Many people who were in George's Assemblies have great loyalty and affection for the ideal of the simplicity of New Testament gathering. They have a strong conviction that it is the Biblical way for the church to meet. Steve and I have a lot of sympathy for these folks. We were married at Westmoreland Chapel, and still keep in touch with friends there.
Westmoreland and the Assemblies are both offshoots of the Plymouth Brethren movement which began in the nineteenth century under J. N. Darby. A look at the early history of the Brethren is instructive for us from the Assemblies, because it shows that there were weaknesses in the outworking of the ideal of New Testament simplicity, particularly as it developed in the branch of the Brethren known as the Exclusives.
At this point, I can hear some readers deciding to read no further, because they think this will be a biased attack on the Assemblies. This article is not an attack, it is an attempt to let history speak, and to learn from it. In several ways, the Brethren history has been already been repeated in the Assemblies. If loyalty to the Brethren ideal prevents people from taking an honest look, the Assemblies might continue to repeat it.
In the 1820's in England and Ireland there were scattered small groups of believers who were meeting in homes for prayer and Bible study because they were disturbed by developments in the Church of England. J. N. Darby, a young clergyman who had been a vicar for two years, joined with the group meeting in Dublin. He soon became the dominant force, even though mature men like Dr. Edward Cronin had begun the meeting.
Darby took the subject of the problems in the established church, and escalated it into his doctrine of the failure of all God's dispensations, including the church age. He believed it was his calling and burden to preach this message of ruin. Some disagreed with him, but by the force of his preaching and voluminous writing, and tireless travel on two continents, his ideas prevailed. The result was that even though the Brethren "broke bread" every Sunday, the centrality of Christ's work on our behalf was at least partly obscured by interest in Darby's new doctrines.
In 1832 B. W. Newton invited Darby to come minister to the group gathering in Plymouth. Newton was the key leader who was allowed to make that kind of decision. By 1845 Darby separated from Newton on the grounds that Newton was teaching heresy on the person of Christ.
In the Bristol gathering Henry Craik and George Muller made the decision to receive people into fellowship who had been with Newton. But this was totally contrary to Darby's principle of Separation from Evil, God's Principle of Unity. Darby called for all the assemblies to "judge the question", and this created the division between the open brethren, who agreed with Muller and Craik, and the exclusives, who followed Darby.
Dr. Cronin, another of the founding leaders, was excommunicated by the exclusives in 1879 on the charge of "independency". He sat in the back in the "seat of the unlearned" for three years, until he died broken-hearted at the age of 82.
Several things stand out in this history:
Can we stay focused on these facts and draw the necessary comparisons and conclusions? It is not easy. Something very precious to us is being called in question, something which we not only believe in, but which we have experienced. As George would say, the joy of gathering in simplicity is "better felt than tel't". It is difficult to step out of the comfort zone and be objective.
Just how hard it is to see that there could be problems with the cherished ideal is dramatically demonstrated by E. H. Broadbent in The Pilgrim Church. He cites the Montanists, who appeared in the Phrygian desert in A. D. 160, as one of the exemplar little flocks who faithfully stood for Tew testament simplicity.
But the rea facts about the Montanists are not hard to research. They are described by Eusebius in The History of the Church, written in A. D. 324, which is a standard reference for serious church historians today. He describes how prophetic revelations were received by Montanus and his two prophetesses: They were "filled with spiritual excitement and suddenly fell into a kind of trance and unnatural ecstasy. [They] raved and began to chatter.." They taught that God was still giving new revelation to the church through these prophecies. Montanus claimed of himself, "I am spirit and word and power." Eusebius says further of Montanus:
The Montanists were declared by the bishops in Phrygia to be an heretical sect. I think we can agree these were serious problems. Interestingly, the characteristics seen in the early Brethren are also seen in the Montanists--the desired simplicity degenerating into power in the hands of a self-appointed few, who emphasize doctrines which obscure the centrality of what God has done for us in Christ. And yet this is what Broadbent has to say of them:
In view of the increasing worldliness in the Church, and the way in which, among the leaders, learning was taking the place of spiritual power, many believers were deeply impressed with the desire for a fuller experience of the indwelling and power of the Holy Spirit, and were looking for spiritual revival and return to apostolic teaching and practice. In Phrygia, Montanus began to teach, he and those with him protesting against the prevailing laxity in the relations of the Church to the world.
The Montanists hoped to raise up congregations that should return to primitive piety, live as those waiting for the Lord's return and, especially, give to the Holy Spirit His rightful place in the Church. Though there were exaggerations among them in the pretensions of some to spiritual revelations, yet they taught and practiced needed reform.
Loyalty to the Brethren presuppositions clouded Broadbent's evaluation and caused him to overlook big problems in his eagerness to justify and legitimize Brethrenism. This is the danger we face. It is easy to think that the abuse of power has been eradicated in the Assemblies with the excommunication of George. But the Brethren system allows it, even encourages it, to rise again.
More importantly, the fact has to be faced that there are serious
charges regarding Assembly doctrine. They must be thoroughly investigated. And if they are corrected, what is to prevent other doctrinal
aberrations from developing. The Assembly as "the schoolroom of
the believer" is a self-perpetuating closed system.
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