PROLOGUE
“Remember your leaders who have spoken to you t he Word of God; and considering the issue of their conversation, imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7, N.T.).
The author of the following letter, Mr. B. C. Greenman, needs little introduction to most into whose hands this paper comes.
Known to many over a period of years, our brother was faithful in his stewardship, and in the words of the Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, (Acts 20:27) did not shun to declare “all the counsel of God.”
We esteem it a privilege to set forth the Scriptural principles which are outlined in this letter; and in bringing this most precious and important line of things before others, our brother, still greatly beloved and highly esteemed for his work’s sake, though “being dead, yet speaketh” (Hebrews 11:4).
May God graciously bless this ministry to His own and grant to those who waver, or who have been misled by the enemy into “popular” and unscriptural associations, the faith that would step out boldly “unto HIM, without the Camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13). F. B. T.
My Dear Brother, Staples, Minn., June 17, 1908
Agreeable to your request I give you some Scripture for my Church principles as a so-called “Exclusive Brother.” Thus, I make the claim to the exact opposite of what you credit Bro. A. with — that I have Scripture for it, which to me, is as plain as “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”
1. My first plank is that all true Christian gathering is unto Christ’s name, as we read, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together” (1 Corinthians 5:4). This presents a Divine, not human center of gathering.
Our exclusivism is that we take this ground, we own Christ as our Lord, and in obedience to Him, gather to His name as our Divine Centerjust as we first trusted Him as our Divine Saviour. This excludes all else.
In proof of this, while we look for our Lord’s coming, we are not Adventists; while we own baptism, we are not Baptists, and while we own the guidance and liberty of the Holy Spirit, we are not Friends. In other words, our Center is not a doctrine, however important; not an ordinance, however precious; not a principle, however blessed, but a Person even our Lord Jesus, Who yet teaches us to look for His coming, to be baptized in His name; and to be guided by His Spirit. This is the teaching of Exclusivism that as to our Center, it is Christ our Lord, we can Scripturally own no other (1 Corinthians 8:5,6).
2. We own the Sovereignty and guidance of the Holy Spirit, according to the Word: All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will” (1 Corinthians 12:11).
In obedience to this truth, then, we resolutely refuse all human ordination for Christian ministry or priesthood. “We believe in the Holy Ghost” thus, as being truly a part of the apostles’ creed, and seek God’s grace to honor this truth by giving Him His true place in our assemblies, as setting aside all human regulations, or ordering of our worship to God or service to men. This truth is to govern our ‘coming together’ in the same way that His indwelling is to govern our individual lives.
3. We own the Word of God as fully and entirely inspired, and as all-sufficient for both our faith and practice. Thus in our assemblies we seek to keep “the commandments of the Lord” as laid down in 1 Corinthians 11-14, as to the Lord’s supper, liberty of ministry by the Spirit, edifying of one another and Church order. In this, we make no pretension (as often charged) to infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit, for while He is an infallible Person “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” But heartily and humbly, in the consciousness of folly and failure on our part, we cleave to this important truth in the face of an apostate Christendom— That God’s Word is all-sufficient, that neither time not change can render it obsolete, and that this Word teaches our Exclusive Church position, as it does our Exclusivesalvation by Christ alone.
4. “We believe in the communion of saints” in the Church of God.
This communion of saints to us involves the truth of the one Body of Christ. This, in turn, involves “holding the Head,” which means both dependence upon and obedience to Him. This, in the early days, involved “receiving one another to the glory of God, ” and “following the things that make for peace” on the one side. And on the other side it also involved holiness and truth, in putting away of evil doers, the refusal of unsound teachers, and the marking and avoiding of those who cause divisions, contrary to the doctrine of Scripture. And finally, that this “communion of saints” means the maintenance of godly order, both in and between the assemblies, so that no one can be owned as independent of the others. This we believe, the very nature of the one Body, and of owning its living Head, forbids.
Paul taught as to this: (1) That what he wrote to the Church of Corinth, as to Church order, he wrote also to “all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Thus he believed in but one Church fellowship in all this dispensation of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 1:1,2).
Paul taught: (2) That what the assembly did at Corinth, in maintaining godly order he also did in concert with them. When charging them to judge an evil doer, he says, “I have judged already as though I were present” (1 Corinthians 5:3-5). This evil doer, he owned, might be a Christian, and the sequel proved that he was such (1 Corinthians 5:5; 2 Corinthians 2: 6-11).
