood is going to do if you're going to be independent,

00:43:45.530 - 00:44:04.050

uh, you don't have gatherings of that kind. That's why we don't, we don't have that kind of gathering at uh Pepperdine in all the wings of this. Interestingly, I if we had time, I could document that. They all went through this and decided that they would

00:44:04.060 - 00:44:28.889

not have conferences like the Methodist did or associations like the Baptist did. Of course, if you're a Southern Baptist, it's conventions, they use various names, but all those are ways of trying to bring people together. Um, now the early adventures you think of the great awakenings,

00:44:28.899 - 00:44:59.310

they were not produced by the headquarters of some denomination, but they were a people independent in one congregation, issuing an invitation to come forth. Uh Stone's great camp meeting out there in Kane came about because Barton Stone representing congregations in Cain and Concord sent out the

00:44:59.320 - 00:45:17.260

word that we're going to have a sacramental gathering that is, they didn't have regular communion and anybody wants to come and together, we can observe communion. That's what we're going to do. And it's about 800 I think, gathered for communion. But all these other people came

00:45:17.270 - 00:45:38.270

in their wagons and on horseback. And finally about 20,000 of them ended up at Kane Ridge. Well, that wasn't prompted by any official church group. It was just one person, by the way, which we missed way back there somewhere that was pattern on some Scottish revivals

00:45:38.280 - 00:45:55.899

that were large, sometimes 20,000. And while I think there were things unique about what happened in America. Nevertheless, these people were aware of what was going on in Scotland. There's a book or two about that you could read for some kind of profit. Now, it is

00:45:55.909 - 00:46:17.120

true though that uh these early churches did establish some associations like the Baptist. And there was the Old May Honing, which was a Baptist Association that they uh brought everybody away from. But interestingly when they decide they were no longer Baptist, they dissolved the association because

00:46:17.379 - 00:46:40.949

uh Campbell himself resisted this. But anyway, he said, uh they said we don't want this. Well, they were the ones who commissioned Walter Scott his first year. He, but it's interesting in that association, they baptized 14 people prior to 1827 and they appointed Walter Scott in

00:46:40.959 - 00:47:03.110

the end of the next year, they baptized 1000 people principally because of Walter Scott's leadership. So, uh even here was the in the Campbell Wing, there was the abolishing or putting aside of the gathering. And maybe that's why we went. So there's Jones and Smith who

00:47:03.169 - 00:47:24.060

travel a lot and they went to some of these Baptist conferences, but they decided that this wasn't appropriate though. They did think that maybe for the nation, it was important. So all in here today by reading, once again, the Last Will and Testament, we will that

00:47:24.070 - 00:47:39.520

this body die. That is a gathering of people from various congregations for decision making, be dissolved and sink into union with the body of Christ at large. For there is but one body and one spirit, even as we are called with one hope of our calling.

00:47:39.530 - 00:47:58.199

And then on down, we will let each particular church's body activated by the same spirit, choose her own preacher. That's a slap at the Methodist. But even the Baptist, I mean, what Baptists and Presbyterians support him by a free Will offering without a written call or

00:47:58.209 - 00:48:19.060

subscription. Anybody here had a call to ministry was supposedly you haven't if you're faithful to our movement. Uh But, ok, well, we can discuss that one or subscription. Admit members remove offenses and never his force, delegate her the right of government to man or set of

00:48:19.070 - 00:48:31.000

men, whatever. Well, that sort of sets them all then and we'll start there tomorrow and keep knowing something about our movement and what's happened in lectureships. All right.