Paul taught (3) one common and exclusive church order. “As the Lord hath called everyone, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches” (1 Corinthians 7:17).
He had not one order for saints in corrupt Corinth, and another for more intellectual Athens. The Church of God is but one, its charter but one, its principles but one, and its order should be but one also.
(4) Paul taught that the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper were expressions of the communion of the body and blood of Christ.
“For we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread’. (1 Corinthians 10:16,17). The fact that a saint with, alas, the bad ways of a sinner was put away in 1 Corinthians 5, leaves this truth untouched. The sad fact of many since “forsaking God’s ground and truth yet claims still that we should act upon it.
(5) In delivering to the Corinthians the ordinances in 1 Corinthians 11, etc., the Apostle Paul shows that they are both absolute and exclusive, saying: “If any man seem to be contentious we have no such custom neither the Churches of God” (1 Corinthians 11:16). That is, the man who refuses the control of the Word of God and to act on the sound principles of the Church of God, only puts himself in his self-will and folly against both the apostles and all the churches of God. To us it means this, or nothing at all, an Exclusive because Divine order.
(6) The apostle taught that each local assembly was a distinct expression of the whole assembly of God, each and all believing its teachings, acting upon its principles, and maintaining its common order. There is no such thing, then, to be owned in the House of God, as independency of gathering. It may invade us, distress us, divide and defile us, but by the grace of God, it must be warred with to the end. .’There is no discharge in this war.” “Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27), This teaches the unity of assemblies, not at all as independent, either of Christ as the living Head, or of others, who, gathered by the same grace, seek to cleave to Christ as their center, the Holy Spirit as their power, the Word of God as their Guide, and the practical fellowship of saints, as being according to truth and righteousness. Each individual in a local assembly has a divinely-given relation to all the rest, and each assembly has the same relation to every other assembly in the wide world. Such is the teaching of Scriptural exclusivism.
Now, brother, I have in my judgment, given you Scripture for an Exclusive Church position. Ifyou say, you do not see it, I cannot help your sight. It needs no penny candle to enable a man to see the sun if his face is turned to that glorious orb, and ten thousand of them will not enable him to, if his back is upon it. My Bible, as I believe, teaches me to be an Exclusive brother, great as the reproach of it may be; and in this conviction, I preach an exclusive Saviour, an exclusive Bible, an exclusive Church, an exclusive Holy Spirit, and exclusive principles also to govern our lives in this evil day, when men say: “Speak unto us smooth things.”
As to why we cannot receive a brother, whose general doctrines are sound, and his conduct godly, who yet refuses to act on Scriptural lines as to Church order and fellowship, the word is “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints.” This order means that in reception, the received should have some definite Scripture reason for their coming, and the firm conviction that the path they come into is of God, and thus claims their obedience. On the other hand, as to the receivers no one should be received by us that we cannot believe is thus taking a step of faith, and in obedience to God, or else we are encouraging souls in what is merely human will, or the choice of their own hearts. Such is not of God, and it is no true service to His people to help them into a path they do not take intelligently for Him.
Your statement that such a cause is also contrary to teaching of Mr. Darby, F. W. Grant and others from whose writings we have received so much blessing, I unqualifiedly deny. They taught me these exclusive principles, equally with the doctrines of God’s grace that rejoice my soul from day to day, and I esteem these, while certainly the less pleasant of the two, to be none the less important. These men, then, taught exclusive principles and themselves walked in obedience to them, as being not only consistent with the truth of the One Body, but as being the only way in which that blessed truth could be practically maintained. So Paul taught the “purging out of leaven,” and a holy fellowship, side by side with the oneness of the Body of Christ, and “endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (1 Corinthians 5-14; Ephesians 4).
That these teachers by their exclusive course nullified their own teachings, you may avow, as many, and as they are not here to defend themselves, we must leave ituntil we meet above. But that they did not both teach and practice a holy and exclusive fellowship, no one can honorably read their writings and deny. On our being converted, we became “followers of them and of the Lord,” and we now after forty-three years are assured that we have made no mistake in this, many such as we are conscious of in other ways, and on other lines (1 Thessalonians 1:6). From these men instrumentally then, and from the Word of God authoritatively, we believe we learned the truth of exclusive principles, and in this firm conviction we continue to walk in them.
Your servant for Jesus’ sake,
B. C. GREENMAN